As most know, yesterday was April Fools day, and in that spirit, different HIV/AIDS activist met with some nominal supporters within Congress that have recently backed a cut of funding to the cause. They presented these officials, including Senator John Kerry, Senator Arlen Specter, Representative Chaka Fattah, with fake 9 billion dollar checks to show these congressmen that AIDS is no joke. The reason the funding was cut, based on the words of these offices, lies in the recession. However, the activist tryed to point out in their chants, “AIDS is not in recession! Teach Kerry a lesson!”
While a lot of government funding has been “nickeled and dimed” (according to Senator Kerry), a lot of AIDS supports see that this is an issue that is not able to recover from a lack of funding -even in a recession. It is an issue today that is pretty much lose-lose. The government had to decide which groups lost money, and AIDS support fell into that bracket.
On an unrelated note, I would be remiss to leave out that today is Autism Awareness Day. It is a neurological disorder that plagues an estimated 1 in 110 children in our country. Be sure to the check into Autism Speaks, and organization built to raise money and awareness for this disease.
Rhetoric1302-007 
That is a very smart idea on their part, but there are so many support groups and activists who wants aids from the government, and AIDS support people cannot be the only group that the government can fund. It’s sad, but what’s the government going to do about it? Spend millions of dollars on researching how to cure AIDS so that people can go off and have more unprotected sex?
Comment by sunglee91 — April 2, 2010 @ 3:44 pm |
This is in more of a response to sunglee’s post, what about all the children that are born with AIDS? Did they go out and have unprotected sex coming out of the womb? I see this as research for all the people that never had a choice in the matter. The children, rape victims, and people who were just not told that their partner has AIDS. They are the ones that need the funding so that they don’t have to live with AIDS beyond their own choice.
Comment by jkaplan7 — April 2, 2010 @ 4:45 pm |
I would be curious to see the other side of this issue. How efficiently does the HIV/AIDS programs spend their money? I’m not dissing anyone, but overall, the issue is just depressing.
Comment by ptslaughter — April 2, 2010 @ 5:59 pm |