PEPFAR, authorized.

So Big Belt Buckle Bush signed the PEPFAR reauthorization which, among other things, lifted the travel restrictions against people with HIV.

Essentially, those people who were not allowed in the country were classes of aliens ineligible for visas or admission based on health-related grounds. The health-related grounds include those aliens who have a communicable disease of public health significance, who fail to present documentation of having received vaccination against vaccine-preventable diseases, who have or have had a physical or mental disorder with associated harmful behavior, and who are drug abusers or addicts (see Boy George and Amy Winehouse).

So, for the first time since 1990, before protease inhibitors and cocktail therapies, when everyone was dying of things like PCP and PML, we can once again allow people with HIV to visit us in the U.S. Not that they haven't been coming here all along, geniuses, they've just not been telling you about it. Welcome to the 21st century on this one. Glad to have you here.

ON THE OTHER HAND!!!!!
Congress and the president's failure to rectify serious flaws regarding PEPFAR’s prevention policies will have harmful implications for the health and rights of women and girls worldwide. These serious issues include funding directives for abstinence and be-faithful programs, the inclusion of the anti-prostitution loyalty oath, and the failure to integrate HIV prevention services with family planning services.

So yay. And boo. Again.

It's all up to the Bushinator now...

The House on Thursday voted 303-115 to approve a HR 5501 which would reauthorize the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR).

The legislation allocates a total of $50 billion -- $48 billion of which would go to PEPFAR and $2 billion of which would go to American Indian issues.

Two major changes have been made with this year's reauthorization. I thank members of Congress for including both of them and despite conservative pressure to reject these changes, passage of the bill.

1) The first change includes a provision that would ease U.S. HIV/AIDS travel restrictions.

2) The second overturns an existing law that requires one-third of prevention funds be spent on abstinence and fidelity programs, instead requiring a report to Congress if countries do not spend half of prevention money on such programs. It ain't perfect but at least it allows countries, cultures and demographics where abstinence education is beside the point (e.g., sex workers) to have an out. Of course the legislation continues to contains an existing requirement that organizations receiving PEPFAR aid have a policy that opposes commercial sex work. Which I've written about before.

Dana Rohrabacher (R-Calif.), not a friend of anything that involves critical thinking noted, "We have big hearts, but we need to use our brains," Rep. Dana said, adding, "We cannot afford $50 billion of generosity to foreigners." O Rly? 'Cause we seem to be spending that money in other places you've seen fit to give that generosity...Dana.

Bush is expected to sign the legislation next week. He'd better because frankly, we just don't need another round of this.

Elizabeth Dole should be ashamed of herself

Yesterday I wrote about the legislation on the senate floor, officially titled the "Tom Lantos and Henry J. Hyde United States Global Leadership against HIV/AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria Act of 2008".

Elizabeth Dole has introduced an amendment to that bill which would add Jesse Helms name to the title.

From Joe.My.God

Jesse Helms, the man who in 1987 described AIDS prevention literature as "so obscene, so revolting, I may throw up."

Jesse Helms, the man who in 1988 vigorously opposed the Kennedy-Hatch AIDS research bill, saying, "There is not one single case of AIDS in this country that cannot be traced in origin to sodomy."

Jesse Helms, the man who in 1995 said (in opposition to refunding the Ryan White Act) that the government should spend less on people with AIDS because they got sick due to their "deliberate, disgusting, revolting conduct."

Jesse Helms, the man who in 2002 announced that he'd changed his mind about AIDS funding for Africa, but not for American gays, because homosexuality "is the primary cause of the doubling and redoubling of AIDS cases in the United States."

Many people hold Ronald Reagan responsible for adding to the early AIDS death toll by his inaction on the pandemic, but it was Helms' actions in thwarting early research that inarguably hastened the demise of many thousands of Americans. How many of my friends, of your friends, would be alive today if the life-saving medications had arrived just one fucking year earlier?

Fuck YOU, Senator Dole. Fuck you with something hard and sandpapery.

I don't really have much to add except that the HIV infected blood of millions of people is on the hands of Jesse Helms.

Elizabeth Dole may be rewriting history for herself as well. With her husband running for President, Ms. Dole, as President of the American Red Cross had the organization rewrite an HIV prevention manual to cater to Christian right sentiments about homosexuality, premarital sex and condom use.

I have spent 18 years attempting to undo the damage that Helms and Dole and their cronies did.
Their blood is on your hands too, Elizabeth.

All the news that's unfit

Damn, there's a lot of news out there today but I'm just going to pick up one issue at a time (actually 2 because I can't help myself).

Today I'll spend a moment in the HIV mines and then a brief moment with J.Mac.

1. Knowing a country by the company it keeps

What do the following countries have in common?

Armenia
Colombia
Qatar
Russia
Iraq
Oman
Saudi Arabia
South Korea
Solomon Islands
Sudan
United States
Yemen

Any guesses? All of these countries prevent people with HIV from entry. Period. No exceptions.

This means that your friend with HIV visiting from the UK best not have his meds on him. It also means that the U.S. has not hosted the International AIDS Conference since the Act went into effect in 1987. This means that before every other scientific conference on HIV, numerous scientists, officials and community activists are effectively sneaking into this country.

