…it was AIDS that was going to reach across all divides – national, affectional, behavioral – and kill us all.
Or, y’know, maybe not:
As World AIDS Day is marked on Monday, some experts are growing more outspoken in complaining that AIDS is eating up funding at the expense of more pressing health needs.
They argue that the world has entered a post-AIDS era in which the disease’s spread has largely been curbed in much of the world, Africa excepted.
“AIDS is a terrible humanitarian tragedy, but it’s just one of many terrible humanitarian tragedies,” said Jeremy Shiffman, who studies health spending at Syracuse University.
Roger England of Health Systems Workshop, a think tank based in the Caribbean island of Grenada, goes further. He argues that UNAIDS, the U.N. agency leading the fight against the disease, has outlived its purpose and should be disbanded.
“The global HIV industry is too big and out of control. We have created a monster with too many vested interests and reputations at stake, … too many relatively well paid HIV staff in affected countries, and too many rock stars with AIDS support as a fashion accessory,” he wrote in the British Medical Journal in May.
AIDS in its day was a dreadfully scary epidemic, and it killed an awful lot of people. It was also a political football, and one of the first examples of systematic politcally-correct groupthink dominating policy on a key issue. AIDS became a politically-correct policy football from the very beginning, costing scads of lives in the process. Case in point; nations that followed the same sorts of rigorous public-health practices that the US had in attacking all sorts of epidemics in the past – like, say, Cuba – and had the political courage (or lack of political opposition, in Cuba’s case) to focus their national policy on the real causes of the epidemic (behavioral vectors like sharing needles and unprotected sex practices) escaped the worst of the epidemic. The US and much of the western world wasted much time on politically-correct diversions; “Anyone can catch AIDS”, we were warned throughout the ’80s and ’90s, even as the evidence mounted that straight, non-IV-drug-users who eschewed promiscuity and approached sexuality with a certain amount of prudent, albeit unerotic and less-than-romantic clinical due diligence, were actually quite unlikely to be at especial risk.
The reason given was to avoid stigmatizing gays. And gays rightly feared stigmatization; one would be willfully obtuse to say gays haven’t suffered from discrimination.
But how many lives was that feel-good exercise worth? Because it certainly sacrificed many, and diverted much funding, awareness and effort early in the epidemic’s course.
The UN bureaucrat who would lose his job if that were universally recognized begs to differ:
Paul de Lay, a director at UNAIDS, disagrees. It’s valid to question AIDS’ place in the world’s priorities, he says, but insists the turnaround is very recent and it would be wrong to think the epidemic is under control.
As with any deadly epidemic, it’s legitimate to avoid complacency. But there’s a real question: does AIDS need to have the same level of global mobilization that it has had, and still has today?
It’s not a loaded question. I’m genuinely curious.
The cultural left will lie to achieve their social goals. One example is that aids is an indiscriminate epidemic; another is that domestic violence does not have a class component. The same libs that fed us those lies are now telling us that global warming, like AIDS and domestic violence, is an issue that demands a collective response — with themselves determining the proper collective response.
Liberals like the sense of smug self-righteous they feel when they get to control how someone else spends his or her hard earned money.
It’s amazing how logically flexible you’re able to be in deflecting responsibility for the damage done by your side.
The economic crash? Lib’rals! New Orleans under water? Damn lib’rals at it again! AIDS? Why it’s them lib’rals! Lather, rinse, repeat till the wingnut brain is thoroughly washed.
Of course the real obstacles in targeting effective strategies to prevent AIDS transmission were put in place by the God Squad faction of the wingnut party. Remember when you kooks were calling for quarantines and tattoos? Declaring that AIDS was a scourge sent from God to rid America of drug users and homasekshuls?
I guess it’s nice you have a support group for far right delusional types Mitch (let’s watch ’em all jump on this particular crazy bandwagon). But if you kooks are ever to be trusted with power again, you’ll have to face up to your mistakes and come up with some ideas that correspond a lot more closely with reality. Cause you’re not going to convince anyone who isn’t already on the fringe right with this kind of nonsense.
The economic crash? Lib’rals! New Orleans under water? Damn lib’rals at it again! AIDS? Why it’s them lib’rals!
So far, so good.
Of course the real obstacles in targeting effective strategies to prevent AIDS transmission were put in place by the God Squad faction of the wingnut party. Remember when you kooks were calling for quarantines and tattoos? Declaring that AIDS was a scourge sent from God to rid America of drug users and homasekshuls?
