The Politics of AIDS

 

Bill and Melinda Gates, through their charitable foundation, have done for the cause of AIDS then any other individuals or private organizations, ever.  Heroes to those with AIDS?  The answer is yes if you support AIDS research and treatment and…are willing not to suggest that abstinence may have some role to play in slowing the AIDS epidemic.  Bill got boos for suggesting this very idea in his address to the 16th International AIDS Conference.  What exactly did Bill say that was so offensive?  Here’s a portion of the speech:

Let’s consider what this means for universal treatment. Right now, nearly 40 million people are living with HIV. The annual treatment cost per person includes about $130 for first-line drugs,and more than $200 for personnel, lab work, and other expenses. That means that the annual cost of getting treatment to everyone in the world who is HIV positive would be more than $13 billion a year,

This $13 billion figure doesn’t count the cost of much more expensive second-line therapies,which many patients will need. Moreover, these figures assume no increase in the number of people living with HIV – yet we’re averaging 4.6 million new infections a year.

We need to do everything possible to bring down treatment costs, and I’m sure we will make progress there. But even if you take very optimistic numbers, when you extrapolate 5 to 10 years, you quickly see that there is no feasible way to do what morality requires – treat everyone with HIV – unless we dramatically reduce the number of new infections.

The harsh mathematics of this epidemic proves that prevention is essential to expanding treatment. Treatment without prevention is simply unsustainable.

We have to do a much better job on prevention.

Right now, one of the most widely practiced approaches to prevention is the ABC program, for“Abstain, Be faithful, use Condoms.” This approach has saved many lives, and we should expand it. But for many at the highest risk for infection, ABC has its limits.

The reaction is instructive.  No matter how much one does to help the cause of AIDS, anything suggested that in any way inhibits irresponsible sexual behavior must be condemned.  Forget that this abstinence is the ONLY sure means of preventing the spread of AIDS though sexual contact, the primary means by which the disease is spread.  For liberals, true compassion for AIDS means allowing thousands and perhaps millions to contract the disease, suffer and perhaps die so long as any restriction on their sexual activity is avoided.

More on “Tolerance”

 

“Tolerance” is the cry of the secular world.  It is invoked to beat those of faith into “acceptance” (also a common cry) of all behaviors and lifestyles.  Tolerance was once a characteristic of confessional governments toward other faiths.  Today tolerance is turned against those who believe. Rev.Thomas D. Williams provide great insight into the current state of “tolerance.”

The language of tolerance was first proposed to describe the attitude that confessional states, such as Anglican England and Catholic France, should adopt toward Christians of other persuasions (though no mention was made of tolerance for non-Christian faiths). The assumption was that the state had recognized a certain confession as “true” and put up with other practices and beliefs as a concession to those in error. This led, however, to the employment of tolerance language toward religion. The philosophes would downplay or even ridicule religion in the firm belief that it would soon disappear altogether. Thus, separation of church and state becomes separation of public life and religious belief. Religion was excluded from public conversation and relegated strictly to the intimacy of home and chapel. Religious tolerance is a myth, but a myth imposed by an anti-religious intellectual elite.

This “tolerant” mentality is especially problematic when applied in non-confessional countries — such as the United States — where an attitude of tolerance is not that of the state religion toward unsanctioned creeds, but of a non-confessional secular state toward religion itself. Language of religious toleration of Christianity in Saudi Arabia would be a marked improvement over present conditions, and consistent with a confessional Muslim state’s belief that Christianity is a false religion. In a non-confessional state, such language is more pernicious.

Moreover, as a virtue, tolerance seems to have distanced itself so far from its etymological roots as to have become another word altogether. Thus the virtue of “tolerance” no longer implies the act of “toleration,” but rather a general attitude of permissiveness and openness to diversity. A tolerant person will not tolerate all things, but only those things considered tolerable by the reigning cultural milieu. Tolerance therefore now has two radically incompatible meanings that create space for serious misunderstandings and abuse.

If tolerance is the greatest civic virtue, then culture, morality and ultimately society descend to depths of darkness from which there can be no recovery.  “Tolerance” may in fact pose the greatest risk to Western civilization today.