The European Commissioner for Justice, Jacques Barrot, has raised the issue of people with HIV being banned from entry with Michael Chertoff, U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security, asking for the reason people with HIV remain barred from entry after all these years.

As HIV remains the only disease in the Immigration and Nationality Act that makes it inadmissible for entry in the United States we are far behind any sort of scientific rationale and we are still making laws based on fear, judgment and knee jerk reactionism.

Progressive-minded senators on both sides of the aisle have added a provision to repeal the ban to Senate legislation to reauthorize PEPFAR, the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief. Section 305 of the Tom Lantos & Henry J. Hyde U.S. Global Leadership Against HIV/AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria Reauthorization Act of 2008 (S. 2731) will repeal that ban.

To support the repeal, please email your senator to support this act.

It is ridiculous that my colleagues with HIV cannot come to this country to work. Not to mention, Andrew Sullivan may have to go back from whence he came, which frankly, sucks on so many levels. Mostly it sucks that I have to support Andrew Sullivan.

2. John McCain needs to think and then rethink. And then maybe think again.
John. Seriously? You don't believe in gay adoption? That's what you said. Here's the transcript from the New York Times (07/13/08):

Q: President Bush believes that gay couples should not be permitted to adopt children. Do you agree with that?

Mr. McCain: I think that we’ve proven that both parents are important in the success of a family so, no I don’t believe in gay adoption.

Q: Even if the alternative is the kid staying in an orphanage, or not having parents.

Mr. McCain: I encourage adoption and I encourage the opportunities for people to adopt children I encourage the process being less complicated so they can adopt as quickly as possible. And Cindy and I are proud of being adoptive parents.

So here, let me parse this out for a moment. You and Cindy are adoptive parents. You believe that that girl, who was in need of medical treatment when you adopted her from Bangladesh 17 years ago would have been better off in that orphanage than with same gender parents. I would like for you to explain this.

Today, while news media is reporting that McCain is "backing off his previous statement," what he actually said (through his communications director) was that it is a "state issue." Which actually isn't a position at all. It's a cop out.

Rape as a weapon of war

Major General Patrick Cammart, Former Division Commander of MONUC:

"It had, therefore, probably become more dangerous to be a woman than a soldier in an armed conflict."

Rape is being used as a weapon of war. It is not new and it is always disgusting. And it has exploded. The UN Security Council today demanded an end to persistent sexual violence during armed conflict, calling it a war crime and a component of genocide.

Approved by all 15 members, Council Resolution 1820 "demands the immediate and complete cessation by all parties to armed conflict of all acts of sexual violence against civilians with immediate effect."

It also urged that "all parties to armed conflict immediately take appropriate measures to protect civilians, including women and girls, from all forms of sexual violence."

Rape is used to instill terror in the civilian population, humiliate and degrade them, destroy group bonds and further agendas of cultural and ethnic destruction. Children of rape survivors often are abandoned and shunned by their families.

This isn't just occurring in one or two places. It is happening in:

• Sudan,
• the Democratic Republic of Congo, where, of the 15,000 survivors of sexual violence treated at Panzi Hospital since 1999, one-third are children
  
• Colombia,
• Sri Lanka,
• Haiti,
• Rwanda,
• Myanmar,
• Algeria,
• Cambodia,
• Sierra Leone,
• Iraq,
• Afghanistan,
• Peru,
• Bosnia and the former Yugoslavia
• El Salvador
• Uganda
• Chad
• Liberia

I wish I could name every country in which a woman was subjected to rape as a weapon of war. I wish I could type each of their names so they wouldn't be forgotten.

No one is doing enough though. Except Stephen Lewis (who is my hero). According to the New York Times, every day, 10 new women and girls who have been raped show up at Panzi hospital. Many have been so sadistically attacked from the inside out, butchered by bayonets and assaulted with chunks of wood, that their reproductive and digestive systems are beyond repair.

This is a direct quote from CNN.com

With U.N. officials calling for more female officers to better educate women against rape and women saying they won't feel safe until the under-equipped and undermanned United Nations force is strong enough to protect them, the situation shows little sign of improving.

I want to know, how, exactly, women are supposed to be educated against rape. I tend to respect Nic Robertson's reporting but this may have been the stupidest statement I have ever heard. This is Robertson repeating a press release, not reporting!

I haven't read the U.N. resolution (I can't find it on the internet and if someone can - please email me I'm reading it now I haven't found anything yet...), but if they actually say something about educating women against rape when armed gunmen hunt them down while collecting firewood or escaping their burning homes I have little hope.

Honorata Barinjibanwa, 18, said she was kidnapped from a village during a raid in April and kept as a sex slave until August. Most of that time she was tied to a tree, and she still has rope marks ringing her neck. Her kidnappers would untie her for a few hours each day to gang-rape her. Here is one face. One face of thousands.

She was being treated at Panzi Hospital, which has 350 beds, and though a new ward is being built specifically for rape survivors, the hospital sends women back to their villages before they have fully recovered because it needs space for the never-ending stream of new arrivals.


Eve Ensler, founder of the V Day Project and author of the Vagina Monologues is building a center for survivors who have been left without family, community or the capacity to have children in collaboration with UNICEF and Panzi Hospital. City of Joy will give them a safe place to live while providing an education, leadership training and a chance to earn income. To donate or learn more, go to V-Day.

