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| Author |
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| 25 new of 129 responses total. |
jaklumen
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response 44 of 129:
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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.
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lelande
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response 45 of 129:
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May 29 01:51 UTC 2002 |
you're so right, dude. you really didn't need to blather on.
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i
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response 46 of 129:
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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"?)
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i
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response 47 of 129:
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May 29 02:13 UTC 2002 |
(leland slipped in)
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flem
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response 48 of 129:
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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.
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jazz
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response 49 of 129:
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May 29 23:16 UTC 2002 |
People're reading into what I've said here. Of course someone who was
pursuing you would try to show off their best qualities - that's their *job*
as a pursuer, that's what will make them a successful pursuer. Your job as
the pursued is to be able to see through that, and try to realistically
evaluate the pursuer.
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i
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response 50 of 129:
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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.
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orinoco
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response 51 of 129:
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May 30 03:31 UTC 2002 |
(Those who like to take a long view of things will say that AIDS is helping
us stave off that ultimate population crash. Those who like to take a long
view of things tend to be keeping their heads up their collective ass.)
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phenix
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response 52 of 129:
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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
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jazz
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response 53 of 129:
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May 30 14:54 UTC 2002 |
HIV, being a retrovirus, mutates at a staggering rate, and is indeed
difficult to find a vaccine or a cure for. No less than the noted Jonas Salk
tried and only partially succeeded. So there may well be no cure in the next
twenty years, though it is impossible to say with certainty.
That said, it's a disease. It doesn't have a moral message.
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flem
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response 54 of 129:
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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.
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jaklumen
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response 55 of 129:
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May 30 23:30 UTC 2002 |
Your last sentence, Greg, speaks volumes. It's not necessarily a good
or a bad sentiment, but I think most people would share it.
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orinoco
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response 56 of 129:
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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>
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jaklumen
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response 57 of 129:
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May 31 09:34 UTC 2002 |
I have a friend that shot off his leg because it didn't work and hurt
like the devil. He wanted to remain productive with a prosthetic leg
rather than be slowed down with a painful leg.
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flem
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response 58 of 129:
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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.
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jazz
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response 59 of 129:
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May 31 15:41 UTC 2002 |
There's a hell of a strong evolutionary selection pressure to have sex.
If any of your ancestors, any of them, didn't have libidoes, then you wouldn't
be here. I do think it's unreasonable to expect logic to overrule the
strongest selection pressure there is, and I do think that when such a
solution is offered - though not necessarily here - it often comes with
undertones of "*they* need to stop having the kind of sex *they* like".
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lelande
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response 60 of 129:
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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.
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i
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response 61 of 129:
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Jun 2 04:47 UTC 2002 |
Re: #54 & following
The "torch 'em on TV" scheme would have to answer to the same standard
as ticketing folks for driving with little kids not in child safety seats
- does the policy save enough innocent life & limb to justify the costs?
Getting through the skulls of the many paragons of cluelessness, denial,
& disfunctionality was my point.
Assuming that you don't have some brilliant master plan in hand to turn
young people into very faithful users of extremely reliable HIV-stopping
barrier methods, how high does the death rate need to go before you'd
support telling kids to stop exploring their sexuality with partners and
masturbate instead? 10%? 50%? 100%?
Best i'd heard, Clinton was & is a sex addict. One hell of a charmer,
too. Perfect resume' for a Typhoid Mary of VD, eh? Society has as much
pubic welfare interest in the behavior of such Don Juan's as it does in
the intoxification of airline pilots...which does not guarantee that any
good policy to deal with the problem actually exists.
The skip-town dad (or rare mom who keeps dropping her babies off at the
orphanage) is a prime candidate for having those little tubes closed up.
Again, this does not a working public policy make.
(Last i heard, the "people naturally immune to HIV" idea was a flop.
Some people take longer to progress to the later (deadly) stages of HIV
(different immune system, varient of the virus, or what?), but it looks
like everyone ends up there after a while.)
The ultimately deadly pair of "almost everyone wants to be sexually
active, with multiple partners over time" and "HIV will kill virtually
all the members of a human population behaving that way" are why i start
using phrases like "self-inflicted genocide". If there are motorboats
'most everywhere, sea cows are too attracted to motorboats, and sea cows
tend to die of the wounds they get from propellors, then sea cows may
go extinct in the modern world. That it's humans' fault won't save the
sea cow. That it's HIV's fault won't save us.
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orinoco
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response 62 of 129:
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Jun 2 19:57 UTC 2002 |
That it's promiscuity's fault won't save us either, for what that's worth.
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flem
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response 63 of 129:
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Jun 3 17:58 UTC 2002 |
Oh, my. Where to start.
