So another World AIDS Day (and this blog’s second birthday) has come and gone. We learned that 2.7 million mothers, lovers, children, school teachers, preachers, husbands and friends became infected with a rather fragile and still potentially fatal virus last year. Each of those prevention failures cost taxpayers about US$ 3,000. Since we’ve known how [...]
To mark the 20th anniversary of World AIDS Day, and the 1st anniversary of The Wisdom of Whores, I offer a post stolen wholesale from Michael Buehler. ‘It is actually not HIV that kills us but the hospital administration’, says an Indonesian woman with HIV. Oh, and corruption in the Ministry of Health, complacent self-satisfaction [...]
So Asia is awash with fake pills. No news there. Cops are seizing a fair few of them — 16 million in the last few months, worth US$ 6.6 million, according to Interpol. That’s a step forward. But that some of them seem to be antiretroviral drugs for HIV threatens two steps back. The first [...]
Malawian civil servants who are not infected with HIV are claiming to be positive to increase their salaries, thus demonstrating that the monster of stigma can be slain with cash. Malawi is suspending its payments to HIV-infected civil servants because so many uninfected people are trying to cash in, according to AFP (via Cryton Chikoko). [...]
Christian fundamentalism and HIV seem both to be on the upswing in Uganda. I’ve remarked before that enthusiastic support for abstinence-only programmes has undermined previously successful HIV prevention efforts in the country. But now it seems over-zealous preachers are threatening the success of treatment efforts, too. Robert Ochai, director of the trailblazing AIDS support organisation [...]
The British HIV Association has issued new guildlines for HIV testing . (pdf) They are very nearly extremely sensible. But… One in five of the people newly diagnosed with HIV in the UK last year were diagnosed with AIDS at the same time. That means they’d probably been walking around with HIV infection for eight [...]
As competition to treat people for HIV has hotted up, pharmaceutical companies have started dumping on one another. Using innuendo and not-quite-stated factoids, they are beginning to imply that the rival camp has something to hide (something they’ve no doubt learned from political campaigns). Those other drugs are toxic, discolouring, inconvenient. Activist groups and HIV [...]
HIV research nerds like myself collect information from people at risk because we want to make things better for those people (by providing better prevention services, e.g.), not because we want to make things worse. But what happens when that information gets used as a weapon against the very people we want to help? It’s [...]
Last week, Swiss pharmaceutical company Roche said it was giving up on HIV-related research. I expected some cynical “told you so” comments from industry analysts, but the reaction to the announcement was surprisingly muted. Even AIDS activists were mousy. Activists have done a spectacular job in slapping down the price of antiretroviral drugs in the [...]
The bill allowing another US$ 50 billion of US taxpayer’s cash to be spent on HIV in developing countries has finally been given the thumbs up by the Senate. There’s good and bad drafted on to the PEPFAR legislation. The good is the dropping of a law which forbids foreigners with HIV from sullying the [...]
The PEPFAR authorisation circus drags on. Senate leader Harry Reid is trying to force a vote on the bill. A handful of stubborn Republicans continue to stamp their feet about it. One of their worries is “mission creep” — PEPFAR money might be used to do things that are not 100% related to showing America’s [...]
Not that one ever wants to take the piss out of St. Bono’s good works, but I did have to giggle at this from The Onion. Hat tip to Ted Gideonse, wonderful person, crap driver….
I’m sure many readers are aware that there’s been a bit of a debate lately about spending on AIDS in the developing world. Is AIDS crowding out other infectious diseases, other health issues, other development issues? Or has the AIDS epidemic focused attention on the woeful neglect of health in developing countries, and will it [...]
It seems my “I told you so” moment has come and gone. So has my attempt to defend WHO for its softly-softly honesty about where the HIV epidemic is going. The sensible scientist who heads up WHO’s HIV division, and who last week had the audacity to tell the truth about the threat of heterosexual [...]
I was pleased to read of the marriage of Bishop Gene Robinson and his partner of 20 years Mark Andrew. Well, not marriage actually, but civil union, the closest we allow gay men and women to get to the sacrament in most States in the US. Bishop Robinson is Episcopalian (which is pretty High Church [...]
The Global Fund has announced an extra round of funding for 2008. Intimidated by the 68-pages of instructions? Don’t be. The Wisdom of Whores Automatic Proposal Generator (TM) is here to help. Just press the “Give me money!” button as often as you need to, and copy the phrases into your Global Fund proposal. function [...]
The head of Uganda’s AIDS commission says his country can’t afford to do any HIV prevention work with gay men, according to the Pink News. Though they’ve got hundreds of millions in the AIDS funding trough, and have their snouts raised for more. “Gays are one of the drivers of HIV in Uganda, but because [...]
Two of the Republican senators accused of holding to ransom some US$ 50 billion in US funding for HIV in Africa are fighting back. They are also ill-educated, badly confused, or lying through their teeth. After a Washington Post editorial accused them of foot-dragging on AIDS funding in part because they worried that money might [...]
A reader recently sent me a link to Time4Facts, a site that allows parents to download videos about sex and puberty. The idea is that parents can pick and choose from a menu of video clips, and then put together a “curriculum” that will allow their kids to learn about everything from wet dreams to [...]
The World Bank and others plan to bribe young Tanzanians to stay HIV negative, according to Andrew Jack, writing in The Financial Times. We know blackmail can work pretty well in HIV prevention. When brothel-owners in Thailand were told their businesses would be shut down if they didn’t ensure clients used condoms, condom use shot [...]
