Redstate

Everyone knows that the biggest problems facing the black community are caused by white racism. There are gangs of white supremecists who sneak into black communities at night and force young black people to take drugs, have illegitmate children, eat high-cholesterol foods, and commit violent crimes against other black people.

You want proof? Look at the "performance gap" in grades between black and white high school kids. It's not because they don't care about education, it's because they're so exhausted by these nightly ordeals that they simply can't concentrate on thier algebra.
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"You can't save the Earth unless you're willing to make other people sacrifice" - Scott Adams (speaking through Dogbert)

The article is incorrect as far as homocides of black women go, it is only about 300 (depending on the year). The statistic quoted is most like for black men, which is in the 2,000's.

2,398,343 people died in 2004, 284,877 were black. My "outraged, outcry" meter isn't quivering.

"A man can never have too much red wine, too many books, or too much ammunition." -- Rudyard Kipling

that 56% of HIV deaths being black says that something is up. Is it because of drug use? Unprotected sex? What needs to be done?

You're obviously not outraged enough to do anything, so let Hillary take a pass.

As a moderate liberal, I have to say that I can not stand her. She panders, and every time I hear her speak my skin crawls. That doesn't mean that HIV doesn't disproportionately affect blacks more than it does any other group.

1. HIV is not a huge cause of mortality. In my view, way, way too much of the medical research money goes towards HIV/AIDS research and education at the direct expense of research on cancer, stroke, heart disease, alzheimers, etc. The real killers of Americans.

2. She didn't claim that HIV/AIDS disproprtionately affects blacks. She claimed that racism is the cause of their being no "outraged, outcry" over it being the leading cause of death among black women when, in fact, it kills more black men. (really, all of this information is in the story).

3. If HIV/AIDS does disproportionately affect blacks are you saying that is related to racism? Why do hispanics, API, AIAN have lower rates? No racism there?

4. If any or all of your presuppositions in your para 1 are correct what does that have to do with racism or the lack of an "outraged, outcry"?

"A man can never have too much red wine, too many books, or too much ammunition." -- Rudyard Kipling

1. I agree
2. She never said anything about black men or women; what she said was if HIV was the leading cause of death for white women, then there would be "outrage" and "outcry"
3. I am not saying it is related to racism. I personally think it is related to the urban sub-culture that has bigger problems than HIV: crime, poverty, etc.
4. I agree with you that she is pandering (why else say the words racism, outrage, and outcry). What she should have done is embrace Bill Cosby's message of accountability and try to get people motivated to fix the problems themselves.

Let's keep researching HIV, but first let's teach our kids to not take drugs and have unsafe sex. This problem starts in the family, not in the doctor's office.

The problem I had with your post wasn't the "outrage, outcry" part but the part that seemed to say that HIV wasn't a problem for Blacks; that she was just making something up.

1. HIV/AIDS is only the leading cause of death for one group in that age range: black women. She was also speaking at a HBCU and in front of a predominantly black audience. Don't insult my intelligence the way she insulted theirs. I don't need your vote and I ban for dishonesty.

2. The story is not about what "dantes" thinks, the story is about Clinton. She clearly implied that race was a reason there wasn't an "outraged, outcry."

3. The larger problem is that you immediately jumped to outrage and didn't bother to read. Nothing seem to say HIV/AIDS was not a problem for blacks. What is clearly said is that 1) 436 deaths does not make a crisis, and 2) why does she ignore the much larger number of deaths among black men in favor of glomming onto it being the leading cause of death for an unidentified race and sex.

"A man can never have too much red wine, too many books, or too much ammunition." -- Rudyard Kipling

Is it because of drug use? Unprotected sex? What needs to be done?

Exactly what are you suggesting, as a moderate liberal, CAN be done that isn't already being done? The only way you could not have heard that sharing needles and having unprotected sex is a Bad Idea(tm) is if you've spent the last decade living in an ice cave in Antarctica. Cripes, that's about 50% of a public school education these days, and, oh by the way, illegal drug use is already, hmmm how to say this...illegal?

AIDS research and education are pretty much fully funded at this point; throwing more money into either one isn't going to have much of an effect. I really don't see how more of an outcry is going to slow down the spread of AIDS unless you're advocating shutting down the gay bars and outlawing extramarital sex (and I'd LOVE to see the reaction from the left on either of those!)
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"You can't save the Earth unless you're willing to make other people sacrifice" - Scott Adams (speaking through Dogbert)

There is a high correlation between educational attainment and longevity, because better educated people tend to make smarter lifestyle and health care choices. So #1, place more value on education in the African-American community.

