If readers were not aware this past Friday was World AIDS Day. Various commemorations for the 39 million living with AIDS and the 25 million that have died from the deadly virus were held in every major city across the globe. The UN has gotten on board with the fight against AIDS and recently stated that AIDS will be the number three global killer of mankind.
The focus area for combating AIDS is the African continent. There is an estimated 24.5-25 million Africans living with the deadly virus. In South Africa, according to some sources, 15-20% of adults are infected. The estimated infection rate by gender is nearly 60% for women. An estimated 2 million African children are born with the virus. The economic toll and drain on the continent’s limited healthcare facilities is probably impossible to calculate.
What strikes your author as strange about this day is the message being turned out. In numerous articles from a wide variety of news outlets the theme has been to raise awareness about the disease. Your author asks who isn’t aware of AIDS? True in remote places such as shanty villages, AIDS may not be known or common knowledge. Haiti, an eyesore for the western hemisphere, apparently suffers from not knowing about AIDS either as the island nation of chaos is suffering with rampant proportions.
Well here in the United States President Bush committed $15 billion to global AIDS relief, which will have funded the treatment for 2 million infected, prevention for another 7 million and the care for 10 million. The initiative calls for abstinence, condom usage and fidelity. The program, known as PEPFAR, will make the US the number one contributor for funding AIDS prevention.
The role of the US and global AIDS prevention should warm the hearts for the activists, often times they lean to the left, but no it isn’t enough for many. Democrats are critical because 33% of the funds call for promoting abstinence. Many have stated that abstinence is rooted more in conservatism and not scientific fact. This will be important as your author opines this subject.
On World AIDS Day protesters from the Student Global AIDS Campaign, ACT UP and University Coalitions for Global Health called for universal access to drugs that treat the disease while marching in Washington DC. Georgetownl University medical student Amy Rinner said the following:
"If you talk about how much money we commit to third world countries in terms of per capita, we give well below what the United Nations wishes us to give and I think that as a country that has the ability to do more and has a lot of the leading pharmaceutical agencies, we could give a lot more than we do”.
Does this President ever catch a break? Well not according to the leftwing thinkers who align themselves with the UN. No, we need to do more and we need to do plenty here in America. Your author could not disagree more.
Despite what Democrats may say about abstinence, it is scientifically proven to prevent the spread AIDS. Now it may be the no frills and boring response but the reader can’t say it isn’t a proven fact that abstaining for promiscuous sexual activities prevents AIDS.
Let us be honest, AIDS as it relates to anywhere on the globe is passed from intravenous drug use and/or sexual activity. It’s as if the left or at least those who criticize President Bush and conservatives choose to ignore these lifestyle facts that are directly tied to the spread of HIV/AIDS. They probably wish AIDS was airborne then they could say “see people who don’t engage in irresponsible sexual activity and/or shooting up dope can contract it too”. These were the same ones that ripped anyone to pieces if they labeled the disease as being related to a gay lifestyle or narcotics usage back in the 1980s, often citing innocent victims who contracted it from tainted blood. Well this is true; those who contracted it via blood transfusions were innocent victims and it also true that the donors were infected gay man and/or IV drug users.
Gay America should also be placed under the microscope as a pandemic is currently washing across their community. Many of them are placing little value on their life. This bizarre and risky behavior is a little dirty secret that spits in the eye of everything that has been attempted to combat the spread of AIDS. This unbelievable behavior will stun the reader as it has stunned your author. It is known as ‘chasing the bug’ and defies all logic and reason.
Chasing the bug, very little has been written about this subject, involves gay men getting high on drugs (typically crystal methamphetamine or ecstasy), romping around dance clubs in the pursuit of unprotected anonymous sex with the ultimate goal being to contract the disease. Yes, gay men attempting to become infected. In the UK, which has also documented bug chasing and the BBC describing it as a phenomenon, the act is described as getting ‘pozzed up’. Gay men cite or give the excuse that once infected they won’t have to be concerned with issues such as monogamy or sexual protection. Should we as taxpayers fund their treatment because they played a deadly game of STD Russian Roulette? Remember this is the same group in our society that railed against President Reagan for not doing something, which meant dumping federal funds into a program, about AIDS in the early-mid 1980s. During that time the same critics refused to recognize the gay bathhouses that were basically a Petri dish for cultivating the AIDS virus. Reagan in fact began to ramp federal funding up to $5.7 billion with much of it going to the National Institute of Health. This amount far surpassed monies funding cancer research. Nowadays the dance clubs have replaced the bathhouses.
In 1894 the first outbreak of polio was reported in Vermont with 132 cases. The second well-known outbreak occurred in 1916 in New York City with an estimated 9,000 incidences. Initially responses such as quarantining and isolation of those inflicted were thought to have prevented the spread of it but they proved ineffective as more and more cases were reported. The disease would leave 100,000s inflicted with paralysis and President Franklin D. Roosevelt was one of them. In 1962 Dr. Jonas Salk presented the first effective polio vaccination and by 1964 only 121 cases were reported.
In the case of AIDS, unlike polio, society knows how to prevent the spread of it. Unfortunately too many opinions and self interests have muddied the waters in their pursuit to appear esoteric. How much more ‘aware’ can we become? Well as your author stated it is all about lifestyle choices. It is a rather simple message that somehow has become very complicated. Ultimately these social activists want more money, whether it is public education, social welfare programs or AIDS prevention, it is always about the dollars and not end-results. Your author ponders if the desired goal is met what would these concerned citizens do? Retiring back home after being in the forefront of whatever pursuit sounds like a pretty boring conclusion for them.
Because the obvious answer has long been ignored or often times scoffed at by the critics as being ‘impractical’, we are losing the international battle against the virus. The UN estimates that 4 million new cases of AIDS will be reported by year end 2006. Just like polio, AIDS could be history but not as long as selfish ideology is allowed to overrule common sense and science.
