Still Blaming the Victim…

News and Analysis…

In preparation for the Xenia Institute’s upcoming event on intimate partner violence, I thought it worth while to examine how issues related to domestic abuse (such as rape) are dealt with in the news. Depressingly, aside from the occasional 2 second headline, these issues are still largely ignored by the public… and when addressed it can met by a decidedly negative response. Indeed there are still those who try and blame the victims of abuse alongside their assailants, as demonstrated by a recent, rather controversial survey taken in England.

BBC News | Almost three quarters of the women who believed this said if a victim got into bed with the assailant before an attack they should accept some responsibility.

One-third blamed victims who had dressed provocatively or gone back to the attacker’s house for a drink.

The survey of more than 1,000 people in London marked the 10th anniversary of the Haven service for rape victims

More than half of those of both sexes questioned said there were some circumstances when a rape victim should accept responsibility for an attack….

The survey also found more than one in 10 people were unsure whether they would report being raped to the police, and 2% said they would definitely not do so.

The main reasons were being too embarrassed or ashamed (55%), wanting to forget it had happened (41%) and not wanting to go to court (38%).

StyleCaster | Harrison may be right that women engage in victim-blaming as a way of feeling safe, convincing themselves that only people who act a certain way get raped. It’s possible, too, that a decline in the numbers of young women who identify with feminism have made more young people convinced that a woman who wears a short skirt is “asking for it.”

Shakesville | These results feel sensational, because ZOMG even women blame victims! But the reality is that when people disproportionately targeted by sexual target victim-blame, it is frequently, among women who have not been raped, an attempt to disassociate from the ugly reality that there’s no magic strategy to insulate oneself from all possibility of sexual assault. Or, among victim-blaming survivors, a reflection of guilt and shame—a misplaced feeling of responsibility for one’s own rape.
That doesn’t make the victim-blaming any more justified (or less depressing), but it does provide a context that most media coverage will lack.

New Stateman | But the fact is, if so many people are ready to believe that a woman is culpable in her own violation, jury trials will inevitably be affected: it is a self-perpetuating, vicious circle. While the majority of people in the Havens poll were keen to assign partial blame to the victim, one in five women said that they would not report it to the police if they were raped, saying that they would be ashamed, or would not be believed. This feeling is justified — just last year a freedom of information request showed that some police forces were failing to record more than 40 per cent of reported rape cases — but we have no hope of changing police attitudes if these attitudes continue to proliferate across society.

We urgently need education; a high profile campaign, starting with schools, to educate the public and eradicate the view that rape is sometimes deserved

Best on the web…

Herpes Drug Might Also Slow HIV Progression  | Business Week

New research suggests that people who are infected with both HIV-1, a strain of the AIDS virus, and herpes simplex virus type 2 could benefit in more than one way by taking a herpes drug called acyclovir. In addition to treating herpes, the medication appears to also slow the progression of HIV.

Computer Engineer Barbie Had PhD In FUN (And Breaking Down Stereotypes) |  Gizmodo

Barbie’s had 124 careers since 1959, ranging from Stewardess to Paratrooper. Today she gets her 125th: computer engineer. You can tell she’s smart ’cause she’s got glasses, and reads nothing but binary.

Barbie’s latest career move is also significant for being the first decided entirely by online vote. Though maybe it’s not so surprising that the internet community was especially inclined to see a Bluetooth-rocking geektastic Barbie.

Winter Olympic Medals Made From Recycled E-Waste  |  Scientific American

When Olympic champions are crowned at this year’s winter games in Vancouver, these elite athletes will be taking home more than just gold, silver or bronze medals—they will be playing a role in Canada’s efforts toreduce electronic waste. That’s because each medal was made with a tiny bit of the more than 140,000 tons of e-waste that otherwise would have been sent to Canadian landfills.

A Year in AIDS Part 2 — The Bad News

The changes outlined in Part One of this series are significant developments in the fight against HIV. Scientists are making huge strides and nations are rising to the challenge of combating the virus. With such progress being made, the eradication of HIV may be in our near future.  Now, let’s turn to the challenges faced by those who fight for HIV prevention.