I wasn’t aware that “calling for” measures caused them to be “put in place” (your words) as policy!
The most effective policies to prevent aids transmission are to avoid sodomizing other men and avoid sharing needles.
It’s just possible that there is a moral lesson in this. That seems to drive Angry Clown into a frothing rage.
AC is of course right, but I’ll reply to your question.
AIDS WAS mobilized against globally except in Africa, where, due in part to our own xenophobia and parochialism about birth control, basic birth control education was NOT promulgated, and voila’ the result… an epidemic in Africa.
The mobilization found “cures” that turned a virtual death sentence into a chronic, even dibilitating disease but one which, on our shores, is no longer fatal.
I worked as a waiter in downtown MPLS in the middle 80’s. Many of the folks I worked with were gay, and many died. Your attempt to say..pff.. not really such a big problem (or at least a problem not needing a global solution – therefore neither does global climate change), and you liberals caused it anyway is ugly, scurilous language. Global Climate change is far more likely to cause massive problems (for that matter HAS caused massive problems) than it is likely to not do so. If you would like to bury your head in the sand (yet again), you will yet again be on the wrong side of the solution – just as the right was on AIDS.
Terry, your comment is the root of ignorance. AIDS is transmitted FAR more frequently by heterosexual contact worldwide than it is by ‘sodomizing’ men. OMG, Mitch, the ingorance/bigotry that frequent your site are insufferable.
Once again you’ve totally missed the point, Mr. Peevish. Mitch wrote:
““Anyone can catch AIDS”, we were warned throughout the ’80s and ’90s, even as the evidence mounted that straight, non-IV-drug-users who eschewed promiscuity and approached sexuality with a certain amount of prudent, albeit unerotic and less-than-romantic clinical due diligence, were actually quite unlikely to be at especial risk. “
You response:
I worked as a waiter in downtown MPLS in the middle 80’s. Many of the folks I worked with were gay, and many died. Your attempt to say..pff.. not really such a big problem (or at least a problem not needing a global solution – therefore neither does global climate change), and you liberals caused it anyway is ugly, scurilous language.
Does nothing, zero, zip, nada, to dispute what he has written. You are actually agreeing with him that aids was a problem not in the general population, but in gays.
In the US if you were a heterosexual mail who did not use drugs your chance of getting aids was about as likely as your getting struck by lightening.
But that is not what the liberals told us. They lied.
Pengie stated
“OMG, Mitch, the ingorance/bigotry that frequent your site are insufferable. ”
And yet he’s still here
Speaking of ignorance
AIDS WAS mobilized against globally except in Africa, where, due in part to our own xenophobia and parochialism about birth control, basic birth control education was NOT promulgated, and voila’ the result… an epidemic in Africa.
is stunning in iot’s simplistic world view. I’ve no dou8bt that all of the gentlemen running those African nations would have been front and center to help us over our “xenophobia and parochialism” had they not been busy reducing their populations through good old African attrition (See Rwanda).
I’d say the xenophobia and parochialism exists primarily in Peevs mind. Such as it is.
St. Terry said: “It’s just possible that there is a moral lesson in this.”
Of course there is, Terry. Gee, who would have thought it was a medical issue?
You holy roller wingnut types are exactly the wrong people to be put in charge of anything too science-y. You think everything from bad weather to disease can be traced to God sitting up in Heaven, throwing lightning bolts at people who displease him. Oh, sorry, Him.
How’s that whole “moral lesson” thinking working out for Bristol Palin and the rest of your red state Sluts for Jesus brigades?
Ah, AC, your bigotry never ceases to amaze.
I’m trying to find some sort of point in your comment, AC, but there isn’t one. You just want to vent.
Think of it as mixing body fluids with lots of different people rather than ‘sin’ if you like. It’s not a good thing. Saying ‘put a rubber on it’ is failing to address the issue. Being physically intimate with lots of different people is bad for children & other living things, even if you wear a hazmat suit. You probably believe that the thirty of forty people found murdered in Tiajuana last weekend needs to addressed primarily as a “public health issue”.
AC, the ugly reality here is that the risk groups for AIDS today are
Prostitutes, their customers, and families of those customers.
IV drug users and those who sleep with them
Homosexual males
Get beyond that group, and victims of this disease are like hen’s teeth. And despite 25 years of “wear a condom” and such, we’re still getting tens of thousands of infections in the risk groups.
