AIDS as a Security Threat

[120mm]

I recently "defunded" one of the non-profit groups I've contributed to for years. They are currently engaged in supplying and administering AIDS suppression drugs in continental Africa, which I think is a destructive practice. I will, like Babe Ruth "calling his shot", say right now, that suppressing AIDS symptoms and development without changing sexual mores will produce a worse, more virulent AIDS epidemic.

I suspect giving AIDS drugs to a prostitute or to a man who frequents prostitutes so they can live longer and spread more HIV cannot be justified no matter what set of morals and ethics you can name.

[Tom Odom]

Good column this AM from the LA Times by way of the SWJ Editorial round up.

It brings up the social mores issue as part of the puzzle.

Africa's AIDS puzzle

The key to combating a disease still killing millions is to take a human approach.
By Jonny Steinberg March 5, 2008

Even though it is hardly fashionable today to regard plagues as God-sent, the African AIDS pandemic is a catastrophe of such massive proportions that we have to struggle not to think about it in a religious way. More than 2 million people are perishing each year; millions more will die if they do not receive treatment. Out of this colossal theft of human beings, we have a great need to tell a story about this epidemic that ends with redemption.

In our secular age, though, the agent of the redemption we conjure is not a god but Science with a capital S. In this case, Science's lodestar is antiretroviral treatment, or ART, which, if made accessible across the continent, has the potential to save millions of lives.

Great redemptive hope has been invested in ART. The distinguished African historian John Iliffe, for instance, has suggested that the drugs will inspire Africans to challenge the dire leadership that has afflicted the continent since independence in the 1960s, thus heralding an era of renewal in African public life. We watch with keen interest as social movements rally around treatment, in the hope that they will elevate African countries to new heights.

[Tom Odom]

I cannot understand how the Pope and the Church continue to hold to dogma when it is destructive. The arrogance in this is stunning, a 21st Century religious equivalent of "let them eat cake."

Tom

Pope visits Africa, reaffirms ban on condoms

CNN) -- Pope Benedict XVI refused Wednesday to soften the Vatican's ban on condom use as he arrived in Africa for his first visit to the continent as pope.

He landed in Cameroon, the first stop on a trip that will also take him to Angola.

Sub-Saharan Africa has been hit harder by AIDS and HIV than any other region of the world, according to the United Nations and World Health Organization. There has been fierce debate between those who advocate the use of condoms to help stop the spread of the epidemic and those who oppose it.

The pontiff reiterated the Vatican's policy on condom use as he flew from Rome to Yaounde, the capital of Cameroon, CNN Vatican analyst John Allen said.

[Schmedlap]

I'm not a Catholic, but I do not view this as arrogance. I view it as quite the opposite. If one believes that God is sovereign and that something violates His word, then it is arrogant to think that "well, he obviously didn't consider this circumstance - God must have made a mistake." I understand the concern about the current suffering of many and the potential spread of that suffering to others, but if one takes the eternal view, as the Pope apparently does, and views current events in that light, then it is a difference of priorities, not arrogance. Ask him his rationale and I suspect he would say that he would prefer that they suffer from HIV, but go to heaven, rather than use condoms and go to Hell. Again, I'm not a Catholic.

[Tom Odom]

I'm not a Catholic, but I do not view this as arrogance. I view it as quite the opposite. If one believes that God is sovereign and that something violates His word, then it is arrogant to think that "well, he obviously didn't consider this circumstance - God must have made a mistake." I understand the concern about the current suffering of many and the potential spread of that suffering to others, but if one takes the eternal view, as the Pope apparently does, and views current events in that light, then it is a difference of priorities, not arrogance. Ask him his rationale and I suspect he would say that he would prefer that they suffer from HIV, but go to heaven, rather than use condoms and go to Hell. Again, I'm not a Catholic.

Perhaps, but somehow I doubt that God said don't use condoms. Rather the Church did. Eternal views aside, the close view is very different.

Tom

[marct]

Ask him his rationale and I suspect he would say that he would prefer that they suffer from HIV, but go to heaven, rather than use condoms and go to Hell. Again, I'm not a Catholic.

Perhaps, but somehow I doubt that God said don't use condoms. Rather the Church did. Eternal views aside, the close view is very different.

I'm not sure I even want to think about the theological implications here !

[Tom Odom]

I'm not sure I even want to think about the theological implications here !

No kidding. But I do care about the real effects on the ground. HIV education has been struggle even w/o theology due to cultural parameters. Africa is considered the Catholic Church's best avenue for expansion. This would be one way to self-limit that expansion.

Tom