HIV jumps in the US

[MrFun]

There is no single, simple explanation for why there are some people who have not acknowledged the information that is out there about HIV/AIDS that can be transferred through unsafe sex, hazardous blood transfusions, and unsanitary needle use.

[Dis]

we can't blame Bush, but we can blame Reagan.

[MrFun]

Originally posted by Dissident
we can't blame Bush, but we can blame Reagan.

Hey moron -- I never blamed Raegan as soley being responsible for how the AIDS crisis developed.

[Dr Strangelove]

Actually for some time now there has been concern in the medical community over the increasing practice of "bare backing", i.e., anal sex without the use of condoms. As Boshko pointed out anti-retroviral therapy has made the disease seem less scary to many gays. There is also the problem that, let's face it, condoms decrease sexual pleasure for many people.

[Dis]

Originally posted by MrFun


Hey moron -- I never blamed Raegan as soley being responsible for how the AIDS crisis developed.

never said you did, but I'm saying it. Apparantly Reagan did not care about the AIDS epidemic. He didn't even say the words AIDS until like 1987.

He wasn't a very compassionate president.

[MrFun]

But you have to remember that some of the political leaders in the gay community unwittingly played into the hands of this disease by crying out that regulations of bathouses was taking away their liberties.

There are several gruops of people that were in positions of responsibility during the early part of the crisis.

[Dis]

bathhouses?

[DinoDoc]

Originally posted by Dissident
bathhouses?

Places where gay people had lots and lots of sex based on the why MrFun describes it.

[Dr Strangelove]

In the very beginning, the late 1970s and early 1980s there were many people in the medical research community who were concerned that announcing the existence of this disease would lead to cries of discrimination in the gay community and/or increased homophobia among non-gays. That's why you didn't hear anything about the existence of AIDS until the virus had already been identified, even though the researchers working with it obviously already knew that the disease existed. That the disease was primarily transmitted sexually was pretty much evident by a study of its epidemiology.

[DinoDoc]

Originally posted by Dr Strangelove
In the very beginning, the late 1970s and early 1980s there were many people in the medical research community who were concerned that announcing the existence of this disease would lead to cries of discrimination in the gay community and/or increased homophobia among non-gays.

What the ...? They were worried that information that might save lives would ruffle a few feathers.

[Kuciwalker]

Yes, because it's easy to be ostracized because of claims of discrimination. The information may in fact have been totally ignored or declared bogus, even.

[MrFun]

Originally posted by Dissident
bathhouses?

It was part of the commercialized expression of the sexual liberation/revolution of the 1970s. I'm sure they existed before then, but bathouses seemed to have exploded in numbers in the 1970s.


Many gay leaders believed that those at the Cancer Development Center and other scientists were part of a conspiracy to renew social persecution of all gays by trying to regulate, if not shut down, bathouses as a way to prevent the spread of this new, strange disease.

There were other gay leaders on the other side, who advocated that gays needed to renounce the lifestyles that encouraged unsafe sex in light of this new disease. The emergence of the AIDS crisis had created a split in gay communities across the nation.

Raegan and other conservative politicians were too-straight-laced, ignorant, homophobic, or morally presumptuous to confront this new crisis in spite of the information that the Center for Disease Control, and other organizations had compiled early on.

And then you had the hemophiliac organizations in which most of the members wanted to pull the wool over their eyes, rather than admit to their deadly vulenerability to HIV/AIDS. They just did not want to acknowledge that they were being stricken by this "******" disease.

And then of course, you had medical officials in many cities who were too ignorant or homophobic to help other medical officials who actually wanted to take measures to prevent the spread of HIV/AIDS.

[Guynemer]

Originally posted by MrFun


the Cancer Development Center

[Jon Miller]

we need to get gay unions or marriages legal now

monogamy among homosexuals needs to be socially supported

JOn Miller

[MrFun]

Originally posted by Guynemer

IIRC from reading "And the Band Played On," some of the researchers within the Center for Disease Control took an interest in this disease when it was originally thought that this new disease was a type of cancer -- not STD.

So, those researchers within the Center for Disease Control sought increased funding for their early research of this strange, new disease but they were always underfunded, and a few of these researchers went through heroic efforts in continuing their work with their meager resources.