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Back to Journal  « Anticipate Toby | World AIDS Day 2005: Keep the Promise | Fiction: James Van Pelt - The ED SF Project » World AIDS Day 2005: Keep the Promise December 1, 2005 In 2005, the world added five million new cases of HIV to its total. This is "the highest number of people newly infected in a year since the beginning of the epidemic." More info in last month's New Scientist article: Global HIV cases pass record 40 million mark.  Next year we'll see the 25th anniversary of the first diagnosed case of AIDS in the United States, this before they even had a name for it beyond "the gay plague." Ignoring the disease (and--as importantly--ignoring the people who contracted it) in the 1970s and 80s is why it's a problem now. So World AIDS Day is about awareness, seeing as how we humans like to repeat our mistakes, especially when more fashionable health-threats push old fogeys like this one out of the media spotlight. It starts with education, and we're making progress. I remember back in the 1980s my mom frantically called a hotline to ask whether her children were in danger of AIDS from mosquito bites. We were all scared then because of ignorance. I remember laughing in the early 1990s, when my health teacher made fun of homosexuals and AIDS using the first-aid practice dummies. We students laughed then, again, because of ignorance. This year I laughed again when a doctor-turned-senator felt it entirely reasonable that AIDS could be transmitted via tears and sweat. Why is that funny to me now? Because of education. The World AIDS Campaign has had a new slogan about every year for WAD, but they decided that for 2005 through 2010 they'll keep the slogan consistent: Stop AIDS. Keep the Promise. "The intention is to establish an international campaign to hold our leaders accountable for their promises and commitments and take the action necessary to deliver on them." If AIDS is still with us, so is WAD. But wouldn't it be great if after 2010 there would be no more need for slogans? For anniversaries? |
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Alex Wilson writes fiction and comics in Carrboro, NC. His work has appeared/will appear in Asimov's Science Fiction, The Rambler, LCRW, Weird Tales, The Florida Review, Futurismic, ChiZine, Pif, and Dragon. Locus Magazine has called him a "promising new writer," and Publishers Weekly also has nice things to say. Alex runs the audiobook project/podcast Telltale Weekly and the writer wiki Guidevines. He publishes the minicomic/zine Inconsequential Art. He is a 2006 Clarion graduate.  
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Can and Has and Sometimes Doesn't Casey at the Booth 2008 Submission Log Weeks 42-45 Latest Audiobooks The Star New Testament: Philippians Sherlock Holmes: The Adventure of the Six Napoleons  Powered by MT 3.35 MySpace Profile |
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