Thursday, February 12, 2009

The Tip of the Iceberg


I only have a general knowledge of HIV/AIDS: transmission, what the acronyms stand for, what eventually happens to someone with full-blown AIDS... etc. I know that anyone is susceptible to HIV--men, women, newborns, children, hemopheliacs (and others in need of blood transfusions), drug users, and more generally, heterosexuals and homosexuals. HIV is usually transmitted via sexual contact with an infected person or through needle-sharing (or any activity in which infected blood may enter a cut or wound in the skin). HIV, or Human Immunodeficiency Virus, can lay dormant in the body without signs or symptoms until it is too late, and AIDS (Auto Immunodeficiency Syndrome) wreaks havoc on the body with the help of opportunistic diseases.

In school, I was told that HIV was like the tip of an iceberg submerged in really deep water. It may seem smaller and more harmless than it really is... that is, until your ship rams into the rest of the iceberg hidden below, and then it becomes apparent that no amount of lifeboats is ever going to be enough. All metaphors aside, there is no cure for HIV and AIDS, and there's no telling when AIDS may develop. An HIV patient may be able to prolong the dormant period of the virus by exercising, eating right, and taking treatments, but not everyone can afford it. Everything I know about HIV and AIDS (which isn't much) I have learned throughout middle school, high school, and college. Since I only know general information, it would be nice to hear more about the way in which scientists are researching the mutation of this virus, and how the government is thinking about dealing with it in regards to other countries around the world--especially in poverty stricken areas.

This brings me to the question brought up in the video seen on Monday, "A Measure of Our Humanity: HIV/AIDS in Namibia": Are we committing genocide by neglect of HIV/AIDS epidemics not just in Namibia, but in poor, rural nations all over the world? I have never seen it that way, and I don't think I would have either, if not for that video. I don't know what the US has been doing to help other countries, but I was surprised that whatever we have been doing has been so little that it can be called a "genocide by neglect." I was also surprised that HIV/AIDS has been around for quite a while (since about the 1930's, according to "The Age of AIDS" seen on Wednesday), yet so little ground has been covered in finding a cure.
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3 comments:

  1. Marie M.February 12, 2009 at 9:44 PM

    I was really surprised, too, about how little seems to have been done in the fight against the HIV/AIDS epidemic. It is a such a huge problem, and it seems very surprising that the United States and other developed countries have known about the virus for over 20 years and have not been able to find a vaccine or cure. We did learn at the very beginning of the term that finding a cure will not completely take care of the disease. However, with a combination of a cure or vaccine, education, and a lot of effort, millions of lives could be saved.

    I was also shocked at the horror women in Namibia face not being able to say no to their husbands. It is so awful that they have to live with the stigma of having HIV/AIDS when they are remaining faithful to their husbands.

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  2. Niki E.February 12, 2009 at 9:59 PM

    Wow, really good metaphor!
    Yeah, I think it is easy to teach AIDs and what it is, but education seems to neglect its actual affect on cultures around the world.
    The video actually made me upset when it called it ‘genocide’. I do think it is a horrible crisis that is happening Namibia.
    “The systematic and planned extermination of an entire national, racial, political, or ethnic group.” Is the definition of genocide. And I think its disrespectful to the victims of the Holocaust to call the situation in Namibia a genocide. That is one of true times in history where genocide was present.
    I think they were trying to make it seem more over dramatic. The situation doesn’t need be dramatized more than need be, it is already evident that it is a serious problem and neglect has helped the disease spread.
    The culture of Namibia is also very different. The dominance of man in the community seems to hinder a woman’s health. It is unfortunate that they are so poor that the only free thing for entertainment is sex. Hopefully in years to come there will a hasty decision to focus on this country and aid its AIDs crisis.

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  3. ZachFebruary 13, 2009 at 1:52 AM

    Nicely done...

    However, it is not the fact that so little ground has been covered in trying to find a cure. It is the fact that the virus itself... is hard to target. Let us set up a little scenario:

    We know the makeup of the HIV that infected a certain person and we make a vaccine against it. By the time we inject a person with that vaccine, the virus will mutate because of the way it replicates so now he have a slight change in the virus and our vaccine does not work against it.

    So instead of trying to find a cure, researchers have made drugs that inhibit reverse transcription (the way it replicates), drugs that prevent entry (inhibitors of the CCR5 and CXCR4 co-receptors), and drugs that prevent exiting of the cell (protease inhibitors) in order to slow down the virus so the person can live a longer, healthier life.

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