response 40 of 129:

May 26 12:09 UTC 2002

Hmmm.  It's reasonable that some New Product Concepts guy somewhere
might be required to crank out X ideas (good, bad, or indifferent) per
week and that he'd be ranked "excellent performance" if just one idea
per month was worthy of serious consideration.  But this is about like
a guy noticing gals in the parking lot.  Actual pursuit is far more
like building a small factory & trying to sell widgets in a test market.

There are plenty of "Johnny Wild Oats" guys who'll pursue pretty much
any gal they notice, do their hormone thing, leave because of boredom/
dumping/pregnancy/responsibility, and repeat the pattern.  I don't know
if i'd call 'em sapient, and probably wouldn't oppose the government
castrating 'em as public health hazards (espec. AIDS vectors).

On the flip side, i knew a guy in college who believed that he could
NOT, as a man, refuse to have sex with any woman who wanted it.  He
was otherwise quite intelligent, nice, and very good looking.  It would
interesting (in a sad sort of way) to know how his life worked out.

response 42 of 129:

May 27 12:04 UTC 2002

Re: #41:
Speaking in the very limited context of young people developing and
discovering themselves in a world free of consequences, i mostly agree
with you.  And if HIV infections progressed like ebola virus infections
(killing victims/vectors very quick, very sure, & (medical costs) very
cheap), i might be tempted to agree with you in the real world.  But
that ain't the case.  More realistic would be to tell young folk to
stick to masturbation and burn HIV vectors at the stake on-air during
major league sports half-times.  Maybe castrate skip-town fathers and
Clinton Syndrome sufferers while we're at it.

response 44 of 129:

May 28 20:40 UTC 2002

What think you of working on fucking PREVENTION?

I mean, really.  A cure would be excellent, but it's only part of the 
solution, and I think the CDC and the UN Committee would agree that 
prevention is a weak area.  "Safe sex" never existed, but "safer sex" 
is realistic.  It is realistic to ask people to avoid riskier 
behaviors, and to limit their partners.

It is a cop-out to assume people are just full of raging hormones, and 
that this facet is ultimately futile.  It is possible that another 
epidemic outbreak may be necessary for those who must learn the hard 
way-- HIV infection is on the rise again in gay and bisexual young men-
- they have not had friends die to AIDS.  Black and Hispanic gay men 
are suffering probably the most due to cultural taboos.  Medical 
treatment has improved, but it is enoromously expensive-- and-- the 
STDs we *can* effectively treat are beginning to grow resistant to 
existing medications.  These STDs increase chances of HIV infection.

HIV in Africa is an enoromous problem.  Poverty and lack of education 
about the disease make treatment and prevention programs difficult and 
challenging.  The obstacles are socioeconomic and somewhat cultural.

Drug use with unsterile needles is another problem, and I believe some 
people suggested some solutions elsewhere.  Alcohol abuse is very 
indirect, but I am referring to problems of rape and in general, where 
alcohol is a part of sexually charged situations and individuals are 
impaired in judgement due to intoxication.

I don't need to blather on.  I'm sure my words are rather amateurish 
and lacking in scope.  *But* I have had some education through 
classes, and my wife has been trained in AIDS issues.  She volunteered 
for an organization that assisted AIDS patients.  A cure is good, but 
it will not end it forever, I am extremely sure, until our behavior 
begins to significantly change.  We could bring back the plague, 
possibly, if our sanitation practices returned to that of the Middle 
Ages.

response 46 of 129:

May 29 02:12 UTC 2002

Re #43: 
Thinking about a *cure* for HIV that could put a dent in the global 
problem in the next 10 to 15 years is about as realistic as thinking
about a *cure* for heart disease.  Ever notice that heart diseases is
the leading cause of high-profile death & disability amoung the very
gender, class, and age group that controls most of the world's wealth
and medical research, and has virtually unlimited access to the best
medical care that the world can provide?  There's loads of free info
on how to cut your risk of heart disease, and loads of treatments to
slow or reduce the damage caused by heart disease - none of 'em free
and none for-sure - but all the money & power in the world can't buy
our VP a *cure*!  And heart disease doesn't mutate like HIV does to
resist drugs.

And even if Santa Claus brings us a magic wand tomorrow that will cure
every STD case on the planet with a single wave, that won't do one bit
of good for all the unwanted babies born to hopeless were-just-having-
fun "parents" on an already-horribly-overcrowded planet with no way off.

