Feb. 9 (Bloomberg) -- The U.S. government and the richest charity are offering bounties to a new wave of scientists to wipe out HIV, the virus that causes AIDS and is one of the world’s biggest killers.
Frustrated by one failure after another, the U.S. is asking scientists to outline a major program to find a cure for HIV, while the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation in Seattle is offering grants of $100,000 for researchers working on ways to drive the virus from patients’ bodies for good. Scientists are responding with new methods to stamp HIV from human cells and tissues where traces of it can hide for years, evading treatment.
The above excerpt is from a longer article in Bloomberg.com (Click here). Apparently, scientists are frustrated with the lack of progress in finding a cure. So far, all experimental vaccines have failed to spread the disease, which these days, strikes down nearly 3 million patients per year.
I applaud these renewed efforts, but until we do find a vaccine, the US government, and all of us, common citizens included, must step up efforts in AIDS education. There is a squeamishness in the schools to discuss safe sex education. This squeamishness is regrettable, even deadly.
And some quarters in the gay community are still playing fire with their lives, barebacking being one of those means. After the heavy toll of the 1980s and early 1990s, there has been a more laissez faire attitude toward sexual intimacy in the gay community. The advent of more advanced drugs for HIV patients has led to a wrongheaded attitude that AIDS is just a minor pest.
Some of this risky behavior is sometimes rooted in self-hatred, which in turn, arises from rejection by the larger society. So greater acceptance from society can go some way to shifting the goalpost of the fight against AIDS. But no doubt, gays themselves must also share the responsibility of knowing what is right and what is wrong. Perhaps it is time for a renewed alarm.
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