oh, come on, erislover, you know we can stop murder if we just don’t kill each other. Why we haven’t tried that before is beyond me… 
Right, Joe - no one ever makes mistakes, and if they do, we should have no pity or compassion for what happens to them. (And never mind that the vast majority of Africans remain ignorant of how to prevent the spread of the disease, let alone the fact that not every person in the U.S. is wholly knowledgable about it, either.)
Your compassion (and foresight) underwhelms me. This is a global, human problem, and people are running around pointing fingers and deciding who deserves to live and who deserves to die.
Esprix
Esprix, I know you have trouble with your reading comprehension, so I’ll say it slowly:
I. Do. Support. Research. For. A. Cure. For. Aids.
That does not change the fact that the vast majority of people who have it brought it on themselves. I am not deciding who deserves to live or die. They have the disease, they are going to die. There is no cure, so the only alternative is prevention.
People decide that for themselves, when they engage in behavior that puts them at risk for the disease.
Tars and eris:
I know you think you’re pretty clever, but guess what? I don’t have aids. And I’ve never killed anybody. So I guess the solution can be implemented after all.
Well, I haven’t been hit by an asteroid, so I guess we’ve got the solution for that, too.
Sure, if not wearing a rubber makes you more likely to get hit by an asteroid. :rolleyes:
I’m sure all these sub-Sarahan Africans are just going to pop into their local convenience store and buy condoms with their disposable incomes…
Joe When some one is killed in an airplane accident, have they, too ‘brought it on themselves’? or, have they made a specific judgement for themselves, weighing the risks and benefits, made a decision which may entail some amount of what for them is an appropriate risk?
And if not, why not?
And if so, why is that different from engaging in behavior which may have some small (tho measurable) amount of risk.
And, of course, you do also understand that the person who is monogomous with some one who claims to be monogomous but does engage in risky behavior, is just as much at risk as some one who engages in risky behavior themself?
So, in order for anyone to not have ‘brought it on themself’ they should not exchange bodily fluids with anyone, since anyone can be lying and there is that ‘window’ between infection and positive testing. Hm.
Wow!! It’s Jesus!!! And He’s casting stones!!!
[lisa simpson]By that logic, i could say this rock keeps tigers away…[/lisa simpson]
BTW, got a cite for your no AIDS having? like an AIDS test?
“How much do you want for your tiger rock?”
Again, no one is denying that people sometimes do stupid things. I still don’t equate that to “they brought it on themselves.” YMMV.
Esprix
As a matter of fact, smart ass, I had a full bloodwork done about 2 months ago. Not that it’s any of your f-ing business…
Goodness, a heterosexual didn’t just get offended at being asked about his HIV status, did he? Goodness, gracious! Stop the presses!
(For the sarcasm impaired, that’s a taste of what we gay folk here at the SDMB have been putting up with for weeks now.)
Esprix
To be honest, Esprix, I don’t understand why anyone (gay, straight, bisexual, injecting drug user or not) feels compelled to reveal the timing and results of any sexual health tests they might have had.
We might be a relatively enlightened and informed community, but I sometimes think that the many “I play safe and I have the results to prove it” comments that get made around here, coupled with the venom which is sometimes directed at people who do not view celibacy or monogamy as the only two available options, can only DISCOURAGE anyone who might be HIV+ from ever revealing the fact on the SDMB, let alone fighting our ignorance or gaining any support or understanding for themselves.
For the record, I no longer carry disposable latex gloves in my bag at all times and I no longer routinely glove when cleaning up bodily fluids. Yes, some day I might stumble across an accident and become infected with some nasty disease because there are no gloves in my bag (perhaps even HIV). In anything less than an immediately life-threatening situation I am likely to be able to find something available for use as a barrier between myself and someone else’s blood, and in an immediately life-threatening situation I’m not going to let the fact that a perfect stranger MIGHT have some transmissible disease prevent me from rendering immediate first aid. The chances of that person bleeding to death are far higher than my chances of contracting HIV from them if they ARE infected and bleed all over me; and if I don’t render first aid because they MIGHT have HIV and I don’t have gloves, the chances of the likelihood of them bleeding to death unless other, immediate, help is available could be 100%.
I can live with that risk just as I could live with the far more immediate risk of dying while trying to save someone from a burning building or drag someone out of deep water.
So I guess I’ll only have “myself to blame” should I contract HIV or any other blood borne disease under such a scenario.
You are not a paramedic I hope. Forget you getting infected, what about you possibly infecting the patient?
No Brutus, I am not a paramedic but I do have first aid training and like any average citizen I can come across a traumatic accident at any time.
The reason I used to routinely carry gloves was because I worked and socialised primarily with people living with AIDS for a very long time (I also used to carry dental dams, condoms, and syringes).
If I were in a health care situation, of course I would routinely apply universal precautions - I’m just talking about coming across accidents and the like in everyday life. It happens to average citizens - with or without first aid training - every single day.
Fair enough then. You had me worried! Even though the officers in our PD ( I am just a volunteer reservist) technically do not provide first aid, we still pack the standard barriers (gloves, eyes, and one-way valves). I wouldn’t want to spread Brutus cooties just as much as I wouldn’t want to catch other’s cooties.
Brutus, I would fully expect in that situation you would not only be provided with the appropriate barriers but that you would be drilled to use them no matter what.
Most of my encounters with possibly infectious (either way) situations these days are pretty much unforeseeable given that I’m living an average suburban mum’s life. I encounter blood in either catastrophic but unforeseen situations (such as traumatic accidents) or quite trivial ones (the nosebleeds and scraped knees of my kids and their friends). In the first situation, the absence of gloves isn’t going to be my primary consideration, in the second situation, I have all the time in the world to take action to prevent cross-infection.
And no, I wouldn’t hesitate about performing CPR without a one-way valve either (never mind the cooties, OWVs prevent the transfer of vomitus which sometimes occurs during mouth to mouth).
At the risk of taking this debate in another direction than that intended by the OP, does it really matter if we have different motivations for wanting or opposing the development of an HIV vaccine.
From a personal standpoint, I buried far too many friends and acquaintances in the 80s and 90s to want this disease to be a permanent part of the landscape.
Yes, I’d like to be able to see people able to make bad judgements about relationships without the consequences being potentially lethal (and the moralists out there might like to acknowledge that an HIV vaccine is hardly going to be a “license to screw”; it isn’t going to protect people against other STDs or pregnancy).
Yes, I’d like health care workers and emergency service workers not to have to endure months of anxiety following accidental exposure in order to confirm that “probably OK” is "definitely OK.
Yes, I’d like to see AIDS removed from the “I hate gays and junkies” agenda so that those people who really just hate gays and junkies could no longer use this disease to validate their own prejudices and bigotry.
Yes, I’d like to see a world in which we could relieve just one of the devasting diseases facing many developing countries.
I’m not really happy about the fact that a vaccine for HIV is being pursued for primarily commercial reasons, and that it will probably be made available first to those who are already best empowered in terms of both prevention and treatment, but at the end of the day I can live with that too - because without the profit motive driving people to develop such a vaccine, it can never be available to benefit those who want it to exist for other reasons.