Lyme Disease receives a scant .02% of funding from the Center for Disease Control.
Nearly 3 million people have the disease in this country. Many of those are children. The reason they got the disease? They were playing outside. They get sick for decades, and lose all the quality of their lives. Lyme is not able to be cured at present. With the scanty funding it receives, it is likely to be a disease that continues to grow.
Meanwhile, more than 50% of the CDC's funding goes to combatting sexual diseases. While Lyme Disease gets about 6 million dollars a year, AIDS gets 20 billion dollars from the CDC. What causes AIDS? It's because of the Sexual Revolution and the drug fascination of the 1960s, and the notion that "if it feels good, do it."
The progressives love sex. Their famous phrase was, "Make love, not war." The result? The Center for Disease Control spends more than 50% of its budget on sexual diseases. Whatever happened to evolution? Should people who are reckless die off? If you can only save one, a child who got sick for playing outside, and an adult who shared needles to inject heroin in his eyeballs after having rough, reckless, anonymous sex, which would you choose? The CDC has chosen the reckless sex and drug addict.
A child will go skipping around the block, and play on the swings, after doing her homework. A tick gets on her leg, and she gets sick. The CDC could care less. Meanwhile, an adult will lie down in bushes in a public park and share a needle, and then get anal sex from twenty partners. This results in AIDS. It cannot be said that the CDC does not have empathy. But why is all the empathy for one group?
I'd like to know why the CwL has been thrown under the bus by the CDC.
41 comments:
Everyone's so taken with the Long and Winding Mao that funding for disease research is being ignored. Too bad, because I think you make a good point. Some diseases are more sexy than others and diseases that hit Hollywood are the sexiest of all. Add in the opportunity to accuse conservatives of prudishness and narrow-mindedness and you've got your funding sewn up.
Funding is all about money, not cures. Salk got rid of polio in the US by infecting himself. Scientists today are arrogant wussies who would rather pretend that puny humans can actually melt the ice caps while ignoring, oh, the sun than try to do anything useful.
Oh well. Civilization, it was nice knowing you.
Hey Kirby,
I'm going to try to post on me blog at least once a week. I posted today about public education. Let's take all the money that goes to corporations for bailouts and use it to implement my 13 points.
Then maybe the smart kids we produce from our educational system might figure out a way to end Lyme disease!
Kirby:
I'm certainly with you, WBP, and GM on the Lyme's Disease question. My own bout with polio at five yrs, grace a Dieu, ended well, as it did for hundreds of thousands of other children who were able to flout its devastating effects by never contracting it in the first place, thanks to Dr Salk's preventative vaccine.
AIDS is a scourge. It infects millions world-wide, including millions of children.
Lyme Disease is a problem, but its extent and potential for spread are miniscule compared to AIDS.
Apparently it doesn't spread between hosts (humans). It requires a blood-sucking insect (a tick). Mosquitoes aren't mentioned, so I presume that's not an issue.
The "competition" for disease research is a keenly debated topic. Parkinson's, diabetes, Lou Gehrig's Disease, MS, Ebola, Birth Defects, all types of cancers--everyone has an agenda.
Setting up a false dialectic between innocent children and "guilty" "depraved" addicts is counterproductive. AIDS infects people who are perfectly "innocent"-- No one "deserves" to get sick and die.
Should we discriminate between diseases that people get "innocently" and those that are the result (possibly) of bad behavior. That seems a poor criteria.
Actually, the population of the earth is about twice too big. Disease may ultimately be the tool that accomplishes what mankind doesn't have the will to do on its own. Africa, which seems like a giant crucible for infection, will never support runaway population growth. Breeding uncontrollably is a recipe for disaster; sooner or later, nature will intervene and the grim reaper take the excess.
Curtis has a split personality. On the one hand he is totally indifferent to the dying off of half or more of the human race. But he is also against any kind of moral criterion for medical funding. No one is more deserving than anyone else.
In that case, why not just enter the diseases on slips of paper, and let a diseased child (doesn't matter what disease, so long as it's lethal), pull a paper from the hat.
Whatever disease is on the slip of paper gets funding toward a cure.
Everyone else dies.
Perhaps that would be aleatory enough for Curtis.
I think however we have a right and a duty to talk about etiology, and values.
