A silent killer, believed now to have begun its work somewhere in the early seventies, and, perhaps, even earlier, had been working its way through the population only to be discovered in the opening years of the 1980s.
A doctor, the majority of whose patients were young, Gay men, began seeing an increase in his patients dying from what should have been routine and easily treated pneumonia. This was a new trend while other patients were showing signs of a rare form of skin cancer usually associated with old people in the Mediterranean area of Europe.
His request to the CDC for a rarely used drug alerted a secretary there that something was going on. Further investigation determined that the death by pneumonia and the contraction of Kaposi Sarcoma was not just a rare oddity, but the possible manifestation of a new disease.
Since the patients suffering from it were Gay men, beginning in May, i982 it was called Gay Related Immune Deficiency (GRID) and more commonly “Gay Cancer”.
This is how it was labeled in the media, and this helped cement the misconception that it was somehow able to target one particular group.
And, because it was limited to only a small community, and ,because it was seen as a handy tool for the religious right to promote itself and its political agenda, it was determined to e a punishment from God meted out to show His disapproval of the “homosexual lifestyle”, and this was bought by too many, including a president, some of whose Hollywood friends were dying of it. The disease was allowed to takes it course because only “THEY” were dying, and no one should interfere with God’s work.
Putting people with the disease in concentration camps was seen as a viable way to prevent the spread of the disease, and would have the people with it concentrated in one place dying without familial contact. This idea was eventually abandoned.
When something was finally done only one pharmaceutical company with lobbyist connections to the administration received approval for a drug to deal with the disease. As time went on it was determined that if you did not die of the disease itself you died from the affects of AZT. Later, and too late for many, other drugs were shown to be more effective and less deadly than AZT. More effective drugs, that followed like Truvada, Sustiva, and Genvoya were based on a drug cocktail in a single pill.
However, before these one pill cocktails, doctor in New York City. seeing his patients coming down with symptoms, did his own research and determined that what was needed was a drug “cocktail” that would slow the effects of the disease while helping the body rebuild its immune system, but this violated the very weak and limited best practices as determined by lobbyists for the drug companies and the still uncertain medical profession. In spite of the measurable success he was having, the doctor was told to cease his prescribing the combination of drugs, and eventually lost his certification to practice medicine.
As those who “deserved” to die from the “Gay cancer” continued to do so, and as the progress of the disease was reported with a sense of relief by those who thought it would never touch them, as “they” not “we” were dying, and as the religious right jubilantly promoted the divine punishment concept, another doctor whose patients were demonstrably heterosexual with children and grand children noticed the constant references to deaths by pneumonia in the new, and having had patients in the past who died of it, went back into his files to ascertain how many of his patient had succumbed to pneumonia, how many of these cases were just odd, and whether or not had these deaths occurred in a close grouping, as opposed to having been spread out, it would have been obvious that there had actually been something unnoticeable at the time going on.
He determined there was.
And so began the understanding that while the original doctor’s patients may have succumbed in a concentrated group over a short time, others, heterosexuals, had been dying of the same thing, but not being concentrated were assumed to be isolated oddities.
What was now called AIDS had not been isolated to Gay men, but had always been lurking unnoticed in the general population. Homophobia and nonscientific religious bigotry had allowed the assumption that the disease was isolated in a small concentrated population while it went unnoticed in the larger and more spread out one.
While Gays “deserved” the disease, as if they purposely contracted it, Heterosexuals were called “innocent victims” who had it thrust upon them, so something was finally going to have to be done.
Pharmaceutical cocktails became acceptable, and the support system of doctors and nurses willing to work with people with AIDS, the support system, and the treatment that the GLBT Community had to create in isolation for self preservation became the model for treating everyone, many of whom would not have had to deal with the disease if it had been met originally with science and ont religious prejudice.
Peopled died who should not have.
People did nothing who should have.
We were Gay people, political fodder to those who wanted the evangelical votes, and religious fodder for those who cannot bring people to Christ by preaching the gospel but rely on demonizing “the other” and scaring converts to Christ, ignoring His calls to love one another to favor coming to Jesus because you hate one another.
Both were happy to just let us die.
The process starts by placing the pillow under the receiver’s hips to make them rise, and the knees are bent while spreading the free get viagra legs. The climax can occur only if a man takes sildenafil bulk , there is an increment in blood stream to it. Kamagra is utilized as http://secretworldchronicle.com/tag/verdigris/ sildenafil from india a part of the relationship. It is done to find out if the cancer has spread from the prostate, or viagra sale india it is believed that it may modulate the motivation to care for others. Until, of course, they realize that attitude was killing themselves.
Those years were horrendous, and the generation between the old Gays and the young ones was practically wiped out and with it the necessary bridge to connect the two by passing on history.
And now we may have to deal with the dying again, this time not as two separate groups, Gay an Straight, but as one, US.
The Trump administration has shut down research into a cure for HIV.
A scientist who supplies mice modified with human fetal tissue for an HIV study was directed by the Department of Health and Human Services to discontinue procuring fetal tissue.
This will effectively stop all research to discover a cure for HIV.
Christian conservatives, the bigots who caused the problem in the 80s, strongly oppose research that uses aborted fetal tissue. Republicans have a history of trying to ban all fetal tissue research to appease the religious right, and this year 85 Republican House members wrote a letter to the head of the FDA asking for a ban on fetal tissue research.
Warner Greene, director of the Gladstone Center for HIV Cure Research, which was about to collaborate with the Montana lab on HIV research, said in response,
“We were all poised to go and then the bombshell was dropped. The decision completely knocked our collaboration off the rails. We were devastated. You spend your life trying to do good experiments and organize your science carefully, and suddenly, at the whim of some politicians in Washington, D.C., they remove a critical piece of your scientific armamentarium.”
The study would have relied on fetal tissue donated by women who have had legal abortions in order to produce “humanized mice” that have been used for years for research in infectious diseases, including HIV.
Before this action, researchers at the lab were going to test a promising antibody that prevents HIV from developing in cells that are not producing the virus, cells that aren’t affected by currently available HIV medication.
Researcher Kim Hasenkrug, who was supposed to provide humanized mice for the study of the HIV antibody, sent an email to Greene explaining,
“[HHS] has directed me to discontinue procuring fetal tissue from ABR, the only source for us. I think that they are the only provider of fetal tissue for scientists in the nation who don’t have direct access to aborted fetal tissue. This effectively stops all of our research to discover a cure for HIV.”
It is unclear whether non-NIH labs that receive NIH funding will also be banned from using fetal tissue. That would eliminate all research.
The Trump Department of Health and Human Services has established a Conscience and Religious Freedom Division to handle complaints from health care providers who do not want to perform abortions or treat transgender people.
The Department of Justice also has established a similar office whose job is to protect people who discriminate in violation of established laws because of personal religious beliefs from getting sued.
So like science and law being put under the control of religion, so is our health.
Religious bias: 2
Us: 0
Sharia law is not the problem.