The Pope

In March 2009, while in Africa, Pope Benedict XVI misled thousands of followers concerning the effectiveness of using condoms to prevent sexually transmitted diseases.  His statements on the topic set off a media firestorm and backlash.

Benedict also said the Roman Catholic Church was at the forefront of the battle against AIDS.  “You can’t resolve it with the distribution of condoms,” the pope told reporters aboard the plane heading to Yaoundé. “On the contrary, it increases the problem.”  The pope said a responsible and moral attitude toward sex would help fight the disease.

The Roman Catholic Church rejects the use of condoms as part of its overall teaching against artificial contraception. Senior Vatican officials have advocated fidelity in marriage and abstinence from premarital sex as crucial weapons in the fight against AIDS.

Many understood the pope’s comments as offering a scientific rather than moralistic reading of the situation. The pope has clarified that his comments were meant to provide a moralistic perspective.  But, many followers do not perceive a difference between the two.  Advocates of prevention worried that the pope’s comments would have an adverse effect, for instance if a man infected with HIV heard the pope’s comments and decided to stop using condoms because the pope had said they only make AIDS worse.

Domestic Statistics

Most Americans have no real sense of the population of HIV+ individuals in the USA.  HIV infections are present in approximately 1 of every 300 people.  In the US, we have a changing face of AIDS, which increasingly affects people of color disproportionately.

In the United States, approximately 1.1 million people are living with HIV/AIDS, including 280,000 women. Women now account for more than one in four new HIV/AIDS diagnoses in America — up from only 8 percent in 1985. HIV/AIDS also disproportionately affects women of color. African Americans and Hispanics represent only a quarter of the U.S. population, but they account for 82 percent of AIDS cases among women. Additionally, African-American women are diagnosed with AIDS at a rate 23 times that of Caucasian females and four times that of Hispanic women. Moreover, adolescent women represent 40 percent of AIDS cases reported among people aged 13 to 19 in the United States.

The prevalence of HIV infection among people of color is yet another barrier faced by a population for which discrimination is already a problem.  Increased stigma and discrimination is also a barrier for the LGBTQ community.

New Battlegrounds

Despite trending down overall, new geographic areas have arisen that have a high prevalence of seroconversion.   One of these is Indonesia.

The number of HIV-Aids cases in Indonesia is rising, according to the government in Jakarta. And U.N. officials say it is spreading far more quickly through sexual intercourse rather than drug use, which they say is a cause for alarm. The latest figures show there are at least 290,000 people in Indonesia infected with HIV.

Global management of HIV is like the hydra of Greek mythology, cut off a head and two grow back in its place.  Controlling the virus will mean managing all of its potential and actual manifestations.

Conclusion

Great strides have been taken in the last year to combat the spread of HIV.   However, this disease is still a significant foe, one about whom we cannot afford to forget.  We must recommit ourselves and our resources to banishing HIV from the human experience.

A Year in AIDS Part 1- The Good News

December 1st was World AIDS Day.  Events were held in Oklahoma, across the nation and the world to commemorate those lost to HIV/AIDS and those who suffer discrimination because of their HIV status. In addition, World AIDS Day events function to provide education and prevention tools in order to prevent future seroconversions (fancy word for the when someone goes from being HIV- to HIV+). World AIDS Day provides a reminder of the continued threat of HIV in a world where red ribbons are now rarely seen and AIDS is no longer a hot topic.  I will take this opportunity to review the year of developments in the field of HIV/AIDS research and study.

There is good news.  But the danger of beginning with good news is that you may not read the bad news in the next article, and glean from this only the good news, thus completely defeating the purpose of raising awareness about the threat of HIV/AIDS.  So I begin with the good news only after that word of caution that bad news will follow, and I proceed with the cautious optimism that you will take both good and bad together.

