Losing Battle Against Aids??

HIV Infection Rate Holds Steady; Government Falls Short of Pledge to 'break the Back' of AIDS

ATLANTA (AP) - Despite the government's promise to "break the back" of the AIDS epidemic by 2005, about 40,000 Americans test positive for the HIV infection every year - the same number as a decade ago.
The figure is double the annual goal of 20,000 new HIV cases laid out by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention nearly four years ago. Nearly a million people in the United States now have the AIDS virus.

"We have a ways to go before we reach the mark of reducing new infections by half in the United States," said Dr. Ronald Valdiserri, who heads the CDC's HIV and AIDS prevention program.

Still, Valdiserri described the infection rate as "relatively stable." CDC released the new data Wednesday as part of the agency's commemoration of World AIDS Day.

We have known about AIDS for more than a decade, I remember massive awareness campaigns in the past, but now and this is just my opinion, I don't see the same amount of active campaigning to inform people about the virus. AIDS isn't just a homosexual or minority issue, it affects people from all walks of life and my biggest fear is that new generation of Paris Hiltons and Brittany Spears do not realize the dangers of their "loose" behavior. In the past four years, I have also noticed a decrease in AIDS prevention information in our schools and I wonder if the religious right is the blame for the lack of discussion regarding using protection while having sex.

I would have to say yes that the religious right is partly to blame. They still hold on to the idea that AIDS only affects gays, minorities and drug users....not the good ole' white, straight and religious. So, why would they want to stop AIDS......seeing as it's getting rid of the undesirables (as far as they think).

You don't think that the religious right thinks this way? Just look at some of the posts on any thread about homosexuality and I can gaurantee that there is at least one poster that states something about AIDS being a gay disease.

I'm gonna go off on a tangent here, but I promise it's related, and I'll get to my point...

My office used to filter the money down to anti-tobacco coalitions here in Florida...mostly programs geared towards youth...

Of course, as you may already know, those funds were cut....the settlement money from the law suits are being used to fund other state initiatives....we didn't see a dime...

Their reasoning?? Well....we've already targeted the at-risk population while they were young...We think they have a good understanding of what could happen....That will suffice for now....

Ok...What about the children that will be coming after them? What about those young children who have benefited from previous funding who will be entering high school and begin to learn what peer pressure really is?! Etc...

More of money is spent on fighting AIDs outside of the US....And that's not a bad thing - but it's certainly not a "good" thing either....

Just last night I watched a South Park episode about Paris Hilton - It was hilarious! It was about her coming to South Park and opening up a clothes store called somthing like "Super Slutty Whore" and it becomes the rave....All the while, Paris is coughing up sperm and shoving pineapples.....well....you get the picture....

But that episode really made fun of how a lot of teenage girls view these "sluts" as role models and want to be just like them....THIS is an area that really needs to be hit hard....

The media that gets exposed to young children is so saturated with images of sex and how great it is, and what all girls and guys should look like, and why they should use this product...That many people don't stop to think, they just DO...

This mentality contributes quite a bit to increasing chances of people having unprotected sex - Things like Blueberry...where you can IM people in your surrounding wireless area anonymously via your cell phone and ask for a quick sex fix....

AIDs has fast become one of the most mind-numbingly potent pandemics we have lived to see - But it's like it's not there for most of us b/c we can't conceptualize it...We hear AIDs and we think Africa - Well - They have it worse than us, that's where all the money is going, so I'm fine here....

I dunno....These are just some of my random thoughts - I don't think I really tied them all together, but I completely agree with you - something HAS to be done!

Originally posted by MacMerdin
I would have to say yes that the religious right is partly to blame. They still hold on to the idea that AIDS only affects gays, minorities and drug users....not the good ole' white, straight and religious. So, why would they want to stop AIDS......seeing as it's getting rid of the undesirables (as far as they think).

There's a very interesting article in the latest Newsweek magazine, detailing how the largest group of new HIV+ patients is no longer gay white males, but heterosexual black females.

America's AIDS epidemic has changed dramatically since it vanished from the headlines in the late 1990s. Women now account for 26 percent of newly diagnosed AIDS cases�nearly four times the proportion they made up in 1986�and girls account for the majority of new HIV infections among teens. Most of these women and girls are infected through ordinary heterosexual relationships. Most of them are black. And many are still dying. "People talk about AIDS in developing countries," says Dr. Victoria Cargill of the Office of AIDS Research at the National Institutes of Health. "They need to see what's happening right here. Women are in the cross hairs, and they're being mowed down."

Yes, but not everyone reads Newsweek etc. You don't know how many times I have told people (here included) that they are the reason HIV is spreading so rapidly in the USA.....because they still think that it's a gay disease and not going to affect them. Well, I'm here to say that it is affecting everyone......doesn't matter who you are.

Originally posted by MacMerdin
because they still think that it's a gay disease and not going to affect them. Well, I'm here to say that it is affecting everyone......doesn't matter who you are.

Very true....

Watch Cops....When they do their prostitution busts, they'll talk with the prositute or the "customer"....quite often these people are actually clueless about AIDs....

Why? B/c these people, in general, are drop-outs, illegal aliens, etc...and never recieved any proper knowledge of the disease - and most importantly - THEY are a significant portion of the population who are spreading it....

thank you all for your great input, I believe you're all right.

Enron, your tangent makes perfect sense.

the problem imo seems to be in our schools, the Bush administration is spending millions on the message of abstinence, but that money would do so much more good if they teached std awareness, since clearly the message of abstinence is not working in this new generation.