November 24, 2004
MEANWHILE, BILLIONS OF CONDOMS LATER...
HIV now a bigger threat to women than men (Sarah Bosely, The Guardian, November 24th, 2004)
The Aids pandemic rampaging around the globe will not be stopped without radical social change to improve the lot of women and girls, who now look likely to die in greater numbers than men, United Nations agencies said yesterday.Infections among women are soaring, from sub-Saharan Africa to Asia to Russia. What began as a series of epidemics among men - in some regions gay and bisexual men, in others men who frequented sex workers or male drug users - has spread to their female partners who are biologically more easily infected.
In many countries, women's subordinate status, and their lack of education and economic power, have made it impossible for them to negotiate sex with men or to ask for the use of condoms. Yesterday the UN agency set up to combat the pandemic, UNAids, called for all that to change in the interests of checking the spread of a disease which killed 3.1 million adults and children last year.
"We will not be able to stop this epidemic unless we put women at the heart of the response to Aids," said UNAids' executive director, Peter Piot.
At the launch of the UNAids annual report on the pandemic yesterday, actor Emma Thompson, who is a founder member of the Global Coalition on Women and Aids launched this year, put it in starker fashion. "There are some countries where women are an endangered species - they will disappear from the face of the earth," she said. "I think this is the greatest catastrophe that the human race has ever faced."
Promoting safe sex while scorning fidelity and abstinence ends up harming women? Astounding.
"Promoting safe sex while scorning fidelity and abstinence ends up harming women?"
Funny, but that's just about what they do in Europe now, and HIV infection rates, as with infection rates for just about every sexually transmissible disease, are far lower than they are in the U.S. In addition, the first real studies of abstinence-only programs in the U.S. are finally coming out, and they show no decrease in rates of infection; it seems that the subjects do wait longer to have sex, but when they do, they aren't terribly safe about it.
All rather predictable.
While it's obvious that abstinence and/or fidelity would solve the problem, most health workers, strangely enough, take the remarkably Christian view that no matter how much promotion the government engages in, people will sin. As such, they are also interested in raising the social and economic status of women; in brief, to give women the power to say "no." That alone will have a greater effect than any amount of abstinence preaching.
Posted by: M. Bulger at November 24, 2004 3:17 PMYes, because even though this is a crisis, it's the sort of crisis that can easily wait to be solved until we remake society.
Posted by: David Cohen at November 24, 2004 3:58 PMDavid,
Doesn't being a conservative mean never saying "until we remake society"?
M.
It may be the Christian view that people will inevitably sin. It is most definitely not the Christian view that we should therefore acquiesce in it, or aid and abet it.
If your idea of an AIDS strategy is ignore the realities of the present and focus on the long term global "empowerment" of women, then, I'm sorry, I can't believe you are really very moved by those afflicted with AIDS. What are they, cannon fodder in fight for Utopia?
Posted by: Peter B at November 24, 2004 6:29 PMCasting it as condoms vs. abstinence misses the point entirely.
Many women don't have any ability to demand fidelity or abstinence, much less safe sex.
It's a problem caused by males, and won't be solved until males change, all women change or die, or until the most aggressive males are dead.
Posted by: Michael Herdegen at November 25, 2004 6:54 AMMichael:
"It's a problem caused by males, and won't be solved until males change, all women change or die, or until the most aggressive males are dead."
You would fit in very well at the UN.
Posted by: Peter B at November 25, 2004 8:51 AMPeter B:
You must therefore believe that AIDS is a problem caused by women ?!?
Posted by: Michael Herdegen at November 25, 2004 4:35 PMNo, Michael, I believe AIDS should be fought by tackling the cause of AIDS.
Your approach seems to be akin to the way tobacco companies say they want to fight smoking. Except tobacco is far less threatening.
Posted by: Peter B at November 25, 2004 7:36 PMDavid Cohen: "Yes, because even though this is a crisis, it's the sort of crisis that can easily wait to be solved until we remake society."
Conservatives - specifically, neoconservatives - seem to be quite willing to remake societies, especially in the Middle East, in large part to avoid a few hundred to a few thousand dead in terrorist attacks now and then. What's a few million against that?
Peter B: "If your idea of an AIDS strategy is ignore the realities of the present and focus on the long term global "empowerment" of women, then, I'm sorry, I can't believe you are really very moved by those afflicted with AIDS. What are they, cannon fodder in fight for Utopia?"
That wasn't my idea; you're badly misreading my little blurb. As a long-term strategy, it's the only way to go. In the short term, I think the promotion of abstinence is fine, but omitting "safe sex" and condom distribution in its favor is at best naive, and at worst downright idiotic. The ideal short-term strategy would be a combination of the two.
Posted by: M. Bulger at November 29, 2004 9:13 AMsorry guys u guys are mistaken women are not the cause of HIV/AIDS in the world .can u guys prove it to me that women are the cause of it? if u can't prove u better shut ur traps. u guys are making a bloody mistake oh don't let me jamm u guy ur always persecuting women b'cause they are the weaker vessels oh sorry i'm not like that i'm a lawyer by profession. infact u guys are the cause of everything.
Posted by: zommy at December 9, 2004 9:48 PM