Almost missed this one: Today is World AIDS Day (it's founded by the World Health Organization founded back in 1988 to raise awareness of the AIDS pandemic and to honor the persons who have died from HIV/AIDS).
Chicago Now has a gallery of influential and famous people who have died from the disease. Do you recognize these four? Answers in the comment.
Link - Thanks Mu!
2. Scientist and prolific author Isaac Asimov, who got an HIV infection through blood transfusion during heart surgery.
3. Freddie Mercury, lead singer of the rock band Queen.
4. Robert Mapplethorpe, an American photographer who triggered controversies with his publicly funded artworks depicting erotic homosexuality.
when it happens some other way, it is more notable.
The main reason that Ryan White became the poster child for HIV/AIDS, besides the fact that he was expelled from school for it, is because it was still widely thought to be the "gay man's disease", and that the only way you could get it was having sex with another man. He helped publicize the fact that other people could get it, too, and knowing that made people actually give a rat's ass about the disease that they otherwise would have written off as one of a sinful existence.
The impulse to mention other means of transmission is worthy in that it reminds us that everybody's at risk and that research for a cure is in everyone's interest, but it's hard to point out without leaving a sort of loud silence around examples that contracted the disease from gay sex. It sort of marginalizes while trying to be inclusive, or something.
Hi everybody!
regards
cleon dann
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WQoNW7lOnT4
It's with the nobel prize winning co-discoverer of AIDS..
Yeah, with any man who will share their crack with them.
Huh, huh. He said "B.M." Huh, huh.
btw - interesting conversation taking here, you've all pointed out things that weren't immediately obvious to me, but which are good point.
QTF, scot.
http://www.economist.com/displayStory.cfm?story_id=14743589
http://redwolf.newsvine.com/_news/2009/12/02/3579743-tales-inside-school-condoms-cause-aids