Richard Gere Cares

[shawnmullin]

Comments

[scottincalgary]

Harper, who was "promoting sovereignty" in the arctic, sent Clement, his health minister. The US, for comparison, sent FORMER President Bill Clinton as their senior point person. So long as the federal government is putting adequate money into AIDS research (which, I'm not certain they do), I don't care if the PM does't show up to a conference just to give the same speech that leaders around the world have been giving for 20 years: 1. "Jesus Christ, AIDS is a big problem!" 2. "Jesus Chris, we'd better do whatever we can to find a cure!" 3. "Jesus Christ, is that Bono

[shawnmullin]

I'm not really mad at Harper - I just think he should've gone. Especially from a political stand point. It would've been smart of him to show up.

But the greater point I really was trying to make is I think him not showing up (and it's in Canada so the president of the US not showing up really doesn't compare) just kind of shows how it's not a big priority or as much of a hot button issue.

[scottincalgary]

The reason why it's not a hot button issue anymore in Canada is that, taking into account that we don't have a vaccine for HIV yet, our efforts to combat it have been extremely successful. In broader Canadian society, HIV/AIDS inflicts a very, very small percentage of people and, so long as they start their treatment early, we can give them a reasonably comfortable existence for a long period of time. In other words, within Canada, the reason why HIV/AIDS doesn't get the same popular attention it once did is because it doesn't pose the same sort of hopeless, unmanageable threat that it once did. Obviously, the situation is different in other societies.

The real "action," politically and medically on HIV/AIDS has been in the foreign aid realm for the past 15 years. And you well know how much Canadian REALLY care about holding their governments accountable on foreign aid.

[rob_in_china]

The Internation AIDS Conference is now a tradeshow and centre for activisim. This is a great way of drawing attention to the huge problem, but this conference is no longer about science. Richard Gere has about as much to do with it as 90% of the other guests there I guess.

I don't really care that Harper didn't attend. He took a lot of flak for it, but I don't think it sends the message that Canadians or the government isn't committed to AIDS research. We spend over $800 million annually and are hosting the event. The Governor General opened the ceremony, and our health minister was there. I think the focus of the meeting should be on the issues surrounding AIDS, not on who wasn't there.

Turning the AIDS conference into a platform for political manouvering about which party is more committed to it - bah!

[shawnmullin]

Well the winner of that would be the NDP anyway, so it's not like this was meant as a pro-Liberal post. I don't think the Liberals did enough about AIDS either.

[scottincalgary]

I aggree that these global "health" conferences have long been too political. One of the problems I see is that everyone is so busy glad-handing each other that no one will even bother pointing out the obvious (for risk of offending international political sensibilities): the governments of highly effected countries like South Africa and Zimbabwe really need to start taking more responsibility for the spread of this disease in their societies and move away from their brutally ineffective current strategies for combating the spread

[stothegeemo]

Scott- (I know I dont know you directly but Im a friend of Amy's) AIDS is actually a huge problem in Canada because people dont take their required drug regimen, beleiving a cure will come before they die. So many people react this way, in fact, that it was a national news story last week. While we Canadians may not be as comparatively afflicted as say African nations, it is not accurate to say it is a "very, very small percentage" of people problem. It's not.
It's funny about Harper because I work in Navy public affairs, and everyone there's desperately trying to get coverage of him on his Navy arctic tour, but the bigger story- that he ditched the AIDS conference to do this artic thing- is working counter clockwise, so to speak. Hahah!

[scottincalgary]

Sorry, but, by any standard, Canada's 0.3% infection rate is, in fact, a very, very small percentage of the total Canadian population.

[fhackit]

I don't think he was arguing that 0.002% is a large percentage, just that 73,000 people is a lot of people, and that it does affect a lot of other people (unless those 73,000 live in silos and have no family and friends).