I close with another quote from Major General Patrick Cammart. Putting the responsibility in the hands of the UN, he testified that:

"You [the United Nations] have the responsibility to protect them
and to take real and effective measures to put an end to this."

It is better to look good than to feel good (or not have syphilis)

According to CDC data, Alabama’s Jefferson county’s 2006 syphilis rate was the highest in the nation.

Despite that rather sobering statistic, Birmingham’s mayor, Larry Langford, along with a number of other elected officials, wanted the county Board of Health to suspend their anti-syphilis campaign and find a new way of reaching people at risk, stating that the messages were “too prominent.”

he ads on buses, they feared, would give visitors to Birmingham a “bad impression”.

"It's hard enough to compete for business without having people to walk in and have that shock value added to it," Langford said. "We have a lot of issues, but you don't destroy your city. You find other ways to address those problems."

Meanwhile, Alabama ranks in the top five nationally for the highest rates of syphilis, gonorrhea and chlamydia. The Centers for Disease Control's 2006 Sexually Transmitted Disease Surveillance report ranked Alabama with the second highest in the rate of syphilis, fourth in gonorrhea and fifth in chlamydia. Despite being removed from the buses, the ads will still appear on billboards and will still run on radio.

Dr. Elizabeth Turnipseed, director of disease control for the Jefferson County Department of Health noted that the effort has been highly effective. In the first three months of 2008, 900 more people came in for free syphilis screening than in the last three months of 2007, Turnipseed said. Billboards and radio spots warning of a syphilis outbreak started in October, and bus banners went on 10 buses in November.

While all elected officials were notified of the media blitz before it occurred, no one had any objections at the time.

Woof.

I love San Francisco.

I'm not a huge fan of the fact that there is not one decent deli in the entire city, the liquefaction under every street just waiting for the next temblor to collapse into the bay, the vast homeless population, the cramped living situations, the overtly corrupt politics or even most of the severely overpriced hotels but when it comes to a prevention campaign, San Francisco has it all over any other city.

I've discussed two previous campaigns, the first, Phil the syphilis sore and healthy penis and then the Hot Sex campaign.

The latest campaign is appealing to gay men and their dogs.

That's right. Their dogs.

That's not a codeword for something else.

I really do mean their puppies!...mutts!....on leashes!.....with tails!

OK, seriously canines!

First ad: So many crotches, so little time.

Also, check out the cute little leather pugs in their logo.

I love San Francisco.

Follow up on the Bulgarian nurses & Palestinian doctor

One week ago today, the 6 Bulgarian nurses and one Palestinian doctor known as the Benghazi Six were released from Libya after being accused of infecting over 400 children with HIV and sentenced to death.

Despite testimony from some of the top scientists in the world that the children had been infected long before the medics arrived at the hospital, they were imprisoned for eight years. During this time they were tortured for their confessions.

Drs. Luc Montagnier and Vittorio Colizzi testified in person that through hospital records, and the DNA sequences of the virus, they traced it to patient n.356 who was admitted 28 times between 1994–97 in Ward B, ISO and Ward A, and theorized that this patient was the probable source of the infection. The first cross-contamination occurred during that patient's 1997 admission. The report concludes that the admission records of a total of 21 of the children

"definitively prove that the HIV infection in the Al- Fath Hospital was already active in 1997"

The epidemic snowballed in 1998 to well over 400 children. Montagnier and Colizzi both testified in person at the trial of record for the defense, and the report was submitted in evidence.

Ultimately, the Libyan court system would not listen to HIV experts around the world, 114 Nobel Laureates or the U.N. The medics were only released when money from various countries was promised to the Libyan government for hospital upgrades and training for medical staff in addition to $1 million USD to each of the families of the HIV infected children.

The names of the released are:

Kristiana Malinova Valcheva
Nasya Stojcheva Nenova
Valentina Manolova Siropulo
Valya Georgieva Chervenyashka
Snezhanka Ivanova Dimitrova and
Dr. Ashraf al-Hazouz

They were raped, threatened with their families deaths and the rape of their family members. They had electric shocks applied to their genitals and were bitten by dogs. They were all injected with a substance and told that they had been intentionally infected with HIV.

They are home with medical problems and psychological issues that will last a lifetime. But they are home.

I wish for them:

• peace
• a place to express their anger
• loving family and friends
  
• dreamless sleep
• and gentle days.

Welcome home.

Destruit

Yesterday, on the Jewish calendar was Tisha b'Av (ninth day of the month of Av). It is a fast day commemorating the destruction of the first and second Temple in Jerusalem (the first by the Babylonians in 586 B.C.E.; the second by the Romans in 70 C.E.).

Coincidentally, it happens to be the day the Jews were expelled from England in 1290 and from Spain in 1492 and the day deportations began from the Warsaw Ghetto in 1942.

Since most Jews today, with the exception of some Orthodox, are not looking for a return to temple practices (which include animal sacrifice), the symbolism of the fast day has, in some places taken on new meaning.

I love ritual. It is one of the things that most connects me to my Jewish community. That there is a proscribed time and a place for everything, for mourning and for giving to the poor, for getting drunk and for working toward a better life. These are all things that we are reminded to do throughout the year (not that we can't get a little drunk or give to the poor at other times...).