Sounds like a moral problem to me. We need to start telling people that putting their most prized possession in a septic pipe, or sleeping with anything on two legs or four, is a bad idea.
The point, Reverend Terry, is that the spread of AIDS is a public health issue. The treatment of AIDS is a medical issue. Getting all Jesusy about everything, the way you wingnuts can’t seem to resist, doesn’t actually help anybody.
Here’s a question you can help me with, what with your direct Batphone to Jesus and all. Were antiretroviral drugs actually invented by Satan? Or merely by a scientist possessed by Satan? You answer that – leave the real problems to normal people who accept the scientific method, m’kay?
Bike Butthead advised: “Sounds like a moral problem to me. We need to start telling people that putting their most prized possession in a septic pipe, or sleeping with anything on two legs or four, is a bad idea.”
Unless you’re a lezzie. Cause chick-to-chick transmission is all but impossible. Go recalibrate your little moral certainties for that, BB.
Clown, rather than respond to your idiotic, poorly thought out ‘comments’, I will ask you to count how many times in this thread I mentioned Jesus or religion and how many times you did, m’kay?
Idiot.
And here, Peev, your own parochialism (I won’t throw “bigotry” around with the gay abandon you use) hobbles what could possibly have been points in a useful discussion.
Nonetheless, I will treat your points with vastly more respect and deference than you show me.
AIDS WAS mobilized against globally except in Africa, where, due in part to our own xenophobia and parochialism about birth control, basic birth control education was NOT promulgated, and voila’ the result… an epidemic in Africa.
Of course, comparing African and western societies is myopic and parochial. Most of Africa has no developed public health system. Even in the parts that had some notional idea of “public health” (South Africa), social attitudes about anonymous promiscuous sex hobbled attempts to control the epidemic, and would have been a massive challenge even in a Western society (as they were in parts of western society that had similar atttitudes about promiscuity – the bathhouse scene, for starters).
There is NO evidence that Reagan’s inactivity on AIDS overseas had anything to do with social conservatism (he took virtually no action on social conservatives’ pet causes during his administration, other than using his “bully pulpit” – which is, by the way, largely as it should be), and ample evidence that is was is view on the US’ proper role in the issue.
Need I even mention that even some of President Bush’s detractors note the exceptional level of aid the President has supplied the AIDS effort in Africa in the past eight years – VASTLY more than any previous administration? Yes, I need to, since I strongly suspect you’re utterly ignorant of it.
Now, the irritating part:
Your attempt to say..pff.. not really such a big problem
And here’s where your parochial myopia swerves into dishonesty. I never said it wasn’t a problem. I said the politically-correct pressure on US public health efforts impeded the “mobilization” you were talking about – which, if you read anything without putting your myopic template on it and understood what I wrote, might have led to an interesting conversation, as opposed to more inane name-calling.
(or at least a problem not needing a global solution – therefore neitherdoes global climate change),
And this just beggars logic. There is no connection, in science or in anything I’ve ever written on the subject, between the two. I’d c all it “dishonesty”, but on reflection, I’ll just chalk it up to you being a lazy writer who writes purely from inflamed emotion.
That’s giving you a break, by the way.
and you liberals caused it anyway is ugly, scurilous language.
Is it bad reading comprehension, or laziness, that led you claim I said “you liberals caused it?” Because that’s not what I wrote, and in any case it’s not merely my opinion.
Gay activism did, as a matter of historical fact, hobble traditional public health efforts.
Standard public health practice when dealing with widespread communicable diseases – whether Tuberculosis or Syphilis – involves finding out everyone the infected had contact with (by whatever means the disease spreads, aggressively contacting them, and taking measures to keep the infected and their infection out of, er, circulation until the infection is treated and the epidemic goes away.
Gay activists, fearing (rightly or wrongly) that this process would be used to “stigamtize” gays, pushed back hard, which did, as a matter of historical fact, hobble the traditional public health approach to treating the epidemic. It is a historical fact that countries that did practice traditional public health measures – Cuba was an example – had infection rates vastly lower than countries that did not.
That is not a matter of liberal or conservative; it’s a matter of following time-tested public health practices or not – and why.
If you would like to bury your head in the sand (yet again), you will yet again be on the wrong side of the solution – just as the right was on AIDS.
