THE UNDENIABLE TRUTH OF ANNIE & MICHAEL: AIDS in Africa

I debated with myself about writing the words “AIDS in Africa” in the title of this piece. After all, many of you still believe AIDS has nothing to do with you, and most of you believe South Africa has nothing at all to do with you. Of course that is a misconception. AIDS is a true pandemic, and a pandemic by its very nature has to do with you. It is a universal threat and an insult to humankind. It has been such for decades now. How many decades we do not know. But it is the immediacy of the global prevalence that we must confront today.

Annie Lennox, well known to many for her award-winning music, has spent the past few years bringing new awareness to the plight of South Africa, as it relates to AIDS. Michael Kearns, the Hollywood film and stage actor who was among the first to come forward as gay and HIV positive, way back when, recently travelled to South Africa. Kearns is an activist in the truest sense of the word. Today, he uses his sheer will and his understanding of the disease to grapple with it, fight it and influence you and me to do likewise.

Kearns has a way of infusing his writing with the singular grit of the five senses. Reading his words, one can see, hear, taste, feel and definitely smell the impending death among South Africans who struggle daily with AIDS. How intense their struggle really is is exemplified by one stunning statistic: At the end of 2007, there were approximately 5.7 million people living with HIV in South Africa, and almost 1,000 AIDS deaths occurring every day, according to the UNAIDS 2008 Report on the global AIDS epidemic. Kearns and his 14-year-old daughter journeyed to South Africa to “investigate, discover, be surprised and be of service,” he writes. The result is eloquently documented.

I grew up with Michael until my age of 15. We lived on the same block in the middle of middle America in the middle of the 20th century. He was an exception to all of the rules of suburban Missouri. He still is. Recently, Michael and I had dinner together in New Orleans. It was the first time we had seen each other in 40 years. If the years are written in my eyes, Michael still generates Hollywood handsome. And when he speaks of his travels to South Africa, his eyes show fury and frustration. Then you read his writing and you see how present AIDS still is on earth. A sample:

If you’ve ever smelled death, you’ll agree with me that it has a distinct smell, the way cinnamon or rain has a distinct smell. I smell death. A small boy is in one of the rooms with his grandmother, changing out of his school uniform, like a toy soldier. His mother is in the adjacent room, swaddled in blankets, dying. Virtually paralyzed, she wants to say hello even though she barely has the stamina to lift her head. I hold her hand, warm to the touch.

Meanwhile, Annie Lennox trudges the hills of South Africa to smell the same struggle. Lennox heard Nelson Mandela refer to the AIDS crisis in Africa as “genocide,” and from there she has never taken a break from her humanitarian efforts. Today, she is actively involved with the Treatment Action Campaign (TAC), the most powerful HIV/AIDS lobbying group in Africa. Recently, Lennox was instrumental in starting SING, an organization that raises funds and awareness. Last year, she assembled 23 female vocalists to record “Sing.” Watch the result now:

Mandela said, "Let us use the universal language of music, to sing out our message around the world." And I would say, simply use your voice in any way you can to eradicate AIDS. Sing out, speak out, write out, holler out, wail if you must, or holler at the moon. Do what it takes. Let Annie and Michael be your mentors. Every voice counts.

Why Sometimes It Is Better to Say Nothing at All

(Photo from BushLegacyTour.com)

We bloggers and citizen journalists are sometimes criticized for distorting facts or misquoting sources. No such luck today, blogophiles (that’s you). Today I quote directly from the mouth of President George W. Bush, specifically from text released by the White House from an interview the President granted his sister, Doro. He said this – I swear:

“I’d like to be a President (known) as somebody who liberated 50 million people and helped achieve peace; that focused on individuals rather than process; that rallied people to serve their neighbor; that led an effort to help relieve HIV/AIDS and malaria on places like the continent of Africa; that helped elderly people get prescription drugs and Medicare as a part of the basic package; that came to Washington, D.C., with a set of political statements and worked as hard as I possibly could to do what I told the American people I would do.”

Swiss cheese, I say. So many holes are there in this statement that we may just slap some ham on it, find some rye and call it lunch. Please. Let’s deconstruct the President’s most foolish 95 words, shall we?