Anyway, I need Tisha b'Av, a time and a ritual to mourn destruction. I think we all do otherwise our time to mourn the losses of our past get filtered a little into our everyday lives, feeling like we never have a proper time to mourn anymore.

I'm not saying that we should not or do not feel our grief and sadness the rest of the year, but we have no place to say, "On this day, I mourn. I mourn my childhood, destroyed at the hands of someone else. I mourn the loss of a generation to HIV. I mourn for the deaths of children, and women and men throughout the world due to violence."

I believe it to be so important. And so, on this day, I mourn.

Not for the squeamish

You've been warned!

I never really have had a squeamish bone in my body. I gave myself injections starting in 8th grade. I've seen the insides of all kinds of things but these days...well, let's just say, the more disgusting, the better.

Friday I got all inked up. Let's just say, it's a pretty large space. As of Monday it started getting itchy. Of course, I have to share this with Michael, who does actually get a little nauseous when I start talking about the Faith jerky flaking off all over the house. Sorry honey!

The really gross stuff started when I started working in the HIV industry. My office mates were always talking about their rashes and diarrhea. I was teaching groups of volunteers how to comfortably talk about fisting on the Hotline. It was all fun and games I tell ya.

Anyway, on Tuesday, I made an unannounced visit to my old lab group. They happened to be in the middle of a video conference call. I was invited in for a peek.

My old group does research on rectal microbicides. The leader of this group, Dr. A, is an incredibly sweet, very attractive and charismatic man. Patients get crushes on Dr. A, while he is looking up their asses with a flashlight. That is how cute he is.

One night about 6 years ago I was at a fundraising dinner with Dr. A. He was presenting to donors about his latest research. He had a slide show. I hadn't seen the slide show before he presented it. It started out just fine. There were data. Charts. Dot plots. Bullet pointed goals for the research. Then there was the slide of a normal vs. a diseased colon. During dinner.

Now, this would not phase a group of researchers at all but these weren't researchers.

I swear to god I heard gagging.

There are other people in this world that don't want to look inside another person's ass while they are chewing on their chicken marsala. This was news to my sweet Dr. A. I love this man. I made him promise to never show colonoscopy slides during dinner ever again. Under any circumstances.

So Tuesday, I happened to pop in during a conference call. The latest research seemed to be going well and so they were talking about moving up to a Phase II trial. Phase I trials are exclusively safety and so they are always done in so-called normal participants. For instance, if you have an HIV drug, you give a small dose to "healthy" non-HIV infected volunteers first to see what it does to them. If there aren't any hideous side effects or adverse events, you can usually go on to dosing trials and trials where it is used in the population it was intended for. Blah blah blah blah blah blah.

This trial was for a rectal microbicide so it was being used in people who weren't regularly using their rectum for sex but they were moving into Phase II trials where it would be used in frequent douchers.

Can I tell you how much I miss my old group. I miss talking about frequent douchers. I miss talking about the difference between gloopy and drippy. It's true.

It may be wrong, but it's true.

Bribing the bureaucracy

A couple of months ago I talked about what I do for a living - it involves ethics and clinical trials.

Yesterday in China, the government executed Zheng Xiaoyu, former chief of the State Food and Drug Administration for taking bribes and damaging the reputation of the safety of Chinese food and drugs.

Yeesh.

I'm not thrilled with this administration but:

A) I'm glad none of my f-ups reached this level - of course I've also never taken a bribe. Lately, it's become so strict around here that we're not even allowed to use pharmaceutical company pens or notepads in the clinic. Forget pharma lunches...those are completely a thing of the past. So unless sitting with a pharma rep and listening to them talk about their super-cute new doggie is considered a bribe...and I don't think it is...then I've definitely never taken a bribe. Phew!

B) Despite the fact that W has damaged the reputation of this country and compromised our safety beyond all reasonable measures, probably taken innumerable bribes (Halliburton anyone?) - I still wouldn't recommend the death penalty.

C) If I thought for one minute that it would make my job any easier I would consider taking the entire IRB out on a golf retreat or some such thing, but frankly I think it would just leave them further behind...

No bling, no ring-a-ding-ding

Today, SIECUS, the Sexuality Information and Education Council of the United States released their review of sexuality education and abstinence until marriage programs in the U.S.

I've had a chance to skim the sucker and here goes:

First off, I have to start with the fact that I have been raging against the wrong machine. I have no problem with abstinence. Confession here -- I am abstinent. It is my choice and a good one for me at that.

There are two key words missing from what I have been talking about in these previous posts and those are "until" and "marriage".

Problems I have with abstinence until marriage (AUM - ironic isn't it...):

1. Some of us aren't going to get married. The AUM groups believe that you should never have sex.

2. Some of us cannot legally get married. These are the sodomites and lesbos and perverted queers who are many of my favorite people, not to mention probably your hairdresser. And I'm speaking to you, Leslee Unruh - cute haircut.

3. Why be abstinent until marriage? Here's where (I think) it gets interesting.

All programs that receive AUM funds must adhere to the definition of abstinence education which specifies, in part, that “a mutually faithful monogamous relationship in the context of marriage is the expected standard of all human sexual activity” and that “sexual activity outside the context of marriage is likely to have harmful psychological and physical effects.”

I would like to direct your attention to the part about "standard of all human sexual activity".

