A grim milestone is reached

As pointed out yesterday at Street Prophets, today is the 25th anniversary of the first report by the then-Centers for Disease Control on an outbreak of Pneumocystis carinii pneumonia (now commonly known as PCP) among gay men in Los Angeles. It would be followed, just about a month later, by a small article (buried on page A20) in the New York Times about another outbreak of a rare disease among homosexual men in New York and California, this time of a rare form of skin cancer known as Kaposi's sarcoma (KS).

Those were the first harbingers of the AIDS pandemic. The CDC's web pages are all down this morning (and I must admit to having entertained dark thoughts that this outage was perhaps by design), so I can't find the latest statistics, but these figures from the end of 2004 are sufficiently grim. As of the end of 2003, the CDC reported a total of 929,985 reported AIDS cases since 1981. Of those, nearly 60% (524,060) had died. The world statistics, such as they are, are far worse. Orders of magnitude worse, in fact: more than 2.2 million reported cases, and an estimated 20 million deaths.

It is positively heinous (but completely in the tradition of American politics and health policy--especially, though regrettably not exclusively, as practiced by Republicans) that on this sad anniversary, Smirky McFlightsuit is saying not a word about AIDS. Instead, he's gay-bashing for votes, pimping in Congress for his doomed constitutional amendment banning gay marriage.

Bush's actions are eerily reminiscent of those of another failed Republican president, Ronald Reagan. It was on Reagan's watch that AIDS popped up on the epidemiologists' radar screen in this country, and he never once uttered the word. His administration took the same moralizing tone that Bush likes to take, and dismissed AIDS (which was originally given the name GRID: "Gay-Related Immune Disorder") as a concern solely of promiscuous homos who, as Jerry Falwell and that ilk loved to proclaim--and still do, 25 years on--deserved what they got for their deviant lifestyle.

AIDS was not a concern of mine when I went away to college 25 years ago this fall. But by the time I graduated four years later, it definitely was. No gay man in America, even one just barely aware of his difference, hadn't heard of it by then. I was fortunate, if you can call it that, to lose only two friends to AIDS. But if you read the gay press (or the memoirs of those of us who lived through the '80s), whole swathes of the gay community had little else to do but see their doctors and go to memorial services. AIDS devastated a generation of gay men, and the Republican administration couldn't even be bothered to fiddle while Rome burned.

Although the present Republican administration is unlikely to admit it, they are now paying for their predecessors' folly. By stigmatizing AIDS as a condition that only afflicted deviants, they allowed the wider population to grow complacent. It's elementary biology that a virus doesn't care about the sexual orientation of those it infects--only whether or not they are suitable hosts.

AIDS in America is still mainly a gay disease: some 55% of current AIDS cases are among the cadre the epidemiologists call MSM, men who have sex with men. But we are a statistical anomaly in that regard. In the rest of the world, and increasingly in the United States as well, AIDS is primarily a heterosexual affliction. It overwhelmingly affects the poor, who haven't the opportunity to get educated about the disease and how to protect themselves from it, and who couldn't possibly afford the kinds of things needed either to protect themselves or to manage their infection as many (or even most) people in America do who are HIV-positive. We may have lost a generation of gay men in America, but there are countries in sub-Saharan Africa where they have lost a generation. Period. Rates of HIV infection in some places are higher than 40%--and that's just the cases that the governments and the WHO know about. Hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions of children will grow up without parents--if they grow up at all, given that many of them contracted HIV from their mothers before they were even born.

An inordinate number of people, especially in this country, appear to believe that they are immune from this scourge. I know people who continue to think that AIDS will never touch them or anyone they know, when statistics alone suggest that they are woefully mistaken. And, even 25 years later, the federal government hems and haws and makes pretty statements to commemorate the anniversary, even as it continues to perpetuate the same deadly stereotypes (and outright lies) about who has HIV, how best to prevent it, and how to go about finding a cure.

So go and do your gay-bashing in Congress today, Georgie. It won't help you win votes in November, and it won't even get you the constitutional amendment you want so badly. And while your actions disappoint and depress those of us in the reality-based community who know all of that, we are comforted by the knowledge that you are already an irrelevancy and the days of your term reign are numbered.

Comments

[Incertus]

Thank you Michael. I didn't know this was the anniversary. Whether it was a deliberate slap in the face to the gay community, or just another callous oversight, these folks never cease to amaze with their callousness.

[Michael]

My guess is it was a little of both, with more emphasis on the slap in the face. Gotta make sure the queers know their place, after all. Or at least gotta make it look like you're trying to do that when the 25-percenters are watching.

The interesting thing is, it appears that at least some of the 25-percenters know damn good and well that this is all posturing. And they're voting for/supporting the Shrubbery anyway. And they're the ones calling us "sheeple"? Crikey.

[Bryan]

It is an intentional slight by someone in his administration, because the same type of behavior has occurred too often. Racist judges getting recess appointments on MLK Day, etc. have just happened too often for it to be anything but a sadistic streak by someone.