I don't think the kids with Lyme are less sick than the kids with AIDS. AIDS is now susceptible to control. Lyme is still out of control, and does indeed make kids really sick.
It ticks me off.
There should at least be some proportion in the funding so that it's several billion for Lyme, even if ten times that goes to AIDS.
Thanks to WB, GM and Jacques, for their contributions toward an understanding of this exasperating funding situation. With infinite problems, and finite solutions, funding does indeed appear to be a matter of presenting an attractive image, and a noble face of some kind, and playing the victim. I may not be the best advocate for Lyme, and my work thus far has not contributed so much as a penny toward its cure.
But, like the scientists who are trying to find a cure, I too am trying to find the combination that will unlock the safe, and spill money toward the children who have this awful disease.
It seems at present that the only way to achieve this is to somehow attack those who currently hog the CDC's treasury, and still want more to preserve their perverse and dangerous lifestyles.
We need at least one or two Hollywood films to dramatize the disease. Perhaps a CwL who gets turned away at a hospital in favor of a PwA, and the child is dropkicked into a dumpster.
Or just goes home and cries.
Or something.
Spot-on in your last post on Lyme's Disease, Kirby, and to prove you wrong that you've not made any pecuniary difference in contributing to a cure, you have my promise that I'll make a contribution today (Em & I are winding up our care-stay for me mum, who's fully recovered from her third and last heart op) or tomorrow to a reliable Lyme's Disease organisation of your choice (just give us the web address, please).
Jacques, this made my day, your willingness to actually contribute to the Lyme Foundation.
American Lyme Disease Foundation, Inc.
PO Box 466
Lyme, CT 06371
It's tax deductible!
If you google them, they also have a Paypal page. I prefer sending checks. I don't trust Paypal.
I'm going to send them 5 dollars myself!
My name spelled backwards is ylimE which is kind of neat. I'm very happy to contribute to the Lyme Disease foundation. Last year I contributed to the Lupus foundation (a similarly un-funded disease which strikes women and minorities disproportionately) in honor of my grandmother who has been suffering with the illness for forty years.
Both are horrible illnesses.
One thing that has been bothering me increasingly is the marketing of certain diseases. Grocery stores vow a contribution of 10% of sales for the month (up to $100,000) for breast cancer research. Everything from yogurt and milk (which have at least SOME tandential connection to breasts) to diapers, to hemmorhoid cream, to bandaids, to a jar of alfredo sauce, to sandals, to lemon lime soda, to cashmere blend sweaters now sport the "pink ribbon" on the tag.
After you've filled your cart with myriad examples of marketing ploy, you can stash them in special "pink ribbon" re-usable bags at the cashout for sale at the low low price of $1 each (eco- and femme chic!) And if you haven't done enough charity for the day, you're encouraged to donate to the ubiquitous Susan Komen foundation.
What I resent is pressuring people to make their charity into a fashion statement. If you aren't wearing your ribbon, why aren't you? Why no bumper stickers or reusable shopping bags? You don't CARE do you? Little do they know I DO care and I made a sizeable donation last month--I just choose not to make it into a big effing deal, and impress on every stranger who sees me what a great person I am for having done it. In other words, it isn't about doing good, its about being SEEN to do good.
How about Prostate Cancer condoms? Lyme Disease bug spray? Skin Cancer sun-screen? Scurvy marmalade? Lupus hydrocortisone cream? Acid Reflux pizza sauce? Osteoporosis calcium supplements? The possibilities are endless--and they all have more to do with the diseases they'd be raising awareness for than alfredo sauce has to breast cancer. Seriously--who thought of that?
Some stuffy old white males sitting around a boardroom table decide, "hey, what will make us money? OH! I know, how about breast cancer shoe laces!" Not that I have anything against old white males stuffy or otherwise (obviously), but no woman would ever think of that. How about a breast cancer bra? Whoa, rock my world with your innovation!
What message are we sending by putting a pink ribbon tag on a cashmere blend sweater if it isn't "like how your tits look in that top? Don't get breast cancer and get 'em lobbed off! Donate now!"?
I think its shameless and a little embarassing. I've actually taken to avoiding purchasing products with pink ribbons on them because its just too embarassing. I do my charity in private and in my own time, thank you.