This statement indicates that homosexuality is abnormal and of all things, unexpected. (OMG, Johnny is queer!). Not only is it deviant, as our definition informs us, but it is also dangerous.

And here, I am going to agree. Sexuality is dangerous.

• You might get your heart broken
• You might get herpes
• You might have a terrible time
• You might get taken advantage of
  

But you might do these things in or out of the sacred bonds of marriage. Check your local rags. Britney, Jeri Ryan, Pam Anderson, Reese Witherspoon, your neighbors and friends and on and on and on and on.

Abstinence until marriage is not the panacea that Muffy and Bobby are being led to believe. Abstinence until marriage will not guarantee you the perfect life partner or a happy marriage or disease free life. Furthermore, daddy cannot protect his baby from any harm by having his daughter pledge her purity to him at a dance where you eat wedding cake while signing virginity pledges. Yet, the Abstinence Clearinghouse, a major resource for those receiving federal abstinence until marriage funding, distributes close to 700 “Purity Ball Planner” booklets a year and points out that the tips in the booklet include “printing out the vows on beautiful paper” and “serving wedding cake for dessert.

In 19 freakin' 48, Alfred Kinsey wrote:

"The world is not to be divided into sheep and goats. It is a fundamental of taxonomy that nature rarely deals with discrete categories... The living world is a continuum in each and every one of its aspects."

So, if we are not just sheep and goats, perhaps we are not all heterosexually oriented and doin' it in the missionary position starting exactly on the day we pledge our undying love and obedience to some idiot lovely individual we met 10 months ago at a purity ball. But that is not what the Bush administration and his gang of (neo) cons wants for their God-fearing America.

What they are not telling us is that 80% of them did it before the ring was firmly slammed shut onto their fingers. A recent Guttmacher Institute study showed that premarital sex has been universal for decades and that among those turning 15 between 1954 and 1963, 82% had had premarital sex by age 30, and 88% had done so by age 44. (Accessed 6/27/07).

Hypocrisy perhaps? Or just wanting better for their children than they had? Or perhaps they hear dollar bills falling like snow in Aspen.

Between 1996 and federal Fiscal Year 2006, Congress funneled over $1.5 billion dollars (through both federal and state matching funds) to abstinence-only-until-marriage programs. (SIECUS)

“All of a sudden, abstinence is a business,” Unruh told a reporter in 2002 as she noted that more than 900 new abstinence-only-until-marriage organizations emerged in the last decade. (accessed 6/27/07).

According to research done by SIECUS, a cadre of national abstinence-only-until-marriage speakers, charging anywhere from $1,000–$5,000 per presentation, are at the fingertips of school districts, local county health departments, faith-based organizations, and others who have hundreds of thousands of federal dollars to spend every year. Whether receiving federal funds themselves or not, many of these entrepreneurs advertise to federal grantees that their products, presentations, and novelty items meet the federal government’s requirements for use in abstinence-only-until-marriage programs.

Meanwhile - over here in reality-land, these people show a total disregard for sound public health practices and responsible spending. They are using the facade of public health to promote religion (most specifically, Christianity though not entirely), marriage with no other options presented, anti-gay bias, anti-choice politics and distortions about actual scientific public health issues.

SIECUS' analysis of the issues is incredibly thorough and I could go on and on but read the report for yourself. I highly recommend it.

Secrets, lies and more inanity

“EVERYTHING in your life you have attracted—accept that fact—it's true.” The Secret

Truth is a funny thing. First off, there is still quite the disagreement among philosophers as to what truth actually is. Just because something may seem logical does not necessarily make it true and vice versa. Truth can change throughout time based on new technology or new ways of understanding.

Erich Fromm wrote that the dichotomy between 'absolute = perfect' and 'relative = imperfect' has been superseded in all fields of scientific thought, where:

"it is generally recognized that there is no absolute truth but nevertheless that there are objectively valid laws and principles....Scientific knowledge is not absolute but optimal; it contains the optimum of truth attainable in a given historical period."

So to say that it is true - that we have attracted everything into our lives - is such arrogance, I can barely breathe.

Regarding this truth - that we have attracted EVERYTHING in our life - I would like to direct the various authors of the secret to talk to a Holocaust survivor, an 8 year old molested by her father and a woman in India living with AIDS with no access to clean water much less medication. I would like for each of them to explain how they attracted EVERYTHING into their lives. I would like to ask them to visit Walter Reed to visit a soldier home from Iraq missing something he left with and a mass grave in Darfur. I would like them to talk to the Princes of Wales, to sex slaves in Estonia and to each woman in every domestic violence shelter in the nation. I would like them to explain how they brought all of this on themselves.

The entire premise of The Secret is an anti-intellectual screed designed to make billions off of superstition and promises of silver bullets with no need, in fact no right to even ask, for corroboration. If you do, you clearly are not believing and you are bringing negativity into your life. Rhonda Byrne can just wish you away into the cornfield.

Rhonda Byrne offers that, "When I discovered 'The Secret' I made a decision that I would not watch the news or read newspapers anymore, because it did not make me feel good." Ooh ooh! I want to be a blithering idiot!! Mee toooo!

No seriously, she thinks that if you throw your weight behind trying to stop war or poverty you bring more negative energy to it...seriously.

