AIDS IN AMERICA. Charlie Bauer Phd. Gscene Magazine. November 2013

Aids in America.

I’ve been asked to write something about HIV and AIDS for this month’s publication. I have to say the very subject I’m most adamant about has remained dormant in my brain for some time now. Why? Are there fewer cases being diagnosed? Has global health care come to meet the HIV community with some sort of financial treaty? Are our UK needs different from everyone else’s? Is HIV care non-racial? Non political?

While you’re considering all the ‘no’ answers, cast your mind back to a previous article when I reaffirmed the anger expressed by the global care community at the World Aids conference in Washington DC only last year. Ever since my brain has been lodged deeply in US policy.

We’re having a financial meltdown in the UK about ‘disability’ and how to fund the growing needs as people begin to live longer. As we know, the Cameron government is in the process of attempting to alleviate us of much of this state aid. In the US, the question also remains about money over care. I’ve been bleating on about the legal scam of drug companies taking medications off-patent immediately after new drugs become ‘available’ (see AIDS conference above); I’ve given you drills about the rise in infection globally using the US as a research barometer. And some of you have questioned why I constantly seem to push US data into everything national.

Don’t forget how American policy has affected the planet. Rich and poor - no one is ever exempt from its reach. I’ve been castigated in the past because I’ve always thought the US elections should be open to the world, since everyone is ultimately affected.

My first requests for global US elections came about as a teenager in the late 70’s, in the Cold War days when both America and Russia were using Europe as a battlefield. Back then they called it ‘Theatre Warfare’ and there were at least two nuclear missile sites within close proximity of my hometown. So, my house actually became a target - not necessarily because of a nuclear strike but of potential air attacks in order to disable these US bases. Therefore, irrespective of any ability to vote in the US elections, its foreign policy had everything to do with my life.

The effect of lack of valid foreign policy reportage hit the American people without ‘educational’ exemption on 9/11.  This was the day that every American understood the importance of what someone else might be thinking and this time - it wasn’t the good stuff. Of course any reasoning Americans who previously questioned US foreign policy had been largely ignored - from The Black List to the Vietnam war. But 9/11 put a rocket up everyone ass - the non-questioning red republican centre of the country who couldn’t understand why anyone could hate them so much - and the blue democrat coastal edges who questioned how such a primitive act would be allowed to destabilize an entire country. (Yes, I do mean primitive, as in Trojan Horse primitive, which is exactly what it was).

The rest of the world’s concerns were about what George ‘Dubbya’ Bush’s knee-jerk reaction would be and, although he didn’t nuke-anyone, he eventually side-stepped the UN in order to enter a war that was universally condemned. School kids defiantly took to the streets of Sydney, Mothers joined hands in a show of peaceful solidarity, Tony Blair twitched live on-air when it came to the lack of any evidence of weapons of mass destruction. But Bush continued to listen only to the people who had elected him back home - against the opinion of swathes of sane Americans and the rest of the world - where US foreign policy had been enforced since WW2.

What’s it all got to do with AIDS, you may ask. Well, those people in America - the hicks who now stand tall on the podium of ‘The Tea Party’, are the ones who are opposing affordable health care or ‘Obamacare’ as its become known.

Great, you say again, but what’s this to do with AIDS.

Well, Obamacare is generally going to benefit only the bottom rung, low-earning, 15 percent of the American population. Any idea who they might be?

I lived in West Hollywood in the early 90’s. I lived there because I ticked all the boxes to live there. White, gay identified, (occasionally) Single, consumer of luxury food and goods, US standard middle class income, home-owner and the rest. It was when I volunteered to work on an AIDS outreach programme, that I discovered that the contributions made, never found their way back into the gay community. No sir, all the food, clothes and financial contributions went thankfully to the people who needed them most – mainly to the Black communities of Los Angeles such as South Central; a place where the people couldn’t afford the health care they needed - even though they were on a par, numbers wise, with the Gay white male population when it came to rates of HIV care.

Current high HIV infection rates and the lowest 15% of American earners have a lot in common these days. In twenty years the demographic has changed and now includes the LGBT community as one of the most impoverished within the USA. The question remains about the markets that finance the drug companies and who re-patent drugs keeping prices inflated and out of everyone’s reach. (Don’t forget it’s possible to get HIV medication down to $100 per person, per year). The elevated cost of HIV medication has an immediate effect on global drug administration - which then has an effect on the cost of care in the United Kingdom. This in turn has an immediate effect on the price of medications when it comes to the new ‘South Central’ of the world – Africa. 

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AIDS IN AMERICA. Charlie Bauer Phd. Gscene Magazine. November 2013