Walter, for someone who appears to have paid some attention to what's
happening with AIDS in the world, you appear to have retained some glaring
errors of fact. You appear, for instance, to believe that "HIV will kill
virtually all members of a human population [in which the majority
are sexually active with multiple partners over time]." Huh? You do
remember, don't you, that it's a precondition for catching HIV by
sexual transmission that your partner has HIV? You are aware that it's
possible to test for HIV with high accuracy, yes? I assert that these
two facts suggest a method by which it may, in fact, be possible to
get one's freak on with very little likelihood of contracting HIV. If
the sea manatees knew where to go where there weren't any propellers,
they might not face extinction.
Clinton may well be a sex addict. I'm a sex addict, too. I get all
cranky and irritable and such when I'm forced to go without sex for
long periods of time. I've been known to do irrational things in
pursuit of sex. As it happens, (and this may be a shock to some of you)
there are circles in which the quirks of my personality are regarded as
charming. I'd be a perfect recipe for a "Typhoid Mary of VD", too, but
for one minor but crucial fact: I DON'T HAVE VD. Guess what? Neither
does Clinton, to the best of my knowledge.
This kind of twisted, limping argument for abstinence tends to suggest to
me that the proponent has something against sex, not against AIDS.
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oval
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response 64 of 129:
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Jun 3 21:12 UTC 2002 |
<wild applause>
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orinoco
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response 65 of 129:
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Jun 3 21:29 UTC 2002 |
<approving nod>
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cyklone
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response 66 of 129:
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Jun 3 23:24 UTC 2002 |
<high five!>
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jaklumen
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response 67 of 129:
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Jun 3 23:59 UTC 2002 |
resp:63 Is this to imply that Clinton couldn't keep it in his pants
because Hillary was too busy or what not to give him some lovin'? We
don't know for sure. We do know, however, that he allegedly engaged
in a number of affairs during his time as governor of Arkansas and as
President of the United States. We know that there was scandal before
his affair with Monica; but it would seem that the president just
couldn't stop. He was definitely in danger of being caught-- and
essentially, he was caught doing something improper a number of
times. If it wasn't an addiction, he may have had more room to cover
it up.
At any rate, there is some reason to believe Clinton is a sex addict.
We have no clear-cut evidence to believe you are the same, Greg.
Something against sex rather than against AIDS.. please. Perhaps
abstinence is poorly represented here, but I *do* know that it is
promoted in AIDS education-- not as *the* alternative, but as *an*
alternative, and as the *safest* alternative.
HIV is transmitted primarily through blood and genital secretions.
Sexual behavior listed in most education programs are as follows, with
riskiest first:
Anal sex-- riskiest, since there is penetration and genital
secretions, with the risk of tearing anal tissue and introducing blood.
Vaginal sex-- less risky, but more mingling of genital secretions.
Oral sex (penile to mouth)-- moderate to moderately low risk. Risk
increases: 1) when ejaculation is involved, 2) when there is bleeding
in the mouth and/or gums.
Abstinence from sexual contact-- relatively little risk, which I
believe includes hugging, kissing, fondling, petting, etc.
Sharing of needles would involve primarily blood.. I am not sure how
risky it is considered-- probably moderately high.
Other risky behaviors include sharing of sex toys without
sterilization, and S&M activities that may draw blood (I don't know
how risky the latter is considered, but I do know the community
considers how to play more safely). Prior contractions of other STDs
are also risky, as they further increase the risk of eventually
contracting HIV. Herpes and Hepatitis C, for example, have no
treatment that will permanently cure infection, especially the former;
and many STDs, including gonorrhea and syphilis, are beginning to grow
resistant to existing treatments.
Okay-- consider that, alone. Even if we find a very effective
treatment against HIV, what's to say it won't grow progressively
resistant like many other bacteria and viruses are today?
About the mantees-- that may be-- but I think it's rather
irresponsible for us to do nothing. And all my point is-- something
can be done, especially in regards to AIDS. A cure shouldn't be the
only solution-- prevention needs to be considered, too, or the cure
may not last forever.
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jazz
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response 68 of 129:
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Jun 4 00:31 UTC 2002 |
Don't think about cunnilingus much, do ya?
I don't think it's the case that the moral and ethical fiber of the
human race has suddenly been eroded, though it's not really possible to prove
or disprove. People, or their ancestors, have been doing it for the last
billion years or so. While we have aggravated a lot of natural factors that
predispose us to disease by living in such close proximity to one another,
we've also imposed social and moral codes on the proper expression of our
sexual drives. I don't believe for a minute that we're sinners and therefore
being punished for our wickedness, and the evidence suggests that such
diseases have emerged, and far from becoming epidemic, disappeared in the
past.
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