"Imperfect thoughts are the cause of all humanity's ills, including disease, poverty, and unhappiness."

Imperfect thoughts. I would say so. But not in the way The Secret moralizes. According to The Secret, a person who is killed by a drunk driver brought it on by their own thought patterns. It couldn't have had anything to do with the "imperfect thoughts" of the drunk driver - could it?

The disease of dis-ease is not new. I personally remember the big Hay rides of the 80's and 90's where Louise Hay spouted the same absurdity about AIDS. Rhonda and her cohorts suggest that not only should you not think about getting cancer, you should "not observe" those with cancer because the energy from their "imperfect thoughts" that brought them cancer might come and infect you.

Rhonda told ABC that she wouldn't even get a flu shot because "if you're feeling good, how can you attract any illness to you?" Hmmm. I don't know Rhonda? I think with all of your positive energy and perfect thoughts you should travel to a third world slum, don't observe any of the suffering people and see if you can avoid malaria or schistosomiasis.

"Disease cannot live in a body that's in a healthy emotional state," Bob Proctor says in the film. I want to see Dr. Proctor's medical license. Stat.

And then Rhonda clarifies, "How does it work? Nobody knows. Just like nobody knows how electricity works. I don't, do you?"

Over 5 million people are reading this drivel. While some people are taking the good (positive thinking) and tossing the idiotic, I have to assume that some of them are reading it like gospel.

Some references from Salon.com accessed 6-19-07.

FYI - No panty throwing occurred

But damn if I didn't want to. As I mentioned in a previous post, I have a huge geek crush on Stephen Lewis, Canadian extraordinaire and former UN Special Envoy for HIV/AIDS to Africa who came to UCLA to speak on Friday. I have read many of his speeches. I have never seen him in person.

OH MY GOD!!!! He's amazing. He's passionate. He's an awesome orator. I'm just infatuated by his big ol' brain. He spoke for a good 40 minutes and I never looked away. I might not have blinked.

Here's a few quotes,

"Driving the epidemic is a predatory sense of male entitlement leading to levels of sexual violence that are hallucinatory."

"The single most important struggle is the struggle for gender equality."

You know I led the standing O. I shook his hand. I feel like Marsha Brady.

He is a worthy and ethical and incredible man. He should win the Nobel Peace Prize.

Step right up!

As a prelim for tomorrow's Carnival of the Liberals hosted at this humble blog, I bring you a little fun (scary and creepy though it may be):

I've posted about purity rings and the creepy and slightly incestuous abstinence balls, Laurie has even posted about having been asked to sign her very own coochie over to the Lord.

This stuff is crying - nay, screaming bloody murder for satire. There are some clever liberal artists out there who have put me to shame. Oh, if only I could be this imaginative.

An old favorite - she's been around since forever and she's damn near a juggernaut. If you don't know her already, go visit Mrs. Betty Bowers - after all, she is America's best Christian and the epistle of shameless schadenfreude. She's so close to Jesus, they're thinking about taking separate vacations this year.

Then, relatively new to the scene is Sex is for Fags and it's sister site Iron Hymen. Making me laugh out loud for hours.

Muffy writes that: "OHMIGOD, like, Iron Hymen taught me to respect myself way too much to ever let some hairy creep hock man-lugies on my Godly cervix like it's some gross subway platform!"

Then, sponsored by DIEBOLD and God himself - The WhiteHouse. Where Christian kids can find out, "Does Jesus watch me go poopy?" and Laura Bush explains "pseudoscientific flapdoodle" like stem cell research.

It makes me laugh, it makes me cry. It makes me want to buy out the gift shop.
I'm just not this lucid or there aren't enough daylight hours for me to be this clever. But I'm glad someone is!

A little writers block-y + GEEK CRUSH!

I like how everything can be turned descriptive with a "y" attached.

I have a bunch of upcoming posts but they need pictures and I somehow haven't managed to have the thought, "Download Pictures" while at the same time being near to my laptop. Therefore, no meaningful posts.

I will say, however that I just found out that Stephen Lewis, former Special Envoy for HIV/AIDS in Africa, is coming to speak at UCLA (omg omg omg!!!).

I've already posted about Mr. Lewis in this post about PEPFAR and this post when he threatened to take the International Narcotics Control Board “behind the international woodshed and give them an intellectual and rhetorical flogging, the like of which they would never forget," (giggle) for discrediting methadone maintenance and needle exchange programs."

Clearly, I kinda have a thing for this guy.

He has been described as relentless, pugnacious, passionate and he called the PEPFAR earmark for abstinence programming "incipient neocolonialism".

I might have to be restrained. I totally want to throw my panties at him.






Update: This picture makes me a little tingly (and embarrassed).

Happy Birthday Jeff

We're all thinking about you today. Not that we don't think about you every day. Seriously, we do. We're talking about you a lot too. Yes, we're talking about you.


I miss the way you said anything. You called me a death junkie. (am not!)

I miss how much you cared about me. You called me the mommy. (am not.)

I miss how you let me know that it was important that I cared about you. You sent me a postcard that said "Thank you for caring about me."


We miss you. A lot.

Logic...or, "Hello? Is this thing on?"

Fascinating article in last week's Los Angeles Times. No really.

Essentially it's about the big abstinence pull-out (he he - I'm 12...).

