I appreciate how this does not say "AIDS victims." Not all who have AIDS are victims- rather, they are survivors and strivers.
Today is World AIDS Day. Since 1981, 25 million have died from AIDS. There were 33.4 million people living with AIDS in 2008. At the end of 2008, 50% of AIDS cases were women. There are over 1.4 million AIDS cases in North America.
I didn’t wear red today (I go to Cal… I don’t own a single red article of clothing!), but I did tweet about HIV/AIDS and did some reading about AIDS today. I’ll admit, my last tweet was flippant. I simply said “get tested and don’t do anything stupid.” Of course, that’s not sufficient.
There is the issue of considering the well-being of others [particularly sexual partners and children.] While I advocate abstinence, I can only suggest using condoms for any and all sexual activity with a partner. Maybe I am being uncharacteristically frank today, but I have to do more than wring my hands and quote statistics. I won’t turn this into an essay extolling the virtues of chastity and abstinence.
But I will point to the truth. The truth is about the most offensive thing I can say. AIDS is not merely “the gay disease.” That meme inhibited any progress that could have been made to prevent the spread in the 1980s in the US. The politically conservative climate would not allow for the progression of the discourses of human sexuality and epidemics- especially if HIV/AIDS was understood in terms of gayness. The misconception that HIV could be spread through casual contact made the stigmas surrounding homosexuality even worse.
Historically, sexually-transmitted diseases have been represented by women and men of lower class and status in society. The theme of poor, non-White women as “vectors of venereal disease” is an old one that was played up to attempt to stop American troops from engaging in sexual activity with women overseas. Never mind the fact that these soldiers CHOSE to go to prostitutes, and these women are not totally to blame. Prostitution and fornication take 2 or more people.
And we all know the Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment that spanned from 1932 to 1972. Black men became guinea pigs for the government at the hands of doctors they thought they could trust. The study preyed on the hunger of the rural impoverished at the height of the Great Depression when African-Americans’ unemployment rates were around 30%, and they were already making for less income than their European-American counterparts. These men were given placebos so that doctors could observe the effects of the the disease’s progression. Spinal taps, blood draws and consulting nurses all created the illusion of proper medical care.
The Tuskegee Syphilis Study, cited as “arguably the most infamous biomedical research study in U.S. history,”[4] led to the 1979 Belmont Report and the establishment of the Office for Human Research Protections (OHRP).[5] It also led to federal regulation requiring Institutional Review Boards for protection of human subjects in studies involving human subjects. The Office for Human Research Protections (OHRP) manages this responsibility within the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).[6]
Is it any wonder that in 1990, a 1056-person survey conducted by the Southern Christian Leadership Coonference (SCLC) yielded these results:
- 34% of the respondents believed that AIDS was an artificial virus,
- 35% believed that AIDS is a form of genocide.
- 44% believed that the government is not telling the truth about AIDS
It is worth noting that those polled were predominately African-American, self-identified Christians. This fact does not take away from the compelling truth- the results of racializing venereal disease (think of the hypersexual non-White male trope) and the devaluation of certain bodies based on class, gender and race have wrought a distrust of medical authority within the African-American population. In my family I witnessed this. My parents would refuse to see doctors (yet if one of their children were very sick they would not hesitate to schedule an appointment.)
Hop across the Atlantic, and a US polio vaccine made from primate kidney cells is being tested on subjects (people!) in central Africa from 1957 to 1960. Over 1 million received the test vaccine. By 1981, 46 Africans had been diagnosed with AIDS within a 90 mile radius of the test site. This is a dramatic coincidence that cannot be an “accident.” The kidneys of the primates on which the vaccines were cultured were very likely infected with Simian Immunodeficiency Virus (SIV). There are no documented cases of AIDS before 1959, so it is entirely plausible that the injection of Koprowski’s poliomyelitis vaccine into compromised or underdeveloped immune systems allowed for the inter-species spread of what would be Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV).
In order for a virus to infect a different species, it is helpful to reduce the resistance of the new host’s immune system. Koprowski’s polio vaccine was given to many children less than one month old, before their immune systems were fully developed. Indeed, in one trial, infants were given 15 times the standard dose in order to ensure effective immunisation.
Today, 76% of AIDS cases are concentrated in Sub-Saharan Africa. Less than 1% of sexually active individuals on the continent have not been tested for STDs, let alone HIV. The following graph highlights the prevalence of HIV/AIDS around the world. It is painfully obvious that most cases are concentrated in Sub-Saharan Africa.
Of course, Africa is not the only area of the world that has been wracked by the AIDS pandemic.
But I’ll talk some more about the economic and human toll of AIDS in Africa. There are 22.4 MILLION AIDS cases in sub-Saharan Africa. Africa has 14 million AIDS orphans. The rate of transmission from mother to child is alarming. A study in Ivory Coast revealed that families of AIDS victims spend far more on medicine and medical care than they did on food. In developing and transitional countries, 9.5 million people are in immediate need of life-saving AIDS drugs; of these, only 4 million (42%) are receiving the drugs.
Disease, mortality and limited access to healthcare are part of a cyclical process whereby economic growth is stunted or declines. The loss of human capital and fear of the spread of disease has been a factor in the economic under-development of much of the African continent. This does not prevent the exploitation of devalued bodies in sub-Saharan Africa- of course not. However, this certainly does inhibit the economic growth and autonomy of the African continent. Respective nations have been plagued by colonialism, neo-liberal globalization measures, World Bank and the International Monetary Fund’s (IMF) Structural Adjustment Plans (SAP) and now the new wave of multi-national corporations seeking cheaper materials and a cheaper workforce in light of a global recession (depression?).
…
I may be stating the obvious when I say this, but AIDS is one of the worst pandemics in recent history. This retrovirus changes our very DNA! It’s not just sexual activity, it’s drug use (re-using needles), infected blood transfusions and perinatal transmission-
Be safe and considerate please. If you are sexually active, please please tell your partners your HIV status and use condoms. If you are abstinent, keep up the good work.
Thanks and Prayers,
-Arri
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