Overall...

At first to be honest this was a class I looked at as a walk through easy A. What I found was that 1) I had to put in a good amount of effort to get an A which I expect to receive, and 2) I was poorly educated in the past about sex and STI prevention. Throughout the course though, I learned what I thought I was going to learn and a lot more. I think that the most effective ways of learning in this class were through the guest speakers and the movies that we watched. Just seeing things from so many different angles and from nations across the world really gave me a much better understanding about how STI and AIDS are such a huge issue globally. I wasn't expecting to learn much about TB which was my project. I pretty much knew nothing about what TB was before this project and now I feel like I could teach the class about it. TB is a huge disease world wide and the fact the myself and out group did a presentation on the subject, I think, opened a lot of eyes. the least useful thing that we did as a class was doing any reading. I think that from the presentations and slide shows from you, we had plenty of information to thinik and write about various topics. the readings were just repeating what you had already said in class. I think that in the future, reading should be more along the lines of watching movies outside, like out extra credit project. Something that is not material that we had just talked about that day or that week. Something new that we had a little background on and by watching a movie or some form of media, information can be retained better. I think that this is the most important time to teach these kinds of things. Maybe even earlier in peoples college career like freshman year. This is very important information and could potentially save lives. This information needs to get out and spread through college campuses world wide. I raelly enjoyed the class. One thing that I would change is to have more class interaction activities. learning through experiences either first hand or from other students first hand experiences are very moving. That is the sort of information that sticks with a student like me.

Living with HIV/AIDS

First off WOW! I was very moved and, to be honest, truely disturbed about some of the realities about contracting and living with HIV/AIDS. I found it hard sometimes to look and listen to Bob Skinner talk. What he did in his past is absolutely unacceptable. I understand that he was not 100% aware of his condition, but if you were doing what he was doing (I will not repeat what was said) and was aware of his condition, he would be serving a multiple life time sentence at a federal penitentiary. Anyhow, what I learned was that living under these sorts of conditions is extremely costly. I knew that the medications were expensive but I had no idea to what extent. It is suprising that people are even able to afford that and still be able to buy the necessary things to live. It is a question of quality of life vs. quantity of life. Bob's life is very different from an ordinary persons life who is HIV positive. One, he has to live with the burden that he has personally infected over 1000 people in his life time. Think about how many people they infected and how many people they infected and so on. The numbers are catastrophic. Also, what Bob has done with his life, post 2000 has be inspirational and educational nation wide. Not a lot of people have the guts to tell their story, especially one as dark as his to others for health preservation reasons. The fact the Mr. Skinner lived in a rural area he said it pushed him to be more permiscuous. In his rural condition it was very common to have heterosexual transmission. It is also very hard to educate people in these rural conditions. Which ended up being his demise. Living in rural conditions usually means that they have little money which means that levels of education and prevention methods are low or not at all. Living with AIDS is hard but possible and Mr. Skinner tought me that.

The Crossing of Species

In my opinion, HIV was indefinitely passed to humans by the SIV virus found in simian species. There is scientific evidence and all results lead the this said conclusion. This theory is known as the hunter theory in which infected chimps were hunted, killed, and eaten by humans which evidently transferred the virus. This is the most plausible theory and is the one that I support. Two theories that I examined closer were the contaminated needle theory and th econspiracy theory. The contaminated theory model is that becuase of the cost of needles being too high, multiple injections were being made per needle to reduce cost. This theory is a little bit of a stretch to me. Organized medical programs would not look so much at the cost of buying needles in relation with the health of their patients. What this theory shows me is that this is a way that the virus could be spread in a very poor area where there is no regulated structure to the health care. At first, reading the conspiracy theory made me laugh. I though that this is something so stupid to even think. But than I remembered things like the radiation experiments and Tuskeegee. These were government administered tests on humans of challange. This is obviously not the case with HIV becuase it is proved that it derived from SIV but to read that interested me that the government creating a disease like this and administering it to humans is not something the our nation has not done in the past. If you compare these two theories, both of which are wrong to the origins of HIV, but both raise eyebrows of maybe. needles could not just start the epidemic, but they could absolutly increase the number of cases. The conspiracy theory actually is just ridiculous. But the needle theory is an example of just how easily the disease could spread which is very scary to think.