Anyway, Ohio is pulling out of the State Abstinence Education Program (SAEP) joining Rhode Island, Wisconsin, Connecticut, Montana and New Jersey in refusing funds with abstinence restrictions.

In the article the President of the Abstinence Clearinghouse Network, rebutting this decision says,

"There are kids who don't want to learn how to put on a condom, because they don't want to have sex."

If these are the kinds of arguments they are making, why are the rest of the 44 states still accepting funds from the SAEP?

Here's my equally logic-based rebuttal.

OK, let's say my kid (and this may be why I don't have any) didn't want to learn how to poop in the potty. That is fine. Wear pull-ups for the rest of your life, for all I care. Someday, you might want to poop in the potty. Maybe. I'm not saying you have to, but I would rather have my kid know how to poop in the potty so that when he makes some decision about not shitting in his pants, that he knows what to do when the mood strikes him.

I am not saying he should practice pooping in the potty for when the right potty comes along. Just to clarify.

I'm saying he needs to know how to poop in the potty so he can make the decision to poop where ever and when ever he chooses to.

Also, I know kids. I was one once. If there was something I didn't want to learn (geometry) don't think for one minute that I learned it. I couldn't tell you the difference between an isosceles triangle and a hypotenuse if you gave me a million dollars.

Also, ever heard of OPT OUT you idiots? If a kid doesn't want to take sex ed, they can opt out. No one is forcing these impressionable children (many of which are already experimenting with sex if not doing the full deal) to watch an uncomfortable 45 year old health teacher put a condom on a cucumber. Promise. There is no Clockwork Orange eye clamps in high school.

Man! What a stupid argument!

Things like that get me all riled up so it's no wonder that when I read yesterday that abstinence funds went from

10 million per year in 1997
to
176 million in 2007,

well, my head just about exploded all over my pretty desk.

As the dems are now in power in congress, there are moves to make more comprehensive sex education the rule rather than the exception. Hoooooowheee.

Senator Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ) believes that schools should gradually shift their focus to more comprehensive programs.

Good idea Frank. And just let all those other kids during that shift get fucked.
Without a condom.

PEPFAR, far away from effective prevention

This is my first post as part of Blog against Theocracy. Hope you like it - or don't like it. Or whatever. I encourage you to go to the site and see what else is up. Also, check back in here. My goal is to post all three days this weekend.

xo

PEPFAR is the U.S. President’s Emergency Program for AIDS Relief. In May 2003, Congress approved a $15 billion dollar U.S. expenditure on HIV prevention and treatment. 3 billion is supposed to be spent on prevention programs. It is, in my opinion one of the most theocratic, far-reaching, fucked up Bush Administration policies. Here’s why:

1. Just to start with, a major tenet of PEPFAR is ABC, otherwise known as the prevention model (in other words, it's for prevention-he he.).
   
   ABC stands for Abstinence, Be faithful, when necessary use Condoms. I like to say it stands for Arrogance Beyond Credence, Absolutely Bizarre Convictions or perhaps Absurdly Bigheaded Citizens (anyway, I'm sure you can come up with some better ones)
   
   
2. This plan aims to teach people of the third world, the majority of whom do not speak English and for whom the cleverness of ABC means nothing, that in order to prevent HIV infection they must abstain from having sex, be maritally faithful or use condoms as a last resort. Of the 3 billion dollars spent, at least 33% of it MUST go to abstinence-until-marriage programs.
   
3. Here’s why this is a problem.
1. Abstinence is great if you’re into it. I’m not disparaging abstinence AT ALL. It does work. However, in context with human lives throughout the world where people:
   i. Have survival sex
   ii. Cannot deny sex to spouse in order to survive
   iii. Have cultural/religious obligation to have children
   iv. Have hormones like any other human on this planet
   it doesn't work for everyone. Duh.

Let’s take an example: Sarvati is married to Rupesh who has a good job as a truck driver. Sarvati has heard the warnings around town that many of the men who drive trucks see prostitutes but she cannot withhold sex from her husband (abstinence) and she is faithful. Some of the prevention specialists visit the truck stops to teach the ABCs but when they leave, some of the prostitutes get rid of the materials they have left because it hurts business for a while after the prevention specialists come though they do keep the condoms they have brought even though they get paid less for sex with a condom. In order to support their own families, they must get rid of the materials.

Rupesh does not visit the prostitutes though. When Rupesh is driving, he tries not to think about his wife or his home because he knows that they would be ashamed of him. Rupesh likes to have sex with men but this is culturally taboo. He is ashamed, but on the road, some of the men are like him and he doesn’t feel quite so bad. After all, he does love his wife and the sex he has when he is on the road is not the same as real sex.

When Rupesh arrives home, Sarvati asks him if he has ever visited a prostitute. He answers truthfully, no, he has not. She feels lucky that her husband is not like some of the others.

Lets take another, less complex example.

Akwe is 12 years old. She is an only child. Her parents are both living. They want her to be a teacher and they scrape all of their money together for her education. Akwe spends quite a lot of time studying because she loves learning, she wants to be a teacher and she knows how much her parents have sacrificed to send her to school. When her teacher demands sex in order to give her the passing marks she deserved, she feels she has no choice but to accept.

b. The GAO -- a non-partisan investigative arm of Congress -- analyzed the effects of the abstinence-until-marriage requirement. In the report, it found that it limited efforts to design prevention programs that actually met the needs of the local population. This was primarily the teams who had experience with HIV prevention programs.