The vaccination trial

September 2009 saw a huge breakthrough in AIDS research with the announcement of the first successful vaccine trial, which reduced infections by approximately 25%-30% among participants.  The study was performed in Thailand with over 16,000 subjects.

The vaccine — a combination of two earlier experimental vaccines — was given to 16,000 people in Thailand, in the largest ever such vaccine trial.  Researchers found that it reduced by nearly a third the risk of contracting HIV, the virus that leads to AIDS.  It has been hailed as a significant, scientific breakthrough, but a global vaccine is still some way off.

The study was carried out by the U.S. army and the Thai government over seven years on volunteers — all HIV-negative men and women aged between 18 and 30 — in parts of Thailand.   The vaccine was a combination of two older vaccines that on their own had not cut infection rates.  Half of the volunteers were given the vaccine, while the other half were given a placebo — and all were given counseling on HIV/AIDS prevention.  Participants were tested for HIV infection every six months for three years.

The results found that the chances of catching HIV were 31.2% less for those who had taken the vaccine — with 74 people who did not get the vaccine infected and 51 of the vaccinated group infected.  The vaccine is based on B and E strains of HIV that most commonly circulate in Thailand not the C strain which predominates in Africa.

This is by far the most exciting news of the year which is why it earns the primary position.

Reduction in New Infections

In November, UNAIDS announced a reduction in new infections worldwide in the last eight years.  This shows the beginnings of controlling the spread of the virus.

According to new data in the 2009 AIDS epidemic update, new HIV infections have been reduced by 17% over the past eight years. Since 2001, when the United Nations Declaration of Commitment on HIV/AIDS was signed, the number of new infections in sub-Saharan Africa is approximately 15% lower, which is about 400,000 fewer infections in 2008. In East Asia new HIV infections declined by nearly 25% and in South and South East Asia by 10% in the same time period. In Eastern Europe, after a dramatic increase in new infections among injecting drug users, the epidemic has leveled off considerably. However, in some countries there are signs that new HIV infections are rising again.

Microbicides

In February 2009, the story broke that microbicides had been preliminarily found to be effective at preventing HIV in women.  Microbicides function by blocking the initial infection of HIV.  This news is especially important for women because the microbicides are applied through a vaginal gel that a woman can use as a prevention tool if her male partner refuses to use a condom, a potentially huge advancement for women.

About 3,100 women participated in the study, which was designed mainly to test whether it was safe. The women were divided into four groups. One-quarter of them used the Indevus gel, which is supposed to block the AIDS virus from attaching to certain white blood cells.Another quarter were put on a gel made by Baltimore-based ReProtect Inc. The rest were given a placebo gel, or no gel at all.

All the women were counseled to have their partners use condoms. The study was done in South Africa, Malawi, Zambia, Zimbabwe and the United States, and was funded by the U.S. National Institutes of Health.Researchers found that women who used the Indevus-made gel had a 30% lower rate of HIV infection than the other women in the study. But the difference was not statistically significant, meaning the results could have occurred by chance.

The most important section of the above quotation is the last sentence, stating that these are preliminary results that may not be statistically significant.  Let’s cross our fingers that they are when the research is completed.

South Africa

On World AIDS Day, South African President Jacob Zuma announced that his country will be putting many more resources behind the fight against HIV, particularly with regards to preventing prenatal and perinatal infections.

The new policy on pregnant women, aimed at ensuring that babies are born healthy, is in line with the new treatment guidelines issued by the World Health Organization just a day before. Treating infected babies earlier is expected to help South Africa, one of only four countries where child mortality has worsened since 1990, improve the survival odds of its youngest citizens.

More people are H.I.V. positive here than in any other nation, and Mr. Zuma called on South Africans to struggle against AIDS as they had against apartheid. “We have no choice but to deploy every effort, mobilize every resource and utilize every skill our nation possesses,” he said.

The policy changes he announced will expand access to treatment. Mr. Zuma said that by April the government would start treating H.I.V.-positive people with tuberculosis earlier, when their immune systems are stronger — a step the World Health Organization said would reduce death rates. Tuberculosis is the leading killer of South Africans with H.I.V., the virus that causes AIDS, and deaths from tuberculosis have more than tripled here since 1997.

