The 10 Greatest Villains of the AIDS Epidemic

[Donnachaidh]

http://www.alternet.org/health/151069/the_10_greatest_villains_of_the_aids_epidemic_/

Thirty years ago to the day, the Centers for Disease Control’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report reported five cases of Pneumocystis carinii pneumonia among previously healthy gay men. It was not for another year that these deaths were attributed to gay-related immune deficiency -- a name that exacerbated the homophobic positioning of the disease -- and then, mercifully, Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome.

Twenty-five million have since died of AIDS. Put another way, the population of Texas has been raptured off the map. Still, as we’re told ad nauseum, the disease is no longer a death sentence; millions are taking HIV antiretroviral therapy for the first time; Magic Johnson is alive and well; and according to UNAIDS figures, expanded access to treatment led to a 19 percent decline in deaths among people living with HIV between 2004 and 2009.

It gets even better! Three weeks ago, we learned that men and women who take antiretrovirals while their immune systems are still “relatively healthy” are unlikely to transmit the disease.

If you grew up listening to stories of the skeletal Rock Hudson and the doomed Ryan White, as I did, such developments seem gloriously improbable. Against such darkness, it’s almost possible, amid the current revelry, to ignore the millions already dead and the 1.8 million who continue to die each year. For a non-death sentence, AIDS sure does kill a lot people. You can’t assign blame for this to just one person, but Ronald Reagan really does deserve an outsized heap of opprobrium. Despite what you may hear from his defenders, the Gipper, when you get down to it, really did care more about UFOs than the new plague.

More at the link --

[HockeyMom]

1. Preventing condom use in Africa

by the religious. That has to be a major killer. Men contact Aids, then give it to their wives, who then give it to their babies.

I would put right wing religous imposing their views on others can be a dealth sentence.

[muriel_volestrangler]

2. I'm amazed Thabo Mbeki doesn't make the list

The state of HIV treatment in South Africa can only be seen in the context of years of doubting the effectiveness of treatment at the highest levels of government, and the initial delay and slow pace of delivering a public ARV programme.

Thabo Mbeki, president of South Africa from 1999 to 2008, often sought the opinions of AIDS denialists, including many of them on his Presidential AIDS Advisory Panel. Both Mbeki and his health minister, Manto Tshabalala-Msimang, questioned the effectiveness of ARVs, with the latter infamously promoting beetroot and garlic consumption as a way of fighting HIV infection.
...
The government published its plan to provide public access to ARVs in November 2003 many years after the evidence of the effectiveness of combination therapy in reducing mortality was reported. In contrast, many of South Africa’s poorer neighbours had already begun to make treatment available, including Botswana, whose MASA programme began to distribute ARVs in early 2002. Furthermore, rollout of the South African programme was very slow.

The departure of President Mbeki, health minister Manto and others who doubted the science behind AIDS and ARVs, signified an end to the kind of barriers which had held back progress in treating HIV and AIDS in South Africa. See AVERT's History of HIV and AIDS in South Africa page for more information.

http://www.avert.org/aidssouthafrica.htm

Certainly more to blame for deaths than an NYT editor. 310,000 died of AIDS in 2009 alone - the highest in any country in the world.

[FreeState]

3. K&R

[AlanCranston]

4. where's Bill Dannemeyer? n/t