Why can't we say that AIDS is a lifestyle disease?
I used to smoke. If I died of emphysema or lung cancer or heart disease, there are people who would have no difficulty saying it was a result of my former lifestyle. Some might even say I "deserved" it - I knew when I smoked that it was not healthy.
I am (for now) overweight. If I died of stroke or heart disease or complications of diabetes, there are people who would have no difficulty saying it was a result of my lifestyle.
People who drink to excess die of liver failure, alcohol poisoning, ruptured esophagus or kidney failure. Rarely does anyone feel constrained NOT to say that those deaths are the result of lifestyle.
AIDS is often the result of unprotected random sex or shared use of dirty needles. Yet it seems to be absolutely forbidden to say that AIDS is a lifestyle disease. Not that AIDS is a punishment for sin, or God's way of cleansing the earth of the depraved - just that AIDS might be contracted as the result of certain unadvisable behaviors. Doesn't it seem that such a stance might make it difficult to communicate how to avoid or prevent AIDS? Isn't this just a little shortsighted?
There is a big difference between pointing out that certain outcomes are the logical, often foreseeable results of certain behaviors, and saying that the outcomes are deserved or are punishment for those behaviors. If we can't talk honestly about connections between cause and effect, the future may be dangerous.
Saturday, September 22, 2007
Saturday, September 1, 2007
NEWS FLASH!
Late-breaking news: this week we learned that Diana Windsor, the former Princess of Wales, killed ten years ago in a car accident, is...STILL DEAD!
There was a public memorial on the tenth anniversary of her death. Why?
I know that sounds heartless, and I'm sorry. I'm very sorry for her and her family. She was a young woman when she died, and was deprived of many years of a normal life span. Her sons, whom, by all accounts she adored, were deprived of her presence and left to the tender mercies of a father of whom the best thing that might be said is that he has difficulty putting anyone else's interests ahead of his own.
BUT: what did she really do? She was very pretty. (Not beautiful. Sophia Loren is beautiful. Audrey Hepburn was beautiful. Venus and Serena Williams are beautiful. Halle Berry - with short hair - is beautiful. Margot Fontaine was beautiful.) She wore clothes like a dream - but who wouldn't with all the time in the world to work out, a cook to put together delicious low-fat meals, and an unlimited shopping budget? She shook hands gracefully, and put on a Lucite helmet and walked through a no doubt carefully sanitized former minefield. That may be a little unfair, because she did die before she had much chance to do any work with her anti-land-mine association, but really.
She had flaws - as do we all, so that's not exceptional - and not much shame about exposing them. In fact, she did so relentlessly, and apparently with little concern about the effects her behavior might have on her sons. She was, in the current web parlance, an attention whore. Just because she managed at the same time to display some vulnerabilities and a little charm doesn't make all this extended mourning any more reasonable or understandable. Have we become so addicted to emotional extremes that we go looking for reasons to keen, beat our chests, and break out the sackcloth and ashes? Isn't there enough sadness for us in our own lives and those of our families and friends? Do we have to go on these vicarious emotional binges?
And she's going to stay dead, so are we going to have to do this again, and again, and again, and again, at the 15th, 20th, 25th (the Silver Jubilee of the Death of Diana!)and other anniversaries ad infinitum, ad nauseam?
There was a public memorial on the tenth anniversary of her death. Why?
I know that sounds heartless, and I'm sorry. I'm very sorry for her and her family. She was a young woman when she died, and was deprived of many years of a normal life span. Her sons, whom, by all accounts she adored, were deprived of her presence and left to the tender mercies of a father of whom the best thing that might be said is that he has difficulty putting anyone else's interests ahead of his own.
BUT: what did she really do? She was very pretty. (Not beautiful. Sophia Loren is beautiful. Audrey Hepburn was beautiful. Venus and Serena Williams are beautiful. Halle Berry - with short hair - is beautiful. Margot Fontaine was beautiful.) She wore clothes like a dream - but who wouldn't with all the time in the world to work out, a cook to put together delicious low-fat meals, and an unlimited shopping budget? She shook hands gracefully, and put on a Lucite helmet and walked through a no doubt carefully sanitized former minefield. That may be a little unfair, because she did die before she had much chance to do any work with her anti-land-mine association, but really.
She had flaws - as do we all, so that's not exceptional - and not much shame about exposing them. In fact, she did so relentlessly, and apparently with little concern about the effects her behavior might have on her sons. She was, in the current web parlance, an attention whore. Just because she managed at the same time to display some vulnerabilities and a little charm doesn't make all this extended mourning any more reasonable or understandable. Have we become so addicted to emotional extremes that we go looking for reasons to keen, beat our chests, and break out the sackcloth and ashes? Isn't there enough sadness for us in our own lives and those of our families and friends? Do we have to go on these vicarious emotional binges?
And she's going to stay dead, so are we going to have to do this again, and again, and again, and again, at the 15th, 20th, 25th (the Silver Jubilee of the Death of Diana!)and other anniversaries ad infinitum, ad nauseam?
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