AIDS: A True Story

Will I lose my dignity-
Will someone care?
Will I wake tomorrow-
from this nightmare?
-from the musical "Rent"

Rent was written and first performed during a time when the most creative and artistic members of our society were being erradicated at an alarming rate, when suspicion about the disease doing this relentless damage was still rampant and the words "HIV positive" were enough to send mainstream Americans surrying for the locks on their front doors.

Those acronyms- HIV and AIDS- don't strike fear into the hearts of people, today. In fact there might be some out there who would crinkle their brows in a sort of dim confusion before realization would dawn and the issue would be pushed aside. Here in the medication- and pharmacy-friendly U.S., HIV is no longer considered a killer. People aren't dropping like flies the way they did at first. There are drug cocktails now that can keep people who are HIV positive from developing full-blown AIDS for quite some time, but like cancer, quite often the drugs that prevent can also cause. They cause nausea, vomiting, headaches.. it's often a conundrum for those who suffer.

Africa is by far the greatest loser in the AIDS epidemic. Literally millions have perished because of a simple lack of education, and because they live in poverty. Generic brands of medication are slowly making their way to more rural parts of the world, but it's been way too long and too many children are growing up alone, orphans of AIDS.

In 2006 it was estimated that a total of 40.3 million people were living with HIV and 25 million have died of AIDS since its onset. The drug cocktail which currently seems to deem HIV as "chronic" rather than "fatal" is not a cure. There are now young people being infected with a form of the virus that is proving to be resistant to treatment. Taking a look back at its inception...

In 1981 the Centers for Disease Control reported that five gay men in the US were suffering and later died of a mysterious illness. The news was barely given a back page by most large-to-small newspapers. For several years following the outbreak of AIDS, it was seen as the "gay man's cancer" and dismissed by almost everyone outside the gay community...even IN the gay community! No one wanted to acknowledge a disease that was being spread by a faction of society no one wished to acknowledge, and gay men didn't want the added stigma. The US only became even partially sympathetic as a whole when *gasp* Rock Hudson contracted the disease; then speculation about HOW it was spread became intensely debatable.

36% of Americans still think you can get HIV from a toilet seat or from kissing-You can't; it is only spread through blood-sharing and bodily fluids that DON'T come from the mouth. It wasn't the health care industry that was slow to respond to AIDS, quite the contrary. Scientists and researchers for infectious diseases traveled the globe trying to discover the origin of this killer and worked tirelessly to find out what exactly we were battling. When officials from the CDC excitedly contacted the Reagan Administration about the discovery of HIV and just how it was spread, they were met by an ASSISTANT secretary of Health and told they should look into its spread by mosquitos. Ludicrous. One CDC official wrote in his memoirs that he was "stunned by the depth of denial." WHY? Why did so many, many people have to die before countries around the world-including the developed ones-started to take AIDS seriously? It's a question that galls me. Doctors, health care providers, researchers and scientists were not slow to react. The foot-dragging came directly from politicians.

The majority of our politicans are ultra concerned about "their image," and I have to ask myself: Is this a disease that has truly tested our mortality or our humanity? I am intensely angered by those who uttered phrases like "The homosexuals have declared war against nature, and now nature is exacting its retribution." A direct quote from "the moral majority." I am not without sin and I can't begin to judge anyone else for anything. I find it difficult to understand my fellow "Christians" who stand in judgement and censure. Christ walked amongst lepers and counseled to prostitutes as well as "the common man". He emersed himself into humanity-ALL of it-and preached what? Not censure, but love. Not judgement, but forgiveness. The bible holds the phrase "love one another" over 700 times; that can't be an accident.

AIDS is not a disease with any scarlett letter. It persistently finds women, children, heterosexual men, famous basketball players, mothers, grandmothers...disease has no prejudice, knowledge, or caring for the lifestyle choices of its host. Be safe, be aware, be informed, and don't be lulled into thinking we've conquered this heinous killer. We haven't.