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 compassion by giving medicine to the afflicted. (It might, for example, be used to talk to infected women about how they could avoid passing HIV on to an infant by using contraception. Oh the horror.)
One of the Stubborns, South Carolina’s Jim DeMint, specifically “criticized the bill’s “mission creep” into other development activities,” according to CQ Today. His solution? He’s going to offer amendments to the PEPFAR bill that relate to biofuels, oil, gas and abortions in China.
Makes sense, I guess. At least none of those are development issues.
“What motivated you to write this book?” interviewers like to ask. And I give all the worthy, change-the-world type answers, though what I really wanted to do was to write a cracking good book about sex and drugs that would make people laugh and perhaps save some of their tax money. Of course if I thought I could write a book that would help people get laid, I’d certainly have wanted to do that, too.
And maybe I have. This comment from reader Bob in Thailand/Singapore:
“The book works like a love charm and chick magnet. Conversation normally starts with “thats an interesting title”…”
So a Russian girl is worth twice as much as a girl from north China, huh? And Malaysian girls are discounted fairly heavily. There are 460 million young adult women in China. That’s 60 times more “girls” that you’ll find in Malaysia (even if you count the Chinese Malaysians). My rudimentary understanding of economics suggests the scarcer commodity should sell for more. Perhaps some of our economist friends over at Marginal Revolution could explain what’s going on before we become Unspun or propmt Ranting from those who know the true value of cewek Melayu…
If nothing else, I’m happy to note from the poster that all nationalities are working in air-conditioned rooms. In these days of rising temperatures and oil prices, that’s a blessing whatever your price.
One of the things I noticed on the left hand side of the Atlantic was how many people took the dust jacket off my book before taking it out in public. No one wants to be seen in the company of “Whores” on the subway. But who is the word offending? Both left and right, it seems.
Check out “Jesus loves you — and your orgasm”, Salon’s review of Dagmar Herzog’s book “Sex in Crisis”. In the review, Louis Bayard says that Herzog implies that the religious right has hijacked the language of the liberal left, the better to control our sexuality. The rhetoric around sex work, for example:
As recently as 2003, for example, a certain public figure was arguing that voluntary prostitution was “despicable” because it “demeans the value of women” and promotes “the severe degradation and exploitation of women, the literal rape of countless women around the globe.” Was it Andrea Dworkin? Catharine MacKinnon? The correct answer: pro-life Rep. Smith, R-N.J., whose distinctly illiberal purpose was to limit AIDS outreach efforts to prostitutes and sex workers in developing nations.
We’ve seen some of this before. We’ve seen leaders of gay communities play down the association between anal sex with multiple partners and infection (including HIV, LGV and MRSA), so finding themselves in cahoots with “everyone is at risk” profiteers. We’ve seen African leaders adopting distinctly unsecular moral rhetoric rather than talk about sex. But the point is, this is all rhetoric. It is not debate, or conversation, or discussion. It is assertion. Asserting beliefs at one another doesn’t change minds. Kids go on having sex despite having been assaulted with messages telling them not to. Preachers go on employing sex workers despite ranting about the fact that prostitution is not work. Fundamentalists of all stripes go on asserting the virtue of programmes that don’t work, despite people like me constantly asserting the opposite. (Though my assertions at least come with data sets.)
And when I hear assertions like this: “Only those women who have been premaritally abstinent will be truly, deeply, and consistently desired by their husbands in the long years after marriage … Have no sex before marriage and you will have outstanding sex after marriage.” I go on snorting in disbelief. But then in my world, I couldn’t find a large enough sample of still-married virgins-at-marriage to disprove the assertion.
Still on the topic of sensible policies to prevent disease among drug injectors, I’d like to pass on the idea of Wisdom reader Pierce Wetter. Pointing out that blackmailing brothel owners delivered very high levels of condom use in Bangkok’s brothels, Pierce suggests we use the same technique for drug dealers. Enlist them to sell auto-destruct syringes with the smack. (For those who don’t know, an auto-destruct is the “bee-sting” of injecting equipment — you can only use it once, then it dies, so no needle sharing, and no passing around of viruses).
Funnily enough, we started discussions with dealers about selling branded, subsidised needles in one country I worked in a while back. A couple of dealers were interested, but the cops were less keen. Pierce suggests that you might get them on side by changing the charge sheet. If you’re caught dealing drugs you still get rumbled, but if you’re selling each dose with a sterile syringe, you get a shorter sentence. Seems like a win-win situation for the dealers. After all, it is in their interests to help keep their clients alive…
Is HIV really about culture and migration and labour? You’d think so if you looked at the mandates of the 10 United Nations organisations that make up UNAIDS. I’ve always thought we only need two organisations involved: UNSEX and UNDRUGS. The first doesn’t exist, and the second (officially know and the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime) has always done more for cops than for junkies.
That may be changing. One thing UNODC is really good at is tracking drug production, supply and street prices, so I always keep my eye out for its fascinating annual report. The World Drug Report 2008 does not disappoint. Opium production in Afghanistan almost doubled in 2007. And in Colombia, where the US has funded a massive attack on coca production, output is up by 27 percent. Ho hum. But for me, the really fascinating thing was the spin that the head of UNODC, Antonio Maria Costa, put on the report. This from the press release that accompanied the report:
Pointing out that resources for public security far outweigh those devoted to public health, Mr. Costa called for a stronger focus on health - the first principle of drug control. “Drug dependence is an illness that should be prevented and treated like any other,” he said.
