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June 27, 2008
Obama pollster: 88% of likely voters see AIDS as "serious problem" in U.S.
Posted by: Kevin
Today is National HIV Testing Day in the United States. It's an annual opportunity to focus on the fact that as many as 300,000 Americans are HIV-positive and don't know it. That's between 25% and 30% of the total number of people with HIV in America. They are undiagnosed, and therefore they are not in treatment and more likely to die of AIDS.
The best research indicates that this segment of the HIV-positive population could be behind as many as 70% of new infections.
So much for the idea that the AIDS crisis is over.
And it seems the American people are not blind to this reality. The Test for Life campaign last night released a poll, conducted by Peter Brodnitz, Barack Obama's presidential campaign pollster, which has some interesting results: 88% of likely voters believe that HIV and AIDS are still "a serious problem" in the United States, and 43% - a plurality of respondents - perceive that it has gotten worse over the last decade.
What's more, 65% of likely voters support making HIV testing a routine part of medical care, rather than something that Americans must skulk off to an anonymous clinic to have done. This is a highly important result because the U.S. Centers for Disease Control issued guidelines way back in 2003, then made them into recommendations in 2006, which called for HIV testing to become a routine procedure for Americans between the ages of 13 and 64, as an immediate measure to close this gap of people unaware of their status, and therefore not getting treatment and infecting others.
The medical profession has resisted or ignored the guidelines for too long, but state and local governments are finally realizing they have no choice. The high number of people, mostly men of color, receiving late diagnoses and entering treatment after the onset of AIDS, reflects a total failure in our national AIDS strategy. Routine testing has been the missing element. In New York City, the Bronx has decided it must find every way possible to ensure that every adult in the borough gets tested within the next three years.
Even First Lady Laura Bush says that HIV-related stigma must be ended, and that it is imperative that every American get tested for HIV. Barack Obama himself got a public HIV test when he visited Kenya. President Bush's global HIV/AIDS relief program (PEPFAR) is awaiting approval in Congress, and the new program will massively increase the amount of money for fighting the disease abroad. There is never enough funding for each community's needs here at home when it comes to the myriad of problems that AIDS causes around us.
But nothing would be more powerful than you, yourself, marching down to your doctor's office or the local clinic and getting an HIV test today, this weekend, or next week. Knowing the truth could save your life, and the lives of others. HIV is only a death sentence if you want too long to find out.
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Comments
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And 9/11 was a hoax, Hitler is alive and Scientology is real.
Go sell crazy somewhere else.
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Have you read a single word of the dissent that has been out there for years? I would bet you are like 99% of gay men who just sheepishly accept the nonsense. You must do the reading or you will remain in blissful ignorance. I have watched friends devastated by those drug cocktails for years, thinking they were helping themselves. Are you aware that the majority of so-called "AIDS-related deaths" are from liver failure? NOT an AIDS defining illness! A direct result of toxic chemotherapy prescribed by doctors who do not have a clue. A challenge: ask your own physician how many cases of "AIDS" he has diagnosed in the past ten years based not on "viral load" or "T cell" counts, but on any of the 30-or-so old illnesses that are supposed to be "AIDS" when the host tests "positive" for the proteins purported to be specific to anti-bodies purported to be specific to the killer virus. You might be surprised.
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And why, Chris, wouldn't they believe that the "HIV/AIDS" terrorists are waiting to get them, when all media, all the time, with zero level of educated skepticism peddle a threat level that goes astronomically beyond the facts? It's the same reason a third of the American people still believe Sadaam Hussein had something to do with flying those planes into the towers. Or that Barack Obama is a Muslim. You need to do the reading! People who put on white coats and call themselves medical scientists can be just as wrong, just as self-serving, just as able to ignore evidence as the fools who gave us Vietnam and the Iraq War. If you want a bit of anecdotal confirmation as to why the myth gets propagated, just go to today's Blade and read about the annual $300,000+ salary/benefits package for the noble leader of Food & Friends. HIV/AIDS is a fucking high profit industry that demands we all fall in line or we are shunned as "denialists." The 25th anniversary of Dr. Gallo's invention is coming up next April. It's time to do some fact-based journalism instead of propaganda.
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I've read plenty on this ridiculous nonsense to know that your supposed theory is absolutely nuts and, frankly, I'd rather you stopped posting it here and found a website someplace that deals in crazy. You are shunned for a reason -- because you're completely insane.
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Kevin:
You can choose to remain as uninformed as you'd like. But calling me names won't improve your knowledge. If you'd like to become smarter about the subject, you can begin by reading these four papers by a physician in the Washington, DC area:
http://www.virusmyth.com/aids/index/mirwin.htm
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Well Read Con-job:
Kevin is right -- go sell your junk science, fake facts, and bogus theories somewhere else. Every reputable scientist and medical researcher knows that HIV causes AIDS and that infection has serious health consequences. The cocktails drug companies have developed are saving lives -- unlike what you're doing by spreading this nonsense (and no, I don't own stock in a drug company; I'm just informed).
Until there's a cure, HIV/AIDS will remain a worldwide health crisis. If you're sexually active, use a condom, get tested, know your status, get educated, and listen to your doctor. And above all, stay away from unproven, nonsensical "theories" and information. These latter will kill you faster than anything.
PS: Thank you, Kevin, for keeping this serious issue on the radar screen of issues.
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OK. I've said all I intend to say here. If you wish to remain ignorant, that's up to you. Information and arguments will not hurt you. But don't try to suppress dissent by engaging in ad hominem attacks. I believed what you believed for many, many years, until I took the time to read well documented, intelligently argued dissent. Peace.
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WRS:
Like I said before, I've read plenty of the hogwash that passes for "Aids dissent" and it's literally trash. It's as valid as the lunatic rantings on the internet which claim that the planes which hit the WTC were holograms, and the Pentagon was hit by a missile. Get a clue - HIV is not some giant conspiracy. It's a virus. It kills. It's treatable. Get over it.
And get lost.
The comments to this entry are closed.
Well Read Skeptic on Jun 27, 2008 9:20:15 PM:
The best thing any one should do with regard to the mysterious "HIV" is to educate himself about the anomalies of HIV=AIDS....which will probably one day go down as the biggest fraud in medical history. Begin by visiting:
http://www.aliveandwell.org
If the psychological impact of your HIV "positive" test doesn't drive you insane, you can then look forward to having your liver destroyed by the "life saving treatments." When will this madness end? No time soon, because The HIV/AIDS Industry is a powerful lobby. Something was damaging the immune systems and killing gay men from the early 1980's to the early 1990's, but it was not some mythic retrovirous conjured up at the NIH. There is so much solid knowledge out there to explain that it was a multi-factorial phenomenon that included unprecedented exposure to a laundry list of pathogens in the early years of the sexual revolution, combined with unprecedented use of recreational drugs. It is sooooo sad that almost no gay males will educate themselves about this. They simply prefer to believe what has become religion, rather than science. So, we are now ready to poison several million Africans with the life-saving treatments, thanks to collusion by the left and the right in America, eager to bear the white man's burden on the Dark Continent. Jesus Christ Almighty.