Some closing thoughts on Toronto 2006
Aug. 18th, 2006 12:03 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jawnbcAm in my favourite chair, having just slurped down a cuppa. To my mind the only thing that trumps tea from one's own kettle is a bath in one's own bath. Which I will take shortly, after pulling the laundry out of the dryer shortly.
I'm pleased and proud of the job Toronto did in hosting this enormous event. If I were to level one criticism of how things were delivered, it would be how the community aspects of the event were (in both logistic and symbolic terms) too far from the centre of things. The Global Village, which afforded NGOs and communities affected by HIV/AIDS spaces to interact, educate and entertain, was wholly isolated from the scientific meetings. To my mind it should have been adjacent to the posters--let the exhibition area be on the margins.
Our last day the security was ramped up even higher. Aside from bag searches coming into the conference site, the exhibition/poster area had another search and very restrictive access. Most of us old conference whores figure that big pharma was tipped off about a destructive demonstration. In fact, this is the first international AIDS conference I've attended where no such action occurred. Then again it's the first time one big pharma company (Abbott) stayed away to avoid scrutiny. As I was leaving the exhibition yesterday afternoon, the salesmen at one such booth (GSK?) were tacky enough to be toasting one another with champagne. At least have the manners to wait until most of the PLWHAs--many of whom can't access treatment due to the gouging you fucking bastards do on a per-pill basis for anti-retroviral (ARV) therapy--had left for the day. In another 45 minutes time. Insensitive assholes.
Among the themes that seemed to be garner the most attention throughout the week were circumcision, ABC prevention campaigns, potential new (integrase) ARV treatment, Vancouver's InSite, mucosal immunity, and South Africa. Which isn't to say that other important topics were explored. But with 600 oral presentations, 30 plenaries, and around 7,000 posters, I can only write about so much. *shrug*
After a few years bubbling under the radar, the big push has begun for using male circumcision as an HIV prevention method--specifically to reduce female-to-male transmission during vaginal intercourse. The physiology of the foreskin does indeed make HIV infection easier than for men who are circumcized; however, the rates of HIV among European gay/bi/queer men have never been as high as in the US. Thus I challenge why it's acceptable to promote a surgical intervention--by the way, using "traditional healers" rather than a hospital environment to do the procedure--when there are other interventions (like condom use) that are much more effective. To my mind there's more than a little bit of racism involved: in particular, archetypes of African men as unwilling or uncapable of changing their behaviour, attitudes and beliefs. And with very high mortality rates in Africa from other diseases like TB and malaria, why not spend a few dollars more and invest in safe water and sewage systems, health care facilities, and primary and secondary schooling?
A (abstinence), B (be faithful), C (use condoms) would largely have remained marginal to efforts to prevent HIV transmission in places like Africa, were it not for the USAID requirement for all US government-funded prevention programmes to have at least 30% of their activities promote abstinence. Beatrice Were, a fierced Ugandan activist said it better than I ever could: "stop importing your 20 year-old prevention programmes that never worked." Were herself was infected by her husband...she was faithful.
Integrase ARV treatment potentially adds a third arsenal in the treatment of HIV infection. Early trials are very promising in terms of viral load levels; assuming they prove to be tolerable and combinable (with the other treatments on offer), we might have a potential triple knockout that could hold HIV infection in abeyance. This third method would also give the folks who've not benefitted from current therapies--due to dangerous side effects or treatment resistance--new hope.
InSite, Vancouver's safe injection facility for injection drug users, now has almost universal support from the scientific, criminal justice and public at-large out here in BC. Only wholly close-minded right wing ideologues choose to ignore the overwhelming evidence that Insite helps IDUs stay alive while still using, while offering them greater opportunities to pursue drug treatment if they want to stop using. InSit has, in fact, made the neighbourhood safer, with less criminal activity. No one is arguing that InSite's clients have a carefree, fun life as heroin and cocaine addicts. But if we can't keep these folks alive and healthy (HIV and/or hep C negative free), they can't ever get off drugs. Dead doesn't mean clean: harm reduction keeps folks alive. And if you think harm reduction is a bad idea, you might as well toss out your condoms, 'cause that's harm reduction too.
Pockets of women have been found to have naturally occuring cervical mucosa (the goo) that seems to protect them from HIV infection via vaginal sex. Most of this science focusses on groups of sex workers in Africa who have been exposed hundreds or thousands of times to HIV without seroconverting. Once we fully understand how this works, there is potential to develop ways of stimulating these protection in other women. Any prevention method that puts power in women's lives will dramatically reduce new infections.
South Africa's ANC-led government continues to keep their head in the sand. Their policies on AIDS still remain HIV-skeptic, which leads to delays in accessing ARV treatment (since, if HIV might not cause AIDS, HIV treatments are possibly useless). The pressure is ramping up, as is the rhetoric. As well it should. Thabo Mbeki and his administration are killing their fellow citizens.
I'm pleased and proud of the job Toronto did in hosting this enormous event. If I were to level one criticism of how things were delivered, it would be how the community aspects of the event were (in both logistic and symbolic terms) too far from the centre of things. The Global Village, which afforded NGOs and communities affected by HIV/AIDS spaces to interact, educate and entertain, was wholly isolated from the scientific meetings. To my mind it should have been adjacent to the posters--let the exhibition area be on the margins.
