Bonnie, how do you get there? Nita

Bonnie Rowley wrote:

> Hi all,
> This was posted on the ABC's 20/20 message board.
> I guess Sarah has a grudge.
> Bonnie
> ***************
> Author:  ahalo2 (Read all messages by this author)
> Author status: Preferred | Neutral | Ignored
> Thread Only: (6 messages)
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>
> Re: Funding For Diseases  8:55AM PDT, Oct 14, 1999
>
> momanator:
>
> I don't know a single person with HIV who voluntarily asked to be infected.
> Parkinson's and diabetes is genetic... so, um, if someone infected with these
> illnesses CHOOSE to have children, would that somehow make their children
> less "innocent" if they were to come down with the disease later? Having
> children is usually a VOLUNTARY act, isn't it?
>
> I don't disagree that some diseases are extremely underfunded, but I STRONGLY
> disagree with encouraging Congress to take away funding from one disease to
> make people with the lesser-funded diseases feel better. AIDS activists made
> the fight for funding political because they HAD to. AIDS wasn't mentioned by
> our President until 1985, and the first drug wasn't available to patients
> until 8 years after the disease was first discovered. *Eight years* for ONE
> treatment. And in those eight years HIV became an epidemic.
>
> It is ONLY since the research that AIDS deaths have slowed. That's gotta tell
> people something. I would think. If the political approach works for people
> who are desperately ill then more power to them. If a cause can find a
> celebrity to help, more power to them. We should be following the example of
> activists who find EFFECTIVE ways to get funding, not put them down for it or
> saying that the funds are somehow "undeserved" because of how the cause got
> Congress' attention or because the disease is a "voluntary" one.
>
> Six years ago 20/20 did a report on a nine year old girl with AIDS that aired
> three times... they talked about how NIH and the clinical trials had saved
> that girl's life. Now, they are "exposing" these same programs? After years
> of themselves focusing on AIDS and the treatments, they now turn around and
> blast the methods people have used to get funding? It makes no sense, to
> support an issue then once it looks like the trials are actually saving lives
> to turn around and push to have the funding taken away. As if the media,
> 20/20, whoever hasn't known all along that this is how AIDS activists finally
> got their effective treatments. It shows how very easily manipulated the
> public is, "pc", whatever. People though seem to forget there are actual
> lives at stake.
>
> I don't care what my sister's biological parents did to "deserve" HIV, this
> child is alive because of these treatments and I'm thankful for that. And I
> hate to see that people feel her life should come down to the mistakes of her
> parents, and that some people feel other "deserve" to be sick or die because
> of what their parents did.
>
> Sarah
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