The politics of STDs

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Ive often wondered about why there is all this funding in the United States to research into deadly STDs like AIDS and HPV(which causes cervical and anal cancer). Most of the new treatments are NOT going to be available to african AIDS victims but will be readily available to gay men and straight women with $. Look at it this way, all this money that could be used to cure fatal diseases that are unpreventable are instead having the effect of alleviating a natural consequence to sexually irresponsible behaviour. Bear in mind that I am talking specifically and exclusively about Promiscuity, and NOT about monogamous homosexuality. Certain factions of the feminist movement think that being non-monogamous is the ONLY way to be "sexually liberated" and thus they are entitled to be protected from any negative consequences of such behaviour which is totally immoral and irresponsible!

The squeeky wheel gets the grease and, most often, its the vain as they don't have much better to do or to preoccupy them than bang on the pots and pans if they don't get their way.

I worked in the Pharma industry for 11 years (admiteddly, as support... but I can tell you yes, all companies go where the money is. However, after about 17 years, the patent disappears, and someone in any number of less-developed-countries make a bargain-basement knockoff for a fraction of the cost.

It all evens out somewhate...

For the same reason that we pay farmers not to produce, rather than letting them overproduce and sending the excess to other countries that need it.

Tricky:

Let say reducing promiscuity is really helpful: How to archive this? You may can close down gay baths or forbid dark-(back-)rooms, as they did in 1980s when the transmission of HIV became clear. This slowed down a bit (but not significant). Anyway the most of this facilities closed anyway, because their customer died away or stayed at home. Today, speaking as an "insider", the most of this contacts are made via the internet on webpages, often specialised into quite specific sexual preferences.

I do not know, besides public warnings and education, how to stop gay promiscuity. It seems to deeply rooted into human nature.

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BTW: I do not have numbers, but I would assume strongly that the costs for society for treatment of other behaviour related illnesses, like obesity, chancer (smoking) or liver problems are much higher than the HIV bill. So stopping people to eat to much would be much more cost effective.

Sadly, there is more money to be made in the treatment of the symptom than the finding of a cure.

There is also significant evidence that HIV was human-made and deliberately introduced into the human population as a way to kill off those deemed "undesirable."

Frankly, if people took preventative measures seriously (HIV+ = no sex; condoms; regular testing; segregation of the infected [worst case scenario]), the disease would burn itself out in a generation.

Go to Africa and see what passes for HIV awareness...it's a joke. It's not like they aren't getting funding to do education programs...they just aren't doing it.

1) AIDS is not purely an STD - it is both a blood-born infection and an STD. The only individual I personally knew that died of AIDS got it from a transfusion.

2) "All this funding" is not one thing. There are private monies spent in pursuit of patents and profit, while government and philanthropies decide to fund other projects. The amount of basic research that comes out of these varied processes increases the chances that we understand these diseases enough to develop effective therapies.

3) Having more than one partner in life is the norm. Most people are not promiscuous in the way you suggest - instead of wild feminist lesbian orgies every week, the most common pattern is serial monogamy. There is risk associated with it, but a moral strategy alone is doomed to failure.

4) This risk can be reduced in many ways - such as preventing the exchange of certain bodily fluids unless and until one is locked into a monogamous relationship with someone who tests negative. But we saw the 'moral' approach of the past 8 years where the US refused to fund any sex education or risk reduction in Africa and other poor regions if the organization had any connection to abortion (including merely mentioning it in any education program) ... this was financial blackmail, where the fundies would rather keep people ignorant of ways of preventing AIDs if that was needed to keep them ignorant of abortion.



No, there isn't. The conspiracy theory that the CIA or the KGB or the illuminati invented AIDS is as bogus as the conspiracy theory that HIV doesn't cause AIDS, but the medicines used to treat HIV do cause AIDS. Its all BS.

I worked as a microbiologist in the Institute that discovered the first 'slow' RNA retrovirus in 1957 (AIDS is also a slow RNA retrovirus) ... before that, people thought that all viruses were 'quick' and either killed a person, or the person defeated the virus and went on living. We know that there are many slow viruses in mammals, and that they can be very insidious. A convergence of evidence suggests that the HIV RNA retrovirus made the jump to humans from other primates ... and there is evidence this occurred prior to 1960, as a frozen blood samples of a man who had been to Africa and then died of a strange disease showed he was positive for HIV when he died in the US in 1961. In 1960, there were only a handful of scientists in the entire world that specialized in RNA retroviruses. At that time, little was known about RNA retroviruses (or genetic engineering) and there certainly was no evidence to suggest that this type of virus could be tailored to only go after 'moral degenerates.' To the contrary, when they spread in livestock populations, they seemed to be transferred by multiple methods and were extremely difficult to control.

Here's a good article on the paranoid myths that have sprung up around AIDS - a bit dated, but still accurate:

http://discovermagazine.com/1994/dec/of ... dmischi458



Yes, and if people simply turned off their anger, we could eliminate murder and assault and bullying and live in a much better world:
Imagine all the people...
living life in peace...
you may say I'm a dreamer...
and you are absolutely right...
not gonna happen.

I see no problem with promiscuity if people are responsible. Why do you think there is a moral issue with having sex with lots of people??? I have been quite promiscuous in the past and have never had an STD. It is possible you know! You just need to be careful, like with many things in life. The two people I know who have had STDs in the past (I am sure more people I know have had them, just not been honest like these two friends) got the STDs (one got herpes, the other chlamydia) when they lost their virginities. It only takes sleeping with one person to get an STD so the problem is with people not using protection, not necessarily how many people they sleep with.

I doubt many people in society live a life where they have behaviour that does not result in problems. Many people are fat from eating too much bad food, others have issues from smoking, injuries from driving stupidly and so on. That's just the way things are and in most Western countries they are protected from the consequences of their actions by medical coverage provided in full (or partially) by the government. STDs are just another thing that happens to people from irresponsibility and if people are not to be protected from STDs then that would imply that they should also not be protected from the consequences of eating bad food, smoking, drinking, etc.

If you are talking about research done by private companies - well their motivation is driven by profit. They will not make money from Africa but they will make money from rich Western patients. If they are forced by regulation to focus on Africa there is no incentive for them to do research.That being said, I think that aid and charity organisations could step in and try to improve the medical care for aids sufferers in Africa as well as government aid.

I remember a report on AIDS once mentioned that an African doctor found some prostitutes that actually were immune to some strains of HIV.

About a decade later, Western doctors suddenly thought that he might have been on to something, because they found it in some gay men in America.

That's what medical research is like. Westerners are superior. There's no way that doctors in other regions of the world could possibly come up with medical breakthroughs. Except, y'know, ancient Chinese doctors, but only with tea. Tea is the only thing they got right. Yeah.