Well, of course! You might say. Who else is getting funding except those with experience in HIV prevention? Funny you should ask. PEPFARs New Partners Initiative provides funding to community and faith-based programs for HIV prevention outreach. Ideally, partnerships would be with proven effective, evidence-based public health programs. If it was about meeting the needs of communities PEPFAR would be partnering with institutions that have technical expertise in evidence-based HIV/AIDS prevention, treatment, and care, or expertise in poverty reduction, capacity building, reducing gender inequalities, reducing stigma and discrimination, and strengthening health systems.

However, this is not the case. Some of the organizations that have received funding include:
Choose Life - a program for church laity and pastors that advertises "In this programme you will explore knowledge, attitudes and perceptions about HIV and AIDS. You will be empowered to combat HIV and AIDS through ethical and spiritual conduct. You will discover how to transform your community into an ethical community." And all this for 200 Rand - about 10 x the daily average income for an average South African.

Beyond our country, our president is forcing religious morality down the throats of people who need, more than anything, facts. He is contributing to the deaths of thousands. I urge you to ask your Representatives to support the PATHWAY Act which would remove the abstinence-until-marriage earmark that requires that 1/3 of all international HIV prevention funding be spent on abstinence-until-marriage programs and ensure that HIV prevention programs are based on scientific evidence, public health practice, and human rights concerns, not ideology.

Ultimately (this here is my POINT) - If I had kids I'd want them to be perfect. I'm sure your kids are perfect as were your parents in teaching you how to avoid sex until the rings were firmly in place. However, some kids aren't perfect. Some parents are assholes. Some parents are not in the picture, some parents have died of AIDS and some parents have sex with their children to get their rocks off. Let's allow condom distribution for them. OK?

There's a c, d and at least e but I didn't want to write an entire journal article and besides, there's a ton of information out there for the browsing. For more concise, coherent and evidence based information, go to PEPFAR Watch.

Experiments and ethics

First, a little history. People have been used for human experimentation for a long time.

It really wasn’t until 1945, when the world found out what kind of experimentation was being done on concentration camp prisoners (including freezing, poisons, bone and nerve regeneration, sewing children together to create “conjoined twins”, gases, and a host of other inhumanity) that the first guidelines were established (Nuremberg Code) to protect people against unethical human subject research.

Unfortunately, it didn’t end there.

The Pelkola* Syphilis Study, known more commonly as the Tuskegee Experiment was started in 1932 condemning hundreds of black men, and eventually their wives and children to mental illness, deformity and death, which continued until 1972. 399 men who had syphilis were left untreated even after treatment became available in 1947 in order to study how syphilis progressed naturally (destroyed the human body). They were also not given the opportunity to have fully informed consent because it would “confuse them.”

OK. So now we have something called the Declaration of Helsinki (1964) and the Belmont Report (1979) that guide the U.S. on the ethics of human research.

This is what I do for 8 hours a day. I spend my days in the labyrinth of the Belmont report making sure that all of our trials meet its guidelines. This is not as easy as it sounds.

The reason there have been so many Codes, Reports and Declarations is because someone will always find a new way of violating peoples’ human rights so every couple of decades since 1945, additions have had to be made. The Helsinki Declaration has undergone 8 revisions, the last of which was made in 2000.

Semantics can be parsed in every which way. Both in favor of and against what ever is trying to be accomplished. Coercion, though a relatively simple concept, can be defined in hundreds of ways. In the extreme, coercion can look like, “If you don’t volunteer for this trial, you can’t get treatment here at University of XYZ.” Or, misrepresenting the risks of a certain drug is considered coercion. Also considered coercion is your doctor telling you about a clinical trial that she is conducting. About a million things are considered coercion. It’s my job to figure it out.

Respect is another concept that would seem to be simple but – isn’t. We respect volunteers for clinical trials by compensating them for their time and inconvenience, but that can also be considered coercion. We respect clinical trial participants by explaining to them exactly what procedures will be performed, including the exact number of millirem of radiation for every x-ray and CT scan. We tell them exactly how much blood will be taken and we do it in lay language so that they understand what that means. Therefore, we don’t just say that 30 ml of blood will be taken, we have to translate that into an amount that people understand (about 2 tablespoons).

Lay language is a concept that most doctors don’t understand. Somehow, they think lay language includes terms like “randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled study to evaluate the efficacy, tolerability and safety of an integrase inhibitor.” I translate that into something an 8^th grader could understand. Sometimes that takes a few paragraphs so I won’t do it here.

Anyway, oftentimes, I have to guess at what the board that reviews all of this is going to consider coercive today. I have to figure out if effective is going to be out of the question as an 8^th grade level word tomorrow. Most of the time, I’m taking a 105 page protocol and trying to tell a story to a trial volunteer that they will understand. It’s not easy.

It's what I do.

For a lot more information go to my IRB blog also try this link. For your rights as a research subject, go here.

ED NOTE: I f'ed up. The Tuskegee study is not also known as the Pelkola study. I'm not sure where this came from but I thank Cynthia - see comments - for the catch.