The reduction of new infections, scientific breakthroughs and response of affected nations is the trinity of progress made in the field of HIV this year.  No one could have predicted what significant gains we have made in only twelve months.  In a couple more years, could we have completely eliminated the threat of HIV?  Read part two of this series to see what challenges we face.

Protesting in Sacramento

On a Wednesday morning, I arrived at the bus meeting location at 3:30 am to ride from Los Angeles to Sacramento to protest the proposed cuts to HIV/AIDS funding in the state of California.  As promised, a faithful friend arrived shortly after to make the journey with me.  We met approximately 100 other Angelenos who would be our traveling companions for the rest of the day.  We all wore red and although LA is a big city, HIV is a small field and I recognized several of the other travelers.  It was a family atmosphere as we boarded.  Friends and coworkers joked with each other in English as well as Spanish.  After settling in, we embarked on our odyssey through southern and central California. 

After seven hours in the bus, we arrived in Sacramento.  We were served box lunches as we unloaded the protest signs brought from the previous rally in Los Angeles.  I recognized some of the nicer signs that had been kept from the week before.  After an impromptu picnic on the capitol grounds, we dispersed to explore before the rally.  I took the opportunity to enter the state capitol building and compare it with Oklahoma’s where I spent significant time during an internship last year.  After a brief run through the museum, floors and chambers, it was time to join up with our compatriots in the protest outside.   

Our scrappy group of a few hundred looked small on the vast California capitol grounds which includes flower gardens and fruit trees.  When I looked around, it was not what I saw that surprised me.   I knew that the diehard HIV advocates would do whatever it took to make it to rally and have their voices heard.  But, the silence of those who did not come was deafening.  Where were the other estimated 160,000 people living with HIV in California?  Do they know the effects that the cuts in HIV funding will have in their lives?  A friend last week mentioned his frustration at the cycle of popular causes, “Why is it that thousands of people will come out for a marriage rally but not for cutting HIV funding?  No one is going to die from Prop 8 but we will die because of this.”  An article in the West Hollywood news echoes the sentiment. 

The rally proceeded without a hiccough.  The speakers included actress Sheryl Lee Ralph, a clergyman, HIV+ individuals as well as social service providers like myself.  My greatest joy during the protest was watching the politicos walk through our protest on their way into the capitol.  Maybe the message of the rally hit home for them.  I could see one legislator peering out his office window at our protest.  I wonder what he thought of the display.

After seven more hours of the charter bus and with bruises on our knees from the cramped seats, my friend and I returned to Los Angeles.  The crowd dispersed and we all went our own separate ways.  In total, we each spent over twenty hours on this one-day Sacramento trip.  It seems like a small price to pay to have involved ourselves in the political process, to exercise the right to assemble.  I feel that what I did made a difference no matter what happens.  I represented a voice.

News for June 11

Battling AIDS in Its Worst-Hit Demographic  |  Miller-McCune

The U.S. AIDS epidemic disproportionately affects African Americans — of the 1 million-plus HIV positive Americans, nearly half are black. And every year, about 25,000 African Americans become infected. The crisis is the focus of most of the articles in the June edition of the American Journal of Public Health.

Miller-McCune.com spoke with one of the issue’s guest co-editors, Donna Hubbard McCree of the HIV/AIDS prevention division at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, about the nature of the problem and some research aimed at addressing it.

Miller-McCune.com: Health disparities between racial groups exist across a range of diseases. Why is tackling HIV/AIDS different?

Donna Hubbard McCree: There are common causes for other disparities, such as the lack of access to care and poverty. But HIV is different. …

Read more …

After America  |  FP Passport

The world is at a hinge moment in history: The United States has reached the end of a global ascendency in political, economic, and cultural terms. This is not just about the “rise of the rest” — the Indias and Chinas of the world. It’s also about what I call “middling America,” a society that is lagging behind others on standard barometers of modernity, from healthcare to education, from financial regulation to the application of green and digital technologies. The global economic crisis, with America as the epicenter, is a case in point of a tarnished U.S. model. At the same time, venerable American institutions, whether it’s Harvard or Hollywood, have migrated to a post-national, global identity; they belong to the world more than to the United States. The future, in short, is no longer happening only, or even especially, in America. The gold standards of global excellence are scattered around the planet.

