Testing AIDS Drugs on Unwitting Foster Children

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http://counterpunch.com/freedman05192005.html

Those kids were as good as dead anyway, so what did it mater? Those HIV drugs should contain some ingredient so shorten the patien's life span anyway so that they have less time to risk spreading it around. Basically, the current generation of AIDS drugs aren't going to help anything. The only feasible cure is to isolate the AIDS patients so they can die off without infecting anybody else.

I can't believe you said that Sean. Not everyone with aides go around spreading it. I work with children who have been molested and even used as prostitutes at the age of four to provide money for a parents drug use. Do you think they will ever get tested for HIV...no, because the cost to care for them would be too much.It's not their fault, they did nothing to deserve this. Ostercising them more is not what they need. You tend to be a bit more kinder then this, I hope you re-think what you just said.

That's probably the nicest reply I should expect.

Positive solutions are desireable, but the number of humane options decreases the number of cases increase. The most humane thing to do would have been to identify and isolate the few sporadic cases and the people they may have exposed to the virus. But liberal activist had to make it a civil rights issue to protect the privacy of a handful of junkies and keep a few homosexuals from being pulled out of the closet at the expense of the health of people that will actually be missed.

I'd love to have a nice, humanitarian, diplomatic reply, but the state of the epidemic dosen't allow for it. Currently, all HIV patients are as good as dead. The only variable is how many others have to die as well.

Paula, if you have any alternate solutions, I'd be interested to hear them.

By those standards, everyone is as good as dead. Because life is terminal, and people with HIV can live a long time (longer than some people without it, depending on who those people are and what happens to them). It's not like someone's value to the world gets tossed out the window just because they have HIV or AIDS.

Why do people not say things like this about other epidemics? I don't hear people saying that people with other diseases are "as good as dead" just because they're terminal and possibly communicable. And it's not a liberal vs. conservative issue, it's a common decency issue, people are people. I know people who've died from AIDS and they did not become worthless as soon as they acquired it. I think if it was someone you cared about, you'd understand better why that's an awful thing to say. And you make it sound like homosexuals and junkies would not be missed. Do you really believe that because someone is gay or has a drug problem it takes a "liberal" to miss them?

You almost make it sound like AIDS has no impact on someone's life expectancy. Also, maybe people don't go around saying that people with certain diseases are as good as dead because they aren't blunt enough and their listener's would rather be BS'd than hear a straight answer. As for being more sympathetic if I knew someone with AIDS, I doubt it. I never cared much for the kinds of people that are at high risk to begin with. If someone I know did get it, that would fall under the catergory of consequences for your actions.

I'm glad most people are not so judgmental. I find this discussion deeply distasteful.

I scored 100% judgmental on the Jung Personality Test.

lol

Sean is very blunt. It's his style, I think.

I'd rather die of experimental drugs than die of AIDS...

But that's me...

HIV is the most horrible way to die known to Western Science, cancer, smallpox and cholera seem like romantic picnics by comparison...

It's rude to say this... but we have to test HIV drugs on somebody... and it might as well be dying patietnts...

That's the thing, a lot of adult patients will volunteer to test the drugs, and that's totally different than testing them on people who can't consent. Many know that testing the drugs will maybe help someone else and are willing to take the risk.

Re: conservatives, most conservatives I know are more humane than to wish people dead regardless of whether they agree with the person's choices (or what they view as the person's choices). Being conservative doesn't mean being callous and judgemental and devaluing of people's life. Most of the conservatives I know can separate out their distaste for someone's choices (or even belief that those choices are a sin) from their wishes about whether that person lives or dies.

Regarding life expectancy, I'm not saying people with AIDS have the same life expectancy as everyone else, but saying they're "as good as dead" definitely doesn't make any sense at all. People in general are going to die. Everyone is going to die. Some people it will be decades from now, some people it will be months from now. It seems bizarre that when you know how someone is most likely going to die, they're suddenly "as good as dead" no matter when that will actually take place.

Regarding whether you associate with the "kind of people who are likely to get AIDS," I seriously hope you don't end up finding otherwise by getting it from heterosexual sex or a blood transfusion. It happens. I guess you also wouldn't want to associate with one of the kinds of people least likely to get AIDS either, if you disapprove of homosexuality then you must disapprove of lesbians (not that we can't get it, but that it's somewhat less likely).

And regarding not saying that people are "as good as dead", maybe it's not just politeness. Maybe it's people knowing that death is inevitable for everyone and that the fact that it's going to be sooner for some people doesn't mean that they're useless in the meantime. Whatever value I have to the world in the next five years will be the same whether I die after five years or after fifty, and if I knew I'd die in five years it wouldn't make me any more "as good as dead" than if I didn't know. Doesn't seem logical at all to see it that way, like people get canceled out once you know their life expectancy. And, as I said, I really hope you never have to find this out the hard way by knowing someone you respect who gets AIDS, it's not like it's a plague brought on to kill only the people you hate, it could affect someone you like too.

And, yeah, parts of this discussion are extremely distasteful. Bluntness doesn't excuse wishing people dead.

I don't think I saw anyone 'wished dead'.

Well, foster children just don't have anyone who can really stand for their interests.

I don't care so much about the testing itself, but the lack of someone who can really say that it is ok for them to be tested as such bothers me.

Yeah, and life is a terminal diasese. I don't think anyone really deserves the indignity of dying under a microscope just because someone can.

As for the kids and the drugs, assuming the situation is as reported, and that their welfare was given second place to the commercially influenced imperatives of the drug testing, then that is clearly unacceptable in a civilised supposedly Christian society.

I can't see how anyone could view it any other way.