Basically, many of the atendees at the conference don't want theiir sexual lifestyles to be changed in any way because of the disease. They just want the medical profession and the U.S. government to fix it now, dammit, because they also know it's only due to the sexist, homophobic foot dragging of the current administration that there isn't already some sort of cure or preventative medication on the market.

And it should cost about a buck a pill, too. At most. Even if the pharmacutical companies go broke making it, because they don't deserve patents anyway anmd shouldn't profit from AIDS medication (we're entering our third decade of this sort of thinking; the only difference being there was an eight-year period when the cries of a U.S. government plot against AIDS victims were toned down to a near whisper).

This Conference was as much about curing AIDS as Durban was about stopping racism. As John says, it was more about protecting sexual license from AIDS and HIV plagues.

Why are there no high-profile politicians or doctors who are prepared to bell the cat loudly and pointedly and speak like the articulate Mr. Pinkerton? This is a plague, darnit, and people have to be made to face the truth whether they like it or not. Lyrical odes des to abstinence and fidelity are clearly not enough.

It's almost entirely self-selecting. Why should we care more than they do?

David:

Perhaps because, at those numbers, the worry that it won't stay self-selecting is a reasonable one. Diseases now associated with AIDS such as virulent drug-resistant pneumonia and TB aren't self-selecting.

But even stepping outside the confines of rational science, for the children.

virulent drug-resistant pneumonia and TB are around, and will continue to be around, regardless of the # of individuals with HIV. it just seems like it's more prevalent because these individuals are so much more afflicted by such infections. wash your hands and finish your course of antibiotics when prescribed, you'll be just fine.

it's rather sad that an AIDS conference talks about everything except AIDS, but since i feel the billions spent on 'finding a cure' for this infection might be better spent on cancer research, i have a hard time empathizing.

poormedicalstudent:

OK, I'll bow to scientific authority, try to check my mysticism, and accept there is no current reason to fear spreads other than sexually or drug transmitted ones.

But are you sure of the future? I have great, if visceral, difficulty with the idea that a society can forever shrug off and isolate a lethal plague of this magnitude. If several of my neighbours have HIV, do I have any present or future worries at all if I live the straight and narrow and wash my hands a lot (??).

So what is the public health interest here?

Peter:

Read And the Band Played On and/or Michael Fumento's Myth of Heterosexual Aids--you, as a male, can only get Aids by being on the receiving end of anal intercourse or sharing a needle with someone who has Aids. The virus is feeble.

OJ, women can get the disease through vaginal intercourse, correct? So a woman who plays it straight and narrow can get it from her husband who doesn't. There are many men who engage in anal intercourse with other men who don't consider themselves gay.

There is an interesting article in this month's Discover magazine about how diseases are spead by the trucking "culture". There are many homo and bi-sexual men who are drawn to truckers, and arrange truck-stop rendevous over the internet. There are networks of drug dealers and female prostitutestied to truckstops as well. Some truckers who are married and consider themselves straight still will engage in homosexual sex on the road.

It is believed that truckers are the main source of the spread of AIDS in Africa.