Yet even as America is fading, the question of what comes next is far from answered.

Read more …

Gaffney Suggests Obama is a Muslim  |  Brendan Nyhan

The misperception that Barack Obama is a Muslim will not go away.

Frank Gaffney, the right-wing apparatchik last seen suggesting that President Obama’s apparent bow to King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia was “code” telling “our Muslim enemies that you are willing to submit to them,” has written an entire column for the Washington Times arguing that “there is mounting evidence that the president not only identifies with Muslims, but actually may still be one himself” (via MM). He bases this false conclusion upon a bizarre and elaborate exegesis of Obama’s Cairo speech that would embarrass even the most paranoid conspiracy theorist.

We’ve repeatedly seen members of the press and political figures promoting this myth (or claims that reinforce it) over the last few years. … It’s therefore not surprising that a Pew poll in April found that almost half of all Americans still don’t know Obama’s religion, including approximately one quarter of the public that either thinks he is a Muslim (11%) or doesn’t know and has “heard different things” (13%).

In a new working paper (PDF), my co-author Jason Reifler and the undergraduates in my PS 199AS class here at Duke report the results of new experiments testing the effects of Obama’s efforts to correct the Muslim myth. Our findings, which extend my previous research with Reifler on correcting misperceptions, indicate that the myth has a strong social desirability component and that Obama’s attempts to correct it may backfire among Republicans.

Read more …

Why Health Advice on ‘Oprah’ Could Make You Sick  |  Newsweek

In January, Oprah Winfrey invited Suzanne Somers on her show to share her unusual secrets to staying young. Each morning, the 62-year-old actress and self-help author rubs a potent estrogen cream into the skin on her arm. She smears progesterone on her other arm two weeks a month. And once a day, she uses a syringe to inject estrogen directly into her vagina. The idea is to use these unregulated “bio-identical” hormones to restore her levels back to what they were when she was in her 30s, thus fooling her body into thinking she’s a younger woman. According to Somers, the hormones, which are synthesized from plants instead of the usual mare’s urine (disgusting but true), are all natural and, unlike conventional hormones, virtually risk-free (not even close to true, but we’ll get to that in a minute).

…

That was apparently good enough for Oprah. “Many people write Suzanne off as a quackadoo,” she said. “But she just might be a pioneer.” Oprah acknowledged that Somers’s claims “have been met with relentless criticism” from doctors. Several times during the show she gave physicians an opportunity to dispute what Somers was saying. But it wasn’t quite a fair fight. The doctors who raised these concerns were seated down in the audience and had to wait to be called on. Somers sat onstage next to Oprah, who defended her from attack. “Suzanne swears by bioidenticals and refuses to keep quiet. She’ll take on anyone, including any doctor who questions her.”

That would be a lot of doctors. Outside Oprah’s world, there isn’t a raging debate about replacing hormones.

Read more …

How to Go Viral  |  Salon

Bill Wasik is an Internet instigator. Though he works as an editor at Harper’s, Wasik is best known as the creator of flash mobs, that early 21st-century trend in which, directed by chain e-mails, people formed mobs in public places for no other reason than to form mobs. That’s hardly his only act of Internet impishness, though: Over the course of his career, Wasik has adopted numerous online personas in order to test the boundaries of our ever-expanding viral culture. He tried to derail the burgeoning career of indie rock darlings Peter Bjorn and John, started a fake version of the New York Times for conservatives, and ran a site focused exclusively on negative attacks against political candidates. In the process, he’s analyzed how and why some stories became cultural phenomenons and others languish in the nursing home of online oblivion.

