Skip to main content

Hey, you, give us more!





Call for action, and access, on AIDS



A sense that the worst plague in human history remains out of control dominated talk on Sunday as 15,000 scientists, health workers and activists gathered here for the opening of the world’s biggest AIDS conference.
The article goes on to, of course, say that the wealthy countries have to give more. More money, more free drugs, more of everything. There's even an idiot statement that AIDS could create "potential havens for terrorists."



Give more. Give more. Give more. Meanwhile, no one wants to treat this like a plague. It's a political football.



And as for giving more, as for making drugs more accessble, was it just yesterday that Glaxo -- and others -- was coerced into granting licenses to a South African producer of generics? No, that was September (!) 2001, and that was six months after concessions had already been made.



Give more, give more, damnit you rich boy, give more! Drugs grow on trees, see, and all the billions spent in research is irrelevant. You, you pharmaceutical companies, you have no right to recoup any of your costs. Society demands your sacrifice. And if you go out of business, oh so sorry, it was all worth it.



Phase 1 for controlling this plague means treating it as a plague! Sorry, but that means quarantine, so that those infected can't infect anyone else. But, no, can't do that. That might interfere with a lifestyle that puts you at risk. Can't have that. That's too much like imposing your morality on someone, and that's much worse that lying bed while your body betrays you and slowly kills you.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Not the Hero We Deserve, But the Hero We Need

The Dark Knight is the best film I’ve seen in years. Not just the best “superhero” film, but the best film of any type. It’s not perfect, not quite a masterpiece, but it’s flaws are, to me, tiny and overwhelmed by the time the film ends. While relatively bloodless, it is consistently brutal, not just in what it depicts but in the themes that drive it. TDK is a film for adults, please leave the kids at home. Let’s deal with those “flaws” first, the largest being the character Rachel Dawes . In Batman Begins , I blamed Katie Holmes . Her acting was weak, to say the least, which is regrettable in that who she is and what she says and does are important to the film. Critics agreed and either for that or other reasons, Katie was replaced by Maggie Gyllenhaal , who is a better actress. Yet here she’s weak, real weak. Maybe it’s the character, not the actress, which is frustrating because Rachel is a pivotal character. The film,...
1 comment
Read more

John Wick: Chapter 4

No sense in playing coy, this is a great film. I’ve seen it twice and while I don’t quite love it in the way I love the first, original John Wick , it’s my #2. It’s a little overlong, has some wasted space and time, has one absolutely pointless and useless character, and generally ignores the realities of firefights, falling, getting shot, hit, etc. All that notwithstanding, it’s a great action flick, has a genuine emotional core, and is well worth your time if you’re into that sort of thing. Like I am. Summary: John Wick (Keanu Reeves), last seen saying he was fed up with the High Table, goes to war to obtain his freedom. Some of the most incredible action scenes ever filmed ensue, culminating in a very satisfactory finale and a devastating post-credit scene. The first Wick film was a surprise hit. It was a simple, straight-forward tale of vengeance told in a simple, straight-forward manner. Where it stood out was its devotion to human stunt work, on exploiting long camera shots that ...
Post a Comment
Read more

DVD: The Day the Earth Stood Still (2008)

Awful. The film is an environmentalist wacko wet dream. No one else could like this thing. I’m trying to think of something positive and all I can come up with is how positively awful it is. The original The Day the Earth Stood Still is a science fiction masterpiece. In it, Klaatu comes to Earth with a simple message: Do what you want among yourselves and on your planet. But if you attempt to export your violent way to the stars, Gort and his friends will hit you with so many lefts you’ll beg for a right. (Gort being the cosmic version of Chuck Norris, you see.) The ultimate warning was that we needed to change our violent ways if we expected to be accepted among the stars. In this remake, the aliens are environmental busy-bodies who have bought into the entire notion that we puny little humans are capable of destroying the planet. Therefore, we must be eliminated so that the planet, for God knows what reason, can try again. To count the ways in which this film makes no sense ...
1 comment
Read more