Posted on 08/19/2006 5:04:41 AM PDT by Clive
Now that the fuss and glamour of the great Canadian AIDS conference in Toronto is largely over, perhaps we can speak honestly about this terrible disease.
First we have to be clear. We must fight against any preventable death and ease all suffering, irrespective of gender, race, age or sexuality.
Sadly, the trend is the opposite. Governments are increasingly legalizing the killing of the elderly, the ill and the disabled. But when it comes to AIDS, it seems politicians and public figures cannot do enough, or at least be seen to be doing enough.
Movie stars, rock singers, authors and activists demand that we pump billions of dollars into their cause. The irony is that AIDS is one of the few diseases where personal behavior rather than medical research could save millions of lives.
At its most simple, stop fornicating.
There, I've said it. One of the things that can end a career in North American media. Yet it's true. AIDS in the West is still overwhelmingly a threat to male homosexuals and intravenous drug users.
It's now found in other groups, but it has taken years for that to happen and they still represent the minority of sufferers. More than this, the bulk of the newly infected tend to be people who have contracted the virus through permissive sexual practices.
While sexual and chemical addiction are powerful habits, both place cause and effect squarely on the individual. Not so Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, most cancer and heart disease, leukemia or malaria.
The latter, by the way, still kills three million people a year in sub-Saharan Africa. Yet none of these or dozens of other illnesses receive anything like the publicity or funding given to AIDS.
In Africa, of course, the disease affects children and is often spread through ignorance or because of archaic attitudes towards women. Yet we ought not to play the politically correct card when lives are at risk.
When the figures are analyzed objectively, there are three distinct infection levels in Africa. The least hit are African Muslims, who are the most sexually conservative people in the region. The second level is composed of Roman Catholic Africans, who are more faithful to church teachings on abstinence.
The most likely to be infected are non-Catholic Christians and those who follow tribal religions. Which means, if we dare to be blunt, that AIDS prevention is most certainly connected to marital fidelity and lack of pre-marital sex.
There are dozens of nuances of course, such as babies born with the infection and infected men being unaware of their condition when they marry. None of these problems, however, can be dealt with merely with money and pop songs.
Cash is essential to build hospitals and pay medical staff to care for the ill and dying. It also helps to educate, but not if the education is dishonest. And dishonesty abounds.
It is truly horrible that Catholic teaching on condoms and sexuality is laughingly rejected by Western AIDS warriors, when it was largely the Vatican that pressurized multinational drug companies into making many vital anti-AIDS drugs generic and thus affordable.
It would be easier for me to ignore all this and write about something far safer. But a week spent watching my dying mother, the mini-strokes and neurological diseases breaking her to bits, has taught me a lesson:
Raise money to combat the medical horrors that are seldom exposed and kill so many and for which researchers are crying out for help. Even if it won't earn you any television coverage or the cover of a magazine.
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Why the outcry over AIDS? Because the left is aghast at the notion that immorality has severe consequences, and they wish to throw tax dollars at diminishing such so they can go back to calling for sex ed for pre-schoolers.
Parkinson's has been getting attention lately because of Michael J. Fox. It's a terrible disease, and I wish Bill Gates would throw money at it.
The gay community could rid itself of the expanding aids epidemic if they would just sit on their asses and keep their mouths shut!
I recently saw a bar graph of various diseases and how much was spent per case. I think it was in the AARP magazine. (No, I'm not a member and that is not on my usual reading list, but it was a good graphic.) AIDS was way out of proportion, of course. Don't remember which issue it was.
ping
Heart Disease is the number one killer in the U.S. by far, yet receives so much less in funding. I will say that I disagree with one point the article in that Heart Disease IS OFTEN caused by a lifetime of bad food choices and inactivity. We are a nation of fatties.
I have stated for many years that the militant gay rights movement has killed many gay men. Not Ronald Reagan and the evil religious right.
By politicizing AIDS and destroying anyone that speaks the truth of its transmission, the radical gays have fooled 2 generations of gay men into believing that it is a hetero disease and that they are no more at risk than anyone else. They also gone along with the erroneous ideas that a cure will be found (can't happen) and that it is not a 100% fatal disease because drugs are prolonging life.
I find it horrible that these deluded people are dying such a death in large part because it serves the political purposes of the "gay rights" movement to deceive them of the truth.
"The irony is that AIDS is one of the few diseases where personal behavior rather than medical research could save millions of lives."
No irony there, just common sense.
they are the party of the downtrodden, demeaned, and perversion.
it is the only thing that keeps them going is that they represent the oddfellows, to say the least of society. further victimizing their members.
The lefties, bleeding hearts, gay activists and our own government are all unwittingly working to assure a cure will never be found for AIDs.
I work for a venture capitalist that invests solely in biotech and pharma. We get virtually no requests for funding for AIDs projects.
Why? One, there is so much fed money available.
Two, big pharma knows that if they managed to produce a cure or vaccine tomorrow that political pressure would force them to literally give it away.
Three, like any other fed funded program, a cure will not be the top priority, first priority is continued funding.
We had best be more interested in TB. Leaky borders are bringing a resurgence to the Southwest. AND, there is now a new strain coming out oF Africa that is 98% fatal.
that it is not a 100% fatal disease because drugs are prolonging life.
Agree. Any who ends up paying for these life prolonging drugs? The taxpayer.
Other sexually transmitted diseases like syphilis etc etc never got this kind of pity since they affected heterosexuals
Does someone have the piechart which shows the per patient money?
It visually shows that we are budgeting 2/3 of all our health money to aids when there are vastly MORE patients in the other 1/3 of diseases.
good article -- if the money spent on aids had been spent to give the poor in the world access to clean, safe water, the number of people saved would be huge.
Yep, I had a hard time seeing the "irony" too.....
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