OBJECTIFICATION

The Culture of Disease: After all the effort exerted to convince the world that AIDS is not a gay disease, we now have a generation embracing AIDS as its gay birthright. (HARVEY FIERSTEIN, 7/31/03, NY TImes)

In our effort to remove the stigma of having AIDS, have we created a culture of disease? We all see the ads for H.I.V. drugs. They
illustrate hot muscular men living life to the fullest thanks to modern science. Other ads show couples holding hands, sending the message that the road to true love and happiness is being H.I.V. positive.

Is that message: You're going to be O.K.? (Which is terrific.) Or is it: You want to be special? Get AIDS. H.I.V. equals popularity and acceptance.
(Which would be tragic.)

My heart goes out to all who have the infection. But while I pledge my energies and resources to the fight for a cure, quality care and justice, I still think we need to examine what we're teaching our gay, lesbian, transgender, bisexual and straight youth. In my opinion, the messages the drug companies are spreading are lies. The truth is that AIDS is not fun. It's not sexy or manageable. AIDS is a debilitating, deforming, terminal and
incurable disease. H.I.V. drugs can bring on heart, kidney and liver disease, as well as a host of daily discomforts.

Unlike the photos in the ads we see, most of my friends who are on drug cocktails are not having the time of their lives. They spend mornings in the bathroom throwing up or suffering from diarrhea. They spend afternoons at doctor's appointments, clinics and pharmacies. And they spend endless evenings planning their estates and trying to make ends meet because they are not well enough to support themselves and their new drug habit. And those are just the friends for whom the drugs work. For many women the cocktails are nothing but a drain on finance, internal organs and stamina.

Even if the drugs were as effective as advertised, should we be creating a community of drug dependency? We have done a terrific job removing the stigma of having AIDS. But in doing so we've failed to eliminate the disease. H.I.V. is an almost completely avoidable infection. You need to be compliant in some very specific behaviors to be at risk. In fact, if every person now infected vowed that the disease ended with him, we could wipe out the ballooning number of new infections.

Instead, we've sold our next generation into drug slavery and their destiny to medical researchers because we'd rather treat each other as sexual objects than as family.

This last is apparently said without irony. Posted by Orrin Judd at August 15, 2003 10:22 AM