There are also high-risk subcultures in the black community which really don't have a counterpart in the white and hispanic communities. So #2, learn that when you're sleeping with someone you're also sleeping with everyone they've slept with in the past 25 years.

It's such a fine line between stupid and clever. - David St. Hubbins

You'd think it would be more fun, and that large bed sales would go up.
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"Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom must, like men, undergo the fatigue of supporting it."
-Thomas Paine: The American Crisis, No. 4, 1777

You're obviously not outraged enough to do anything, so let Hillary take a pass.

I think the OP was focused on the implication by Hillary that there is insufficient "outcry" (which I would translate into action) to combat the matter of AIDS because whites are disproportionately underrepresented in those affected; and conversely that if that were not the case - that whites were equally affected or more affected, we'd see more "action".

The fact is, however, that federal AIDS spending has almost equaled and often exceeded the total spend for either cancer and heart disease since the late 80's, and has continued to do so whether under (R) or (D) administrations and congresses:

The report said that from 1982, when the epidemic began, to the end of this year, the federal government will have spent $5.5 billion on illness caused by HIV, the AIDS virus.

In 1989, federal AIDS spending will total $2.2 billion, or about 1 percent of all federal health expenditures. Of this, about $1.3 billion will be spent for research and prevention. The disease will kill 35,000 people.

By comparison, the government will spend $1.5 billion on research and prevention of cancer, which will kill 500,000 people this year, and $1 billion for heart disease, which will kill 777,000 Americans. [cite from 1989]

And:

According to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, AIDS is the ninth-leading cause of death in the U.S.

In 1995, the leading cause of death was heart disease, followed by stroke, lung cancer, chronic obstructive pulmonary diseases, pneumonia, diabetes, colon cancer and car accidents.

AIDS receives $1.5 billion a year in federal research spending, 50 percent more than the $900 million that goes to heart disease research. Federal spending on cancer research totals $1.8 billion a year. [cite, from 1997]

And:

Since the first federal resources were made available to state and local health agencies for AIDS prevention in 1985, federal funding, which now includes money for research, treatment, and housing, has skyrocketed to $13 billion for fiscal 2003. As a result of the work of highly mobilized lobbying forces, more is spent per patient on AIDS than on any other disease, though it does not even currently rank among the top 15 causes of death in the United States. [cite, from 2002]

Clinton really can't blame (R)'s for not participating in the gross overspending for AIDS relative to other causes of death; see here (also from the CAGW link above):

The Ryan White Comprehensive AIDS Resources Emergency Act (CARE Act) received $1.9 billion in fiscal 2001. Though President Bush did not request an increase for the program, he did sign into law Congress's $112 million (six percent) increase for fiscal 2002.

What could account for the disproportionately high federal spend on AIDS? Are we spending this much because AIDS disproportionately affects blacks and Clinton is ignorant of how much our expenditure actually is? Or are we spending so much because AIDS was a really scary health problem touted as an epidemic that enabled both (D) and (R) alike to justify throwing more of our money out to certain groups with little or no oversight and attention to actual results, and without any rational spending prioritization strategy?

We spend alot on AIDS/HIV because it had good marketing and PR behind it. Well organized, got alot of awareness and celebrities on the bandwagon.

Ask not what you can do for your country, ask what your country can do for you. Washington Elected Elite

The automobile must be banned. The things are a menace.
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"Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom must, like men, undergo the fatigue of supporting it."
-Thomas Paine: The American Crisis, No. 4, 1777

I think it's silly to try and prioritize based on what is or isn't a "behavior contracted" problem.

Lung cancer is the number one cancer-related cause of death:

Lung cancer is the leading cause of cancer-related deaths in both men and women. An estimated 163,510 deaths, accounting for 29% of all cancer deaths, are expected to occur in 2005. [cite]

Smoking - a "behaviour" - is by far the leading cause of lung cancer:

Smoking is the number one cause of lung cancer. Lung cancer may also be the most tragic cancer because in most cases, it might have been prevented -- 87% of lung cancer cases are caused by smoking. Cigarette smoke contains more than 4,000 different chemicals, many of which are proven cancer-causing substances, or carcinogens. Smoking cigars or pipes also increases the risk of lung cancer. [cite]

So by your logic we ought to drastically reduce spending for lung cancer because almost all those people pretty much asked for it, right?

