Things that make me go "Hmmmm...."

I want to share a couple of news articles I've read today. First up is this interesting article about HIV and AIDS medicines. The first sentence of it reads:

Over the past 17 years, successive generations of AIDS drugs have restored a total of three million years of life to HIV-positive Americans and prevented an estimated 2,900 infants from becoming infected, a new study finds.

- from the article entitled HIV Drugs Have Given Americans 3 Million Years of Life by Randy Dotinga

According to this article, there is an estimated 300,000 Americans who are HIV positive, but do not know about it. It makes a person think. I wonder if any of the people I have known and hung out with over the years fall into that category? I wonder if any of my close friends have HIV and don't know...

A lot of people are scared to find out. I don't know if I would blame them for being scared. It's certainly got to be important to know though, right? For some reason, this HIV epidemic reminds me a lot of leprosy. I realize it hasn't been around as long (as far as we know), but it's certaily got a similar stigma attached to it. With lepors though, it would become pretty obvious when fingers and skin started rotting and falling off. (that would suck so much!!) Because it was uncurable and often contagious, they would place these people into their own private communities for care, segregating them from society. Some countries, like China, would sometimes just wipe out groups of lepors if they had them brought together.

Near Tungkun on Easter Sunday morning in 1937 a terrible tagedy took place. A little land in this area had been set aside years ago for "outcast lepers" in memory of an Empress Dowager who also had leprosy, but no provision had ever been made for the support of the unfortunates. Consequently, when they were warned not to beg, starvation looked them in the face. They became so desperate that finally a government subsidy of ten cents a day was promised, provided they would remain inside of the colony compound. This promise was kept for three days. The fourth morning was Easter. Just as the missionaries were leaving their homes to go to the leprosarium to hold services, the news came that all of their congregation had been shot at sunrise, and that the village was in ashes.

- taken from Doctor of the Happy Landings by Eugene and Julia Lake Kellersberger

I quote this here because I find myself thinking about how AIDS creates such a similar stigma. The problem with AIDS though is that it is so undetectable without proper testing that many go for a long time without even suspecting they have it. These people then go out and spread it around with rampant acts of promiscuity. In many of the third world nations, it is spreading like wildfire through rape, which often runs rampant there. Let's not forget the drug usuage that spreads it as users share needles so they can all get their fix. Even if it was culturally acceptable to seperate the victims from mainstream society, it would not be feasible by any means. You would have to test everyone, and then how could anyone ever justify isolating the victims who are non-violent and not spreading? Even so though, there was a fear of catching leprosy because of the lack of a cure and the social stigma it carried with it. There was an added fear of being seperated from your loved ones. With AIDS it is the same way except for the seperation. I hope that not only is a cure found soon, but that there will be a way to spread such a cure to the massive populations of people around the world that need it lest they and their entire culture dies out.

The second article I want to share is this one about a 17 year old Christian? girl who wants to go marry a 20 year old Muslim man she met on MySpace.com. I have no room to mock or argue against anyone for any kind of long distance relationship. But, this story has me baffled. Maybe it's because I don't like MySpace.com. Maybe it's because it just smells like a horrible foundation for a relationship. Of course, I can't really know what they are building on. Maybe I'm baffled because they are talking so casually about her converting from Christianity to Islam for the sake of man she has never met. That's just so wrong!!! If she's willing to do that, has she ever really been a Christian at all? That she would even consider putting Christ aside to be with a boy speaks of her inability to be faithful. I am perhaps judging too harshly. It makes me think though.

It makes me think about my relationship with my Musankisha, and it makes me glad that I know I neither will nor can ever be first in her life because Christ will always be first there. I am also glad because she can know and be glad that Christ will always be first in my life also. It touches home for me because we too are getting to know each other from so far away. I guess we are lucky though because we have a common friend who is close to both of us. (I don't mean Christ there although He is also a commonality) We also talk a lot. And (a really big plus for us) MySpace.com has not been involved in our getting to know each other. lol. This blog doesn't count!!!

The numbers below are staggering:

HIV prevalence across the world (UNAIDS)

- Image taken from Wikipedia and is listed under the GFDL license (GNU Free Documentation License)

Globally, between 33.4 and 46 million people currently live with HIV. In 2005, between 3.4 and 6.2 million people were newly infected and between 2.4 and 3.3 million people with AIDS died, an increase from 2003 and the highest number since 1981.

Sub-Saharan Africa remains by far the worst affected region, with an estimated 21.6 to 27.4 million people currently living with HIV. Two million [1.5–3.0 million] of them are children younger than 15 years of age. More than 64% of all people living with HIV are in sub-Saharan Africa, as are more than three quarters (76%) of all women living with HIV. In 2005, there were 12.0 million [10.6–13.6 million] AIDS orphans living in sub-Saharan Africa 2005. South & South East Asia are second worst affected with 15%. AIDS accounts for the deaths of 500,000 children in this region.
- Taken from the Wikipedia article on AIDS in the section on Epidemiology
and the information in that article was sourced from: UNAIDS (2006). “Overview of the global AIDS epidemic”, 2006 Report on the global AIDS epidemic