If we must choose and discriminate amongst diseases, we should probably base our strategy on the numbers: The most fatal, the most widespread, the most insidious.
We've beaten back some terrible diseases (though not perhaps permanently) like TB and Small Pox and plague. We also think there may eventually be hope for inherited diseases or proclivities. But viruses are the joker in the pack. They're impossible to eradicate completely, and, like all life-forms, they mutate, sometimes very fast and unpredictably. Intelligent theorists believe that, in the end, viruses will be our undoing.
Let's make this personal. Kirby, you think your agenda regarding Lyme's Disease is more persuasive than mine against diabetes (which my maternal grandfather died of, and which my late son had (juvenile)). Well, f*uck your bloody Lyme campaign! Diabetes is 100 times more widespread, insidious, and damaging, and the research which promises to be very effective, is hampered by mediocre funding.
Imagine yourself sitting at a table and servicing a line of afflicted, as if you were a "doctor" at a Nazi death camp, deciding which person will get treatment, and which will be sent to the ovens. Ja, zie haben AIDS--KAPUT! To the ovens!
No one--certainly not me--wants to see populations die miserably from malnutrition or disease or pointless civil wars. But that's precisely what happens in the modern world, because we can't face population control. The punishment for that failure is inevitable--nothing you or I will be able to do can save humanity from its folly.
To assert that I'm "totally indifferent to the dying off of half of the human race" is absurd--it's people like YOU, indifferent to the causes of suffering--even encouraging it !--are the true culprits. You would have the people of South Africa fornicate, without condoms, needlessly spreading disease and causing unwanted numbers of births, and then blame them for their irresponsible behavior by damning them to moral/mortal suffering to suit your righteous sense of fake justice. You should be ashamed even to hint at such a position. I can imagine that you think it's cute or provocative to say it online, just to draw attention to yourself, but it's deeply irresponsible, and plainly evil.
Shame on you.
Kirby:
I know your remarks in favour of increased Lyme's Disease research included merely a call for greater proportional funding for a disease primarily afflicting children, not an either/or appeal, though that nuance was obviously lost in the cranky Malthusian gloom of the relentlessly obtuse Faville. Maybe Red China's dictatorial policies of forced abortions and draconian penalties for having more than one child are among the "few things" Faville approves of--maybe scratch a lib after all, find a Bolshevik. . . . At any rate, the shame's all his. . . .
Jacques right, and Curtis loses twice because he played the Nazi card.
We should always try not to play that card because it's too simplistic.
but I give him half a point back because at least he didn't call me a Jewboy!
These days, that's something!
At any rate, yes, I think we should just be thinking proportionally, and no doubt the pie should be divided up in all kinds of ways.
By the way, the only person I know with Lyme was a doctor friend that I haven't seen for probably five years. The argument is a purely abstract one for me.
I feel for the kids who have it, but don't personally know a single one who has it. It's just a purely statistical argument.
I also don't know anyone who has AIDS.
So it's not a personal animus on that end, either.
My father had adult onset diabetes and it's part of what killed him. On the other hand he was 78.
I think even he would ask us to think of the children before we think of him.
My argument is: children first.
And percentages, not lethal aspects, should be the trump card.
Given at least some degree of seriousness.
(Children with a hangnail should have to wait until someone with diabetes can have their legs amputated.)
Why children? Because technically they have longer to live, and because they represent the future, and just because they're children, and I love children.
I don't even love the Tamarin Monkey as much as I love kids. We protect the category of people we love most, but past that, we have to think in terms of greatest health for the majority. This is afterall a democracy, and more people have Lyme than have AIDS.
It's hard to think proportionally, or proportionately, but it's easy to see that the CDC is completely way out of whack in its appropriations.
I think everyone looking at the 50% plus figure for sexual diseases should be able to discover that for themselves.
It's just that the Hollywood left keeps pushing that focus. When was the last time we saw a flick with a CwL in the starring role?
yea, Curtis is straw-manning himself into oblivion.
No, YOU believe everyone should die of gonorrhea and rot in hell!!! ( cookie son? )
One thing, though, that Kirby has glommed over is the fact that the AIDS movement (like many such movements) gained a lot of attention because a bunch of ignoramuses in America decided to create AIDS-o-phobia -
It's a punishment from God! I won't let my kids go to school with kids who have AIDS! Gross! etc.etc. So in your pile of blame, also put the anti-science, pro-hysteria crowd that victimized people with AIDS.
