1 in 3 HIV?

Great Debates
21

The use of the word “refuse” implies that they have a choice.

This is false.

No, most of Africa has not been told. The lack of a communication infrastructure means that their capacity to disseminate information is drastically reduced.
To put it into a language that you could comprehend…There ain’t no Daisy Fuentes on MTV talking about safe sex.

Effective HIV education is being combatted by the spread of
bogus theories such as those endorsed by the president of South Africa, the country with the most people afflicted. (Sidenote: He believes that the HIV virus does not cause AIDS.)

Your statements also ignore the fact that women often do not have a choice about sex, whether or not to have it and whether or not to use condoms.

Quote:
“About the only excuse I can see that’s plausible is if the couple is trying to have a kid and one of them has cheated.”

This is increasingly the vector of transmission for women in Africa. Many of those who do practice safe sex are infected by their husbands who have visited commercial sex workers unbeknownst to their spouses.

There is nothing more annoying than somebody who comes off as a high schooler who is in the Ayn Rand phase.

If you are going to make the assertions that you did, do some research beforehand and educate yourself because you are coming off as incredibly ignorant.

22

I stand in 100% agreement with Grendel.

Esprix

23

Badz

re - It’s a tough world…(implication here has to be ‘you get what you deserve’)

Too right it is, the US is wealthy and has excellent education and medical facilities relative to the majority of the world. This is only made possible by a healthy economy.

Much of Africa is in servitude to debt repayments which takes priority over healthcare and one of the main beneficiaries is the US.

You can argue over how that debt came about but there is no denying the effect of this on the populations of debtor nations.

If standing by doing nothing, watching whole nations wither away because they were stupid enough not to be ‘careful’ is your idea of how the world should work then don’t be surprised when such problems turn round and bite you in the ass big style - you get what you deserve.

24

Badtz, you seem to be of the opinion that a condom is the ultimate form of birth control. However, it’s just one of many alternates. Are you aware that many couples use Norplant, the pill, or any number of alternates to condoms? In these cases, the female may believe herself to be in a monogamous relationship. Since there is no barrier, the woman can then get infected. Or the man, if the woman is not being faithful.

And for that matter, condoms are only as effective as they are when used properly. A lot of people do not know how to use them correctly. This accounts for the majority of breakage and accidents.

Americans do not know that much about sex. Not near as much as they think they do, that’s for sure. Teenagers today, even those who have sat through health class, can still be woefully unaware of basic information.

Evolution in action? Oh, please. When your culture is built around incorrect ideas about sex, and you live your life believing them, do you expect that a few words from an outsider is going to change your mind?

Seriously, how many people grow up believing incorrect things because they are part of their culture?

Possibly the most disturbing thing about your arguement is the logical extention- if these silly people knew what they were headed for and got AIDS, they deserve no compassion and no help.

25

I disagree with Grendel69. I don’t think that Badtz would get the Daisy Fuentes reference.

26

:wink:

27

I’m no high schooler, I just don’t find it beneficial or realistic to feel concern for people I don’t know dying. And when it’s people dying because of their own irresponsible actions (as it often is in HIV cases) I care even less.

If your spouse cheats on you and gives you AIDS, kill them or shut up about it. Sorry, you made a mistake when you fell in love with them and/or gave them reason to cheat on you. As to other forms of birth control, none of them claim to prevent disease. If you don’t want to get AIDS, use a condom. If you live in a third-world country where this information is not available or is not acknowledged as true, you probably have a lot of bigger problems in your life than the fact your life expectancy might be shortened by a decade or a few, and they aren’t MY problem.

28

Well, I can feel the love… :rolleyes: Man, what happened to you that you’re so callous?

Esprix

29

It’s all black and white to you ain’t it Badz ?

Someone causes you a problem, hey get rid of it, maybe you should have bought that industrial size waste disposal unit ready for when someone hurts you in some way.

Child with chronic arthritis - sorry its the kids problem - shoud’ve chosen differant parents, give him a gun to blow those mothers away.

Vietnam vet minus a couple of limbs, hey he could knew what could happen in war, must be his own fault should have gone as a ‘conchie’- let him open doors for himself.

Neighbour down the street whose wife dies of cancer, possibly caused by smoking but you don’t know them. Well hard shit on the husband, why show any sympathy when you see him in tears, that’s the breaks folks.

Get real man!!

