Monday, July 26, 2010
I Swear I Still Love You
My Verizon DSL line is down and whatever is wrong is beyond my ability to figure out. It's also beyond the dubious skills of the Verizon tech support by phone. So I await a repairman for tomorrow morning. I hold out no expectations that they will be able to fix the problem I've been having for over two years.
Wednesday, July 21, 2010
Annie Lennox Explains It All
Annie has been spotted and photographed many times sporting her "HIV POSITIVE" T-Shirt. At the opening day of the 2010 AIDS conference in Vienna, Ms. Lennox gives the straight poop on why and what the shirt actually means. I was cleaning out my closet the other day, and watching this video made me run out to the hallway and rifle through the bag of clothes I was preparing to throw away. In it was a baseball jersey I had purchased a few years ago. It had a parody of the old Intel logo on the front, only my shirt was "HIV Inside". I was thinking that since I frequently sport my own "POSITIVE" T-Shirt, that perhaps the baseball jersey was overkill. And a bit dated. But I decided that until the stigma attached to being HIV+ in this country is talked about openly and dealt with, I should probably get a few more miles out of that jersey. It's what Annie would do.
Monday, July 12, 2010
On The Road Again
Actually, I just returned. Was visiting family and friends back in Buffalo and the surrounding Indian-inspired named towns. I have plenty of stories to blog about and will get to it ASAP, but for now the fridge is empty and I need to hug and kiss my dog.
Tuesday, July 06, 2010
Monday, July 05, 2010
HIV+ Canadian Charged With Attempted Murder
"OTTAWA — A 29-year-old man accused of failing to disclose his HIV-positive status to sexual partners has had his charges upgraded to include attempted murder.
The four counts of attempted murder were laid against Steven Paul Boone in relation to four of his alleged victims. Boone has also been charged with four counts of administering a noxious substance — HIV — to the four men.
It now brings the total number of charges against Boone, who is still facing 14 charges of aggravated sexual assault as well as multiple counts of sexual assault and breach of probation, to 31. Boone also faces seven charges in Waterloo on similar accusations.
Boone was arrested in early May after an 18-year-old Ottawa man contracted HIV after the two had unprotected sex several times in January. A bail hearing for Boone, which began Tuesday, is expected to continue next week. The evidence presented during that hearing is subject to a publication ban."
The four counts of attempted murder were laid against Steven Paul Boone in relation to four of his alleged victims. Boone has also been charged with four counts of administering a noxious substance — HIV — to the four men.
It now brings the total number of charges against Boone, who is still facing 14 charges of aggravated sexual assault as well as multiple counts of sexual assault and breach of probation, to 31. Boone also faces seven charges in Waterloo on similar accusations.
Boone was arrested in early May after an 18-year-old Ottawa man contracted HIV after the two had unprotected sex several times in January. A bail hearing for Boone, which began Tuesday, is expected to continue next week. The evidence presented during that hearing is subject to a publication ban."
Thursday, July 01, 2010
ADAP Funding In Jeopardy, Waiting List Soars
"The weak economy is crippling the government program that provides life-sustaining antiretroviral drugs to people with H.I.V. or AIDS who cannot afford them. Nearly 1,800 have been relegated to rapidly expanding waiting lists that less than three years ago had dwindled to zero.
Eleven states have closed enrollment in the federal program, most recently Florida>, which has the nation’s third-largest population of people with H.I.V. Three other states have narrowed eligibility, and two of them — Arkansas and Utah — have dropped scores of people from the program.
Last week, because of swelling numbers here in South Florida, the nationwide waiting list surged past record levels set in 2004, to 1,781 people, according to the National Alliance of State and Territorial AIDS Directors. The growth is expected to continue when Georgia starts deferring enrollment in its drug assistance program on July 1. Illinois may soon follow, and New Jersey plans to cut eligibility on Aug. 1, removing 600 of the 7,700 people on its rolls.
Louisiana capped enrollment on June 1 but decided against keeping a waiting list. “It implies you’re actually waiting on something,” said DeAnn Gruber, the interim director of the state’s H.I.V./AIDS program. “We don’t want to give anyone false hope.”
