Comments on: Can Paying African Kids to Stay HIV-Free Help Stem AIDS?

By: Art of jQuery

Art of jQuery — Thu, 04 Aug 2011 18:31:33 +0000

HIV must be controlled, they must be educated and a new structure should be implemented.

By: fintin

fintin — Mon, 13 Jun 2011 21:34:29 +0000

Then he decides to come up with some completely ridiculous solution to AIDS by shaming and ridiculing the teens. When I read that, I wondered if this was a 10 year old I was talking to.

By: Ashley Cakes

Ashley Cakes — Mon, 13 Jun 2011 10:44:51 +0000

Hey, “Liberalism is a Sickness:” I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but this is discovermagazine.com, a website for a SCIENTIFIC magazine and people who are interested in SCIENCE. It’s not a place for homophobic, moronic, anti-abortionist, abstinence-only-advocating idiots like you who seem to only study the notoriously poorly-written book of contradictions known as the Bible. Get a clue. Telling people to ignore their evolutionary instinct to have sex as the “cure” for AIDS and a prevention for abortions is not only unscientific, it’s idiotic and proven to be ineffectual. Telling people that gay men are the cause of AIDS is just so incredibly stupid that I almost can’t believe I’ve come across such an ignorant comment on a scientific article. Wow. Sometimes you religious, ultra-conservative, right-winged types still amaze me.

By: reidh

reidh — Thu, 09 Jun 2011 18:37:19 +0000

wouldn’t it be cheaper in the long run to pay them to contract and spread AIDs ?

By: LOLWUT?

LOLWUT? — Thu, 09 Jun 2011 16:33:09 +0000

Sickness, you are truly an idiot. I agree that this study if foolish. However, you caused me to bust out with laughter with your “statistics” in this quote …

“The failure rate for condoms is almost 20%, and with anal sex it’s estimated to be as high as 50%. Not very good odds when the results are either dead, aborted infants or homosexuals typically dying of AIDS in their 30s.”

By: Brian Too

Brian Too — Wed, 08 Jun 2011 23:15:22 +0000

@ Liberalism Is A Sickness,

Just because we cannot (or have difficulty) making progress on one issue does not mean we cannot make progress on another. Nor is society obligated, in any way shape or form, to prioritize problems. Nor to schedule them, either. Politicians are responsible for a great deal of this and, in this case, I think that’s a good thing overall.

Your example of smoking is telling. There was a time when smoking was nearly immune to any kind of pressure no matter what the facts said. It took a long time to change cultural norms and they still haven’t changed in most of the developing world.

Also, I find your need to cast this issue in political left versus right objectionable. Your very posting name hints at a monotonic need to ride that hobby horse at every turn. I saw a similar behaviour a few years ago. It was in the Granma newspaper in Cuba.

By: fintin

fintin — Wed, 08 Jun 2011 19:46:56 +0000

Ok, but remember, these are teenagers we’re talking about- titillated young people in the prime of their life, who don’t know what the real world is like. They are subjected to peer pressure, and are constantly witnessing new kinds of things that are “hot” on tv, such as sex. If these were adults we were talking about, then that would be different, but these are teenagers, who know better than to spread disease, but don’t want to do anything about it. I’m not saying it’s their fault- it is. But for teenagers, the urge to have sex is bigger than the resistance to it. Studies are made to find out what can stop a teen from having sex. Ridiculing them is not going to get us anywhere, as sex and smoking are two very different things. Smoking is a poisonous habit, no matter what, but sex is more 50/50. Sex is something that everyone feels and craves, and isn’t always dangerous, while smoking is and always will be dangerous. Besides, even if we do stop all these teens from spreading AIDS, there would still be tons of AIDS out there. Finding the cure to AIDS is necessary, not an excuse to lead us from disciplining teenagers. I agree that discipline is needed, but in a simpler way, instead of “ridiculing” them.

By: Liberalism Is A Sickness

Liberalism Is A Sickness — Wed, 08 Jun 2011 18:49:17 +0000

Fintin, it doesn’t take a genius to understand that when certain behaviors are putting you at risk, you simply regulate or stop those behaviors altogether. I find it very curious that the very same people who tell smokers to stop their risky behavior are the very same ones handing out condoms to 12 year olds. If this double standard were not in existence, by logical extension we would be handing out filtered cigarettes to teen smokers. See anything wrong with this picture? Well, most of us conservatives certainly do.

Similarly, why do we hammer smokers day in and day out for endangering their health while making not a peep about the reckless sexual behavior of so many homosexual men, behaviors which kill them in far greater numbers and at far earlier ages than cigarettes ever could – even smoking a couple packs a day.

Hell, society has deliberately shamed smokers into hiding and made of them second class citizens. However, this very same culture absolutely refuses to make a peep about what homosexual men are doing for fear of offending their powerful Pink Lobby in DC. No, instead we are spending billions of taxpayer dollars trying to find a cure for AIDS. Gee, following this same logic we should also be spending billions trying to find a “cure” for lung cancer associated with smoking. There is not a whit of difference to the extent that AIDS in this country is overwhelmingly a function of male homosexuality.

So, my answer to you is to make reckless sexual behavior taboo, as it once was. Do with these people what we did to smokers…shame them and ridicule them mercilessly.

By: Tron

Tron — Wed, 08 Jun 2011 15:07:37 +0000

If it’s such an evil thing to be wealthy, then why are poor, noble, virtuous poor people always trying to steal our money?

By: Curious

Curious — Wed, 08 Jun 2011 11:36:53 +0000

What is your measure of evil? I think we need to hold a study to determine whether evil and wealth is merely a correlation or whether it may actually be a causation. Once we establish a set of indicators for our measure of evil, we can then go ahead and get a sample group of poor people, measure their level of evil, make them wealthy, then measure their level of evil again. Of course, while comparing with a control group that stays poor. Wait…..but what if evil is the cause of wealth?!!