They're moving the tables around me. Gotta go!
-B
Curtis,
Diabetes is controllable entirely through diet. Don't eat anything that spikes blood shuga and you be good.
Duh.
Moreover, the earf's population is fine. We have a food transportation problem, not an overpopulation problem. We could double the world's population and live in the US with about the same population density as Manhattan.
And this whole "overpopulation" comes from being healthy anyway -- very few people have seven or eight babies just so two or three can live any more.
The Carlisle Story,
a touching tale of a young man -- a brilliant professional -- whose life was tragically altered by the dreaded and much misunderstood Lyme Disease. Soundtrack by Bruce Springsteen. Coming soon to a theater near you.
DAMN YOU DEER TICKS! DAMN YOU ALL TO HELL!
LYME DISEASE HURTS PEOPLE! PEEEEEEEOPLEEE!
THE DREAD LYME DISEASE IS COME FOR YOUR SOUL!!!!
Yeah, the anti-population shtick is silly.
Populations get huge because people live and think like it's the 1800s but have health and hygiene of the 21st century.
Let's just get folk out of the stone-age, babies-at-16-and-forever-on-out mentality, and we'll be fine!
We should focus on spreading democracy and technology and learnin' and Western values.
Then everything will be fine.
Let's see. Capitalism is THE WAY, endorsed by Jesus and John Locke, yet we're complaining about using people's sentiments about certain diseases as a marketing ploy?
Which would you rather, condoms or the consequence?
I guess you guys must have a hard time with them. Can't get off with them? Maybe you have erectile disfunction. Or premature ejaculation.
Jacques, have you ever adopted a child? Ever fathered one? Are you Gay?
How DO you get off, mate? Porn?
I hope you keep it clean, and well-closeted.
I suspect that Kirby's root motivation for discussing Lyme Disease Research funding has nothing whatever to do with its victims, and everything to do with attacking AIDS research funding. Kirby believes that everyone who has AIDS is to blame for their plight. His solution: Let them die a miserable death, preferably in death camps with little treatment, and no amenities. After all, they "forfeited" their right to be treated as humans for sinning against God's teachings. Into Hell with them!
Population? No problem! Let'em rot! If they won't toe the line, they don't deserve to live. Let'em breed!
Babies are good! Condoms are bad. Are we on message yet?
Welcome to the Middle Ages!
Curtis should quote me if that's what he thinks.
I do think that AIDS is preventible and that people shouldn't share needles (has anyone watched this program called INTERVENTION??).
I also think it's possible for people to not practice anal sex.
It isn't a disease like polio.
It has to do with activities that people choose to perform.
The only other pathway is blood transfusions.
If people are monogamous and don't shoot shared needles, they won't ever get AIDS, and the CDC can focus on other diseases.
I do care about Lyme disease. I saw a documentary on it, and it made me very sad.
Also, the one guy I knew who had it was very sick. He was a top Manhattan doctor and could only stay out of bed for several hours a day. He was a brilliant guy, and this disease had all but destroyed him.
I looked it up, and became very concerned. I actually did send money to the Lyme Foundation.
Not much (five dollars) but it's a lot for me.
I think we should all send them five dollars, or whatever we can afford.
It's so hard on children to have this disease, and it's totally preventible. Here, again, is the address:
American Lyme Disease Foundation, Inc.
PO Box 466
Lyme, CT 06371
What particularly mystifies me is the open contradiction between believing that sex is bad, but babies are sacred. You refuse to take any responsibility for babies, or contraception.
If babies are sacred, then sex must be too, because that's where they come from. If contraception prevents fertilization, then it must be bad.
All breeding must be good. Oh, I forgot, we're supposed to practice celibacy!
If the only form of sex that's allowed is marital sex, then marriage must be sacred too. So--no divorce! And married couples can have as many children as they want! 10! 15 babies! No problem! Fertility drugs! quintuplets!
The more the merrier! We don't need responsible parenting! We need more orphanages!
Adoption! Wow, what a concept!