Ten states’ programs have stopped covering drugs that do not directly combat H.I.V. or opportunistic infections. Unless money is found by Aug. 1, Florida plans to pare 53 of 101 medications from its formulary, including those for conditions that are often related to H.I.V., like diabetes, high blood pressure and anxiety." via The New York Times
Here's a sampling of 138 comments posted about this article:
Point blank, I don't care what a person did: no one deserves a death sentence because they had unsafe sex, too much sex, gay sex, anal sex, adulterous sex, sex on the down low, etc. etc. etc. And refusing to give AIDS medications is a death sentence, make no mistake about it.
and
As a gay man that came out of the closet at 18 years old in 1993, I was terrified of HIV and vowed to protect myself from contracting it. Back then, gay men in particular were dropping like flies! For guys my age (straight ones too), there was never a time where sex was tantamount to freedom and liberation with zero consequences like in the 1970s. Sex could KILL you. We had that message drummed into our heads ad infinitum. However, in the last decade or so, the safe sex massages have dissipated, and people have resumed their old ways. Society can't protect people from catching an illness that no longer scares them. Why should society promise to fund the health care of people who took risks, knowing the consequences, but preferred living dangerously? And the one thing you almost never hear HIV+ people own up to is that possibility that he/she might have passed it on to someone else. HIV is entirely preventable, with very few exceptions. The only thing that can stop its death march is each individual protecting himself or herself. All the funding in the world is, for the most part, misspent.
and
Even if HIV is transmitted because of behavioral choices... so what? "Behavioral choices" are bad decisions, moments of weakness, made in ignorance, made drunkenly (and it's not exactly illegal to drink), made when people are lied to about a partner's status, made irrationally because of addiction, made from places of desperation.
It doesn't matter to me why or when a bad decision was made. We all make them at one time or another. Why do people's whose decisions lead to HIV deserve to die, when the rest of us get to scrape by thinking "God, I'll never do *that* again..."? Providing health care is the empathetic, kind thing go do.
Additionally, people on medication are less likely to transmit the virus (fewer cases in the future!) and are less likely to be hospitalized and require *even more* expensive treatment.
We're talking about something where the kind response is also the cheaper response and a way to prevent future problems. I'm not seeing a downside on my tax money going to help here.
Full disclosure: ADAP is the program that has been keeping yours truly alive and well these past 7 years. Just so you know.
Eleven states have closed enrollment in the federal program, most recently Florida>, which has the nation’s third-largest population of people with H.I.V. Three other states have narrowed eligibility, and two of them — Arkansas and Utah — have dropped scores of people from the program.
Last week, because of swelling numbers here in South Florida, the nationwide waiting list surged past record levels set in 2004, to 1,781 people, according to the National Alliance of State and Territorial AIDS Directors. The growth is expected to continue when Georgia starts deferring enrollment in its drug assistance program on July 1. Illinois may soon follow, and New Jersey plans to cut eligibility on Aug. 1, removing 600 of the 7,700 people on its rolls.
Louisiana capped enrollment on June 1 but decided against keeping a waiting list. “It implies you’re actually waiting on something,” said DeAnn Gruber, the interim director of the state’s H.I.V./AIDS program. “We don’t want to give anyone false hope.”
Ten states’ programs have stopped covering drugs that do not directly combat H.I.V. or opportunistic infections. Unless money is found by Aug. 1, Florida plans to pare 53 of 101 medications from its formulary, including those for conditions that are often related to H.I.V., like diabetes, high blood pressure and anxiety." via The New York Times
Here's a sampling of 138 comments posted about this article:
Point blank, I don't care what a person did: no one deserves a death sentence because they had unsafe sex, too much sex, gay sex, anal sex, adulterous sex, sex on the down low, etc. etc. etc. And refusing to give AIDS medications is a death sentence, make no mistake about it.
and
As a gay man that came out of the closet at 18 years old in 1993, I was terrified of HIV and vowed to protect myself from contracting it. Back then, gay men in particular were dropping like flies! For guys my age (straight ones too), there was never a time where sex was tantamount to freedom and liberation with zero consequences like in the 1970s. Sex could KILL you. We had that message drummed into our heads ad infinitum. However, in the last decade or so, the safe sex massages have dissipated, and people have resumed their old ways. Society can't protect people from catching an illness that no longer scares them. Why should society promise to fund the health care of people who took risks, knowing the consequences, but preferred living dangerously? And the one thing you almost never hear HIV+ people own up to is that possibility that he/she might have passed it on to someone else. HIV is entirely preventable, with very few exceptions. The only thing that can stop its death march is each individual protecting himself or herself. All the funding in the world is, for the most part, misspent.
and
Even if HIV is transmitted because of behavioral choices... so what? "Behavioral choices" are bad decisions, moments of weakness, made in ignorance, made drunkenly (and it's not exactly illegal to drink), made when people are lied to about a partner's status, made irrationally because of addiction, made from places of desperation.
It doesn't matter to me why or when a bad decision was made. We all make them at one time or another. Why do people's whose decisions lead to HIV deserve to die, when the rest of us get to scrape by thinking "God, I'll never do *that* again..."? Providing health care is the empathetic, kind thing go do.
Additionally, people on medication are less likely to transmit the virus (fewer cases in the future!) and are less likely to be hospitalized and require *even more* expensive treatment.
We're talking about something where the kind response is also the cheaper response and a way to prevent future problems. I'm not seeing a downside on my tax money going to help here.
Full disclosure: ADAP is the program that has been keeping yours truly alive and well these past 7 years. Just so you know.
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