Even heart disease is "behaviour" related:

Heart disease deaths were nearly three times as common among light smokers as among nonsmokers. The risk was a bit higher for women than men, the study shows.
<...>
In the U.S., heart disease is a leading cause of death among men and women. Smoking is widely viewed as a risk factor for a host of health problems, including heart disease and several cancers. [cite]

Not to mention all the bacon clogged arteries and sedentary lifestyles. You know, I'm hard pressed to see where almost all health problems are not fundamentally "behaviour related".

The real question we should be asking is whether it makes any sense at all for the federal government to employee people to try and direct our money towards any health research programs that they pick and choose (quite probably, with political motivations and ear-markery), or whether we ought to dislodge this function from the government, reduce taxes in-kind, and leave it to the American citizens to contribute directly to whatever health-care related organizations they prefer.

to give one heart disease, the mystery of cancer and the direct immediate contraction of AIDS by known behavior,

I'm right.

Mike Gamecock DeVine @ The Charlotte Observer
www.race42008.com
www.hinzsightreport.com
www.theminorityreportblog.com
"One man with courage makes a majority" - Andrew Jackson

the amount of behavior required to give one heart disease, the mystery of cancer and the direct immediate contraction of AIDS by known behavior

I'd say the connection between smoking and lung cancer, and between a high cholesterol diet / low exercise lifestyle and heart disease are as well known as the connection between unprotected sex and STDs.

And the fact that smoking and poor eating/no exercise are willful choices made over long periods of time tends to make such persons even more culpable for the outcomes of their consistently risky behaviour, and at minimum equally culpable as someone engaging in risky sexual relations.

So yours is a good observation but it bolsters the responsibility that people who contract lung cancer after smoking or suffer from heart disease after eating too much bacon bear for their situations which were brought on by continual bad decision making.

If we're going to cede the ground to those who want to spend Federal funds for this stuff then we ought to simply apportion the funding by incidence rate, in which case AIDS would get a far lower spend than it does now - you really needn't bother contorting around concepts like "behaviour contracted" or culpability. I'd still prefer to see us fight for discontinuing the spend altogether.

system.

I even have tremendous difficulty with the aids funding vs Heart disease vs alzheimers. But aids while primarily a result of lifestyle is contagious in a way the others are not. It has the possibility to increase to much vaster numbers of affected if not contained.

Because Aids is viral it has possibilities not inherent in systemic conditions like heart disease. It can very well mutate into more viral or dangerous forms. As a matter of course that is one of the problems with treating the virus is that it does mutate quite a bit.

Bird flu is certainly overrated, but you really don't want to see what airborne aids will be like.
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"Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom must, like men, undergo the fatigue of supporting it."
-Thomas Paine: The American Crisis, No. 4, 1777

I could see someone taking up a national security angle with AIDS or things similar. When it first started spreading in the 80's it was scary and billed as an epidemic and there were all kinds of horrible theories about the plague of the 20th century, etc etc. I think it was an over-reaction but that's water under the bridge.

If there's a valid reason for national security to spend money researching AIDS and other communicable diseases, I'd listen. I can fathom that there are valid arguments for this. But there's got to be a limit to what we authorize spending for and a real focus on the outcome. No "public interest" educational stuff - if it's security related then we're really talking about protecting/defending the populace as the priority, and not "social programs" for those afflicted.

sodomy

vs

non-lung cancers that we can't directly tie to behavior (and non-smokers do get lung cancer)

put my money on the latter
and tell the former to cap it or abstain

Mike Gamecock DeVine @ The Charlotte Observer
www.race42008.com
www.hinzsightreport.com
www.theminorityreportblog.com
"One man with courage makes a majority" - Andrew Jackson

Tell it to the little girl that got it from her dentist and all his other patients.

Or tell it to anyone who got it from contaminated blood.

The problem is there is now a large population out there with this disease. At the very least it has to be tracked and confined as best as possible.
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"Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom must, like men, undergo the fatigue of supporting it."
-Thomas Paine: The American Crisis, No. 4, 1777

ation of funds. AIDS has been more a political movement. People die of all kinds of things, and all will die of something. Cancer research has been shortchaged so that gays can escape all responsibility for their behavior. We don't dare suggest that anyone suppress their sexual desires. Oh no, that is the First Commandment.

Mike Gamecock DeVine @ The Charlotte Observer
www.race42008.com
www.hinzsightreport.com
www.theminorityreportblog.com
"One man with courage makes a majority" - Andrew Jackson

Now if you just wanted to riff on "sodomy" instead of having a discussion about good governance with regards to federal spending on health care research, you could have opened up with that and saved us the time.

