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Subject: 
Re: Why is AIDS such a big deal?
Newsgroups: 
lugnet.off-topic.debate
Date: 
Mon, 8 May 2000 22:49:39 GMT
Viewed: 
542 times
  
In lugnet.off-topic.debate, Christopher Tracey writes:

So what you are saying is that you don't care that 250,000(1) people around
the world get infected by HIV/AIDS every month?

Why does my own priorities about how my tax money should be spent have to do
with whether or not I "care" about those people?

Do I think its too bad that that many people get AIDS and will more than
likely die from it?  Yeah, I do.  I also think it is too bad that lots of
people outside the US die from hunger every year, and they've been doing that
for a lot longer than AIDS has been around, yet no amount of money, public or
private, seems to stop it.

I do what I can on a personal level to help people I can see and talk to and
help in my own country, and specifically in my own community.  If your
standard of caring is based on the amount of your own personal money you
donate to charitable causes I'd take on anyone I know in a percentage of
income comparison, but I don't go around claiming to "care" more about people
than people I know don't give much.

But back to the issue I was addressing - tax money and how the government
should be spending it.  I know one person who has died from AIDS.  I have
several family members who have died from various forms of cancer (and not the
self-inflicted lung-kind - I don't count them, although I have a few).  I also
know people afflicted with parkinsons, alzheimers, and other horrible
diseases.  So yeah, I'll just say it - in _my_ book, if the government is
going to be spending money helping to fund disease research, there are quite a
few that rank higher than AIDS.

What makes you think that >what
goes on in other less developed parts of the world will not affect the USA?
This is a viral plague- one that does not (typically) agree to any border
or population.  The only principles it follows are ecological ones.

Well, until it becomes airborne I don't think most Americans with sense have
anything to worry about.  Now those stupid enough to have unprotected sex or
share needles, maybe they do.

The US was/is a major cause of the HIV/AIDS pandemic.  The Reagan
administration had it's chance to do something early on that could have
drastically slowed down the spread of the virus(2).  We should help
pay for it now.

Maybe.



Message has 1 Reply:
  Re: Why is AIDS such a big deal?
 
(...) How fortunate for you. I can think of 25 off the top of my head, but in actuality, its more like 75 that I personally knew. Of the first friends (20+) we made when we moved to NYC in 1982, there are four - FOUR - of us still alive. (...) I (...) (25 years ago, 9-May-00, to lugnet.off-topic.debate)

Message is in Reply To:
  Re: Why is AIDS such a big deal?
 
(...) So what you are saying is that you don't care that 250,000(1) people around the world get infected by HIV/AIDS every month? What makes you think that what goes on in other less developed parts of the world will not affect the USA? This is a (...) (25 years ago, 8-May-00, to lugnet.off-topic.debate)

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