Now, in his new book “And Then There’s This: How Stories Live and Die in Viral Culture”, Wasik sets out to explain what he’s learned from all his Web mischievousness and also  what our increasing addiction to the Internet indicates about us as a society.  We now have more information at our fingertips than ever before, but Wasik suggests we find it hard to focus on issues that really matter because we’re so consumed with myopic, ephemeral things.

Read more …

Some Cuts Don’t Heal – The State of HIV Funding in CA

As you may have heard, California is in trouble. Due to the economic downturn, the state revenue has significantly decreased. To make up the difference between the current rate of expenditures and the revenue available to spend in the coming fiscal year, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger proposed a budget with cuts to hundreds of programs. Those cuts are being felt in fields across the board in California. I can only tell the story of one of those cuts, the proposed elimination of $80 million of HIV funding.

These HIV cuts would significantly reduce the AIDS Drug Assistance Program (ADAP) and cut completely all other Office of AIDS programs for the state of California, including HIV testing and counseling and all HIV prevention programs. The proposed cuts are unprecedented and will essentially eliminate the Office of AIDS in California. In addition to eliminating state funding, agencies will also not be able to receive federal funding that requires state matching.

These draconian cuts are being felt deeply across all HIV/AIDS agencies in California. Some are being forced to close their doors. At my agency, Common Ground: The Westside HIV Community Center, these cuts account for approximately $300,000 or a quarter of our annual budget. Without a miracle, we will have major layoffs and cuts to our programs.  One potential cut is our needle exchange program.

As a response to the proposed budget, Californians concerned about HIV have organized. On Friday, June 5, a protest rally was held at the Hollywood Forever Cemetery to show our outrage. Appropriately named, the rally was deemed Fight for Our Lives. Carry protest signs, hundreds turned out in red, the color of HIV awareness. We marched the streets of Hollywood chanting and waving. In a small victory, the rally successfully closed down Santa Monica Blvd, a major street in Los Angeles.

The location of Hollywood Forever Cemetery invoked powerful symbolism. One speaker stated forcefully, “We’re not taking any more early visits back to the cemetery.” Other speakers cited their disappointment that they were back on the streets protesting for HIV after so many years of the epidemic.

The topic of many of the homemade signs at the rally was the AIDS Drug Assistance Program, (ADAP). This program funds medications for those HIV+ individuals who cannot afford to pay for their meds. ADAP preserves their lives. Without it, thousands will suffer the full-blown effects of HIV/AIDS before they should. The most moving signs I saw implicitly referenced these medications. The most powerful stated, “I want to live.”

On a personal note, I have heard outrage before. But I am not sure I have felt it before now. These proposed cuts make my blood boil and my eyes water. As many signs at the protest read, “These cuts will kill.” How can we let that happen in Los Angeles? California? The United States? The world?

Stay tuned.  Next week I will be attending the HIV protest at the capitol in Sacramento. For more information, visit stopthehivecuts.wordpress.com.

News for May 11

All the News That’s Fitting

President Obama shone at the White House Correspondants Dinner this weekend, bringing down the house of Washington journalism’s elite by cracking jokes about Dick Cheney, Fox News and his own reliance on teleprompters. But Obama also addressed the crisis daily newspapers are facing as they struggle for financial solvency in an age of new media, and the U.S. need for responsible journalism. ”A government without newspapers, a government without a tough and vibrant media of all sorts is not an option for the United States of American,” he said. Bloggers recently examined the future of newspapers and whether new media can play a role in creating responsible citizens. Links include:

Columbia Journalism Review |  “We have also failed our readers in the way we cover government. The First Amendment not only guaranteed freedom of the press from government interference, it also gave American journalists the opportunity—I believe the responsibility—to find and present facts on issues that require public attention. Our press is not protected in order to merely echo the views of government officials, opposition politicians, and so-called experts. Too often, though, that’s what occurs. One of my basic concerns is that American journalism has turned away from its own hard-won expertise, and at the very time when readers are looking to us to explain the context of what is happening and what will happen next.”

