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Wah! I wanna it my way





So I'm perusing Wired and come across the headline U.S. Rep Hooted Off AIDS Stage, and read:



"They're expressing themselves and that's their freedom of speech," he [Anthony Fauci] said. "Now they've got to give the secretary his freedom of speech."



It was not to be. [U.S. Secretary of Health] Thompson continued with his speech before stopping several minutes into the protest, by which time about a dozen of the activists had climbed onto the stage with him. When their shouts faded and they retreated to the back of the audience after about 20 minutes, Thompson resumed his speech, only to be drowned out by a second round of booing and screams of "murderer, murderer."
...and I'm left shaking my head in wonder, at the sheer hypocrisy of things, not to mention the whining and crying. Act Up is not one of my favorite activist groups because they are, as a group, assholes. No, that's not sound reasoning, but that's the point. They don't want to discuss an issue. They epitomize the phrase "my way or the highway"; they are right, you are wrong, and shut up, we don't want to hear the argument. In the name of free speech, they stifle free speech, or -- more to the point -- the free exchange of ideas.



And in this instance it is just such crap. What Act Up, and AIDS activists of their ilk, consistently seem to ask for is a solution that does not involve their having to change. Not their lifestyle, not their habits...not a thing. AIDS remains primarily a sexually transmitted disease, and like all STD's it's spread can be contained by modifying your sexual behavior. No, that doesn't mean going straight, because straights can catch and spreads AIDS quite easily, thank you. It does mean showing some concern over who you're sleeping with, maybe not fucking around all over town, etc.



I love their T-shirt slogan, "Silence=Death," because that's exactly what early AIDS activists called for. When health care professionals tried to speak up about a strange new epidemic hitting the gay community in San Francisco, they were in essence silenced. Surprise, silence did indeed equal death.



Hope is where you can find it, though, and this program offers some.



A major five-year programme to develop the "holy grail" of HIV vaccine research has been launched by a team led by the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative (IAVI). Their goal is a vaccine that stimulates the production of antibodies to destroy the virus before it can take hold, as well as triggering the immune system to kill infected cells.
More power to 'em. Unless, of course, they offend Act Up, or don't perform to their specs. In which case, I'm sure that, once more, silence will equal death.

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