World AIDS Day - December 1st, 2002

Tomorrow - December 1st - is World AIDS Day.  Link and Think is a campaign to encourage bloggers, journalers and others such forums to post about AIDS, our thoughts or experiences with it, links to news, research, resources or other tools dealing with AIDS and to help remind people that the fight against AIDS is still going.

I have been very fortunate in that AIDS has never touched upon my life in a tangible way.  I don't know anyone who has AIDS, and, to the best of my knowledge, none of my good friends know anyone who has AIDS, either.  I suspect that is something of a rarity.

That doesn't mean, however, that I have been completely untouched by AIDS.  It may not be part of my personal experience, but I have seen what AIDS has done to this country and how we have treated it's victims. I have seen the way the victim profile led our government to delay recognizing in the early years - when we might still have had time to contain it - how serious the epidemic is, and how the sexual nature of transmission is, even today, leading to suppression of information on how to prevent contracting it.  I've learned about the ego games that may have delayed our ability to have a truly accurate test, which could have possibly helped prevent some of the contamination of the blood supply, and how the fight over credit for discovering the virus that causes AIDS made research more difficult for everyone.

Earlier this year I read "And the Band Played On", by Randy Shilts, and "Science Fictions: A Scientific Mystery, A Massive Cover-Up, and the Dark Legacy of Robert Gallo" by John Crewdson. These books tend to be a bit dry at times, and - "Science Fictions" in particular - sometimes gets a bit lost in the arcana of science and politics, yet I couldn't put either of them down once I started reading.  I was in my late high-school/early-college years when most of what was written about took place, and while I was aware of AIDS and had some idea of what it was, by and large, it wasn't something people talked about much. 

When I look back on it now, I realize just how dangerous that was.  Here were kids from all walks of life and of all sexual orientations who were getting their first taste of freedom and, for the most part, starting to explore their sexual natures - and we didn't really comprehend that there was a dangerous disease that couldn't easily be detected, was transmitted from one person to another through sexual contact, could stay dormant in your bloodstream for years before you began showing symptoms - even though you could infect others that entire time - and brought with it a horrifying death that nothing could stop.

Contrasted with the "West Nile" scare of the last few years, the difference is astounding.  While West Nile is a serious disease and can be fairly easily contracted, after three summers of frequent news reports and updates, the number of people who have been sickend by or died from West Nile is only a fraction of the number of people who contracted or died from AIDS in its first three years.  Yet you'd almost have to be a hermit to be unaware of the West Nile virus and measures you can take to help prevent getting it.

Accoding to a Reuters report published this week, women now make up half of all AIDS victims worldwide.  The article also notes that by the end of the year, 3.1 million people worldwide will have died of AIDS, another 5 million with contract the disease and 42 million will be living with the virus. Even as progress is being made, news of that progress sometimes leads people - especially young people - to believe that there's not as much to worry about as there might have been previously, so not as much caution (including the use of condoms) needs to be used. 

Over the next 24 hours, I will be posting links to various articles on AIDS, living with AIDS, fighting against AIDS and fighting against apathy.  I hope that you will find them useful.  If you have any comments or thoughts you would like to share, please do so.  Every voice needs to be heard.