Countries Around Globe Commemorate World AIDS Day (Video)

I am sorry to say that, recently, a physician I work with made the comment that AIDS is the most over-politicized disease in the world, and has been a waste of time and money over the years…Then a technician who was working with us chimed in “They don’t NEED to find a cure for AIDS!” I was incensed at the attitudes of these so-called ‘health-care professionals’, and I proceeded to remind them that the research into AIDS has advanced the understanding and treatment of viral diseases of ALL kinds, and that (since HIV is a constantly morphing retrovirus) we could see the day that the transmission of the virus could be accomplished as easily as that of the oh-so-prevelant rhinovirus (which causes the ‘common cold’). If this happened then EVERYONE (even our ubersanctimonious doctor and tech) might get it
EVEN IF they are SO HOLY and SO GOOD. Never mind the fact that these people come in contact with blood and body fluids on a daily basis in their occupations! It is disheartening that this attitude still exists in 2008, yet it is not at all suprising. These statements are born out of ignorance and hatred, and (unfortunately) bigotry abounds! So, on World AIDS Day, I would like to challenge everyone to remember that NO ONE deserves this disease, and that we ALL are vulnerable until a definitive cure is found!

It’s just amazing how this disease has spread throughout the world. Even with all the incredible education on preventing the spread, it seems to continue to grow and accumulate victims.

And you wonder why? It’s because people don’t want to take responsibility for their behavior and continually live their lives aimlessly and wrecklessly. I said this very same thing months ago in regards to the incredible amounts of education, that we were educating untill we are blue in the face. Yet folk’s still don’t get it. It gets to a point that it proves that they don’t care about getting it and that is the very reason…They end up getting “it”

Elaina and Tanja, not all AIDS victims got the disease by “irresponsible behavior”—there are MANY babies who are born HIV positive, and there are many faithful wives/partners who unknowingly had the virus brought home to them by unfaithful mates! While I agree that there are too many people who got the disease through their carelessness, it is remiss to write off the disease and its victims as merely the result of irresponsibility! As I mentioned in my post above, HIV is a retrovirus, which constantly changes and mutates…God forbid we see the day when the virus mutates to a form that can be transmitted through droplet infection, like rhinovirus, or influenza. It would be a grave mistake to try and sweep this disease under the rug by dismissing it as a moral issue!

Melanie, While I am sympathetic to those who were infected by unfaithful partners, I too, wished I had excluded them in my post as I am totally in agreement with you on that. The innocent, yes, these are those that my heart goes out to, as well as those, of third world countries, where the availability of education and medicines is lacking,to comfort those who become stricken with this unforgiving disease. However, firstly, my mind automaticaly wraps itself around this country and other civilized countries throughout the world that continue to rage with new cases minute by minute and to those countries, I have little to no sympathy and therefore must stand on my original posting. And, when people know there is no know cure for such, continue doing as THEY please, then they are arrogant, wreckless and beyond stupid which cannot be excused. That that is promiscuity and and stupidity at it’s finest display and make for one dangerous cocktail.

Elaine, I do agree about those who throw caution to the wind, and those stupid young men who seek out become HIV positive as some sort of gay birthright…well , whether through the foolishness of youth or some Darwinian principal, they’ve chosen their fate. I am just trying to emphasize the importance of continued research into this disease in order to prevent the rise of a new, more easily transmitted form. In my occupation, I come in contact with blood on a daily basis, as mane health care professionals do, and I have, in fact, had a patient who became infected as the result of her job as a dialysis nurse. In fact, I myself became a nurse at a time when AIDS was still called “GRID” (gay related immunodeficiency), and there was no test to detect the disease at that time…I remember having MANY patients who came onto the ICU where I worked, and died of ‘fevers of unknown origin’…many of those patients had symptoms which we now associate with AIDS (one of which is hemorrhaging due to abnormal platelet function)….When I began school to become a Nurse Anesthetist in 1986, gloves were not readily available on anesthesia carts as they are now, and many older anesthetists laughed at you when you requested them. So, remember those of us who are in the medical profession…our occupation qualifies us as being at risk not only for AIDS, but for the deadly disease Hepatitis as well!