For those unfamiliar with PEPFAR, it was the President’s initiative called President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief. Read all about it if you wish, but as you peruse the propaganda, know this: The plan had two fatal flaws. First, it specified that fully one-third of its funding had to be used to promote sexual abstinence. How’s that working for us, Mr. President? Well, as usual, the numbers tell the story: A study published in the British Medical Journal (Aug. 2007) reveals that school abstinence programs “do not decrease or exacerbate sexual risk among youths” in US schools. One wonders if sexual risk among the same subjects might have decreased with some type of safer sex training. But then, there was no line item built into the PEPFAR budget for that.

While PEPFAR spent valuable days, hours, weeks, years trying to validate its own questionable moral code, the Bush administration skimped so heavily on health funding over the past eight years that sex education is almost non-existent. And all the while, minority populations steadily increased their levels of new HIV infections, with Mr. President doing virtually nothing to address the issue.

So, while it is true that PEPFAR has provided HIV retroviral drugs for nearly a million people worldwide, the pandemic was much broader and faster moving that the administration’s willingness to truly fight it with all possible artillery. PEPFAR also stipulated that the only drugs it would distribute anywhere would be those that had been approved by the Food and Drug administration. The FDA is not always the most reliable source for such approval, since their fast track system sometimes puts drugs in the marketplace before they are fully investigated. What about drugs that have shown similar effectiveness, but in testing in other countries? Some are less expensive, but not qualified under PEPFAR.

Additionally, PEPFAR has been slow to embrace financial support of generic drugs. Instead the U.S. government has favored the support of brand name drugs, which are much more expensive. According to the Report to Congress by the U.S. Global AIDS Coordinator on the Use of Generic Drugs in the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, by 2007, only 57% of the drugs supported by PEPFAR were generics. Why? Further, the report seems to express governmental pride in the fact that from 2005 to 2007, this percentage increased from a mere 11 percent. Why was PEPFAR not supporting a greater percentage of generics sooner? Draw your own conclusions.(Ron Wurzer/Getty Images)

Among those who truly understand HIV/AIDS, Bush will not leave a legacy of progressive thinking or significant accomplishment domestically or internationally in this arena.

Bush is somehow proud of the fact that during his watch, Medicare’s Part D was introduced. This was the plan whereby seniors might be somehow relieved of some of the financial burden of their prescription drug costs. Gosh, there’s just one problem, and it’s been dubbed the “Donut Hole.” It concerns the discontinuation of benefits once the total paid by the member and the plan hits $2700. Then the citizen is required to pay 100% of the costs up to $4,350. Find me a senior with health care issues who has an extra $1650 lying around and I’ll bet his name is Cheney. Further, there’s a whole list of drugs the plan will not cover, including those for erectile dysfunction. I guess the administration is all for sexual abstinence among seniors, as well. Someday when you are feeling very ambitious, take some speed and read the whole Part D. You’ll need the pharmaceutical help to do it because it’s so boring, poorly written and incomprehensible. Oh, and for the record, amphetamines aren’t covered under Part D.
(photo from Medicareprofessor.com)

I will not insult your intelligence by addressing Bush’s statement about liberating 50 million people and achieving peace. I will simply prognosticate that the outgoing chief exec will likely not join former President Jimmy Carter and former Vice-President Al Gore in the long list of Nobel Peace Prize winners.

Still, one wonders how President Bush will explain his supposed legacy of peace to the mother of Staff Sgt. Matthew J. Taylor, 25, who died Sept. 21 in Baghdad, Iraq, of wounds suffered when he received small arms fire during dismounted operations. Taylor, who felt he needed to seek justice for the 9/11 terrorist attacks, enlisted in the infantry so that he could have a frontline fighting position.

Taylor's parents and wife last spoke with him by phone one day before he died.. According to a piece in his home town paper, the Charleston Post & Courier: "He called to wish his 5-year-old daughter a happy birthday. But his heart sounded heavy because he hated missing those special occasions. The next day, Sunday, Staff Sgt. Taylor patrolled in Baghdad with his unit when shots rang out in an alleyway. Taylor was struck multiple times by enemy small arms fire." He died in a military hospital, many thousands of miles away from anyone who loved him. He died in George Bush's war about nothing.

On December 1, Bush said, "I think I was unprepared for war...I didn't anticipate war." Mr. Bush's lack of preparation for his job, and his severe lack of foresight cost Staff Sgt. Taylor his life. Taylor and 4,206 other Americans died in vain.

Those deaths, combined with millions of Americans who now suffer with HIV/AIDS and a lack of medical care and appropriate drugs, along with senior citizens who cannot even afford medicine, make George Bush's comments to his sister not just delusional, but reprehensible.