Curing HIV is easy!

While watching a Belgian movie, Calvaire (The Ordeal, an insane, Deliverance type horror movie) I was treated to a preview commercial featuring Brad Pitt, Dennis Hopper, George Clooney, the HIV bleeding heart Bono, even Pat Robertson and a bunch of other celebs, yammering on about AIDS. I am heartily sick of hearing about AIDS. Really, really tired of it. Soooooo fucking tired of it.

This is not to say I do not feel bad for many of the people who have contracted the disease, as it is an awful thing indeed. During the 1980's many of my mom's friends were infected in San Francisco and they would often have a few different types of cancers at once. Their toes would auto amputate. Men who were spectacularly beautiful would turn into skeletal hags overnight. Horrible, ghastly, awful stuff and we don't see much of that any more due to the high quality AIDS drugs that are currently available.

Stopping the spread of AIDS is entirely free. It should not cost us, in the Western world, a dime. The people of the third world need to take responsibility for their own behaviors. The constant refrain is that the Bush administration is making unreasonable demands on Africans by asking that they remain more or less monogamous. Well, we in the West are more or less monogamous and those of us who are more monogamous are, not surprisingly, free of AIDS. Lesbians are so immune to AIDS that we could recommend lesbianism as a lifestyle choice to African women. The left could hardly accuse us of inflicting our puritanism upon the peoples of the third world then, could they.

The truth is the West, and parts of Asia and most of the non African Islamic world are highly successful at avoiding AIDS because we have certain habits that help us avoid the diseases that promiscuous behaviors cause. When women have the freedom to choose sexual partners, they are often very monogamous and choose men that are monogamous. In third world countries women do not have the right to turn down sex with a husband who has had relations with infected homosexual partners or prostitutes.

Controlling births and limiting exposure to disease is a benefit of a "puritanical" society. The left seems to think that everyone should be able to engage in a variety of behaviors but achieve the same outcomes. That is, a successful, disease free society. It's not possible. Never happens. There are always consequences to human behaviors. There are behaviors that insure a failed society or culture and strange to think that promiscuity would be one of those. You have to weigh reproducing at a high rate against reproducing at a lower rate but ensuring the economic success and health of fewer members. The left should understand this, its what they always claim lowering class size will do for students.

It is a fact that everyone in the world knows that you can contract AIDS from sex. To think that there is a special reason that people in Africa do not know this, at this point in the AIDS crisis, is pure racist assumption. The only reason that you would believe such a thing is that you think these people incapable of taking care of or thinking for themselves.

Part of the reason these people still engage in risky sex is that they think the US is going to invent a cure. We should not hold out that hope for them. They need to change their habits. Period. The Christian churches in Africa have been trying to bring about changes in the sexual behaviors of Africans. I support them in their efforts.