Michael, AIDS is a behavioral disease.
It shouldn't be treated with drugs, but with behavior modification. (Just try it!) It is much less contagious than gonorrhea or syphilis. one or two exposures to these diseases will infect you, whereas the equivalent exposure to AIDS is abut 500. (This may have changed over the years since I originally worked on it. One doesn't test for AIDS - it's too expensive. They test for HIV by looking for antibodies. If they find them, it's evidence the body has successfully fought off the infection. It's like checking for polio after a vaccination. The body will be full of antibodies - but it doesn't mean you have polio. So, the fact that you have HIV antibodies doesn't mean you have AIDS. (Watch Magic Johnson gamboling around!) Mingling HIV with AIDS is therefore a thing of politics - a way to inflate the numbers. Someone with HIV who changes his behavior is likely to avoid AIDS. Someone with HIV who keeps making contacts will likely get another bout. Homosexuals back when behaved in a way that asked for trouble. The drugs that enabled continuous erections and contacts also increased the chance of contracting the disease. They are now more cautious, though I understand that some young homosexuals deliberately take risks for the fun of it. They are stupid. Heterosexual aids is an African phenomenon, indicating promiscuity is the name of the game. All they have to do is stop and AIDS will die out. Lots of luck. Harry _____________________________________________ Michael wrote: >Whistling Past the Global Graveyard > >July 14, 2002 By HOWARD W. FRENCH > > >TOKYO > > >THE details may change each year, but when the 14th International AIDS >Conference got underway last week in Barcelona, the flood of alarming >statistics about the progression of the disease around the world was >entirely familiar. > >Soon, average life expectancy will dip below 40 years in 10 African >countries. Twenty-five million children will be orphaned worldwide by the >disease by the end of the decade. In Russia, H.I.V. infection has increased >15-fold in three years. In China, 17 percent of the population has yet to >hear of AIDS, even as the disease takes off there in earnest. > >Sometime soon, AIDS will have killed more people than all the wars of the >20th century. Yet, in a paradoxical way, the most pessimistic data coming >out of the conference may come from the few bright spots, including the >United States and a few other rich countries. > >People in the United States and Western Europe, where annual treatments may >average $35,000 per patient, have begun to think of AIDS as a survivable >condition. Each year, moreover, new data seem to feed a growing conviction >in the wealthiest countries that the epidemic has been blunted in their own >backyards. > >In Japan, the world's second-largest economy and a lavish spender on >scientific research, there has never been an AIDS epidemic. Search as one >might, it was nearly impossible last week to find more than a brief mention >of the Barcelona conference in newspapers. > >AIDS has always created a chasm between rich and poor. More than ever >before, though, the pandemic is carving up the world into islands of >affluence, medical prowess and good governance, and vast regions of poverty, >imploding institutions and despair. > >Perhaps the most glaring symbol of this divide is the tepid Western response >to the United Nations' plea for $10 billion a year to fight AIDS. Many >experts call this the minimum amount needed to blunt the epidemic and care >for the sick and dying. But the world's rich nations, lacking the same sense >of urgency that drove them to action in response to Al Qaeda, or in the gulf >war, are now offering less than one-third of this sum. > >Strong moral objections have long been raised to the West's seeming >indifference to the plight of many African societies. And yet the growing >magnitude of the AIDS crisis has tested the illusion of invulnerability, >prompting a search for more pragmatic solutions. > >"The world stood by when AIDS was spreading in Africa," said Peter Piot, >executive director of the United Nations AIDS program. "We can't do the same >thing now that it is spreading in Eastern Europe, at the doorsteps of the >E.U." > >Beyond the universe of AIDS experts, however, many people involved in >international affairs say appeals to realism like this do not go far enough. >For them, the central lesson of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks is that in >today's globalized world there is no such thing as lasting insulation from >other people's crises. When entire societies are allowed to collapse and >human miseries are permitted to fester, sooner or later those who had the >means to help do something about it but didn't will have a steep bill to >pay. > >TODAY, some people will say, `Why should we care?' " said Joseph S. Nye Jr., >dean of the Kennedy School at Harvard University and author of "The Paradox >of American Power" (Oxford University, 2002). "Well, in the mid-1990's, many >people said pretty much the same thing about Afghanistan: `It is in terrible >shape, but what does it matter to us?' On Sept. 11 we found out what it >matters to us." > >If the challenge from AIDS was limited primarily to Africa, a continent >perennially shunted to the periphery of the world's concerns, some might >still maintain that wealthy nations need do little more than apply the kinds >of Band-Aids and moral salves that are being employed there now. According >to yet another statistic issued in Barcelona, although 28.5 million of the >world's 40 million people infected with H.I.V. live in Africa, only about >30,000 Africans are receiving treatment with anti-retroviral drugs. > >Year by year, however, it is becoming clearer that Africa is hardly alone. >In Russia, the rate of infection is growing as fast as anywhere. China and >India each acknowledge millions of recent cases, and yet both are thought to >be vastly underreporting the crisis. In Indonesia, the disease has been >spreading like wildfire. > >In the future, the main hotspots highlighted in any new atlas of this >epidemic will be major countries (albeit not Western ones) that are the >anchors of entire regions. The doomsday scenarios that full-blown AIDS >epidemics in all these places imply are almost too extreme to contemplate. > >For self-interested Westerners, it is easy to conjure images of the >devastation that could visit the more affluent parts of Europe if the former >Soviet empire were to be sucked into the AIDS vortex: refugees streaming >into Europe, economic collapse, even the outbreak of violence on such a >scale that the rich nations might be forced to intervene. But the West is >less accustomed to contemplating more distant catastrophes. > >In thinking about India and China, Africa may once again serve as the best >cautionary model of how a disease can change the course of human history. >Africa, with all its problems, had made great strides in terms of life >expectancy, and in some countries, economic development as well. Like a >century suddenly torn off a calendar, those gains are now being wiped out, >and with one-third or more of adults infected with H.I.V., few institutions >can remain intact. > >In living memory the world has seen mass death in places like China, with >its great famine, and the damage has stayed contained. This is a vastly >different era, though, one of huge trade and investment linking all parts of >the world, not to mention the proliferation of nuclear weapons. And the >wholesale collapse of institutions, like China's army - the world's largest >- is something mankind has never seen. > >Yet these are precisely the kinds of threats that the international >conference-goers have been warning of. > >Given such realities, it would seem the world is rapidly approaching a >critical fork in the road. One way, perhaps, lies death on a scale unseen >since the worst plagues of the past. The other way lies a Herculean common >struggle against AIDS, of uncertain outcome. Either way, experts from a >multitude of disciplines say everyone - rich and poor - will be involved. > >"The message of Sept. 11 is that there are no more quarantines," said Ramesh >Thakur, a political scientist and vice rector of the United Nations >University in Tokyo, "and isolation is an illusion." > >http://www.nytimes.com/2002/07/14/weekinreview/14FREN.html?ex=1027616484&ei= >1&en=35b11b55dd4a05af > >Copyright 2002 The New York Times Company ****************************** Harry Pollard Henry George School of LA Box 655 Tujunga CA 91042 [EMAIL PROTECTED] Tel: (818) 352-4141 Fax: (818) 353-2242 *******************************
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