AIDS – Transcending Time
By Charles “Chaz” Hobbs – If one of age can remember back to the 1980’s you will remember the scores of news reports that caught our attention about the new, “Gay Plague,” that hit America’s homosexual community by storm. The Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome, or commonly known as AIDS, was the penultimate disease that ravages one’s ability to fight off any opportunistic infection. The rate of death then was 100% and anyone afflicted with this so called scourge was certain to meet their maker when they were diagnosed.
The first confirmed cases in the United States occurred in June of 1981 and the number of AIDS related deaths skyrocketed throughout the 80’s. This was followed by substantial declines in new cases and deaths in the late 1990’s.
I can remember this era because it brought out the worst in America – public displays of extreme prejudices against homosexuals – discrimination against certain immigrant groups who everyone assumed had the disease (i.e. Haitians) – and utter injustices against anyone else whose positive status was publicly known. It was a time of fear in our country, and moreover for those individuals who were infected and succumbed to death as hermits without dignity.
Fast forward to the decade of 2000-2010 and the disease has come back with a vengeance. The greatest impact of the disease is among men who have sex with men (MSM), and amongst Blacks and Latinos. Break this down even further and Black and Latina women encompass the most newly infected individuals with the Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) or the virus which replicates to AIDS. This indeed is caused by the high-risk behavior of Black and Latino men who subsequently contracted HIV by Bi-Sexual/Homosexual activity (i.e. willingly, prison rape) who then in turn return to their quasi-heterosexual lifestyles and infect their female partners. For comparison – in the 1980’s nearly all of the AIDS cases were those of white homosexual – middle-class men, or IV Drug Users (IDU). Fast forward thirty years later and the racial/ethnic demographic has done a 360 degree turn. The disease now is disproportionately affecting our community like leprosy of the Old Testament, and it’s not stopping or coming to a slow halt.
Many of us can remember a particular day when we were watching TV and it impacted our world view. One of my memories was when screen legend Rock Hudson succumbed to the disease. Here was a man’s-man who played various movie roles with great virility and machismo. How could this be? Next was the death of Ryan White, a young white male who transmitted the disease via a blood transfusion. Poor kid! Finally, there was the revelation by Earvin ‘Magic’ Johnson who extolled to the world that he was, retiring from the Los Angeles Lakers due to his contraction of HIV.
After Magic’s revelation many people wondered if he grazed on the other side of the fence. Magic claimed to be heterosexual, so his infection with the disease opened up a Pandora’s Box of populations that could be infected outside of the normal cases.
Take a look at the staggering statistics – according to the Center for Disease Control (CDC) over 1.3 million adults and adolescents in the U.S. have either been diagnosed with HIV – have AIDS – or have not been diagnosed (meaning infected but not tested). To dissect this for the Black community it shows that our people account for 52% of new HIV diagnoses and over 48% of AIDS diagnoses. Furthermore, 55% of Black men have become infected with HIV by virtue of male-to-male sexual contact, and 77% of Black women diagnosed with AIDS became infected through heterosexual contact. One doesn’t need to be a molecular biologist to do the math, and come to the only conclusion that I could intelligently find. We are killing each other! To go even further one only needs to traverse across the Atlantic Ocean and over 23 million of our brethren in Sub-Saharan Africa are infected with HIV. Is the diseases purpose finally being fulfilled? Hmm….
Two weeks ago former Reagan appointee in 1981, Surgeon General, C. Everett Koop stated at the National Press Club that, “AIDS is a forgotten epidemic, as it no longer is on the public’ radar screen and the results will be deadly.” I share his sentiments as he has seen the disease from its embryonic stages and the devastation that it has caused many a people. His closing mantra at the event was, “Never, never, never, never give up.”
That mindset has continued every year since 1988 with the World AIDS Day on December 1st. The purpose of the event is about raising money for research, increasing awareness, fighting prejudices, and improving education. The theme for World AIDS Day 2010 is, ‘Universal Access and Human Rights.’ Global leaders have pledged to work towards universal access to HIV and AIDS treatment (prolonging life), prevention and care (education), and the protection of human rights (discriminatory practices against those who have disclosed their status). All three of those components are vital to reducing the spread of this disease. What does that look like on the grassroots level? Promising; but yet a day late and a dollar short.
Our communities are in a crisis. Immediate support is needed from the highest levels of local, state, and federal government to combat the further spread of this pandemic. We are beyond rhetoric, we know the dynamics of the disease, and how one is infected. Some schools of thought say that this is a disease of choice – meaning if someone knows the ramifications of their behavior – then so be it. Of course we can’t subscribe to that mentality. We would then be knowingly committing genocide.
But what path should we take? I, like you have no definitive answer. At the present rate of the decimation of our people, only time will tell if we have heeded the advice of the experts, and grassroots level activists. It’s one of those, “Look to your brother to the right and to your sister to the left; if you all are still standing five years later then we’ll know we are on our way to combating this disease.”
Get tested. Educate yourself. Know the truth. In doing so you may save one of your brothers or sisters lives!
