What does the U.S. have in common with Ethiopia and Angola? Here’s the disturbing answer: The rate of HIV infection among the poorest Americans has reached the same epidemic levels as that of the two impoverished countries.
This shocking new statistic comes from a recent report by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which stated that HIV was detected in 2.4% of adults living at or below the federal poverty line. That’s twice the rate of the general U.S. population and about equal to the HIV prevalence rate among Ethiopians and Angolans.
The poverty may be concurrent with and perpetuated by addictions (substances like drugs and alcohol or to behaviors like homosexuality and/or porn addiction) and the inability to work. All of this has been correlated to family dysfunction and fracturing or due to abandoning, absent, abusive, addicted, apathetic, adulterous parents. Fatherlessness is the precursor to many pathologies and research shows it is one of the chief causes or predictors of poverty, misconduct and imprisonment.
In previously published statistics, the fastest growing group with HIV and STDs were the over-50 crowd, with teens running close. This does not mean that MSM (males having sex with males) had lost any percentages statistically, but that the other groups were growing faster.
Same with poverty.
One has to ask the right questions to get at the truth these days.
Homosexual behavior is an addition like an addiction to porn? And that somehow relates to the inability to work?
Have you taken a look at all of the research out there that indicates that household income for both single gay men and coupled gay men exceed their straight counterparts?
Isn’t it more likely that lack of education and lack of proper health care contributes more to the fact that poor Americans are more likely to have AIDS than, say, homosexuality?
St. Nikao, why are you bringing up the fast growing group with HIV? The article has to do with the fact that poor Americans are more likely to have AIDS than non-poor Americans.
The caution I feel compelled to offer you, St. Nikao is that addiction does not follow follow economic lines. It may be more obvious that the guy living on the street with the bottle in his hand is captured by addiction than the corporate CEO that is able to hide it behind breath mints and a (broken) family and friends who cover for him, but addiction doesn’t care how much money you make.
That was a typo – read addiction not addition.
To further explain:
A. Substance addiction can and often does lead to inability to work and joblessness leads to poverty.
B. Sexual addiction and/or same-sex sexual activity are correlated with substance addiction.
C. Both substance addiction (needles, inebriation lead to careless sex) and MSM (males having sex with males) are correlated with HIV.
AIDS is transmitted either by choice (sexual activity and drugs) accident (exposure to blood through needles or transfusion), birth (infant infected by the mother) or crime (intentional transmission by a malevolent person). Education, income and health care cannot prevent transmission of AIDS by exposure, nor cure anyone who is exposed. There have been promising treatments, but the compulsion to engage in sex and carelessness in taking medications of some patients have created new strains of the AIDS virus faster than researchers can develop new treatments to combat the viruses.
Recently published statistics showed that one fifth (20%) of MSM (males who engage in homosexual activity) have AIDS and 44% of those do not know they have it.
St. Nikao – do you have any evidence to back up your claims in #6 – B, and #7 – % of gays with AIDS?
Here are a few citations indicating the need to be aware and treat self-harm, substance and domestic abuse and other mental health issues in SSA populations:
McKirnan and Peterson, Addictive Behaviors, Volume 14, Issue 5 (1989) 545-553
Bailey, J.M., Archives of General Psychiatry, (October 1999) vol. 56, no. 10, 876-880.
Greenwood 2001, Drug and Alcohol Dependence, Volume 61, Issue 2, 1 (January 2001) 105-112
Hughes and Eliason, The Journal of Primary Prevention, Volume 22, Number 3, (2002) 263-298
British Journal of Psychiatry (December 2003) 556
King, M., E., et al, British J. of Psychiatry (2003),183, 552-558.
McAndrew, S., et al, J Psychiatr Ment Health Nurs. 2004 Aug;11(4):428-34.
Vanable, P.A, et al, Health Psychology, (September 2004) Vol. 23, No. 5,
King, M., et al, BMC Public Health. 2006 May 8;6:127.
Cochran, B. N & Cauce, A. M, Journal of Substance Abuse Treatment, (March, 2006) 30, 135-146.
Cochran, S. et al, J Consult Clin Psychol. 2007 October; 75(5): 785–794.
King, M, et al, BMC Psychiatry. 2008 Aug 18;8:70.
Tyler, KA, Violence Vict. 2008;23(5):586-602.
Wilsnack, et al, J. Stud. Alcohol Drugs (2008) 69: 129-139,
Woolfe, S.E., et al, AIDS Behav. (August 3, 2009) 4):757-82.
