1 in 3 HIV?

Great Debates
41

Quote from Collonsbury: “…that’s why for instance health programs for the indigent are smart public policy – they improve the overall safety of the population.”

I couldn’t have said it better.

Quote from Badtz Maru: “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.”

Do you have a cite for this? The general rule is that infectious disease receives much less monetary attention than diseases that plague developed countries (e.g. cancer, Alzheimer’s, etc.)

Nobody called you a monster, but when you drop things like, “If your spouse cheats on you and gives you AIDS, kill them or shut up about it.”, it paints a picture of your personality, whether you like it or not.

I am more troubled by your logic than anything else.

Quote: “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…”

But given that infectious diseases like HIV/AIDS afflict more people than cancer and co., why do these companies spend most of their money on researching cancer and co. which are less prevalent. The impetus for research, obviously, is not how many people it effects, but the profits they can garner.

All of the reasons that you use to justify not caring, are the exact reasons that you should care.

You should care how this disease is addressed because, whether or you like it, your tax dollars will be spent on research.

You should care because if you own stock in pharmaceutical companies, watch what happens to their stocks when South Africa decides to ignore international patent law and begin producing their own HIV/AIDS medicine because of the prohibitivve prices.

42

As an addendum, I am not omitting the moral and biological reasons for taking HIV/AIDS seriously.

Those last few lines are addressing a certain area in which Badtz Maru seems to be interested.

43

Back to the OP, a quote from Peter Singer, Princeton Professor of Bioethics.

"Botswana has more than 35% of the adult population. In South Afica, the figure is 20% and rising sharply. Neither the increase in new infections, nor the deaths of those already infected is inevitable. Uganda, one of the worst affected countries in the early 1990s has brought the infection rate down sharply by a strong educational campaign. For the leaders of countries with high infection rates, the ethical challenge is to do the same; and for th e rich nations, to finance these efforts.

 The most direct ethical challenge to the rich nations is the fact we have that drugs to treat HIV/AIDS the majority of infected people can't afford... yada yada

 The first step is allowing the developing nations to produce the drugs themselves at a fraction of the cost they currently have to pay. When South Africa first mooted this proposal, the United States threatened a trade war to protect the interests of pharmaceutical companies. This threat was withdrawn after Al Gore was dogged on the campaign trail, but drug companies are pursuing this litigation privately..."

 These days, many patients with AIDS can live 15-20 years. And transmission of AIDS from infected mothers to children can be decreased from 30% to 8% or so with proper meds.
44

I guess I haven’t read enough of Singer.

I would have guessed that he would have taken the opposite position, but I am just operating on the overdramatized media coverage of his stance on the elderly :slight_smile:

45

Grendel69 stated:

I’m a twentysomething who is sexually active (and I thought I knew quite a bit about birth control/disease pervention), and although I never did the double wrap, that statement knocked me out… I had no idea that was the case. Why is that and what studies were done that indicated this? (I am not doubting that the above was true, its just that I assumed it would be better for stopping STDs…)

46

No studies to cite on that.

I went to an all boys high school and we were lucky in that they pulled no punches when it came to sex ed :slight_smile:

I’ve also been told the same thing in college at our clinic when they did general sex ed for those of us who wanted to volunteer to do it in high schools.

I can see how it would be true for non-lubes because you have dry latex rubbing repeatedly on another sheet of dry latex.

Up until a few years ago, however, I never understood why this applied lubed condoms as well. Someone explained to me that with lubes, doubling up will cause them to bunch up halfway part of the way down the penis. The semen or pre-ejaculate can leak out onto the upper part of the shaft which is no longer covered.

47

Grendel69:
Thanx for the info. Makes sense when you explain it that way.

48

Grendel, the cheating spouse who gave the innocent spouse and the rest of the family AIDS effectively killed them or forced them to undergo expensive treatment for life. The cheating spouse in the situation should also be tried for manslaughter. The spouse knew the risks, and didn’t go all out to prevent it, and in fact indulged in the proscribed behaviour.
Sorry to sound hard-line on this topic, but when I hear and read that the crisis is coming to the point where men who are afficted are raping virgins in an effort to cure themselves of AIDS, I think that the government involved has to intervene immediately and arrest and quarantine them.

49

Capacitor,

The jump between advocacy of killing the offending party and taking them to court for manslaughter is rather large.

Quote…
“Sorry to sound hard-line on this topic, but when I hear and read that the crisis is coming to the point where men who are afficted are raping virgins in an effort to cure themselves of AIDS, I think that the government involved has to intervene immediately and arrest and quarantine them.”

Just exactly where did you read this?

50

The double-wrap/increases risk is way wicked news to me. In the gay community, people are encouraged to use two condoms when engaging in anal intercourse in case one breaks. I’ve never heard this increases the risk of HIV transmission.

Esprix

51

Grendel, I read the ‘men raping virgins’ quote from Newsday, the Queens/Long Island paper, which did a series on AIDS in Africa, and what is being done about it.

And yes there is precedent. A man in upstate New York was tried and convicted for aggravated assault of 6 women whom among many he had sex with, after he learned but never revealed that he had AIDS. And there was one case of attempted murder involving a man, who, while raping a woman, announced that he had AIDS. It was verified that he did just before he died.