This may sound like common sense, and it is. But it comes from a man who has in the past instructed his staff to remove from agency reports all mention of “harm reduction” (aka “public health”) approaches to addiction and drug use. It’s a tribute to a small number of people who have been working inside UNODC to try to put drug users’ health more firmly on the agenda. Chapeaux to Christian Kroll, Karl Dehne, Gray Sattler and others.
Opposition to harm reduction comes in large part from the US government. But not, it seems, from thoughtful citizens. I note that a grand jury in California has recommended that local government fund a needle exchange programme as a way of reducing HIV and Hep C. With enough of these small steps, we may walk towards the goal of keeping drug users alive until they get clean.
Before AIDS, the sexually active teen’s STD joke-of-choice was “What’s the difference between love and herpes?” The answer, of course, was that herpes was for ever. And so it was, although antiviral therapy, acyclovir in particular, has proven quite good at suppressing it and at reducing outbreaks which often lead to genital ulcers. But those, including me, who beloved suppressing herpes would prevent HIV are sadly disappointed by recent research.
A gaggle of studies have shown that people with Herpes Simplex Virus Type 2 (HSV-2, or genital herpes to most of us) are more likely to get infected with HIV, in part because they are more likely to have ulcers that open the door to HIV. So it was perfectly logical to think that if we suppressed the herpes, we’d have fewer new HIV infections.
The first study, among high risk women in Tanzania, was not encouraging. Now a much larger study among women in South Africa, Zambia and Zimbabwe and gay men in Peru and North America have confirmed the gloom. Treating people’s herpes doesn’t seem to make any difference to the risk of getting HIV. Read the rest of this post…
I wrote this post while in LA a fortnight ago, and found it lurking in my drafts just now. Belatedly, then, I feel compelled to celebrate my stay in Los Angeles by congratulating Judge Alex Kozinski for having a (somewhat sophomoric) sense of humour, incuding about sex. Kozinski is chief judge of the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, which sits in southern California. He’s presiding over a trial in which the definition of “obscenity” is in play. Ira Isaacs has made videos in which naked woman get their faces smeared with shit. He says it’s art, other think it is the basest form of porn. Kozinski’s courtroom will decide.
Uncomfortably for the judge, he recently shared some mildy lewd YouTube videos with his family. Guy tries to piss in field, gets charged by angry donkey (who happens also to sport recent evidence of penile exposure), runs away trying to hold his pants up.That sort of thing. Schoolboy humour at best. And at worst. In this puritanical land, that gave him enough fishnet stocking to hang himself with.
And this in a town that gave me one of my all time favourite (though very disturbing) studies of HIV transmission in primary infection: porn star has unprotected on-screen sex with 13 women in the three weeks between testing HIV negative and testing HIV positive. He infected three of them. Not all that suprising, since one of the acts was “double anal sex”. In LA, that’s not obscenity, that’s business. But a judge can’t share a puerile snigger at daft videos with his wife. Go figure.
If you want to make your own ruling on donkey porn, here you go:
Apparently not willing or able to think for themselves, Christian fundamentalists have been programming their computers to automate their views. The result: content that they themselves would probably consider pornographic. This, for example:
“Homosexual dominated the competition. He started well and pulled out to a comfortable lead by the 40-meter mark. This time, he kept pumping those legs all the way through the finish line, extending his lead. In Saturday’s opening heat, Homosexual pulled way up, way too soon, and nearly was caught by the field, before accelerating again and lunging in for fourth place.”
The pulling up, pumping and lunging is actually the work of Olympic sprinter Tyson Gay. But the “G” word is not acceptable to the American Family Association, so they’ve automated their software to replace it. Or rather it is acceptable, according to AFA news service OneNewsNow’s Fred Jackson. “We don’t object to the word ‘gay,’ except when it refers to people who practice a homosexual lifestyle,” Jackson told Sleuth.
Thanks to Sleuth, Ed Brayton and Don Dickerson for the story.
Fundamentalists are not the only ones who get in trouble when they replace brains with algorithms. Back in the mists of time, I was working the late shift at Reuters during the Golden Globe awards. Someone pressed the button on an alert announcing Best Supporting Actress award to Joan Plowright. Seconds later, she popped up on the screen in her Anglicised incarnation: Joan Ploughright.
We don’t have many success stories in HIV prevention. And it seems like the Bush government is determined to undermine the ones we do have. Cambodia and Uganda, both shining examples of success in HIV prevention, are being squashed into failure by ideologues who would rather see people die than help sex workers and young people live their work and sex lives more safely.
Four in ten sex workers in Cambodia were infected with HIV when the government started its admirable programme to promote condoms in brothels, karaoke bars and on the streets. Sex worker groups also organised to demand health services, and for the most part, they got them. HIV infection rates came crashing down, halving in just 5 years. It is estimated that condom promotion had saved 970,000 Cambodians from HIV infection by 2007.
The programme worked because brothel owners and sex workers were organised, easy to reach and involved. Now, under pressure from the White House, Cambodia has launched a massive crackdown on the sex trade. Read the rest of this post…
Still on the topic of sensible policies to prevent disease among drug injectors, I’d like to pass on the idea of Wisdom reader Pierce Wetter. Pointing out that blackmailing brothel owners delivered very high levels of condom use in Bangkok’s brothels, Pierce suggests we use the same technique for drug dealers. Enlist them to sell auto-destruct syringes with the smack. (For those who don’t know, an auto-destruct is the “bee-sting” of injecting equipment — you can only use it once, then it dies, so no needle sharing, and no passing around of viruses).
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