No war on the face of the earth is more destructive than the AIDS epidemic. ~ Colin Powell
So how does one battle the HIV/AIDS epidemic? If one is part of the
I am not sure what century or fantasy these right-wingers are living in. I do not that, short of a miracle cure from the pharmaceutical industry that the vast majority of the world’s people could not afford to purchase, the epidemic will continue to consume the lives of millions. For example, in Sub-Saharan Africa, where more people are affected by HIV and AIDS than any other region of the world, an estimated 24.5 million people were living with HIV at the end of 2005 and approximately 2.7 million new infections occurred during that year. Here in the
Likewise, as long as the right-wingers throw around the weight of their “moral superiority” and demand that only programs can be funded that are based on abstinence and fidelity and disavow the value of condom use, the battle will continue to be lost.
Nick, thank you for your blog regarding this disease. It is horrible to watch someone suffer and die from this disease. Truly horrible. Thank you for raising awareness.
ReplyDeletePlease see http://www.time.com/time/2001/aidsinafrica/
ReplyDelete" Imagine your life this way.
You get up in the morning and breakfast with your three kids. One is already doomed to die in infancy. Your husband works 200 miles away, comes home twice a year and sleeps around in between. You risk your life in every act of sexual intercourse. You go to work past a house where a teenager lives alone tending young siblings without any source of income. At another house, the wife was branded a whore when she asked her husband to use a condom, beaten silly and thrown into the streets. Over there lies a man desperately sick without access to a doctor or clinic or medicine or food or blankets or even a kind word. At work you eat with colleagues, and every third one is already fatally ill. You whisper about a friend who admitted she had the plague and whose neighbors stoned her to death. Your leisure is occupied by the funerals you attend every Saturday. You go to bed fearing adults your age will not live into their 40s. You and your neighbors and your political and popular leaders act as if nothing is happening.
Across the southern quadrant of Africa, this nightmare is real. The word not spoken is AIDS, and here at ground zero of humanity's deadliest cataclysm, the ultimate tragedy is that so many people don't know--or don't want to know--what is happening."
Thank you for your blog.
That is terrible.
ReplyDeleteunfortunatly people can't seem to get past their "moral superiority"....so many people suffer because others are so blinded. Thanks for sharing
ReplyDeleteToo many people ignore this horrific disease or delude themselves into believing it will never happen to them or their loved ones. They choose to believe that spouting their religious rhetoric will protect them and that anyone who gets this dread disease asked for it in some way. That's not the way it is and I thank you for reminding them.
ReplyDeleteHi Nick ~~ Let us pray that a cure will be found for this awful disease.
ReplyDeleteThank you for your comments. Glad you enjoy the jokes. Also thanks for updating my new address.Take care,
Regards, Merle.
Nick...agree with you. It's a silent killer that most of us prefer to push under the carpet and pretend that it's not there. But no amount of pretensions can wish it away.
ReplyDeleteI'm hopeful that there will be a cure to this dreadful disease soon.
Australia needs to put AIDS research back in the spotlight again. We had huge success in the 80s and 90s with a massive drop of new cases....education is the key.
ReplyDeleteI agree with Boseley’s assessment about the claims of “moral superiority” by U.S. right-wing Christians. They preach abstinence from sex as the answer to Aids in Africa and refuse funds to any family-planning clinics across the world that provide abortions or even counsel women about them. This head-in-the-sand attitude towards abortion leads directly to women's deaths. Every year nearly 20 million unsafe abortions are carried out on desperate women in ill-lit rooms and illegal clinics. You don't stop that happening by refusing to talk about it. But the so called Religious Right refuses. It’s really bad her in Republican controlled Arizona. (But not so bad that should not come and visit me in the desert!)
ReplyDeleteThank you for the information. Your last paragraph is a frightening to me as AIDS itself.
ReplyDelete