Lucrezia Magazine

When a HIV epidemiologist says, "HIV is mostly about people doing stupid things in the pursuit of pleasure or money," it tends to cause a social clang. The wake and smell the coffee title, The Wisdom of Whores (Elisabeth Pisani, Granta Books), promises to remove the veil on HIV and AIDS funding, offering a staggering financial comparison that, along with the absence of a cure or vaccine, can only make one wonder when agencies avoid the issue of sex workers and drug users.

Like most of her colleagues, however, she also quickly realised that "governments don't like spending money on sex workers, gay men and drug addicts". So she put her skills as a former journalist to work, and began producing the sort of reports that persuaded politicians in Washington and the west that it is not "wicked people" but "innocent wives" at risk. "Aids couldn't be about sex and drugs," she explains. "So suddenly it had to be about development, and gender, and blah blah blah." The strategy was more successful than she could ever have imagined. "All these obsessively politically correct things started getting introduced." HIV publications and conferences began devoting more time and attention to issues such as poverty, gender, development, vulnerability, leadership - what Pisani calls "sacred cows" - than to condoms and clean needles. "I'm just waiting for 'climate change and Aids'. (Guardian, 13 May 2008)

She doesn’t have to wait for climate change and AIDS, a professor from the University of New South Wales added climate change to the HIV smorgasbord. Professor of Health and Human Rights, Daniel Tarantola added more problems to HIV:

"Today, additional threats are lurking on the horizon as the global economic situation deteriorates, food scarcity worsens and climate change begins to affect those who were already dependent on survival economies."

There are varying views on HIV/AIDS prevention. No one is close to providing a vaccine, and research hasn't led to any breakthrough treatment that cures the virus. At this point in time, there is a lot of talk, ongoing discussion, and numerous theories about the prognosis of infection throughout the world.Pisani delves deeper, avoiding tremendous generalizations. According to Pisani, there are two distinct AIDS epidemics. In Africa, transmission tends to be via commercial heterosexual sex, whereas the remainder of the world sees infection via drug users, sex workers and gay men. The latter epidemic doesn’t include heterosexuals. This can be a concern because heterosexual people do contract HIV, and many don't contract it via sex workers or intravenous drug use. They are infected via conventional sexual encounters.After more than two decades, HIV can no longer be isolated or categorized in accordance to sexual orientation.Shock journalism and marketing tactics can lead to positive outcomes: increased awareness and ongoing discussion. However, is there such a thing as too much talk, and little action in regard to HIV/AIDS?

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Below:

The Wisdom of Whores

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