Given that I’ve shown you (as usual) irredeemably wrong on my take on AIDS (indeed, as usually you went down a series of pointless but inflammatory tangents that had NOTHING to do with what I wrote), and that science is slowly abandoning the idea of man-made global warming…well, we know how this ends, right?
OK, Father Terry, if it isn’t Jesus H. Christ morality you want to apply to the AIDS issue, maybe you can tell me which brand of armchair moralizing you propose to apply. With you wingnuts, though, twisted Christianity is always a good bet.
well, we know how this ends, right?
Oh yes. That gutless worm Peev will take his ball and go home (or in this case, pollute another commet thread).
Clown, if you can’t argue point properly, you shouldn’t use more insults, you should shut the F*ck up.
Morality, not even sexual morality that promotes chastity over incontinence and heterosexuality over homosexuality is a product soley of Christianity. The Dalai Lama made a pro-celibacy speech just a few days ago and for those of us who follow these things his devout belief in chastity — and his dislike of homosexuality — did not come as a surprise. The Greeks invented whole systems of morality that were not based on any examples set by their gods. Romans burned Christians at the stake and they (unlike the Greeks) considered homosexuality an abomination.
Homosexuality is immoral for the same reason that adultery and divorce are immoral. It’s a vain exercise that hurts innocent people and the person who practices it; not always and not everywhere but often enough that it should socially unacceptable. Otherwise Bad Things happen. That’s probably why God made it a sin.
AC, you really need to examine why you hate the idea of morality and Christianity so much. I suspect mother issues.
Aren’t a few other diseases in Africa getting labled as AIDS?
Morality, not even sexual morality that promotes chastity over incontinence and heterosexuality over homosexuality is a product soley of Christianity. If I may I think Terry may have typo’ed in his haste, I think- from the rest of the post- taht you meant not solely
angryclown said:
“With you wingnuts, though, twisted Christianity is always a good bet”
So we can count on angryclown to untwist this Christianity for us, correct? Doesn’t seem like it to me. :-/
Peevee said: “AIDS is transmitted FAR more frequently by heterosexual contact worldwide than it is by ’sodomizing’ men.”
Hehe, if that makes you sleep better at night, you go for it little fellow.
AssClown spewed: “The point, Reverend Terry, is that the spread of AIDS is a public health issue.”
I agree 100%! We need to get Dave “Bucky” Thune to start working on a ban on cornhole rodeos as a threat to the public’s health and well being.
First of all, the fight against HIV/AIDS has been a modern success story, though it has taken a number of years. I’ve worked in/covered the insurance industry for nearly 30 years and back when AIDS first appeared there was a lot of concern about how this new disease would impact mortality (life) and morbidity (health) claims. This was especially acute in the employee benefits (or “group”) market where the “best risks” (i.e., younger employees) were now much riskier. There was initially even talk of not underwriting certain industries perceived to have concentrations of gays, and resistance to offering domestic partner benefits. In addition, the treatments available then were nearly as debilitating as the disease itself.
Today AIDS is not a factor in group life underwriting and for health and disability benefits it is considered a chronic but manageable condition. An HIV-infected patient starting treatment today has nearly a 100 percent chance of achieving essentially full suppression of virus replication and recovery of immune damage. Meanwhile, annual, age-adjusted HIV-related deaths peaked at fewer than 18 per 100,000 in 1995 and have dropped dramatically since then to four per 100,000 today – that’s even lower than the six per 100,000 at the beginning of the outbreak in 1987. Furthermore, initial concerns about incurring AIDS claims by covering domestic partners, or how to underwrite industries with perceived higher exposure to AIDS, have proven to be unfounded.
As to the religion/morality question, I suppose it’s easy to picture an angry God smiting people for all the creative ways we come up with to sin. I think it’s more accurate to picture a loving God who gave us the free will to make choices as well as a lot of practical instruction about avoiding self-destructive behaviors of any variety. The first view is easier because it casts us as victims of a “mean” God; the second uncomfortably puts the responsibility on us. Fortunately, a loving God gave us the means to deal with the fruit of that (and I’ve got the scars and testimonies to prove it).
AC writes “How’s that whole “moral lesson” thinking working out for Bristol Palin and the rest of your red state Sluts for Jesus brigades?”. And he freaks out over “porch monkeys”.