Mansergh, et al, PLoS Med. (August 24, 2010) 7(8): e1000329. doi:10.1371/journal.pmed.1000329
Oops, forgot to answer Charles’ second question.
The statistic is (20% have AIDS, 44% of those don’t know it) from the Sept. 2010 CDC release: http://www.anglican-mainstream.net/2010/09/28/cdc-20-of-gay-men-have-hiv-and-half-are-unaware-of-status/
If somehow the world would have adhered to this teaching,
http://www.lambethconference.org/resolutions/1998/1998-1-10.cfm
HIV/AIDS would not be a terminology we would know anything about. And that would pretty much go for all the STD’s.
If the world WOULD adhere to
http://www.lambethconference.org/resolutions/1998/1998-1-10.cfm
then HIV/AIDS would be of historical significance in a couple of generations, except perhaps for those poor unfortunate children in Africa left as orphans by this scourge.
#9…
That should keep #8 busy for a while.
I wonder if the survey looked into the cause of poverty among the HIV/AIDs people they interviewed, this should be a factor in their survey because serious illness and its treatment or lack of treatment often leads to poverty.
If we truly want to be kind to potential HIV/AIDS patients we should publicize HIV/AIDS as the serious, often fatal, disease that it is, so that they can avoid acquiring this “Acquired Immune Deficiency”. Offering anti-viral drugs and condoms after the fact may help a little bit but it is then too late to undo that which could have been prevented.
I also wonder if privacy laws which protect HIV/AIDS patients from having to reveal their infection with HIV/AIDS are really a kindness or if they simply facilitate the spread of the disease.
Here are a few more studies:
Balsam, KF, J Consult Clin Psychol. 2005 Jun;73(3):477-87.
McCabe, SE, Addiction. 2009 Aug;104(8):1333-45. Epub 2009 May 12.
Bostwick, WB, Am J Public Health. 2010 Mar;100(3):468-75. Epub 2009 Aug 20
Conron, KJ, Am J Public Health. 2010 Oct;100(10):1953-60. Epub 2010 Jun 1.
Dilley, JA, Am J Public Health. 2010 Mar;100(3):460-7. Epub 2009 Aug 20.
Gupta, J., Public Health Rep. 2010 Jan-Feb;125(1):79-87.
Stephenson, R., West J Emerg Med. 2010 Aug;11(3):242-6.
Honest science will not refute God’s Commandments in Scripture.
I heard alarming statistics on the radio yesterday of the AIDS research money which is funded 10s of times more (like 30+ times) than common cancers, alzheimers, and some elder dementia. The radio said that while aids deaths have nearly leveled off (better treatment?), alzheimer’s is headed straight north. Could these be true? It was a real idictment of gay power. Is the women’s breast cancer push appropriate given numbers, or is that a resource hog also? Are we not obligated to take resources appropriate to our numbers somehow? Perhaps these are such moving targets it is impossible.
Lostdesert,
HIV/AIDs is an acquired, preventable disease, the other diseases you mention, including different kinds of cancer are not preventable.
That is why our focus should be on telling the truth about how serious and life threatening the HIV/AIDS disease is.
The survey you mention may have accurate statistics on the money spent but if doctors and health care workers are prevented from disclosing that their patients have HIV/AIDS, I don’t see how there could be accurate statistics on HIV/AIDs deaths.
More stats and studies:
Preliminary reports just out of a Spanish study reveals that 75% of sexually active homosexual males are infected with the Human Papilloma Virus compared with 30% of teen population. (http://www.lifesitenews.com/news/75-of-sexually-active-homosexuals-are-carrying-human-papiloma-virus-study-s)
According to the CDC (March 2010 report), active homosexual males are 71 times more likely than females and 46 times more than other males to have syphilis, and they are 44 times more than other men and 40 times more than women to have HIV.
Aren’t we as a society being irresponsible and cruel if we withhold information from young people who might be tempted to experiment with the homosexual life style? Young people should not be kept ignorant of the health hazards associated with homosexual behavior just because we don’t want to offend a certain group of people, some of whom may be actively spreading these diseases.
Shouldn’t we look into the facts before we pass on the rumor that HIV/AIDS is a treatable disease, or that condoms are adequate protection from the spread of venereal diseases?
Does the homosexual community or society at large really think that young people should be protected from the revelation of the health effects of homosexual behavior even considering the consequences of this spread of deadly, preventable, venereal diseases to those who have been kept ignorant?