BEIJING (Reuters) - The world's two most populous nations promised on Wednesday to eradicate ignorance about AIDS, a disease that was at first dismissed by many as a Western evil confined to drug users, homosexuals and prostitutes.
In the world's poorest continent, Africa, where the epidemic has ripped huge holes in the social and economic fabric, thousands staged rallies to mark World AIDS Day and Botswana's president called on his stricken people to "Abstain or Die."
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...In countries such as Botswana and Swaziland, deaths from the disease are robbing economies of workers, families of breadwinners and cutting average life expectancy by decades. Botswana President Festus Mogae told the BBC 37 percent of Botswanans were infected with HIV. "We don't seem to be getting on top of it," he said bleakly. "We have to say things like 'abstain or die'."
One thing for sure tho', nobody's going to die from abstinence. Don't blame other people for your life and death decisions. It gets quite petty when you do that.
But in the meantime I am supremely confident we'll find a cure for AIDS quite soon. Probably a lot sooner than most people would expect. AIDS/HIV will be by then nothing more than a nuisance. A time will come when we can simply eradicate this virus with a pop of a pill or a medicine shot. And then, only then, will we see morality and common sense go down the tubes once again into a massive global orgy with the sex trade on the rise. As with Occam's Razor, the answer is literally staring you in the face. If you haven't figured it out by now, no sense in repeating what I just said.
2 comments:
Mike,
I agree that abstinence is the absolute best way of avoiding AIDS and STD's, but any sort of sex education that doesn't address all of the aspects of human sexual experience (i.e., the fact that some people have sex outside of marriage) is just ignoring the reality of human nature. The problem with trying to teach people about sex the way they think it should be rather than its reality is that the truth inevitably gets stretched. In Africa, this led to the S. African president claiming HIV didn't cause AIDS. Here, the mainstream media just reported on some of these government-sponsored abstinence programs putting out incorrect information, including inflating the numbers on condom failures.
I'm a parent like you, and if there's one thing I know, it's that the minute kids realize that you are lying to them, they immediately discount everything that you say. The only way to educate kids on sex is to give full, truthful disclosure. There are plenty of good arguments for abstinence without restricting discussion to abstinence issues or "cooking the books."
Be truthful about abstinence. It only works when they have all the facts and that they do not have the temerity (the kids) to do these sorts of things without thinking first, second, and third time again...possibily saving their life. Honesty and truthfulness are the two best options when it comes to informing young minds about the seriousness of sex, risks, and diseases.
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