Can you at least state, unequivocally please, that you are indeed a bigot AC? A raving, frothing lost soul fighting tooth and nail to be god of your own pathetic little world? Well, maybe you don’t have to admit that last part to me, but you might try talking to yourself about it a bit. But the bigot part? Oh yes, I want an admission. You are this site’s most “bigoted bigot”. Bar none.
Colleen the Wingnut Queen said: ‘And he freaks out over “porch monkeys”. ‘
Freaks out? Hardly. Angryclown isn’t surprised when he reads racist tripe, ‘specially around here.
If you want the possibilty of an Angryclown freak-out, try writing something intelligent one time. The shock might actually make Angryclown’s floppy shoes explode.
billhedrick-
You’re right. typo.
“try writing something intelligent one time”. This from a guy who thinks being chief gopher of the Harvard Lampoon (or whatever) qualifies yo to be president.
“..try writing something intelligent one time. ” That’s what I’ve been waiting for from you. No matter the subject it’s always some asinine, smart-ass juvenile retort…never substance. Never arguing for whatever position you see is better compared in relation to what the thread was about. Just adolescent snark without end. Don’t you ever get tired of yourself?
Funny you`re worried about AIDS in Africa, AC, and not about malaria, which kills thousands more people than AIDS. About Africa, you seem to blame the “God squad faction of the wingnut party.” So i guess soon you`ll writing about and blaming the “environmental wing of The Democratic party” for that, right? You know, DDT and all that. You seem to bad-mouth religion, yet there is no more ferverent “religion” in this country than the cult of Global Warming, and the dupes that believe it. Oh, and writing the word “wingnut” in every post doesn`t make your point any more valid.
Oh, yeah, Peev – on the off-chance you come back to the scene of your annihilation (unlikely as that seems):
AIDS is transmitted FAR more frequently by heterosexual contact worldwide than it is by ’sodomizing’ men
In terms of raw numbers? Perhaps, since there are 30-50 times as many straight people as gays.
However, it’s fact that “gay male” sex practices carry a higher risk *per act* of transmitting the infection than the hetero alternatives; they seem to carry with them a higher chance of passing blood between people.
Let’s measure apples and apples, please.
Aren’t a few other diseases in Africa getting labled as AIDS?
Quite likely but it’s difficult to know to what extent. There are a lot of problems with getting proper health information – including diagnosis of diseases – from developing countries in the best of circumstances.
Most people who die of AIDS die of infection after it destroys their immune system. If you’re living in a country with a poor health infrastructure, you’re going to have a lot of people dying of infections and probably not a lot of additional resources to spend on performing HIV-testing.
Add to that the incentives created by someone offering you money for health care in order to fight AIDS and it’s easy for some of the more questionable cases to get “diagnosed” as AIDS-related so that you qualify for funds. IIRC something similar happened in the 1970’s when another disease (tuberculosis?) was the focus of a global fight and when funds were made available specifically for that disease, it was discovered that some questionable cases were diagnosed as TB.
Moreover if the funds get used to improve their health infrastructure (e.g. buying clean gloves and needles, disinfectants) and it reduces the number of deaths by infection, it still ends up saving lives even if those lives weren’t people who were even HIV-positive.
Terry whimpered: “This from a guy who thinks being chief gopher of the Harvard Lampoon (or whatever) qualifies yo to be president.?”
Silly Terry! Guess it takes a while for the news to travel out to Hawaii. Actually turns out his most compelling qualification to be president is the overwhelming ass-beating he gave John McCain in the recent election.
so you finally admit GWBush was qualified to be president. Twice. Keep walking toward the light.
Tautology, Angry Clown. And not even good tautology. The electoral college hasn’t met yet & they elect the president. By your own lights if McCain had won SPalin would suddenly & miraculously have become qualified to be VP, and if McCain had dropped dead the day after the inauguration she would have been qualified to be prez.
You guys on the left cannot argue your points intelligently. Yet somehow you think your conclusions are sound.
Nope, I’d just stop whining and trying to come up with alibis, Teary. The country isn’t with you. Get used to it.
The country isn’t with you.
Neither were they “with us” in 1976 or 1992.
And then, something happened…
out his most compelling qualification to be president is the overwhelming ass-beating he gave John McCain in the recent election
So Reagan and Bush WERE the best guys for the job!
Angryclown never thought Reagan or Bush 41 were unqualified. And by the time he won his first presidential election, in 2004, Bush 43 was certainly qualified to be president. Just completely incompetent at it.