{"id":354,"date":"2005-12-01T14:03:02","date_gmt":"2005-12-01T19:03:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/homemaderavioli.com\/woodstock\/weblog\/?p=354"},"modified":"2005-12-01T14:03:02","modified_gmt":"2005-12-01T19:03:02","slug":"world-aids-day-2005","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.homemaderavioli.com\/woodstock\/weblog\/2005\/12\/world-aids-day-2005\/","title":{"rendered":"World AIDS Day 2005"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"World
\nI’m ambivalent about World AIDS Day. <\/p>\n

According to the UN<\/a>, 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. <\/p>\n

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<\/acronym> 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.<\/p>\n

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<\/acronym> but it can now, literally, kill you. Oh, and by the way, we’re not *really* sure how you get the virus<\/acronym> so better to just drop any thoughts you had of exploring your sexuality. And beware of night sweats. That’s a good girl.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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 – […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-354","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-thoughts","7":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.homemaderavioli.com\/woodstock\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/354","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.homemaderavioli.com\/woodstock\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.homemaderavioli.com\/woodstock\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.homemaderavioli.com\/woodstock\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.homemaderavioli.com\/woodstock\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=354"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.homemaderavioli.com\/woodstock\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/354\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.homemaderavioli.com\/woodstock\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=354"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.homemaderavioli.com\/woodstock\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=354"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.homemaderavioli.com\/woodstock\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=354"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}