Nobody wants to admit it.Could it be that certain actions may be incorrect, and we are paying the price?
A UNAids report has revealed that around the world, there was an estimated 4.3 million new HIV infections this year(2.8 alone in sub-Saharan Africa). They also say there is an estimated 40 million now living with HIV.
Bush has asked Congress to approve $5.4 billion for his President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief(PEPFAR) for 2008.
That amount would bring the total to $18.3 billion the US has pledged for investing in the fight against AIDS.Because of this epidemic, some experts say that 2/3 of the sub-Sahara population will eventually be wiped out by AIDS.
Oddly enough, the success of HIV medications seems to be contributing to the African epidemic, mainly because complacency has led to increased unprotected sex.
In many corners of the world, this monster is growing. But all we want to do is attach band-aids to the problem. The people most at risk are young girls, men who have sex with men, commercial sex workers, and injecting drug users. Let’s be frank here. The term “unprotected sex” refers directly to lack of condom use. “Injecting drug users” are sharing needles used for illicit drug consumption. “Man-to-man” sex is sex between unmarried male partners.
Hemophiliacs stopped getting infected with HIV when their transfusion blood was checked starting in 1985. Women and girls get HIV from infected male partners who are unmarried, or infected partners lacking fidelity in their existing marriage. HIV/AIDS is a plague that seems to be acquired from poor behavior.
If Jesus cured someone of HIV/AIDS today, He would say, “Go, and sin no more.”
But how many would listen to that advice?
Just in the US, the CDC reports that by 2008 there will be well over a million accumulated AIDS cases, with a growth of more than 50,000 each year. For a truly ominous problem, the answers are very obvious, but most are willing to chance getting the disease because they will not be separated from perceived pleasure. It seems the words, abstinence and fidelity, are missing from their vocabulary.
Without a doubt abstaining from sex until marriage and then faithfulness to your spouse after, seems to completely curtail the killer disease and works every time. Why didn’t we think of this before?
The ironic part is that commentators(e.g. British) have pronounced that the Catholic Church is killing ‘millions’ because of its teaching on chastity and fidelity in marriage, and needs to change its policy on banning condoms in the fight against HIV/Aids.
The Guardian’s Polly Toynbee on the occasion of John Paul II’s death, called the Vatican “A modern, potent force for cruelty and hypocrisy.”
In 1985, Toynbee compared him to Vladimir Lenin saying, “They both put extreme ideology before human life and happiness, at unimaginable human cost.”
But it seems a brief examination of the HIV/AIDS rates of those African countries with a large Catholic population shows that the Church’s accusers have not done their homework, or are deliberately misreporting the facts.
Available statistics show that countries with large Catholic populations have significantly lower rates of HIV/AIDS infections than countries with mostly non-Catholic populations.
Just from 2003 statistics(World Factbook/‘CIA’), a new world opens.
Burundi(62% Catholic) had a 6% AIDS infection rate, Angola(38% Catholic) had a 3.9% rate, Ghana(some regions 33% Catholic) had a 3.1% rate, Nigeria(Muslim and Christian) had a 5.4% rate, and Uganda(33% Catholic) had a rate of 4.1%.
Countries with low Catholic populations, such as Botswana(5% Catholic), had a 37.3% AIDS rate, and Swaziland(20% Catholic) had a 38.8% rate.
An obvious answer seems to be abstinence and fidelity.
It’s known they always work when they’re tried.
But amazingly, many will say that’s not realistic, and you can’t stop kids from having sex when they want. But that doesn’t seem true of everybody, because some kids are waiting until marriage. And they’re staying faithful after marriage.
The really weird thing is that these people that practice abstinence and then fidelity are not getting HIV/AIDS, but they’re getting sex! It’s funny that parents consider themselves powerful enough to stop their kids from drinking poison.
But they claim they are not powerful enough to stop kids from having casual sex, even though HIV/AIDS will kill their kids the same as poison would. People don’t seem to mind being slaves to their hormones.
It would seem employing “A&F” could kill two birds with one stone:
1) reduction of the federal budget, and
2) less total deaths from HIV/AIDS.
But, when you think about it, maybe we should all be slaves to hormones.
It’s just a matter of time before hormones could be the rational behind such crimes as cheating, larceny, kidnapping, treason, arson, lying, murder, and the ‘coup-de-grace’ of hormonal disorders - rape.
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Sotto Voce