That has to top my list of people’s description of their jobs. Card carrying nerds who spend time analyzing MSM behavioral trends so that the world can effectively curb a raging endemic are fascinating creatures.
Also..
AIDS is a four lettered word. (Ok, acronym, if you want to split hairs)
Those two are perhaps mutually exclusive pieces of information.
When an ordinary, non-epidemiologist type of person like myself looks at statistical data floating around about public health catastrophes, procured by universally revered medical agencies(such as UNAIDS) about a universally terrifying contagion(such as AIDS) it usually leads to some palpitation(I studied economics and stats) and some confusion(with limited comprehension, I might add). My generation, aka GEN D(D for Disoriented, am told) is usually so consumed by racing past some new super-information highway(I just spotted a cliche in soup, yuckie!) at mach speed, so issues like the AIDs epidemic, public health, harm reduction, sex positive feminism et al are not even a blip on our respective radars. Tres tragique!
These exact issues are at the core of Elizabeth Pisani’s “The Wisdom of Whores : Bureaucrats, Brothels and the Business of AIDS”. Its a direct and non-apologetic look at the AIDS crisis and an entire industry that’s construct around it and the big dollars(and euros and yens and every other appreciating or depreciating currency) pouring in and being drifted away in the wrong directions. New age philanthropists and Bono not withstanding. Often the amount of lip service offered to any campaign is directly proportional to its futility. Bitter pill. Yes. True, nevertheless.
I like this Pisani woman, already. I am 24 now and my first no-holds-barred plungedown into the world of Acquired Immuno Deficiency Syndrome was almost 10 years ago for a school report. The exigence for its dissipation and the phobia surrounding its spread was almost instantly “attractive”. Thats the type of nonsense that percolates your psyche when you are light years away from someone who is actually staring into the eye of the tornado. The desire to morph into a crusader at the drop of a hat is something that needs strong prevention against. Later in life I actually got to know of people who were HIV positive, some with fullblown AIDs. The reality of the situation hits you like a 20,000 miles per second variety tsunami. I am not a social worker or a lab genius working on a miracle cure, not even a mathematical wizkid who can spit out numbers correlating the AIDs disaster with x,y,z factoids or datapoints. I will even admit to a certain amount of fear when I chose an AIDS relief hospital for some corporate social responsibility work for my ex-organization. I wasn’t the only one. People were clearly sweating behind their white, blue and assorted colored collars. Its a scary disease. Though some of that fear is due to lack of information or just that nobody wants to die. Fair enough.
Hence, my overwrought-with- idealistic-fervor sort of writeup on this subject would not hold much water. Mz Pisani, however, can afford to be snarky and sassy and equally intelligent while narrating tales and facts(woven together fantastically)even as your are trying to screw your jaw shut from coming apart in disgusted astonishment everytime a new and even more disturbing fact in revealed as the chapters roll. This epidemologist is an ex Reuter’s correspondent(with an Oxbridge degree in classical chinese no less) turned an AIDS researcher turned activist about 10 years ago. The last of those descriptions will probably not go down too well with her but what other term can be utilized to describe someone whose day job, for most part and for a whole decade if not more, consisted of chatting up hookers of straight, gay and transgendered variety in some of Asia’s most dangerous red light districts, naviagting her way through war torn anarchist empires rummaging for information for high risk behavior data analysis just to setup surveillance systems, collecting anal swabs from sexually ambiguous youngsters in equally precarious slums and transporting HIV infected blood to labs to fathom enough data so that the politburo and the Pooh-Bahs of Big AIDs Funding could get their act together and avert an international disaster which they have actually been fanning rapidly since discovering the nasty virus a few a decades ago. In other words, the woman knows her trade. She has been there. She has given it her sweat, tears and in reverse, collected enough blood to stand up and say – Hey, we may not be doing this right. Yes, she tends to drop too many anecdotes too quickly and sometimes seem haughtily conceited not to forget her slightly unnecessary colloquialisms but all thats forgiven in favor of some of the more hard hitting revelations.
Which, we probably already know. In small amounts.
It’s the biggest international problem, we are told. Well, it is but the way they are selling it to you, that is not exactly the truth. AIDS is a real and palpable problem. No doubt. But the presentation to the population at large is very different from the research data bundled in neat “cookbooks” summoned by the UN conventions in Geneva or Nigeria. AIDS is everyone’s problem but the maps of high risk behavior in high risk populations haven’t yet supplemented that thoroughly.
Appalling is one word that sprung back and forth repeatedly when I was reading about some of the arm-twisting measures reinforced by the high powered AIDS funding donors(read: USA). About how religious and ideological and even cultural hoopla far exceeds the desire to save lives. The constant fugging up about how trafficking equates more AIDs or less live injectors reversing that process. For instance, a lot of people can’t wrap their brains around the concept of harm reduction for injectors. One of the more effective ways to prevent bad blood from infecting millions others. This is the line that separates morality from ethics. Learn to navigate the difference. It’s not an easy thought to digest, agreed. It’s not impossible either. People are still so exceptionally comfortable demarcating territories of cultivated moral(and hence physical perhaps)safety from those who are definitely are going to hell for their wicked habits and hence leaving the Other Half to die whatever lesion-riddled death is suitable for them, yet the very same people when put on a political pedestal suddenly campaign about AIDs being everyone’s problems. Weird loopy logic. Or lack of it.
Randall “The-Abstinence-over-safe-sex douchebag” Tobias’s phone number was found in the DC madam’s little black book is that one fact which still leaves me wildly barbed. You attach better expectations to USAID. Then again, there exist Republicans. So, shudder!
The title emanates from Pisani’s almost oracle-esque decree that everyone involved in the AIDS “business”(what better term do we have?) is as much a whore as those walking the night streets of Chiang Mai or Kamathipura. True , that.
p.s.: I am heartily awaiting the sudden spike in my blog stats’ heartbeat after this post title fetches enough of perverted Googlites or Googling pervies to this unknown domain!
