Originally posted by Sioubisae
Nonetheless, I don't think you all understand what it was like in our community during the late 70's to mid-80's, things like our official greeting turning into "Have you gotten tested lately?" or watching 225 pound men turn into 110 lb weaklings or having a cold and being scared to go outside your door cause you don' t know which of your neighbors might have AIDS and die from germs carried by you.
You should keep in mind that the gay community has the highest percentage of AIDs as well as the lowest percentage. Gay men might be extremely susceptible to the virus, but lesbians are the least affected group of people.

One of my professors used that often to counter the people who would claim that this was God's punishment for homosexuals. Homosexual women are the least affected!

Anyway, I remember when the AIDs scare started. People really knew NOTHING about it. There were parents pulling kids out of school because they found out some other kid was HIV+ from a blood transfusion. People didn't know how it killed or if it even existed. (Keep in mind that when you have AIDs, your immune system is horribly depressed. Thus, what you're really dying of is things like the common cold and pneumonia.) Where do you direct your funding when it's something that's brand new?

If any of you have studied any biology, you know that one of the reasons AIDs is such an epidemic is because of the absolutely brilliant design (from a biological standpoint) of this pathogen. It has a long incubation time allow people to infect others before they even know they've been infected. Why aren't people complaining about no Ebola funding? Ebola is actually a much more virulent disease than AIDs. However, it kills so fast that it's not the same threat that AIDs is. I really think that only people who do not fully understand how the virus operates on a biological level could make accusations such as "Reagan didn't put enough funding into AIDs".