Daniel Akst @Atlantic Correspondents |  “The truth is that it hardly matters what you put in newspapers these days, and their owners have cottoned to this fact. Good newspapers are losing readers and advertisers just as fast as bad ones, if not faster. I could easily argue that Pincus has it exactly backwards; the problem isn’t that newspapers aren’t good enough, it’s that they aren’t bad enough to thrive in a culture that won’t pay for quality and finds voyeurism much more compelling than solid news and analysis.”

Ezra Klein @The American Prospect |  “The news business, we all agree, is an inefficient enterprise. But it has benevolent inefficiencies. Not every story in the paper maximizes readership and thus advertising revenue. The low-readership stories, however, aren’t misfires. They’re aimed at a different audience: Empowered elites. They make the political system aware of problems, or they alert the political system to the fact that other people are aware of problems. And that only works because newspapers are hard to ignore.”

Andrew Sullivan @The Atlantic |  “A good blog, with a tenacious blogger, on a difficult subject, can keep at a subject with intensity newspapers are hard-pressed to match. And as long as there are meta-blogs or aggregators or edited blogs that can highlight niche blogging on important, less-read subjects, these issues can be brought to the fore. Ideally, blogs and newspapers form a helpful nexus. But both can and will evolve to save the old civic function of the press.”

NPR |  “Newspapers across the country continue to lay off journalists and columnists, and investigative reporting is rapidly becoming a thing of the past for many media outlets. Now an unexpected player — the Goldwater Institute, a conservative think tank — is looking to fill the void.”

Obama Bans Funding for Needle Exchange  |  AlterNet

Obama, during the primary campaign, pledged his support of needle exchange programs to slow the spread of HIV/AIDS. When he took over the White House, the administration website affirmed: “The President also supports lifting the federal ban on needle exchange, which could dramatically reduce rates of infection among drug users.” Yet Obama’s budget includes language that bans spending federal money on needle-exchange programs.

• Related link: Needle Exchange and Human Dignity  |  Xenia Institute Featured Articles

Liar, Liar: Jim Carrey and the Misinformation about Vaccines and Autism  |  The League of Ordinary Gentlemen

(Thanks to vaccines) diseases that once killed thousands of children a year are all but unheard of now. It’s hard to argue with that kind of success. Sadly, Jim Carrey has seen fit to try. It was with singular frustration that I read his recent missive in the Huffington Post, full of the usual “vaccines lead to autism” misinformation and pseudoscientific mumbo-jumbo. What was most frustrating about the post was not so much that I think Mr. Carrey is wrong (though I think that he is very, very wrong), but that he is dishonest.

• Related link: The Judgment on Vaccines is In?  |  Jim Carrey @The Huffington Post

Escape from Guantanamo  |  Slate

Some members of Congress are up in arms about the Obama administration’s plan to transfer Guantanamo detainees to prisons in the United States. Objections range from legal (how do we try all 270?) to logistical (how do we move them?) to plain old NIMBY-ness: “Our constituents don’t want these terrorists in their neighborhoods,” said House Minority Leader John Boehner. Leave aside, for a moment, the fact that none of these detainees has been convicted of anything—unlike the inmates already in constituents’ neighborhoods. Also forget, if you can, the nonsensical nature of these objections. (Aren’t most prisons already full of dangerous people?) Instead, consider this: If Guantanamo Bay detainees land in American prisons, they may find themselves treated worse than they are now.

The Joy of Exclamation Marks!  |  Stuart Jeffries @The Guardian

Exclamation marks – those forms of punctuation derided by the funless and fastidious – are making a comeback, thanks to an internet renaissance that is bleeding over into every form of written communication. Once it was bad form to end a paragraph with an exclamation mark. Now it’s borderline obligatory. Once it was enough to put a sign on your door: “Back in five minutes.” Now, without the flourish of an exclamation mark, that sign lacks verve or at least zeitgeisty voguishness. Go figure!

Needle Exchange and Human Dignity

By Caitlin Fraizer

Hi, my name is Caitlin, and I assist people in exchanging needles. Let me tell you about needle exchange and why I am proud to do this work.

