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Chickenhawk wrote:

I wonder if changes in health education has made any difference in those numbers.

I believe it has.
I can't prove it, but I suspect health education has increased the condom use rate, especially in high risk groups.
What I believe we need to work on though is the other vector, IV drug use. I think that clean needles are still too difficult to come by. Sure, it would be nice if they just didn't do drugs, but since people do use IV drugs, until we can figure out a way to effectively drastically reduce such use - clean needles must be readily available for those who will use IV drugs whether they have a clean needle or not.

Last edited by resedit (2008-08-02 8:08 pm)

Chickenhawk wrote:

resedit wrote:

Chickenhawk wrote:

I wonder if changes in health education has made any difference in those numbers.

I believe it has.
I can't prove it, but I suspect health education has increased the condom use rate, especially in high risk groups.
What I believe we need to work on though is the other vector, IV drug use. I think that clean needles are still too difficult to come by. Sure, it would be nice if they just didn't do drugs, but since people do use IV drugs, until we can figure out a way to effectively drastically reduce such use - clean needles must be readily available for those who will use IV drugs whether they have a clean needle or not.

That's not what I was talking about.

They said the changes were in the way the counted, and the statistical record-keeping and did not reflect an actual increase in cases.

The method of counting since the early days of the epidemic has varied greatly from state to state.  For example, Pennsylvania mandating confidential reporting of names of HIV patients 6 years ago, but the bulk of cases (something like 85%) are in Philadelphia county, and the city refused to comply so there were all sorts of court crap.  Previous to this there was NO reporting at all of HIV cases -- hence no statistics, making it very hard to figure out how much money was needed from federal Ryan White programs.  The thinking is that by mandating the use of name reporting it will discourage actual testing for HIV due to stigmatization of the disease.  And when someone isn't tested we all know it just spreads the disease, and it also costs society more money because these infected people suddenly show up in the ER with 2 t-cells instead of commencing treatment at higher lab numbers when the costs are much less (not that it's a cheap disease to treat but I digresss).

Anyway, I know this is just a local example because it's where I live, and I have many friends that work in advocacy positions, but Philadelphia finally started name reporting either this year or last.

Look, this is a disease with lots of social stigma, so it should surprise no one that it's very difficult to get a handle on the actual numbers of infected individuals.

I'll go further and make this thread more fun though -- while Bush has been pumping money into AIDS programs in Africa he's completely flat-funded domestic HIV/AIDS programs for 7.5 years, and now we see that more people need treatment provided by even less money.  Now someone please explain the sense in this  -- I'd really love to hear it.

I will be happy to comment on other issues of prevention, but you might be interested in looking at the most recent CDC infection reports that show something like a 30% annual increase in the 13-24 age group in minority populations, notably African American and Asians.  And of course it's well known that African American women have been the hugest portion of newly infected for years now.

For the most part the gay, middle/upper class white boys learned their lesson in the 80's/90's and at least have more or less stable infection rates.

How many billions should the US be spending on a disease that currently effects 3/10th of 1% of our population and 5/10th of 1% of the world population?

Farmerkev wrote:

How many billions should the US be spending on a disease that currently effects 3/10th of 1% of our population and 5/10th of 1% of the world population?

Effect some affection, you heartless man! AIDS affects us all.

Last edited by jerwin (2008-08-03 12:06 am)

Farmerkev wrote:

How many billions should the US be spending on a disease that currently effects 3/10th of 1% of our population and 5/10th of 1% of the world population?

In other words, smurf them, and let them die.

Graphic Autist wrote:

Farmerkev wrote:

How many billions should the US be spending on a disease that currently effects 3/10th of 1% of our population and 5/10th of 1% of the world population?

In other words, smurf them, and let them die.

The NIH budget per disease
http://www.nih.gov/news/fundingresearchareas.htm
and the leading causes of death
http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/deaths.htm

It's estimated 12% of the world's population is malnourished and is the cause of 5 million child deaths per year. The US will spend 2 billion on it this year http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/N30428524.htm
that's less than our AIDS budget.

Educate yourself and come back for an adult conversation.
We'll talk about how much 1 disease should be funded over other needs.

res is right. Relatively speaking, AIDS is cake to cure - just find a vaccine. You don't have to solve the drug addictions or African rape cultures that make AIDS a problem - just solve the virus problem.  Malnutrition is the end result of a  lot of very difficult (and expensive) problems with no easily distributable cure.

Tallgeese wrote:

res is right. Relatively speaking, AIDS is cake to cure - just find a vaccine. You don't have to solve the drug addictions or African rape cultures that make AIDS a problem - just solve the virus problem.  Malnutrition is the end result of a  lot of very difficult (and expensive) problems with no easily distributable cure.

Rez is wrong, we've spent many billions on an AIDS cure and we will spend many billions more I'm afraid, it's a terribly tricky bastard. Someday we might find a cure, I hope so anyway but realistically it might never happen.
The question though is how much we spend now, today and what is "underfunded".
AIDS is only one small killer among all the others and the health killers are just one part of all the things money needs spent on.
Sure, somebody is reading this right now and getting ready to quip about the money wasted in Iraq.
Money we didn't have and borrowed and that is causing us economic problems.
The same arguments though can be made about childhood leukemia, the millions starving around the world, the millions suffering from mental illness and thousands of other great needs.
It's easy to sit back and say we need to spend more for this heart string tugger but it's not so easy to take that money from another cause and that's what we're forced to do. For any given year the govt only has so much it can borrow and spend.
Prioritize, it's all we can do.
So, how many billion should be spent on AIDS, a problem that effects a tiny percentage?
Yes, it's terrible for those it does. All the other diseases and problems are terrible for those they effect too.

jerwin wrote:

Can we solve the problem of malnourishment without expensive farm subsidies?

You could come up with some more money there, depends on what you want to cut.
If you want to keep conservation programs you're talking about 7 or 8% of the Ag budget (9% of the budget total is for price supports and direct payments), 73% of the budget is already spent on food and nutrition.
Current 5 year funding for food and nutrition is 289 billion for the ag department.

Farmerkev wrote:

jerwin wrote:

Can we solve the problem of malnourishment without expensive farm subsidies?

You could come up with some more money there, depends on what you want to cut.
If you want to keep conservation programs you're talking about 7 or 8% of the Ag budget (9% of the budget total is for price supports and direct payments), 73% of the budget is already spent on food and nutrition.
Current 5 year funding for food and nutrition is 289 billion for the ag department.

$50 billion a year? AIDS funding for 2009 is $24.1 billion.

jerwin wrote:

Chickenhawk wrote:

jerwin wrote:

Can we solve the problem of malnourishment without expensive farm subsidies?

Doctors w/o borders invented this peanut butter compound with enough nutrients to keep children healthy past the most dangerous point for the first couple years of their life.

Peanut allergens might cause problems, though.

Food allergies are actually quite rare in the developing world.
Here's the stuff http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plumpy%27nut