Let’s talk about sex.
OK, now that I’ve got your I’m really here to talk about AIDS and U.S. foreign policy.
Don’t go away, this is important.
Both can make you sick, especially the latter after you read this story in the Washington Post.
From the article:
RIO DE JANEIRO — Paula Duran is an outreach worker with a style of her own. That style — heavy on fishnet, tattoos and suggestive poses — is at the heart of an ideological disagreement between Brazil and the United States over the best way to fight AIDS.
Duran, 35, is a prostitute in Villa Mimosa, a red-light district in this seaside city where an estimated 3,500 sex workers lounge in the doorways and lean out the windows of scarred, decaying buildings.
Each time she snags a customer, she fishes in her purse for a government-supplied condom. Often she repeats information on disease transmission that she learned at a state-funded workshop for prostitutes around the corner.
“I’m always telling people that they should never do anything without a condom,” Duran said. “A lot of the young people who come around here don’t know anything about it, so I try to teach them whatever I can.”
Makes sense to me. People like sex. People who provide sexual services have sex. Recruit them to be AIDS prevention advocates and cut down on the rate of sexually transmitted diseases.
Except U.S. foreign policy is not based off practicalities, of course:
But the U.S. government strongly disapproves of such unorthodox methods. Two weeks ago, Brazil received a letter from USAID declaring the country ineligible for a renewal of a $48 million AIDS prevention grant.
The U.S. government doesn’t like prostitution and will not fund any country that does not formally declare prostitution “dehumanizing and degrading.”
Brazil, which has a successful partnership with the prostitutions to collaborate on the prevention of the spread of sexually transmitted diseases, refused to do that. Perhaps it’s cultural, perhaps it’s pragmatic. I don’t know. I don’t particularly care. The program worked.
…the country’s AIDS prevention and treatment programs are considered by the United Nations to be the most successful in the developing world. There are at least 600,000 people infected with HIV in Brazil — but that is only half the number predicted by the World Bank a decade ago.
“When we started in the 1980s, our projected AIDS rates were exactly the same as Africa’s, but now it’s a completely different story,” said Mariangela Simao, deputy director of Brazil’s national HIV-AIDS program in Brasilia. “I’m convinced it’s a result of the way the government has responded. We provide information and resources, and don’t enter into moral or religious issues.”
That of course will not do for the ideologues who set U.S. policy.
Far from the official U.S. policy of abstinence, Brazil has tackled the issue of sex openly.
In the view of the U.S., it is better for people to die of AIDS than to risk an honest discussion on sexual behavior.
Even Pat Robertson seems to grasp the concept of the importance of condoms, according to Sarah Vowell (who I love from afar):
On a recent “Nightline,” Robertson showed up with his new best friend, Clooney. When asked if his group Operation Blessing would promote “the responsible use of condoms” along with abstinence in its AIDS education program in Africa, Robertson answered, “Absolutely.” Pat Robertson!
“I just don’t think we can close our eyes to human nature,” he continued, adding that with regard to teaching proper condom use, “you have to do that, given the magnitude.” I could have hugged him.
It’s time for U.S. AID’s policy to get in line with reality.
Type in condom in the U.S. AID search box and you get this:
A brilliant idea. Prostitutes as safety advocates. Fantastic!!
This country though… we can’t talk about sex. Some dude asked me “so you don’t support Bush?” when he learned I had marched – but… but.. what about the moral issues??? I asked “what morals does Bush have?”
“But the abstinence and and and abortion issues…”
His followers are either delusional or hypocrites. Or both.
Great diary Mr. Carnacki. My only regret about DC is that I didn’t get to meet you. 🙂
Thanks! I’m going to try to organize a meetup like the Harpers Ferry meeting last year.
How’s that going…did you get my email a couple of weeks ago?
Yes. I thought I replied to it. Sometimes my emails end up in spam folders (too many wingers have marked my emails as “this is spam”).
RenaRF is playing in Winchester Va., on April 4. I’m going to go and try to hammer out an event. I’m thinking something in May or June for those of us too poor to go to Yearly Kos. A consolation trip if you will. I still think Baltimore would be the most fun, but that might just be me.
. . . but actually promotes it.
Hence the money for programs which are sure to be ineffective, but as soon as someone finds something that works, the grant is pulled.
This policy goes right back to the beginning, to the mid 1980s.
Don’t believe me. Check the history.
Thanks, Carnacki, for finding this. I wish the Brazilians luck.
more smoothly than anyone had anticipated. The resultant expedited resource retrieval costs may also be lower than anticipated, which with the originally planned price structure, will mean a significant increase in revenues for the participating companies!
The only reason to think AIDS is not an example of US biological warfare is that it required biological knowledge and technology that was not available at the time (early 1980’s).
Then again, the Austalians stumbled on that mouse-AIDS virus by accident, so maybe after all it was the DoD just being lucky.
The official explanation of AIDS is a complete crock–a fairy-tale concocted to cover the absence of knowledge or guilty knowledge.
Beyond that, we speculate.
is marginally easier for some to swallow than MIHOP.
It’s a process, a journey, and patients must take their own time in the transition to MIHOP.
Sadly, neither LIHOP nor MIHOP taste as good as Kool-Aid.
😀