I’m ambivalent about World AIDS Day.
According to the UN, in 2005 4.9 million people acquired HIV, which means there are now over 40 million people living with HIV and AIDS. Of that 40 million people over 2 million are children under the age of fifteen, and more than half – nearly 26 million – live in Sub-Saharan Africa where education, prevention, and medication are often rare or so expensive as to be out of reach of the majority of people.
HIV/AIDS disproportionately affects the poor (no, I can’t prove this but it is axiomatic: being poor means less access to education and healthcare which means a greater risk for preventable disease). And yet, it seems to me that all the AIDS epidemic has spawned is a lot of charities that grow fat off donations and seemingly do nothing (has AMFAR actually come up with a cure yet?) and a generation of gay men who take for granted the protease inhibitors and other drugs that no longer make AIDS an automatic death sentence.
Perhaps I’m just bitter because AIDS robbed me of a chance to be truly young and carefree. There’s nothing like being 17 and ready to leave home and get a taste of freedom only to be told that not only is sex a sin (OK, they didn’t tell me that at school officially) that can leave you with a life-long responsibility but it can now, literally, kill you. Oh, and by the way, we’re not *really* sure how you get the virus so better to just drop any thoughts you had of exploring your sexuality. And beware of night sweats. That’s a good girl.
I’m ambivalent about World AIDS Day because I don’t think HIV can be cured. I don’t think we’re smart enough to find a medical cure (after all, HIV is the king of parasitic viruses; once resident in the host it can replicate and live a nice long life equivalent to millenia in viral time before killing the host off) or self disciplined enough (the easiest way to stop AIDS, it seems to me, would be for no one else to ever get it again; or perhaps I’m missing something) to win through attrition. HIV, I think, is nature’s way of finally getting us off the planet.
Cynical…perhaps. But when you think about it people are a sort of cancer in the biosphere: we run amok, have no natural predators, and destroy everything we see.
So…today, remember your friends who have passed, if you have any; I know I will. It’s the least we can do for them and it certainly does no harm.
I’m cynical about it for a diffrent set of reasons…..most likely that there isn’t as much as work being done on either cure or containment, due to pharmacuetical companies making a mint on the antivirals.
Call me paranoid.
Oh I’m cynical too. I watched Angels in America yesterday. I saw the work on the stage years ago, but had not seen the HBO production. Thrilling. Sad. Nothing has changed.
Everything TK talks about especially through Roy Cohn has come true. Look at the reality we live in.
I agree. AIDS will end when we take responsibility. So will war, poverty, racism, hatred, gender phobia blah blah blah.
AIDS like cancer isn’t cured because isn’t it a money making proposition at this point. Cynical. I’ll give you cynical.
Have a great weekend!
STB
HIV is not the only sexually transmitted disease that’s on the rise. Chlamydia and gonorrhoea are, too, and predominantly among well-educated heterosexuals. We’re not scaring kids *enough* nowadays.
Yes, sex is fun, but sex is also potentially dangerous; nature tends to like balance, kind of like, “With great power comes great responsibility”.
But we should never underestimate the human body’s ability to adapt. Yes, the change might not happen in our lifetimes, but we will start to adapt as a species and one day someone – most likely some poor kid in sub-Saharan Africa, by the sheer law of averages – will be born HIV+ and then fight it off himself without drugs.
All viral, microbial and bacteriological attempts to kill us as a species so far – the bubonic plague, various flu pandemics, the Black Death, etc – have failed.
Also, there’s a whole world – a whole planet, even – outside the USA and some of us are doing entirely non-drug company funded research into HIV/AIDs and other blood-borne viruses (Hep C is just as lethal and far more prevalent) just for, you know, the altruistic pursuit of knowledge and the wish to make the world a better place.
Anyone who knows me will tell you that I am the last person to be all hearts and flowers, but the level of cynicism expressed above is utterly and completely mystifying – and disheartening – to me. Thankfully, I work with people who are utterly and totally committed to eradicating this problem and to ameliorating the lives of those who are HIV+ and I shall continue to take comfort that they remain refreshingly cynicism-free.