30

I thought that government spending was also expressed as a percentage of GDP and that if this perentage rose it was seen as ‘a bad thing’ as this was likely to involve increased taxes if the economy did not expand enough to pay for it.

31

Esprix wrote:

[QUOTE]
[ul][li]Nearly 19 percent of those surveyed said they agreed with the statement, “People who got AIDS through sex or drug use have gotten what they deserve.”[/ul][/li][/QUOTE]

Maybe most of these 19 percent meant that these people with AIDS “got what they deserved” because they engaged in high-risk behavior, not because they were “being immoral”.

32

Not to take up for our friend Mr. Badtz here but the basic premise is correct. If you are in a high risk group, you better take responsibility and do whatever it takes to make sure that you do not get AIDS and die a horrible death due to your own carelessness. Activist brochures and government policy will not save your life if you insist on playing with fire. The average citizen of the U.S. knows what causes AIDS and how to prevent it (yes, even male homosexuals). If you really do not want to contract this disease and die, you should take the appropriate measures, and if you do, the chances are miniscule that you will ever contract HIV. If you choose to ignore what you know, then it is Mother Nature that is going to bite you in the ass, not the bigots, or the government’s social policy.

33

I usually allow for some degree of misunderstanding because this non-verbal type of communication is prone to create such instances.

Quote:
“If your spouse cheats on you and gives you AIDS, kill them or shut up about it.”

The above, however, leaves me at a loss for words.

The most I can say to you Badtz is that you are FREAKIN’ WRONG!!! Those pieces of your communique that were not casually tossing around advocations of violence were simply ignorant.

You have no clue as to what you are talking about.

Go away.

34

Mavpace,
Quote: “The average citizen of the U.S. knows what causes AIDS and how to prevent it (yes, even male homosexuals).”
I don’t really know what to make of the last part of your statement so I’ll ignore it. As for the primary assertion, you would be surprised. Ask yourself the question, “What is safe sex?” and see if you can answer this in every conceivable circumstance.

 I've met teenagers who believed that using two condoms at once increased safety (note: it increases the chances of HIV transmission).
 The assumption that because there are television advertisements, pamphlets, etc. that say, "Safe sex!!!", this amounts to a sufficient education, is erroneous.

Please don’t think of the situation as being one where people are shirking personal responsibility. Such a viewpoint is the simplistic reduction of an incredibly complicated situation.

On a sidenote Mavpace, this thread was addressing Africa and not the U.S.

35

I am not anti-homosexual in the least. I lived in New Orleans for 4 years and many of my closest friends, bosses, co-workers are homosexual. What I dispute, is the accusation that anyone should be able to engage in any behavior that he/she wants and modern science and government programs should be able to protect them from any adverse consequences of that behavior (including death). The fact of the matter is that science has never introduced a cure for ANY viruses especially one as strange as a retro-virus like HIV. It is foolish to rely on modern medicine to introduce a cure for a class of disease that has never been cured before.

The best measures that we have are education and prevention. The transmission of HIV could be wiped out within a few years if those in high risk groups took proper precautions in whichever behaviors that they chose to engage in. This includes the parts of Africa with the highest incidence of AIDS. This has nothing to do with morals, it is the proven and guarenteed way to save those that are not yet infected.

Social policy has nothing to do with this. People infected with HIV today are, most likely, going to die an untimely death. It should be looked at as a state of war against a biological enemy. As such, appropriate measures are education for those not affected and a behavioral quaretine against those that are already infected.

36

Quote from Mavpace:
“What I dispute, is the accusation that anyone should be able to engage in any behavior that he/she wants and modern science and government programs should be able to protect them from any adverse consequences of that behavior (including death).”

I don’t think that anyone here even came close to adopting such a stance. In fact I directly disowned that idea…

I said, “Please don’t think of the situation as being one where people are shirking personal responsibility. Such a viewpoint is the simplistic reduction of an incredibly complicated situation.”

Nobody has really talked about a cure as of yet, and so far the topic seems to be education/responsibilty. Badtz Maru seems to be under the illusion that everyone is educated at the same level and in the same way. I am disputing the assumption that Badtz Maru seems to be operating under: that to acquire AIDS is a decision made by the irresponsible members of our population.

I suspect that he is imprinting his experience and knowledge about HIV upon everyone else. I doubt that he has much experience with different cultures or he would not be so brazen with his comments.

