Where HIV came from, or not

While there are multiple theories about how HIV came into the human disease scene i believe two are the most important in my opinion. Since there has not been out breaks of HIV like there is now i believe that alot of the other theorys are not true because if the disease were already present then there would most likely been an out break much sooner in history. This being said the theories i chose to talk about are "Hunter" theory and the "Conspiracy" theory. The hunter theory to me seems the most reasonable theory to believe because of the proven fact that diseases can be transferred from species to species so it is not out of the question that infected chimpanzees could have passed HIV onto the human hunters that came in contact with thier blood. I think that the "Conspiracy" theory is just a creation of ignorance and the result of propaganda into less educated societies and groups of people. I think that this theory is very important because it damages the credibility of doctors to the groups of people that actually believe that humans created HIV to destroy the black and gay. The fact that HIV was first discovered in gay men i think really plays an important role in this theory and needs to be either disproved or discredited. I think the origin of HIV and the understanding of how it was transmitted into the human race is important to understand the disease and how we can defeat it.

Unrealized privaleges and STI's

In her article Peggy McIntosh talks about over priviledged classes in our society and how they impact those that they are opressing. While the oppressors might not be intentionally doing this on purpose, the reality is that it is still happening. Although i believe she is right on this point i will dissagree with the fact that she says that priviledged people shouldnt try and make it equal but also strip themselves of these priviledges for it to be equal. These kinds of systems of oppression greatly impact the wareness, spread, and treatment of STI's along with other contractable diseases. These systems make it extremely hard to make treatment or other benefits that priviledged classes have available to the other classes. To really progress in stopping STI's spread throughout the world the systems of oppressions need to be dismanteled and forgotten about.

My knowledge about HIV/AIDS..or lack of.

Through out my acedemic career the same knowledge about STD's has been pounded into my head over and over. The one heavily emphasized on the most was HIV/AIDS. I understood that can be passed from having sex or having contact with infect bodily fluids. This was so deep into my head i dont think i could forget if i even wanted to. Most of the places i learned this were from sex ed in school, from the entertainment industry and my parents. What i never learned about HIV/AIDS is where it came from, why its so infectious, when it became so widespread, and how it impacts not only people but how it impacts the economies of the affected areas. Im hoping to learn the global impact that HIV/AIDS has had and how widespread the effects are. I have been suprised at how it was first labeled as a Gay mans disease and how the timing of being gay became more openly expressed and the emergence of this new disease just happened to be in the same time frame.

The North-South divide

The north south divide is an interesting allocation of not only the majority of the wealth in the world but also the burden of Sexually Transmitted Infections. This not only occurs on a global scale but also occurs on a national level too. This divide is basically from the northern hemisphere to the southern hemisphere because most of the burden of sexually transmitted infections lie in sub saharan africa and south east asia. The bad part is most of the money is in the developed countries and the majority of public health funding is in these coultries. This makes sense because naturally developed countries tend to have more money than developing countries. This divide plays a big part in the problems with over coming global diseases such as HIV/AIDS and other easily transimitted viruses and infections. I believe in order to really conquer these diseases we need to bridge the gap between these two demographics and stop thinking of just ourselfs and think of humanity as a whole.