Our last day the security was ramped up even higher. Aside from bag searches coming into the conference site, the exhibition/poster area had another search and very restrictive access. Most of us old conference whores figure that big pharma was tipped off about a destructive demonstration. In fact, this is the first international AIDS conference I've attended where no such action occurred. Then again it's the first time one big pharma company (Abbott) stayed away to avoid scrutiny. As I was leaving the exhibition yesterday afternoon, the salesmen at one such booth (GSK?) were tacky enough to be toasting one another with champagne. At least have the manners to wait until most of the PLWHAs--many of whom can't access treatment due to the gouging you fucking bastards do on a per-pill basis for anti-retroviral (ARV) therapy--had left for the day. In another 45 minutes time. Insensitive assholes.
Among the themes that seemed to be garner the most attention throughout the week were circumcision, ABC prevention campaigns, potential new (integrase) ARV treatment, Vancouver's InSite, mucosal immunity, and South Africa. Which isn't to say that other important topics were explored. But with 600 oral presentations, 30 plenaries, and around 7,000 posters, I can only write about so much. *shrug*
After a few years bubbling under the radar, the big push has begun for using male circumcision as an HIV prevention method--specifically to reduce female-to-male transmission during vaginal intercourse. The physiology of the foreskin does indeed make HIV infection easier than for men who are circumcized; however, the rates of HIV among European gay/bi/queer men have never been as high as in the US. Thus I challenge why it's acceptable to promote a surgical intervention--by the way, using "traditional healers" rather than a hospital environment to do the procedure--when there are other interventions (like condom use) that are much more effective. To my mind there's more than a little bit of racism involved: in particular, archetypes of African men as unwilling or uncapable of changing their behaviour, attitudes and beliefs. And with very high mortality rates in Africa from other diseases like TB and malaria, why not spend a few dollars more and invest in safe water and sewage systems, health care facilities, and primary and secondary schooling?
A (abstinence), B (be faithful), C (use condoms) would largely have remained marginal to efforts to prevent HIV transmission in places like Africa, were it not for the USAID requirement for all US government-funded prevention programmes to have at least 30% of their activities promote abstinence. Beatrice Were, a fierced Ugandan activist said it better than I ever could: "stop importing your 20 year-old prevention programmes that never worked." Were herself was infected by her husband...she was faithful.
Integrase ARV treatment potentially adds a third arsenal in the treatment of HIV infection. Early trials are very promising in terms of viral load levels; assuming they prove to be tolerable and combinable (with the other treatments on offer), we might have a potential triple knockout that could hold HIV infection in abeyance. This third method would also give the folks who've not benefitted from current therapies--due to dangerous side effects or treatment resistance--new hope.
InSite, Vancouver's safe injection facility for injection drug users, now has almost universal support from the scientific, criminal justice and public at-large out here in BC. Only wholly close-minded right wing ideologues choose to ignore the overwhelming evidence that Insite helps IDUs stay alive while still using, while offering them greater opportunities to pursue drug treatment if they want to stop using. InSit has, in fact, made the neighbourhood safer, with less criminal activity. No one is arguing that InSite's clients have a carefree, fun life as heroin and cocaine addicts. But if we can't keep these folks alive and healthy (HIV and/or hep C negative free), they can't ever get off drugs. Dead doesn't mean clean: harm reduction keeps folks alive. And if you think harm reduction is a bad idea, you might as well toss out your condoms, 'cause that's harm reduction too.
Pockets of women have been found to have naturally occuring cervical mucosa (the goo) that seems to protect them from HIV infection via vaginal sex. Most of this science focusses on groups of sex workers in Africa who have been exposed hundreds or thousands of times to HIV without seroconverting. Once we fully understand how this works, there is potential to develop ways of stimulating these protection in other women. Any prevention method that puts power in women's lives will dramatically reduce new infections.
South Africa's ANC-led government continues to keep their head in the sand. Their policies on AIDS still remain HIV-skeptic, which leads to delays in accessing ARV treatment (since, if HIV might not cause AIDS, HIV treatments are possibly useless). The pressure is ramping up, as is the rhetoric. As well it should. Thabo Mbeki and his administration are killing their fellow citizens.
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no subject
Date: 2006-08-18 08:19 pm (UTC)I realize it's a rite of initiation for some religions, and I don't have a problem with it, but I don't think I could ever have a child of mine (hypothetically speaking) circumcized. It's not hard to teach a kid to wash, and once he's 18, he can do whatever the hell he wants with his cock. It seems like circumcision gets more popular in more repressed generations (like the 1950's), so I'm not horribly surprised that people are foisting circumcision as a preventative against HIV. What about the correspondence in research that circumcision is often a rite in religions with restrictive ideas regarding sex? Odds are you aren't going to see an observant Jew or Muslim sleeping around or having sex before marriage. (Not that it doesn't happen, but that premarital and extramarital sex are forbidden.)
I wonder if part of the problem with "abstinence-only" education is that it makes sex into something desireable, because of how forbidden it is. We all know that teens get off on doing activities to piss off us old fogeys.
no subject
Date: 2006-08-18 10:17 pm (UTC)This is yet another case of an operation in search of a cause. All the other things that they've said for the past 100 years that circumcision was good for have been proven wrong and instead of just giving up on it, like foot binding or head binding and other weird body modifications/mutilations that cultures have forced on their kids, they try to keep it alive by looking for something that they can sell it with.