AIDS, HIV and IV drug use

In a recent article, Robert Knight asks why the media never asks some of the following questions of "the professional HIV/AIDS lobby, which grows ever fatter while the human tragedy rises":

• Federal funding for HIV/AIDS has increased dramatically every year since 1993, yet the number of new infections has not declined. Why do we spend more money every year on prevention programs that have failed to prevent new infections?
  
• Why do billions of dollars continue to flow to organizations and programs that have been a colossal failure by any yardstick?
  
• Why does the government spend far more on AIDS than cancer or heart disease, which each kill more than 10 times more people annually in the U.S.?
  
• With CDC statistics showing that HIV/AIDS in the United States is still astronomically higher among men who have sex with men (MSM), why are AIDS officials getting away with saying all Americans are equally at risk?
  
• Why have most of the media ignored studies, such as one in the American Journal of Public Health in June 2003 about a program among African-American female adolescents that reported that "17.8 percent of the adolescents acquired an STD despite 100 percent condom use."

Knight goes on to point out that:

• "Between 2001 and 2006, MSM sexual contact was the most common mode of transmission reported among newly reported AIDS cases."
  
• "Between 2001 and 2006 among persons living with AIDS, the highest number of cases was consistently among those attributed to MSM sexual contact, followed by heterosexual contact and IDU [injection drug users]."
  
• "Males made up greater than 70% of all cases living with AIDS, consistent with national trends."

Knight says that “A draft report for the UN's AIDS agency has found that even when people use condoms consistently, the failure rate for protection against HIV is an estimated 10 percent…One would think a 10 percent failure rate against a 100 percent fatal disease would continue to make news, but the stat has disappeared into a media black hole.”

Knight says that “All three leading Democratic presidential candidates have pledged to increase federal money for needle giveaway programs.” But Knight then points out that while Vancouver, Canada has the largest needle exchange program in the Western Hemisphere, the incidence of HIV among IV drug users has risen from 2% to 40%, the “highest HIV infection rate of any city in the developed world.”

Just another bright idea from your friends on the Left. These drug users should find a way to sue the government for facilitating and enabling their drug dependence.

The government is already taking billions of our tax dollars for programs that are not working.
The Democrats want to take even more of your tax dollars to expand these programs that aren’t working. And our politically correct media just continue to ignore the story.

The article concludes, “The main question should be: Why are we throwing billions of dollars at the same old approaches? It can't be "compassion," because it's not working.”

Good question. Please read the entire article at One News Now.