White Privelege

This was a very interesting article and it really made me think about my life and how race and color has certain characteristics that come along with it. For example living in a college town where the African Americans normally only play sports. And for the most part that is true but there are exceptions. What Peggy McIntosh is trying to point out through this article is that white, and especially white males have a more privileged life. Interesting enough is that although white males are not willing to admit that they have a privileged life as well as that they do admit that women have an under-privileged life as well as people of color. It was interesting for me to hear someone say that this is not a free country and that one's life is not what you make it. As though there is some predetermined purpose and life that your life should already be. She said that "many doors open for certain people through no virtues of their own. So it seams she has a sort of a religious or pessimistic side to her. I am torn between view points on if I agree with her or not. Or if I even like her as a person or not. If I had to pick a side I think that I would disagree with her views overall. I am a strong believer that regardless of gender, race, religion or anything that hard work and determination will bring success. I support her in the fact that some people (rich parents that have kids that reek of benefits) might not have to work a day in their life and will still live a luscious life style due to the hard work of their parents. Others need to work a little harder for what they want. Now how this ties into AIDS and STI transmission and infection is that people who think they are more privileged think they have more rights and therefore to what they want to do. They could potentially do things like intercourse with no protection because they think they are too good for it. Or possibly they have multiple sexual partners. It is a very controversial topic of race, gender and dominance. what I think will happen in the future is that these things won't exist. they will soon deminish and before we know it they will not even exist, and hopefully my children and grandchildren won't even know what the word "racism" means.

HIV/AIDS; Epidemic

Monday's and Wednesday's movies have been truely disturbing and mind altering. I knew that things were bad but I had no idea how bad they really were. On a global prospective HIV/AIDS has stricken a fear in to all that come near. It is to the point where if someone is infected with the HIV virus that they are not telling anyone on fear of being excommunicated from community, friends and family. My past knowledge of HIV and AIDS have been very similar to my exposer thus far in H312. From my elementary school, middle school and high school I have been shown movie after movie, read document after document and the same information conclusion in my eye's keep coming up. Education, Education, Education. This IS the most important way to control and and in the prevention of HIV/AIDS. Safe sex education and practice will allieve many people of many diseases. From a biological and chemical prospective myself and as a class have learned about how it affects the WBC and immune system. Breaking both down to where they are left disastered and dicrepid. The disease has genetically been traced back to emerging around the 1930's from chimps captured and eaten by indiginous people of Africa. I believe it was an infected chimp liver that was the origins of the spread of HIV. Globally, like I said earlier, HIV/AIDS is an epidemic. In places of poverty and weakened education systems especially. What can we possible do to kill the plague that so silently lives amungst us? What has been the most suprising to me so far about watching the videos are the live footage films and pictures of full blown AIDS outbreaks in their victims. Actually the most suprising and ridiculous this that I hear was the president or vice-president of South Africa who thought has wasn't going to get AIDS or an STI after having sex with an infected woman because he took a shower after. What an idiot. And that man is leading a country.

THE MONEY DOESN"T ADD UP

In class monday (2/2/2009) the class was shown a variety of global maps that showed many different things. Things like population, densities of diseases, money dedicated to disease control and many more. The two that stood out for me were the densities of disease and the amount of money that was being contributed towards each country to control these diseases. The maps just didn't match up at all. In most all cases, sub-Saharan Africa was the leader in any given disease, followed by South Asia followed by an up coming Russia. What was mind boggling switching back and forth between the two maps was that consistently, America was the least populated country for any given disease yet they had the most money being put into their health care system to control these disease. From an American ethnocentric position, this is a great thing that any American would be proud of. To any one else around the world that is not seeing any benefit from America of even larger European countries for aid with AIDS and other STI's, this is a very serious topic. Because there isn't enough health care money being put into sub-Sahara Africa or South Asia, the disease have a tendency to thrive in many spots. It is obviously seen by the number of cases from there regions. Without the resources to prevent disease, especially diseases as serious as AIDS and STI's there is but a slim glance of light. Not to mention that the South African president for some reason doesn't believe STI's are a real thing. My US prospective has given me a bittersweet taste in my mouth. Sweet to the fact the we are so fortunate to have such availability of health care, bitter in the sense that there greater causes world wide that would benefit greatly from our money. In the US because of the great health programs and disease prevention methods, along with lack of education, I feel that STI's have taken a back seat of severity which should not be the case. Education NEEDS to be increased!

chlamydia, the STD monster

I have recently watched a video that talked about the "STD monster" (as they called it) chlamydia. The video was a three part video and each took a comical approach which I though was very effective. At the end of the video they were informative about STD awareness. The video that I would like to focus on of the three videos is the second of the two. In this video, it targeted what looked to be a college girl, and than the reoccuring man dressed in a chlamydia contumb. What was true about the ad were a few things. The first being that as the chlamydia man was looking around the room, he was pointing out who he gave the STD to. This is very accurate in that it can spread very fast. Also he noted that one of the women didn't even know she had chlamydia becuase symptoms can usually not show. On the table that the man and women were sitting, there were many empty drinks. In college there are many opportunities for sexual interactions. Partying only encourages that at an unhealthy level. The ad noted that 1 in every 20 college girls has chlamydia. Since the mood is light there are not really any fear portrayed in this ad and no false ingormation is given either. To me, this is not necessarily an effective way to present the severity of chlamydia. To me, the pictures of actual genetilia infective with the disease are the most effective. I think that advertisement and media have a huge role in SDI and AIDS awareness. One thing I don't like about this video is how they portray the girl as just some slut basically. I also think that the video needs to be more informative with shocking and startling facts. You can access the video by going to this link.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D4Y3QXOZY6E&feature=related