Let's get back to the Fifties! Ugly flies crawling on the droozy eyelids of malnurished Black babies in Uganda! Starvation? No problem! Let's teach them a lesson--no food shipments this time! Maybe you'll stop breeding uncontrollably. Maybe you'll learn a little self-control.
But condoms? Perish the thought!
What a weird cabal you've established here, Kirby.
Jacques:
Do you categorically regard population control as a "Bolshevik" idea?
If a "lib" advocates population control, does that mean s/he is an advocate of Marxian economics?
The population-control, anti-condom is just a fall-back position. It sounds good when you advocate against government control, but you're not willing to face the consequences. Unbridled capital won't bring universal prosperity and good will, but that doesn't matter to you, in the end. People who fall off the tray are on their own. That's what you call self-reliance. Didn't make the cut? Tough luck, little guy.
In the meantime, get off my lawn!
If we want to be rational, let's have a breakdown of the diseases that plague mankind.
Where does Lyme Disease fit on that scale? Against, let's say, cancer, or Parkinson's.
Are the number of people who actually have Lyme Disease symptoms more than, say, .0000000000000000000000000000001% of the population?
How many people die of cancer each year? How many of Lyme Disease? Is Lyme even really a fatal disease at all?
Curtis - you're funny.
I like how you say lots of things that you say other people have said, but they haven't, and create weird little points-of-view that exist only in your mind...
And you make these weird straw-man arguments that no one ever makes and which don't follow - like 'sex is bad, infinite babies are good.'
I'm pretty sure most of us Christian types on this blog have similar views when it comes to sex - good within the context of a monogamous relationship (yay marriage!). Outside of marriage, it creates an emotional attachment that has no commitment behind it (recipe for emotional disaster, or for detachment-from-ones-own-emotions-and-body). It also has the problem of helping spread diseases.
It's also something that certain parts of the church focus on too much, and too judgmentally.
I do think babies are good, and that it's our job as humans to pass on good patterns of information - something that we can do by creating humans with our good genetic codes and then raising them with successful patterns...
And it's also good to become a monk, or make art, or build quality staircases...
But being a good doesn't mean that it's always good to have more of the thing. It depends on the situation, to a degree - 15 year old kids shouldn't have babies, and it's just weird to have peeps with 20 children (who then have reality shows).
From there, I think we all probably have different approaches regarding condoms etc.
I myself am pretty pro-condom, but that's Two Kingdoms, and I'm willing to recognize that we're dealing with reality and that we are dealing with humanity and that peeps is gonna git it on with or without condoms, so with condoms is better than without.
And studies show abstinence-only sex ed. is less effective.
Jacques has a wife, so I'm pretty sure he gets it on w/her.
I think Kirby problematizes his argument unnecessarily by bringing in morality wrt Lymes and AIDS. We need more funding for other diseases besides the ones that have lobbies behind them. That's a straight, simple argument that everyone can get behind!
Curtis, google Lyme and find out about it. About 1% of the American population is suffering from it.
It's rarely fatal, but it puts you into a kind of limbo.
It's terrible! Google it, and send money if you have any to the Lyme Foundation.
It's important!
Brett:
I don't have a beef with you.
You seem a sensible, level-headed kid.
Marriage is good. Kids out of wedlock--not good.
We do agree on that.
But arguing against AIDS cure research funding by setting up a ridiculous dialectic of Anal Fuckers versus innocent New England kids is insulting. That's what Kirby's doing, and it doesn't merit serious consideration.
That's when I head for the exit.
Did someone yell "Fire!" in the church?
Vicarious promiscuity may be morally repulsive to you--no matter what form it takes--but blaming people for having sex because some diseases are sexually transmitted is a non-sequitur. Sexually transmitted diseases are age-old--they've been around, like, forever. Does that mean that intercourse per se is bad? Of course not. The fact is that the AIDS virus is opportunistic in the same way that anti-Gay propagandist are. The difference is that the bugs don't "know better" whereas people should.
AIDS isn't a "punishment" to Gays for having the wrong kind of sex. It just happened. AIDS is as easily transmitted via heterosexual sex, as it is via Gay sex. The primary mode of transmission of AIDS in Africa is between prostitutes and "johns" who patronize them. That must mean, in Kirby's parlance, that God is punishing sex for sale--or, if you want to get really nasty, God is punishing Black people for copulating and breeding like animals. Anyone who even thinks that deserves our opprobrium.
