Posted on 11/26/2011 12:51:21 PM PST by mdittmar
Running toward a dream of a lifetime
When I tested positive for HIV in 1994, I never would have imagined an AIDS-free generation to be possible in my lifetime.
I also didn't think I would live past 35.And yet, I am 42 years old today and we have arrived at the precipice of that dream. With recent medical advances, and the promise of more soon to come, an AIDS-free generation is possible. Achieving this goal, as eloquently outlined by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton earlier this month, would save millions of American dollars and countless lives around the world.
The question is whether we have the political and social will to make it a reality.
No one is talking about what the deficit-reduction talks or the attempts to dismantle health care reform mean for stopping AIDS in this country. Now is the time for that conversation. Cutting funding for HIV/AIDS services, treatment and research would be devastating to our progress in defeating this 30-year-old epidemic.
And the full implementation of the Affordable Care Act is necessary to provide access to treatment for the thousands in our country who are on waiting lists because they cannot afford life-saving medications.
(Excerpt) Read more at chicagotribune.com ...
“an AIDS-free generation is possible”
It’d be even more possible if males never engaged in sexual activity with other males. Of course, that makes way too much sense for the politically correct.
I’m 48 and I’ve managed to be AIDS free without medical care.
Ernesto, My, aren’t you the lucky one. < sarcasm decidedly left on. >
You got it. Remember back in the early 90s Rush used to say that AIDS is incurable but with the exception of bad blood transfusions it's 100% preventable.
Sooner or later, aids will certainly go the way of bubonic plague.
But then it will be something else.
Blood borne pathogens of new, and perhaps even a more deadly, variety will find their way into any needle sharing community that likes to engage in anonymous sexual encounters sooner or later.
I don't share needles.
I don't take infected loads of you know what up the you know where.
I miss the days when Rush had the courage to state common sense facts like that. Also, when he would “abort” phone calls.
This person seems to be completely delusional.
This epidemic could’ve been contained with proper medical procedure - namely, quarantine of the infected.
Unfortunately, medicine (like many of the other sciences) has been co-opted. Francis Bacon would be ashamed of modern science.
Well, your logic is quite facetious if you realize that the cure for AIDS really only means the freedom to have you and your ilk engage in unprotected gay sex with a myriad of anonymous male sex partners. Really, that's all the gay community expects, wants out of a cure.
Billions has been spent on HIV research for the benefit of a miniscule portion of the population that can’t keep their penises out of areas where they don’t belong.
If one leads a healthy lifestyle and makes it to 85 there is a 50% chance of developing Alzheimer’s disease. What is the ratio of funds spent on HIV vs. Alzheimer’s disease?
Perhaps the claim should be made that AD affects rump rangers in disproportionately high numbers. Then the funding floodgates would open.
Hell,I’m pushing 50,and never needed the Federal Government to take care of me.
Not our job to care for the medical problems of the entire world.
The libs don’t want to take care our American’s medical problems. They just want to allow doctors to kill the worse off patients and deny actual care and give pain pills until your worth score is so low they can officially kill you and probably get a bonus for keeping costs down.
Yet they want to take our money and take care of the rest of the world whill killing us off. What good people libs are.
The virus changes too much to have any drug ever work on it.
Best bets are intravenous vitamin C, and other healthful herbs and natural antivirals and antioxidants.
He’s saying AIDS-free, not HIV-free. The first requires public largesse, the second personal self-control and responsibility.
I was making a point about the gay community in terms of them being social derelicts, sodomites bereft of any modicum of responsibility, irrespective of there being a cure or not. Their desire to find a cure is not about their concern for others but one of being narcissistic, self-indulgent deviants, pleasure seekers, only out for a thrill.
But to answer the author's question - no, probably no level of increased government spending is going to wipe out an epidemic with an established disease reservoir within a generation. It would be possible to come close, however. To end the epidemic, end the transmission vector, i.e., celibacy or at the most, monogamy among gay men. No amount of government funding is likely to do this. To end the incidence of the actual etiological agent itself, everyone who has it now will have to die without passing it on. No amount of government spending is going to accomplish that, either.
What the author is really demanding is a large and unspecified amount of money be thrown at the problem for an unspecified time in pursuit of some sort of magic bullet. Those tend to be rather difficult to come by. Protease inhibitors and other anti-retroviral agents were a truly remarkable achievement but they're not a cure.
The truth is that ending the epidemic is very straightforward and needs no government funding at all: don't get it, and if you do get it, don't pass it on. It is extremely clear what this entails, and the honest among the gay community know it perfectly well.
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