By: Mary Mostert, Analyst, Banner of Liberty, (www.bannerofliberty.com)
January 3, 2005
The world hasn’t quite had time to figure out exactly what to make of the devastating 9.0 earthquake in the Indian Ocean, that according to reports has killed more than 155,000 people and caused the earth to wobble on its axis, but some writers are beginning to try to analyze its meaning. The Wall Street Journal offers two possible points of view. Daniel Henninger observes on the last day of 2004 in a piece entitled Why we Need Politics: “Here's some context for 2004: The number of human beings who died of HIV/AIDS in sub-Saharan Africa was about two million. The number of people who died of bad water and bad sanitation was more than two million. These deaths broke families and even whole communities with a force as hard as that in Sumatra this week. What is the answer? …In the aftermath of 2004's too-numerous unnatural deaths, the only resolution possible is to re-enter the arena of politics and fight the good, slow fight. It's all we've got, and it is enough.”
Henninger also noted that it was merely a natural phenomenon: “the gods didn't do this.”
Then there were the observations of theologian David B. Hart who asked, also the last day of the year 2004 in the Wall Street Journal, in a piece titled Tremors of Doubt: “What kind of God would allow a deadly tsunami? When confronted by the sheer savage immensity of worldly suffering--when we see the entire littoral rim of the Indian Ocean strewn with tens of thousands of corpses, a third of them children's--no Christian is licensed to utter odious banalities about God's inscrutable counsels or blasphemous suggestions that all this mysteriously serves God's good ends. We are permitted only to hate death and waste and the imbecile forces of chance that shatter living souls…”
On the other hand, Insight Magazine’s Martin Sieff asks: “Was the death toll unavoidable? Was the disaster an act of God against which no actions could have been taken?
”The answer to both those questions is quite clearly and simply "No." The technology and level of scientific know-how already exists to have cost-effectively sent warnings that could have saved the lives of tens of thousands.”
Now, let’s see. While we are trying to figure out who to blame for the 155,000 deaths from the earthquake and tsunami of 2004, literally NO ONE is talking about who to blame for the millions of people who died of AIDS in 2004. Actually, of course, AIDS is a disease that is clearly preventable by personal behavior. Yet, according to AVERT, an international HIV and AIDS charity that tracks deaths due to the disease, there were 3.1 million deaths from AIDS during 2004, not 2 million, and 4.9 million more people became infected with the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), which causes AIDS. Eventually, they too will die early, painful deaths.
In the United States, the National Institutes of Health reported there were approximately 40,000 new HIV infections in 2004, 70 percent of them among men and 30 percent among women. Of the new infections, approximately 60 percent of men were infected through homosexual sex, 25 percent through injection drug use, and 15 percent through heterosexual sex.
We know how AIDS is transmitted and avoiding it is actually quite simple. People who avoid homosexual sex, do not share needles while injecting illegal drugs and who abstain from having sex until marriage and remain faithful to their spouses rarely contract AIDS. They also tend to live 40 years longer than people who get involved in homosexual sex, share needles while injecting illegal drugs and heterosexuals who have sex with numerous partners. While we are being subjected to lots of media stories that attempt to identify God or Nature, insufficient technology or some lone person somewhere in a lab as the villain responsible for the 155,000 deaths from the tsunami, I haven’t seen ANY end-of-the-year articles identifying and scolding those responsible for the 3.1 million global AIDS’ deaths in 2004.
And, just who, or what, IS responsible for the AIDS deaths? In the United States, 60% of the AIDS infections acquired in 2004 and the more than half-million AIDS deaths in the past 15 years were caused by homosexual sex, 25% are caused by sharing needles in illegal drug use, and the remaining 15% are caused through heterosexual sex with numerous sex partners. Obviously, since we know what is causing it, stopping the AIDS epidemic should be easy. Millions of lives could be saved if those who participate in homosexual sex, share needles in illegal drug use and have promiscuous heterosexual sex with many partners were quarantined. After all, people with tuberculosis can receive a quarantine order issued by their County Department of Health that requires them to remain in an institution for at least 6 months, while taking anti-tuberculosis medicines, until they are no longer contagious. Why aren’t we doing the same with those infected with HIV?
With good communications, good technology and the personal choices of hundreds of thousands of people who heeded the warnings many lives were saved in 2004 when 4 major hurricanes hit Florida. Good communications, good technology and the personal choices of people near beaches also could have saved most of the people who died in Asia’s tsunami. So, why don’t we use the communications systems we have and the knowledge we have about what is causing AIDS to prevent MILLIONS of deaths annually in the AIDS epidemic by quarantining anyone involved in homosexual sex, sharing needles in the use of illegal drugs and having sex with more than one heterosexual partner? Or, why don't people involved in those behaviors make the personal choices to save themselves from dying of AIDS?
Could it be because we’d have to quarantine so many people in government and in the media and they would rather die than to admit they are personally responsible for their own, and possibly other people's, deaths?
To Comment: Mary@bannerofliberty.com