Regardless, getting the Feds out of this business would, as I pointed out, let you keep that portion of your tax dollars currently directed by bureaucrats and move it in a direction you prefer (e.g., not to any "sodomy based" health issues).

Otherwise, I'll end by noting that in 2005, an estimated ~32% of new AIDS related diagnoses among adults were from heterosexual sex - in fact almost 80% of all diagnoses for women were from heterosexual contact. An estimated 142 diagnoses were made for perinatal children, which means they were diagnosed either in the womb or not long after birth. So spare me the sodomy angle.

Mike Gamecock DeVine @ The Charlotte Observer
www.race42008.com
www.hinzsightreport.com
www.theminorityreportblog.com
"One man with courage makes a majority" - Andrew Jackson

The simplest and most just way to appropriately allocate funding for health issues is by incidence rate, in which case heart disease first and then cancer second would receive the vast majority of all funding, followed distantly by strokes and lower respiratory disease. AIDS wouldn't even be in the top 15.

But that's far too logical, I guess. If we applied your recently proposed scheme, whether the issue was caused by willful risky behaviour, we'd need to drastically reduce funding for cancer to account for smokers, reduce it for heart disease to account for people willfully eating bacon and not exercising, and almost eliminate it for lower respiratory diseases like emphysema and chronic bronchitis which are also almost entirely attributed to smoking.

But that didn't really engineer the outcome you wanted, so now evidently you're proposing that the government spend whatever they want on anything else but issues connected with homosexuality?

The #1 value of the secular world is "if it feels good, do it." The 2nd commandment si that one's desire for sex is paramount

I'll say this much, we may have common ground insofar as I very much agreed with the move in the last Congress to prevent all Federal funding of erectile dysfunction drugs via Medicare, Medicaid, etc:

The amendment to the Departments of Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education Appropriations Act bars Medicare and Medicaid from funding ED treatments such as Viagra, Cialis and Levitra.

Sponsored by Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa), the amendment passed 285-121, before the final bill passed 250-151.

“Sex is never medically necessary,” King told WebMD. “If it was, priests wouldn’t live into their ’90s.” [cite]

And:

"The fact is that these sexual performance drugs aren't life-saving, they are lifestyle drugs," Mr. King said. "We don't force taxpayers to pay for face lifts, weight-loss drugs, hair-growth treatment or vacations, so we should not force them to pay for sexual performance drugs."

A similar ban is pending in the Senate, and is sponsored by Sen. Charles E. Grassley, Iowa Republican and chairman of the committee that oversees both Medicaid and Medicare. [cite]

Now that's good governance, bravo to King and Grassley.

that, unlike with smoking, logical people were silenced by political correctness to dare not suggest that gays abstain from risky behavior.

Mike Gamecock DeVine @ The Charlotte Observer
www.race42008.com
www.hinzsightreport.com
www.theminorityreportblog.com
"One man with courage makes a majority" - Andrew Jackson

Anyone politically aware in the 80s can't help but remember the protests and harassment that it provoked. The gay community tried to portray Reagan as a Nazi and anyone opposed to their agenda as a mass murderer. (God forbid you mention their stand on abortion rights)

It was one of the better examples of the Republican blocks in congress caving to media pressure. Lets face it, they were punching way above their weight in the media.

That said unless we are willing to make testing mandatory and quarantine everyone thats positive. Aids is a persistent public health crisis that will continue to have consequences that will get worse. This justifies extra funding for research on a vaccine.

Now who should fund it, and how should it be paid for ? thats a whole nother kettle of fish.
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"Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom must, like men, undergo the fatigue of supporting it."
-Thomas Paine: The American Crisis, No. 4, 1777

dis-served by the lie of condoms, or the promise of research lest anyone dare pass judgment on the risky behavior. The #1 value of the secular world is "if it feels good, do it." The 2nd commandment si that one's desire for sex is paramount, even if it doesn't produce a life, but only produces an orgasm followed by horrible death...and y'all hurry up with the cure even if 100,000,000 million die of cancer (since cancer is not caused by sex).

Sex, not life rules the culture of death ands self gratification prior to death.

riff on that

Mike Gamecock DeVine @ The Charlotte Observer
www.race42008.com
www.hinzsightreport.com
www.theminorityreportblog.com
"One man with courage makes a majority" - Andrew Jackson