… but did not have the time to…
I would like to have blogged about this thought provoking excerpt from Russell Banks’ The Darling on the difference between empathy and sympathy.
“What was ethically and even practically wrong with having empathy towards the other? For a long time, I answered, Nothing. Nothing at all. It’s good politics. I see a blind man about to cross a street and think, He can’t see the whizzing traffic, he needs me to see it for him, to take his arm and escort him over to …

A response to IRIN/PlusNews list of six potholes in the road to significantly increasing HIV treatment coverage in Africa.
1. Cost:
The Joint UN Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) has estimated that US$ 28 billion to US$ 50 billion would be needed globally every year from 2010 to 2015 in order to progressively reach universal access targets for HIV/AIDS by 2015. One-third of this will contribute towards the cost of the drugs.
The figure may sound “staggering” but it needs to be put in perspective with a few other figures such as:

The cost of …

In a recent posting I suggested that the possibility to show your HIV status online proves “how much has been accomplished in stamping out stigma”. A reader objected that “Actually, no. This is a move to culturally pressured disclosure so that people with HIV can be further minoritized and excluded, and presumed HIV-negative people can couple with potentially dangerous self-satisfaction.”
A search on the Fridae.com website which allows for publicly showing one’s HIV status returns 280 profiles (110 of them Caucasian) stating being HIV negative at the last test (a period …

In an article posted on LifeLube, Charles Stephens wonders what oral prevention and rectal microbicides, amongst others, might mean for HIV prevention and pleasure, risk and taboo.
As “condom-centric” prevention interventions are failing (the intervention, not the condom), hope and expectations are high that other prevention strategies such as PrEP and microbicides could succeed where condoms are failing. However, discussion and debate are rife around these interventions and they are important because we need to think ahead about how they will affect our sexual behaviour.
The problem is “how” to think these …

Another must see talk from the TED conference. The message to take home is that no simplification can be made neither is it valuable to try to make one.
“We hope that when we act on global problems in the future, we will not only have the heart, we will not only have the money, but we will also use the brain”
Hans Rosling
Professor of global health at Sweden’s Karolinska Institute

The interactive animation in this video is accessible on the Gapminder website.

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