Re: Prevention of HIV...

January 18, 2006

Dear Forum, Read with interest the postings of Mr , Mr Dhall and Mr

.

To counter the claims that HIV/AIDS prevention and gay men's rights are mutually

exclusive, as Mr claims, is not true. You would not have the HAART or

ARV drugs available so quickly had it not been the rich, young and very vocal

gay men in the USA, who were insistent on sitting in on every board meeting of

the pharmaceutical industries(Merck, Pfizer etc) in the late nineteen eightees.

We would have had to live with only zidovudine, which, by the way was in the

market as an anti-cancer drug, long before the 1981 cases of AIDS or Gay Related

Immune Deficiency, GRID (as it was called then) and is very toxic(suppresses

production of red and white blood cells). We should note that AIDS was prevalent

in sub-Saharan Africa before that, and surely in Haiti, from where it spread to

USA. Unfortunately, no one cared until it hit USA.

It is they (gay men), who got these drugs passed through the US Food and Drug

administration in record time (it usually takes ten years or more) on

compassionate grounds, and followed it through with civil disobedience when the

prices set were very high.

This brings me Mr 's claim that " Poor nutrition...including HIV due to

seriously deficient immune systems... " in his second para. Magic , the

basketball player was in the pink of health when he was infected and perhaps

because of that is still alive, running his businesses quite successfully today.

In fact, most men infected in the USA were in their early twenties, very

healthy, and which is what puzzled all the doctors when they kept dying. So were

Arthur Ashe and Rock Hudson; both were rich. This is counter to Mr s

claims that it is " ignored as a determinant of the high levels of infection in

certain populations " . So middle class, well fed Indians beware!

His second claim that there is too much emphasis individual behavior is quite

true as there is much more compassion for children with AIDS and hemophiliacs,

than those who got it through sex. Unfortunately, the virus knows that too and

is quite content spreading itself through semen and vaginal fluids where it

resides in high quantities.

Perhaps we should take Prime Minister Singh's advise that we should talk a lot

about sex. We also need to have more HIV+ public speakers since they are the

only people who can do justice in removing the stigma, than all those who speak

for them.

Sincerely,

Priyadarshi Datta, PLWHA

E-mail: <thurpu@...>

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