AIDS: The global morality disease
BackIf it weren't for what all goes on in Iraq, the Sudan or Israel, our attention would likely be directed to Thailand, for a few days, at least.
There, in the capital of Bangkok, the 15th International AIDS Conference took place this week. Besides being a terrible and vicious disease that stalks humankind, AIDS has another distinctive mark. It mixes medicine and morality in a way that easily can leave you confused.
Even though there's enough criticism at this conference to go around - demonstrators march outside calling for free condoms, generic anti-AIDS drugs and sterile needles for drug addicts - no one should be surprised that the United States takes the brunt of most of it.
France accuses the United States of coercing poor countries into giving up their rights to make the generic drugs, presumably in favor of the drug companies that put hefty price tags on their name-brand products.
Then U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan stood up Tuesday to appeal to the United States to take a leadership role in the global effort to overcome and control the terrible disease. This, after even critics have admitted that no other country has matched the United States for such efforts and, particularly, the Bush administration for its five-year, $15 billion program to, at least, try to fight AIDS to a standstill in Africa and elsewhere. But, that's politics and we'll leave that right there.
And it may have been political when U.S. Rep. Barbara Lee, D-Calif., joined the demonstrators outside to condemn what is seen as the administration's insistence on an abstinence-first policy.
ŒŒIn an age where 5 million people are newly infected each year and women and girls too often do not have the choice to abstain, an abstinence-until-marriage program is not only irresponsible, it¹s really inhumane,¹¹ Lee said. That's an interesting statement, as much for what it conceals as what it reveals.
It conceals the fact that some who support a condoms-for-all approach can't be bothered to consider how many of those 5 million are without a choice to abstain. It reveals a strange morality behind their thinking.
To understand this, know that the debate between the two basic strategies is called "CNN vs. ABC," or "Condoms, Needles, Negotiating skills" against "Abstinence, Being faithful, then Condoms."
And the differences couldn't be clearer. While the "ABC" strategy frankly seeks a basis in individual strength of character, the "CNN" approach begins with little effort to address character at all. Despite the fact that AIDS, for as long as we have known about it, has borne a moral component for the primary ways it has been passed from sufferer to sufferer - sex and drug abuse - the "CNN" proponents believe it can be overcome by factoring out morality.
Thus, they promote clean syringes and plentiful condoms as the only weapons to defeat a disease that has been stopped more decisively by culture, choices and character.
The delineation is not that sharp, however. One has to wonder why the promotion of a moral component - abstinence and drug-free living - was dismissed out of hand by most attendees at the conference in favor of condoms and clean needles, which not only offer no guarantee of stopping AIDS, but can be seen as encouraging the kind of behavior that spreads it.
It is hard not to suspect an undercurrent of moral bankruptcy, a fear of introducing personal responsibility in favor of a risky strategy that makes no decisive call on anyone to consider his or her behavior - even if a different strategy must be used in the circumstances which Lee used as a reason to throw a blanket over the promotion of abstinence as "inhumane."
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