There are lots of reasons not to spoil the marriage custom, but the threat of infection isn't one of them, it's only an unpleasant possible side-effect. You can't legislate behavior backwards from opportunistic infectious diseases. Sex has always been the "perfect" mode of transmission, and it will remain that way forever, unless we find some miracle barrier against microbes and viral strains.
Sex in the Gay brothels wasn't medically "evil" until we had a reason to condemn it--i.e., when AIDS came along. Prostitutes would get syphilis and gonorrhea, but nobody cared much about that because we had penicillin. Old whores servicing sailors, Gay cruisers looking for action. It went on for hundreds of years, until (woops) AIDS. Then suddenly we had the hammer. God's punishing them!
Ethics 1A. Sorry, you fail!
"...and Curtis loses twice because he played the Nazi card.
We should always try not to play that card because it's too simplistic.
but I give him half a point back because at least he didn't call me a Jewboy!
These days, that's something!"
Kirb: I've been trying to figure out what you meant by this. Are you saying that because I metaphorized your dramatization of medical funding as a contest between morally preferable child victims and evil Gay AIDS victims by comparing it to Nazi death camp "selection" that I myself must be a Nazi? How do you pull that off? How is this "playing the Nazi card"? (It sounds as if this may not be the first time that someone accused you yourself of that.)
And why would I consider "calling you" a "Jewboy"--that really beggars credulity.
I'm married to a Jewish woman and we had children.
Nazism is racially based. Nazis believed in weeding out racially impure peoples, incinerating them. Death camp administrators and guards got off on all kinds of bizarre discriminations amongst prisoners. They especially hated Gays--though many officers in the high command were homosexual--and persecuted them mercilessly. Would you want to associate yourself with people who thought this way? I hope not.
CF: What Brett says.
Moreover, none of us here believes sex is bad.
We believe promiscuity is bad, because it is.
And it's not a non-sequitur to blame folks who engage in high-risk sexual activity -- that is promiscuous behavior -- for getting sexually transmitted diseases.
That's like saying it's a non-sequitur to blame drinking for someone getting drunk (let alone getting into a car crash because of it).
This brings us to the lovely abstinence/condom sex ed debate.
Fact is, the only way to prevent unmarried pregnancy and STDs is to not have sex outside of marriage.
Realistically, though, it's not likely that this is going to happen. People are hard-wired to "get it on" because that's how the species propagates itself -- and as good old Archie MacLeish said in JB -- women are ready any time (not precisely true but neither do they go into yearly heats).
So while I find condoms vile, just as I would prefer junkies use new needles, I would prefer the sex-addicted use prophylactics.
Of course, I would much rather junkies come clean and the sex-addicted control their urges but shit in one hand and wish in the other, right?
What we need to do is bring back public shame for infidelity and promiscuity.
Perhaps the death penalty only, in respect to feminism, we'll shoot the men.
Playing the race card means that you pretended to be offended on a racial matter.
Playing the Nazi card means you accused another person of being a Nazi.
J. called Jacques a Jewboy.
You've got to read all the comments, Curtis.
I think you misread all my comments.
I think it's silly to try to make comparisons between Americans and Nazis. It's so overdone.
It's still a bit refreshing to find structural comparisons between Nazism and communism, however. That's fine.
Mostly because it's still fresh.
Comparing the right to Nazism however is a bit dull, and doesn't match, at all. It bothers me a lot because it's so tired.
Let's keep things fresh around here, ok?
A big part of the CwL thread was about freshness. Most people don't know squat about Lyme.
They should, but don't. The disease has very little visibility, unlike those diseases that have been taken up by the Hollywood crowd as causes.
I think Lyme may be Hollywood material, but things have to bubble up for a while. 1% of AMERICANS have Lyme.
Would you like a lime with that, sir?
Making lemons out of Lyme is more or less what I was trying to do.
I did get Jacques to contribute to the Lyme fund. If just another 20 million people knew about Lyme, we could lick it.
5 bucks a pop, and the scientists could crack it, I think.
AIDS has proven to be a much tougher nut to crack. 20 billion a year, and it keep morphing.
Just to be clear -- approximately 1/3 of 1% of Americans have HIV/AIDS.
