The more things change . . .
Today is Monday, 5 June 2006.
“On June 5, 1981, in the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report from the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, brief note was taken of a peculiar cluster of pneumonia cases in five otherwise healthy gay men.” (The New York Times, June 5, 2006)
This is the first official mention of HIV/AIDS, originally labeled GRID (Gay Related Immune Deficiency). It is now apparent that HIV/AIDS was not “the gay plague,” a scourge of God ridding the world of sinful homosexuals, but a disease originating in sub-Saharan chimpanzees, which crossed over to humans ca. 1930.
Tragically, the combination of the first medical notice of this disease being among gay males, combined with the virulent homophobia rampant in the United States Empire/United and Subject States (USE/USSA), plus the early appearance of the disease among another ostracized sub-group, intravenous drug users, meant that pitifully insufficient funding was for too long committed to the development of prevention and treatment.
The result was the worldwide infection of more than 65 million human beings, and more than 25 million deaths (U.N. estimates).
Now, as the disease ravages sub-Saharan Africa and Asia to a degree unimagined in the USE/USSA, the white supremacist racism engrained in European culture (and of course the USE/USSA is a Euro-dominated nation), in tandem with predatory imperialist capitalism, has led to a new colonialist exploitation, as aid lags and pharmaceutical giants battle to gouge the suffering masses.
"Plus ca change, plus c'est la meme chose." ("The more things change, the more they remain the same." (Alphonse Karr, Les Guepes, 1849)
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Today in History
1898 – Spanish poet and dramatist Federico Garcia Lorca born; assassinated by Franco’s Fascists on 19 August 1936
1967 – Six Day War begins
1968 – Robert F. Kennedy shot; dies on 6 June
“On June 5, 1981, in the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report from the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, brief note was taken of a peculiar cluster of pneumonia cases in five otherwise healthy gay men.” (The New York Times, June 5, 2006)
This is the first official mention of HIV/AIDS, originally labeled GRID (Gay Related Immune Deficiency). It is now apparent that HIV/AIDS was not “the gay plague,” a scourge of God ridding the world of sinful homosexuals, but a disease originating in sub-Saharan chimpanzees, which crossed over to humans ca. 1930.
Tragically, the combination of the first medical notice of this disease being among gay males, combined with the virulent homophobia rampant in the United States Empire/United and Subject States (USE/USSA), plus the early appearance of the disease among another ostracized sub-group, intravenous drug users, meant that pitifully insufficient funding was for too long committed to the development of prevention and treatment.
The result was the worldwide infection of more than 65 million human beings, and more than 25 million deaths (U.N. estimates).
Now, as the disease ravages sub-Saharan Africa and Asia to a degree unimagined in the USE/USSA, the white supremacist racism engrained in European culture (and of course the USE/USSA is a Euro-dominated nation), in tandem with predatory imperialist capitalism, has led to a new colonialist exploitation, as aid lags and pharmaceutical giants battle to gouge the suffering masses.
"Plus ca change, plus c'est la meme chose." ("The more things change, the more they remain the same." (Alphonse Karr, Les Guepes, 1849)
______________________________________
Today in History
1898 – Spanish poet and dramatist Federico Garcia Lorca born; assassinated by Franco’s Fascists on 19 August 1936
1967 – Six Day War begins
1968 – Robert F. Kennedy shot; dies on 6 June
posted by HH at 9:21 AM
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