Needle exchange is the process by which people, mainly injection drug users (IDUs), trade their, old or “dirty,” needles for new “clean” needles. Although the practice has been used as a political football in the past few years, I imagine that most Americans — including myself before I started working in HIV prevention — do not really understand why needle exchanges exist or what happens at them.

The concept of needle exchange comes from a service provider philosophy called “harm reduction.” This philosophy is based on the idea that any step, no matter how small, that someone takes to reduce their potential harm is a positive one. It may be easier to explain with the help of some examples.

Since September, when I started my job at Common Ground: The Westside HIV Community Center in Santa Monica, Calif., as a prevention advocate, I have been known to say the following things:

• “Now you’re smoking meth instead of injecting it?  That’s a great improvement.”
• “If you’re going to share needles, would you consider using first instead of using after other people?”
• “Yes, cleaning your needles out with bleach and water is a good way to prevent infection if you are not able to use a new needle every time.”

See the pattern in the previous statements? None of them suggest that the only way to be healthier is to give up using. Instead, they either suggest or affirm a practice that makes using drugs a little safer. Through these small steps, people are able to make improvements to their health, even if they are not able to quit.

The sharing of needles, especially for injecting drugs, is one of the leading causes of HIV and hepatitis C infection. By providing clean needles, exchanges decrease needle sharing and the resulting infections that come from sharing needles. Since fewer people are infected with these diseases, society is saved the cost of medical services and gains the increased productivity of healthy people. In addition, exchanges take hundreds of thousands of needles off the streets and properly dispose of them. These are needles that could have ended up in public trash cans, on streets and in parks.  Doesn’t this sound like a win-win situation?

“Not so fast,” say those who oppose needle exchange. Many opponents of the practice argue that it condones and aids the use of illicit drugs. Proponents of exchange respond to this argument that people would be using illegal drugs whether or not the exchanges were there and that needle exchanges help them to be safer in their drug use.  In fact, people engaging in needle exchange may be more likely to seek treatment for drug addiction because of their increased contact and links to social services through exchanges.

Although the major part of my job description does not involve needle exchange, I am happy to lend a hand when people come into the office and ask for ‘points.’  I probably do three or four needle exchanges a week.  Here’s what happens:

I get a call at my desk, “Caitlin, someone is here for an exchange.” I go out to the front of the office and escort the client into a room full of exchange equipment.  Then, I complete a short form we use to keep track of our statistics. It includes questions like, “What was the drug you last injected?” and “How many injections in the last week were with a new needle?” Although these questions seem quite personal in nature, the information is usually shared easily.  Then, dirty needles are discarded in a biohazard sharps container.  Afterward, I ask what kind of needles* the person would like to receive and pack those up in a bag.  I also point the person to other supplies such as cookers, cottons, tourniquets, alcohol pads, antibiotic ointment, bandages, and condoms. Those items are gathered and packed up as well. Then, I send the person on his or her way, much better prepared to inject safely.

You should know that what I just described is the simplest kind of exchange. Many other aspects can and are added based on the participant’s needs. These include: overdose prevention training, legal information, HIV testing, access to treatment, and advice on safer injection. Exchanges can last anywhere from 10 to 40 minutes or more.

Now that I have shared the general philosophy and the nuts and bolts of exchange, let me tell you why I am proud to do it.

Because injection drug users are usually treated inhumanely.  They are stepped on and counted out.  They are brushed past.

Because of all the groups of people I interact with at work, IDUs are the most appreciative.  They tell me it’s because they are used to being exiled to the fringes of society, getting needles from car trunks and RVs in back alleys.

Because by serving IDUs with respect and professionalism, I am giving them back a piece of the dignity that has been stolen from them.

Because the interaction we have might be the most normal interaction that person has all week.

Because in helping this person live a safer life, I am showing empathy for the human condition.

Because I am being the change I wish to see in the world.

* Needles come in a variety of gauges and two different sizes of barrel.