Three times as many have Lyme Disease.
The funding for Lyme Disease should be 60 billion dollars.
Kirby:
I just now noticed the thread on this post and the personal queries made to me by a clearly passionately incensed Faville.
I think I'll leave to the sensible GM and Brett to manage responses to Faville's challenges, though I might add that I'm not at all homosexually inclined (though I'm sure some dedicated Fraudian should try to convince me of my, um, "resistance" to it), am the father of a son (by a former and non-Catholic marriage, when I was not yet of the faith) and married to a twenty-four yr old (yes, female) former student of mine (thirty-five yrs my junior but an equal in every other way that counts in a marriage), Emmy (we've been together for six yrs now).
While I'm not prepared to say more about my personal life on this blogsite, suffice to say that I don't think AIDS a "divine punishment" any more than condoms are a cure for clearly dangerous sexual promiscuity among heterosexuals and homosexuals.
I've no desire to play misery roulette with Faville (don't know who'd be the loser in this game), though this personal turn in his addresses has me wondering if anything, however intimate, would satisfy.
Jacques and Em sent 25 dollars to the Lyme Foundation. I sent five dollars. I would love it if anyone else sent even a dollar.
American Lyme Disease Foundation, Inc.
PO Box 466
Lyme, CT 06371
I hated sending the five dollars. It meant I had to forego lunch. But I did it, and am thinner for it.
Thanks for the clarifications, Jacques.
I guess unwarranted presumptions about debating foes is a dead-end, no matter who conceives them.
People make a lot of generalizations here about extreme positions, imputing all kinds of peculiar notions to the opposition.
I'm not alone in doing this. I consider it one of Kirby's hallmark provocations, but usually unjustified, even in jest.
A little mutual respect might be in order. But that respect must be earned. I would never call anyone here a Nazi, unless they clearly asked to be.
It struck me that being in a position to "decide" which group of victims is more deserving is a moral dead-end, in the same sense that Hitler created hierarchies of the damned.
I'm potently aware of Lyme Disease. As a devoted fly fisherman, I must be vigilant to guard against catching things from deer ticks, which are plentiful in the bush. One natural advantage I have is that when wearing the rubberized "waders", I have a built-in barrier to "attachment" when walking.
But Curtis, the CDC has just that position. And if they give all the money to one category they are precisely condemning another group by denying money to them.
I have no such power.
Who on earth would listen to me?
If I did have the power, would I distribute the money in relation to the vociferousness of the target group? If I wanted to continue my funding (which every institution needs to do) then of course I probably would.
So if the Lyme group wants lemonade, they have to figure out how to make a bigger public impact.
The only high-placed writer they have is Amy Tan, at least insofar as I am aware of it.
As for me, I don't have the capacity to do anything more than raise a few questions. Jacques and Em sent 25 dollars to Lyme Foundation. I sent five dollars.
I don't see how that is anything like planning a death camp.
Try to think this through. It's true I like to provoke thought. But I don't necessarily want to provoke hysteria.
You compare me with Joseph Mengele and other angels of death simply because I question the funding that doesn't seem to me to be proportionate.
I don't know if the CDC has ever been transparent about why one group gets money, and another doesn't, but if it has been, I have never been able to work it out, any more than I can figure out what the Democrats are doing behind closed doors wrt the massive health care bill.
No one's allowed to see it. And the info is being very tightly guarded. You'd think at least one senator would break ranks and post it online.
I don't think the Republican senators are even allowed to see the bill.
The records of the CDC are equally closed. You just aren't allowed to know why Lyme Disease is not countenanced. It's just not as sexy as some other diseases.
Kirby, fair enough.
Obviously you don't have the power position you posit, through your critical position.
I don't either.
We're arguing about policy, the privilege we have in a democracy with a free press. Thank god for that, I say.
The difference, Kirby, is that the CDC isn't the Office of Racial Extermination. Your argument is backwards. If AIDS is infecting hundreds of millions world-wide, you'd prefer to think that addressing its probable causes and cures is morally repugnant, because AIDS is transmitted sexually, notably between Gay sex partners (though by no means restricted to this occasion). But prurient and vicarious and promiscuous sex isn't bad "because of" diseases. The diseases are opportunistic and scientifically "accidental".