On a side note, what annoys me even more about his comments is the attitude of “It doesn’t affect me so screw 'em.” This attitude is distasteful to me on a moral level, but EVEN MORE SO on a logical level.

If you study the history of disease, the spread of major epidemics has been encouraged by such ignorance. Apropos to this topic, does anyone remember back in the 80s when AIDS was just “the Gay disease” and it didn’t affect “us”?

On a more material level one Badtz Maru should be inclined to give this topic more than a cursory thought because, in one form or another, a portion of his tax dollars will be dedicated to research, prevention, and education.

PS I truly didn’t understand the “homosexual” reference so I wasn’t implying anything when I said that I wasn’t going to address it :slight_smile:

37

I had to go do something for a sec…

Quote from Mavpace, “Social policy has nothing to do with this.”

This is wrong. Social policy has everything to do with this. It is impossible to educate people about HIV prevention without addressing social and cultural conditions.

Every successful attempt to prevent the spread of HIV has been done inconjunciton with a fairly aggressive and adaptive social policy.

Those countries in Africa that have achieved the best results in fighting HIV are the ones that have tailored their efforts to their population. Instead of simply saying, “HIV is spread through sex. Don’t have sex.”, these countries have used local resources to spread information in a more appropriate manner.

Thailand is an example of a country that was potentially a time bomb for the HIV epidemic. In the early 90s they adopted a public health stance towards HIV that has tremendously successful because it addressed social issues.

The Thai government knew that commercial sex workers were the largest and most prolific vector for the spread of HIV. They could have taken the position so readily adopted by many of our U.S. politicians and said, “Don’t be a prostitute. Stay abstinent.”, but they did not do so.

Why? Because they were sensitive to their audience persay. Telling these women (and men) in so many words that they had to quit their means of employment would have been futile.

Instead the Thai government purchased millions of condoms and distributed them freely to all sex workers. They made all prostitutes engage in routine STD screeings. They enforced the use of condoms in all brothels and broke up those establishments that skirted around the laws.

Obviously HIV transmission did not stop, but it has drastically slowed down. It is still the major health issue in the country, but it is no longer the proverbial Sword of Damocles.

This is a social issue. This can be addressed, in part, through social action.

38

I don’t see why I’m being treated like some kind of monster and having words stuffed in my mouth because I don’t worry about things that happen to people I care nothing about.

I never said when bad things happen to people, it is universally that person’s fault. Even with AIDS, it is not always that person’s fault - but it’s not mine, either. I make sure I don’t have to worry about it, why do people want me to? I also never said I would have no sympathy for anyone who has had bad things happen to them. If I know someone, if I think it seems particularly…well, I can’t really use the word unjust, but just WRONG that something bad happens to them, I will feel bad. If it’s someone I care about, I may even help them if I can. Sometimes even if it is their fault. But I save this kind of personal sharing of suffering for people I care about, people who care about me. Starving people in Somalia don’t give a shit about me, why should I care about them? If I could choose I would make my wife’s gums stop hurting before I would feed starving strangers.

My problem with this view that AIDS is everyone’s problem and that we should all be supportive is that this conflicts with the way I want to lead MY life, and it detracts from mine when I have to pay more taxes to pay for more education problems, to subsidize research for a cure, to keep people alive who are going to die anyway. The government spends far more on AIDS research per victim than almost any other disease, including ones that can strike ANYONE regardless of how careful they are. I’m still not entirely sure why. If AIDS was such a big problem, pharmaceutical companies would be spending more of their own money on finding treatments for it, but it’s more profitable to funnel research into problems that effect more lives, like male pattern baldness, impotence, and depression. They know that even if they did come up with a cure (which apparently will require a lot more expensive research, retroviruses are tricky) they would lose money on it, because if they charged what it took to make back the billions they spent researching it, not everybody would be able to afford it (because not many people have it) and the government would force them to sell it at a loss.

AIDS isn’t going to endanger the species. It’s not going to endanger me. I’ll try my hardest to make sure it doesn’t effect my loved ones. Why should I do more?

39

The word here is complacency.

40

Aside from the offensive method of expression, you’re wrong on the facts. GD does not suffer fools gladly.

It will. You may make a “mistake” yourself (oh perish the thought) and of course suffers may present serious public health issues as reservoirs of new diseases --that’s why for instance health programs for the indigent are smart public policy – they improve the overall safety of the population.

In this context, your view, besides being morally bankrupt and intellectually cramped, is also penny wise, pound foolish as the saying goes.