Re: Bush's AIDS relief promises and the reality...
UTD, I don't get it. In the beginning you post that Bush isn't doing enough, then you post he is giving out an additional $674 million.
My points are:
1) you could spend the whole frickin GDP and you might not solve much.
2) Bush has made the worlds largest commitment to AIDS relief.
3) I think practical problems on the ground are the bottle neck, not the funding.
4) Clinton blew it, because the epidemic was out of control by the year 2000, and expenditures will be exponentially higher now, compared to the opportunity thoughout the 90's.
5) Much of the emergency relief is for side effects of Aids, such as poor harvests because of a lack of workers. These secondary effects could have been avoided if large scale action had been take much earlier.
6) Ignorance, incompetance, corruption, slowness and denial have been as big a set of barriers as the liberal touchstones of funding and medicine. The arguement over absinence is a red herring, but ANY epidemiologist will tell you that sex is the vector, and until behaviors change the epidemic will speed ahead.
7) It is entirely possible that we have not yet seen the very worst of this disease. The melt down scenario is that the AIDS virus mutates and becomes drug resistant. If drugs are not employed strictly, but flung around without sticking to a precise treatment plan, a much worse bug could appear. This is not just science fiction. AIDS mutates quickly. If the infrastucture for treatment is not inplace before drugs are prescribed, then the world is just asking for this to happen. The worst case is that an AIDS virus that is spread though much more casual contact could erupt. That is why it is important to take things sequentially and not to throw money and drugs at the problem. We are talking about billions of deaths if this worst case erupts....