Coffee & Conversation: AIDS at 30 – Still Worth the Convo?

Now, a complete rundown of all the news from the front would take hours. Risk of death from AIDS: way down. Risk of death from other things: going up. Risk of drug reaction: depends. Risk of fatal drug reaction: low but not zero. Risk of drug resistance: gets higher every year. The statistics change almost hourly as new treatments appear. It is all too cold, too mathematical, too scary to dump on the head of a sick, frightened person. So we simplify. “We have good treatments now,” we say. “You should do fine.”

The bottom line is clear enough: once, not so long ago, we were working in another universe. Now we have simply rejoined the carnival of modern medicine, noisy and exhilarating, confusing and contradictory, fueled by the eternal balancing of benefits and risks.

From Dr. Abigail Zuger’s, AIDS, at 25, Offers No Easy AnswersTop of Form (essay published on June 6, 2006, in The New York Times)

Simple question: as we reach this moment – thirty years later – do we still have to talk about AIDS? Societies usually know how to commemorate, memorialize, forgive, reflect, and remember. When it comes to HIV/AIDS, is it time to learn to forget? Just an American way of looking at it all? What about the world? All Overblown?

This Friday, we’ll think about AIDSBottom of Form. Our friend Georgia Arnold – Executive Director of the MTV Staying Alive Foundation and Senior Vice President of Social Responsibility for MTV International – will join us for the first half of the convo. (Be sure to also check out how she and her crew work public health messages into attractive, inspiring, and entertaining drama on the tubes – Shuga: Love, Sex, Money.) See you – 3-5 p.m. – in the Howard Thurman Center. I’ll have the cookies and coffee; you bring the conversation.

Peace.

#buconvo