That is a pretty fucked up situation. It should certainly be the case that with regards to just about anything, really, partners be open and honest with one another. And that people engage in responsible behavior. Going around picking up street kids is a reprehensible, irresponsible behavior regardless of HIV status, but the particular situation you pointed out was all the more tragic for obvious reasons.Quote:
Originally Posted by basschick
Where I have a problem is not in whether or not people should be considerate and caring and disclose these kinds of things, but to what degree people are suggesting we go about making sure they do just that or punishing them when they don't. Is quarantining the answer? Treating the failure to disclosure as a capital offense? Forcing people to disclose their status? And how do we do that? How deeply involved are we going to get Big Brother?
It's not so much an issue of gay politics today. HIV/AIDS is firmly embedded in to the collective conscience of all people all over the world today. But in the history of HIV/AIDS, the early years of its first coming about, early treatment issues (drug trials and availability of medicine), public policy with respect to HIV/AIDs, public awareness and the like were all greatly influenced by gay activist groups. Understandably so.Quote:
while a lot of people, gay and str8, think of this as gay politics, at one point the largest killer of straight women 18 - 40 was hiv, who were usually infected by their husbands or (so they thought) exclusive boyfriends. unfortunately, HIV knows no limits regarding gender, preferences or age.
There was seen a danger in those early years that people would just see HIV/AIDS as a gay disease and so not care about it. Either homosexuals brought it upon themselves, or heterosexuals need not worry. Those were two dangerous attitudes that were developing and could have remained throughout those early years. What effect would that have had on funding? Could the nation have been expected to mobilize itself behind combating a disease that only affected homosexuals and IV drug users? Hardly. Could complacency and the belief being straight absolved one of risk result in a health catastrophe? Certainly. So you can see how politics became involved, especially from the perspective of gay activists groups and gay people in general. We either had to mobilize and politicize or risk being ignored and abandoned.
As to the AIDS being the leading killer of women 18-40 at some point, that # kinda stumps me cuz I'm not familiar with that statistic, though it's not like I'm a computer so I surely coulda missed it. But the 2003 CDC report on HIV/AIDS shows just over 93,000 cumulative AIDS cases among women from the late 1970s to 2003, or about 4000 per year (that doesn't include women presumed to have been infected through IV drug use or transfusions, as opposed to heterosexual contact). And thats diagnoses. Not deaths. With 40,000 women a year dying of breast cancer I'm not sure how AIDS could top that in a year unless a massive proportion of the 93,000 cumulative female AIDS cases met all of the following: a) are already dead b) died within the same year c) were overwhelmingly between 18 and 40 years old. For the last 4 years the estimated number of women that have died of AIDS (not including IV drug users) has been about 2000. I don't know numbers prior to 1999 offhand so those years could have been different.
c) is highly likely but the other 2 are kinda hard to imagine.
By in large, HIV/AIDS is still predominantly something that affects gay men and IV drug users. Way beyond their proportion of the population on the whole.