If, suddenly, we began to see a new viral infection passed exclusively between heterosexual couples, would that "prove" that there is a pantheistic force in nature which is "punishing" straight people for having sex? Obviously, you'd disagree.
If I had to choose funding priorities amongst a range of alternatives, I'd certainly give priority to the greatest scourages. Cancer would probably be at the top, heart disease second, obesity and its consequences third, and neurological disorders after that. But these choices don't imply a morality; i.e., I'm not claiming a greater moral "purity" for the victims of cancer, that's nonsense. I'm just addressing a fact. If AIDS research is funded out of proportion to its actual consequences, by the numbers, then you have an argument, and that's exactly how you should press your case. Not by denigrating Gay sex, but insisting upon the necessity for research based on actual numbers.
If Lyme Disease is a relatively trivial problem--by the numbers--it should receive consequently little funding. That's how it works--or should.
Curtis, my argument IS by the numbers. But I don't know the exact numbers. The CDC is about as transparent as the Democrat's insurance plan. Even Republican senators like John McCain (he was on Hannity last night) say that they have not even been allowed to read it. Apparently, Olympia Snow has been permitted to look at a few parts of it, and the Dems have offered her all kinds of deals and bribes if she will vote for it. Lieberman is thinking of filibustering.
But from what I've been able to tell, AIDS funding is about 20 billion dollars. The CDC doesn't fund foreign medical research (AIDS in Africa has a totally different etiology -- much more use of prostitutes, and in S. Africa there is a problem with ganging up on girls and raping them).
But around here the two big pathways for AIDS are anal sex and sharing needles.
Here's the statistical part:
1. AIDS gets 20 billion
2. Lyme gets 6 million (althoguh one congressman named Wolf in Virginia has asked for the amount to go up to 9 million)
This means that Lyme gets about .02 percent of what AIDS gets
However, 1% of Americans have Lyme, and it's growing.
About a .33 percent of Americans have AIDS and it's shrinking.
Sexual diseases receive about half of the CDC's funding. These are preventible, and it would allow for treatment of other problems if people could just contain themselves a little bit. If monks can do it, why do we have to act like monkeys? Meanwhile, there is a meanwhile, in which people think they need drugs and anal sex. (I don't think these are human requirements since I can get along pretty well without either one.)
At any rate, Lyme gets about .01 of the overall budget, which means they get about 1 dollar for every twenty thousand dollars that AIDS gets, even though Lyme affects three times as many people.
But there are other things you have to think about when proportioning money. You'd have to think about the severity of the disease, for instance. Lyme is quite severe if you don't catch it early enough. It can be like having a very bad flu for as long as 15 years. It wipes you out.
AIDS can lead to death, but now, with expensive treatments, it can be arrested. Magic Johnson for instance seems to still be pretty well after ten years. I think he got it from sleeping with thousands of women. If you do that, it can still pass. In unprotected heterosexual intercourse, you have about a 2% chance of catching the disease.
In unprotected anal intercourse, the odds are higher (but I don't know precisely how much).
But then there is also the issue of lobbying. It's not clear to me who's on the panels that decide how the pie gets divided. I'm sure the president has input, and I imagine major senators have input. They need in turn to be responsive to political pressure groups, who will vote them out if they don't get what they want. Doctors on the panels have input. Many doctors refuse to recognize that Lyme is a major problem. They refuse to diagnose it in some cases. I'm not sure what's going on with that -- there is a documentary going around about it, but it hasn't come to the one theatre in this county yet.
Also, there is the visibility of the disease. Probably everyone from 20 up has heard of AIDS, and knows what it is, and how you can get it.
With Lyme, it's far more obscure, even though almost three times as many people have it. Among any three hundred people, you are likely to find one person who has AIDS. In any one hundred people, you are likely to find one person with Lyme.
But they would also be different populations. In the cities, there would be more people with AIDS. In the country, more people with Lyme.
My county doesn't have a single case because we are so high up -- about 2000 ft. up in the valleys, and Lyme doesn't make it through the heavy severe winters.
Down in Connecticut, where it's milder, and susceptible to Atlantic breezes, Lyme is a scourge. You'd think they'd also have more political clout. but they aren't organized, and don't have any kind of powerful national visibility.
Thank you for calming down.
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