http://www.newsday.com/news/columni...nov14,0,702522.column?coll=ny-news-columnists A fact sheet on the effectiveness of condoms in preventing the transmission of the AIDS virus has disappeared from the Centers for Disease Control Web site. A separate CDC listing of sex-education "Programs that Work," meant to give local officials information on scientifically proven methods of reducing risky teen sexual behavior, also has vanished. President George W. Bush has begun appointing critics of condoms to a presidential advisory panel on AIDS. Government audits of AIDS activist groups began after protesters disrupted remarks by Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson at a conference in Barcelona. Last spring, Capps tried to get the House Commerce Committee to agree that the government should fund only "medically and scientifically accurate" sex-ed programs. She failed, by a committee vote of 31-19, that mostly broke on party lines.
Good thing Bill Clinton about safe sex . Could this be the Religious Right standing erect and pentrating the deepest parts of government ?.
Clinton kept Troj-enz in Ronald Reagan's old jelly bean jar on his desk. In case he wanted to have a close, "one-on-one" meeting with a 22 yr. old intern. Remember that marble-mouthed clown Jocelyn Elders? Didn't she want to hand out condoms to pre-schoolers? I guess she figured that if the kids were playing with blocks & wanted to get it on during naptime, they should be protected.
AIDS is a horrible disease. But heart disease & cancer kill WAY more people than AIDS does. AIDS gets more media attention, but the funding for AIDS is out of whack for the number of people who die from it. Many more people live full lives with AIDS than they did just 15 yrs. ago.
True, but the critical difference with AIDS, is that the overwhelming majority of those who die from it are. As William McNeil pointed out many years ago in his epic history of diseases 'Plagues and Peoples', deaths among otherwise young and healthy adults have a far greater impact on the society as a whole than do deaths among children and the elderly. The very young have yet to contribue much to society; the very old have already done so, so society as a whole doesn't lose much when these people die. However, when adults below 60 or 70 die, the society they live in loses all their current contributions. If you calculated the years lost to those who have died of AIDS against years lost to cancer and heart disease, the gap would shrink dramatically. To get back to the topic. This reminds me a lot of a scheme that the christian right was operating a few years ago in which people were encouraged to run for small time local offices (most often school boards) without mentioning their ties to that political agenda. When they won, they would begin voting strictly along religious lines but would probably win re-election because of the power of the incumbency.
What? The number of childhood cancer deaths blows away the total number of deaths from AIDS so no matter how you calculate it years lost by cancer patients far exceeds that of AIDS. I also find it somewhat appalling to be quantifying the worth of life by the age of a disease's victims.
In 2001, 1,500 children died of childhood cancer in the US. In 2001, 8,963 people died of AIDS in the US (which is actually a far smaller number than the peak in 1995 when more than 50,000 died). The point is that AIDS can be prevented by some education, and it is a lot cheaper than paying for super-expensive drugs.
The difference with AIDS is that it is communicable. If not dealt with properly it can reach epidemic proportions, as it has done in other parts of the world. Should we spend more on cancer research? Sure. But what happened here isn't even a question of funding. We're talking about basic information here, censored by the Republicans, because it doesn't fit their moral worldview.