As I mentioned in previous posts, on the first Word AIDS Day in 1988 I was working on a pediatric HIV/AIDS study. That is how I got "into" the cause, so to speak.
In the eighties, you might remember, it was still common to hear AIDS dismissed as a disease you got if you were a bad person...a faggot, a druggie, a slut. I'm a shy person, rarely confrontational, but occasinally I'd get up the nerve to look someone in the eye after they'd made some denegrating comment about people with AIDS, and I'd say something like "One of the patients in our study died this week. She didn't make it to her second birthday." And the person would say something like "Oh, well, of course I feel bad for the children..."
It made me queasy then, and it still does, that people can think like that. Oh, the few innocents, that's too bad, but the rest, well, it's their fault and not my problem...
Queasy, and angry, and depressed. I can't even articulate a decent argument about the young women in Africa and Asia (and undoubtedly here as well) who are victims of violence (so go here: The Global Coalition on Women and AIDS). And it might be hard to believe by knowing me now, but I went to Sunday school when I was young, and I remember lots of stories about lepers. Seems like there might be a parallel or two.
I hope I was just reading the wrong blogs today. Right now I'm sitting here in front of my computer, feeling worse than I was yesterday with the statistics page up. Because those numbers, holy shit. But that attitude, how do you fight that?
Posted by Nic at December 1, 2005 09:22 PM | TrackBack