Remember that opening to Team America with the spoof on Rent when the little puppets just keep singing “Everyone has AIDS …. AIDS, AIDS, AIDSSSSS.” As funny the statement made in context may seem, the closest place to this actually being of truth is sadly, of course, Africa; specifically Sub-Saharan Africa. A continent that holds an estimated 24.5 million of the roughly 33 million people living with HIV (that is close to 75%). A startling figure really. So it was when I began reading this Washington Post article ‘Best Kept Secret For HIV-Free Africa’ that I became somewhat ashamed and dumbstruck. Its turns out the current best option for reducing the spread and infection of HIV is a fairly simple and cheap solution: birth control. The pill that so many western women pop on a daily basis could be a potentially life-saving device for others who are born with HIV. Infection by birth now appears to be the majority cause of new infections. Family planning plays a huge role in preventing the spread of the disease in Africa and according to the article the “U.S. support for family planning began to drop in 1996, the first budget year after Republicans took control of Congress. European donors also shifted their money away from contraception and toward other programs.” Now I find it extremely ironic that a Republican (so-called party of family values) Congress would drop the ball on such an important issue that they claim to be central to core views. In fairness, Clinton should also shoulder some of the blame being he was the President and all. But that was ‘96, so where are we now?
“In 2003, when Bush created the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, or PEPFAR, some administration scientists lobbied for reinvigorating international family planning efforts. Four of them posted a study that year showing that even a modest expansion of contraceptive programs could prevent nearly three times the number of child AIDS deaths as antiretroviral programs for pregnant women.
But top officials with the Bush initiative refused to allow the AIDS money to be used to buy birth control, said Daniel Halperin, one of the study’s authors and now a researcher at the Harvard School of Public Health.
“The first few years were a nightmare. You couldn’t even say the words ‘family planning,’ ” he said. “This is probably the clearest example of when PEPFAR politics trumped evidence.”"
Thats where we stand ladies and gentlemen. And millions more dying by the year.
Also:
Um, what. This is kind of a huge deal. Sitting on the Khan nuclear network for 3 some years?