(For hotter hell, look at HIV in the 2nd, 3rd, & 4th worlds.  *Both* 
the society and the authorities are in denial and/or prevented by taboo
from doing much anything about it in many places.  Even if they were
rationally fanatical about fixing the problem, the resources just ain't
there.  And the too-long-living HIV carriers develop all sorts of very
destructive ways to deal with their disease.  In many area, the idea
that having sex with enough virgins will cure HIV is accepted as truth,
and the de-facto minimum age for girls raped by men working on this
cure is *0* years.  At what point does members of a society "acting 
human" and "doing the natural thing" become "self-inflicted genocide"?) 

response 48 of 129:

May 29 14:50 UTC 2002

That's all well and good.  I understand that in most parts of the world, huge
amounts of work on prevention is needed.  But *here*, in *my* world, where
people are educated about AIDS, have the scientific knowledge and excess
means, the job isn't done.  The dangerous meme around here is that if you have
a normal, moral sex life, AIDS just isn't your problem.  You can forget about
it and move on.  You don't need to help fund research to find a cure.  You can
self-righteously tell the rest of the world that if they weren't so 
backward/uneducated/immoral, they wouldn't be having this little problem.  
  Safe sex is a workaround, not a bugfix. Let's fix the problem, not just 
expect people to contort their sex lives into areas considered relatively 
safe.  Note that this is *in addition* to working on prevention.  

response 50 of 129:

May 30 01:01 UTC 2002

Re: #48
Are you aware of how many $billion$ per year are going into direct and
indirect research on the problem?  If you magically boosted the HIV-cure
research budget to as much as is spent on *all* medical research, for
*all* diseases combined, starting yesterday and continuing *forever*,
than doubled *that*, there would *still* not be any real scientific
prospect for the kind of cure that you want for 20+ years.  That's over
a generation, and in large parts of the world, the HIV+ bones of *most
of the population* will have been picked clean years before that.  The
attitude that "i can risk HIV 'cause they'll have a cure before i'd get
very sick from it" is a big part of why infection rates are bouncing 
back up in many groups that public health people *though* had been
taught about safe sex, prevention, etc.

Not that "screw as you will & don't sweat the consequences" would be a
survivable attitude for humanity to have even if Allah snapped his 
fingers & made HIV vanish tomorrow.  There's something called "runaway
population growth & crash" that really easy to demonstrated with a few
rats in a cage in a lab.  Only there's no guarantee that Earth would be
able to support humans after the crash, and no sign of alien scientists
who'd move the survivors to new planets & feed 'em there after we'd
given 'em their desired experimental result.

response 52 of 129:

May 30 04:11 UTC 2002

aids isn't doing dick
we'd need an ebola outbrack in new deli to really do that.
we're looking at that population crash as it is, it's just a matter of weather
it'll be 4 or 6 billion dead

response 54 of 129:

May 30 20:45 UTC 2002

I was trying to remember why I opened this can of worms in the first place,
so I read back.  It's mostly #42 I am reacting to.  I may be misreading, but
this seems to be saying that 1) because consequences can be so severe, "young
people" should not be allowed to explore their sexuality, 2) knowingly 
engaging in behavior that exposes someone else to AIDS is a crime deserving
public execution in a painful fasion, and 3) what the heck, let's commit 
mayhem on some other people we think are morally weak, too.  (WTF is "Clinton 
Syndrome", anyway?  Enjoying a good BJ?)
  I'm sympathetic to #2, though I would probably prefer hanging or perhaps
a gas chamber to burning.  It's mostly 1 and 3 I have trouble with.  I don't 
think AIDS is a problem that requires young people to stop having sex.  I 
think that "skip-town fathers" is a reference to a far subtler and more 
complex problem than such heavy handed moralism can counter (in fact, I lay
a nontrivial part of the blame for the existence of the problem squarely 
at the door of such moralism), and the other reason #42 suggests for 
mutilating people is something I don't even understand.  
  My reaction whenever people suggest that, given all the possible consequences
of sex, people should just stop having so much sex, is similar to my reaction
when keesan suggests that we wouldn't have to pay high gas prices if we just
all decided not to own cars.  I'm not interested in giving up significant
portions of my lifestyle, much as I'm not interested in amputating my legs to 
keep my feet from hurting.  

response 56 of 129:

May 31 05:57 UTC 2002

Most people agree that it would be over the top to cut your feet off. 
There are people who think that abstinence, or life without a car (or
vegetarianism, or not having cable, or giving up chocolate) are perfectly
legitimate choices. That's really where the problem is. 

If you think your feet are expendable, then amputation is a pretty good
response to sore feet.  If you think double-fudge cheesecake is
expendable, dieting is a pretty good response to weight gain.  And, yeah,
if you think sex is expendable, abstinence is a pretty good response to
AIDS.  <shrugs>

response 58 of 129:

May 31 13:42 UTC 2002

The problem is when you think, say, cars are expendable and try to get *other*
people to give them up, rather than trying to help them solve their problems
in a constructive way.  

response 60 of 129:

Jun 1 23:03 UTC 2002

if only the mass knew it needed saving.

there seem to echo notions, in some sentiments here, to do with appropriate
ways for enormous groups of people to handle their privates, to do with
expectations had of national health programs' sway over nature. i'd say it
sounds like some folks are projecting their own sex lives onto their ethos.
even if they didn't know what they were doing at the outset, they can at least
say they did it all the only right way there was.

what talk has there been of the possibility of people selectively immune to
HIV? i'm curious, so if anyone has any info or ideas, please drop them here.

response 62 of 129:

Jun 2 19:57 UTC 2002

That it's promiscuity's fault won't save us either, for what that's worth.