The Advent to AIDS and its Connections to Heaven’s Coast by Mark Doty. The AIDS became the plague for the mankind. There is no more cruel disease than the AIDS. Nobody knows exactly what the origin of it was. One thing is obvious and the scientists, social leaders agree that it needs to be combated otherwise there is a real threat that it may destroy the mankind. We may have different attitude towards the people infected with the AIDS as well as to the risk groups but it is obvious that the plague named AIDS has all the features of the global epidemics.
The spread of AIDS became really alarming all over the world. According to the World Health Organization there were 1 million people in the North America infected with AIDS in 2004. Worldwide, AIDS kills more than 8,000 people every day; 1 person every 10 seconds. The figures are more than alarming. HIV accounts for the highest number of deaths by any single infectious agent. Since the beginning of the epidemic, AIDS has claimed nearly 30 million lives; more than 14 million children have lost one or both parents to AIDS.
There are 39.4 million persons living with HIV/AIDS worldwide. Of these, 2.2 million are children less than 15 years of age1. The situation worsens because of the prejudices towards the people who are infected with the plague of the modern society. On the first site the advent of AIDS resembles the punishment applied by the Maker to people for their sins. The most susceptible group for AIDS is the group of people practicing the homosexual contacts. The people may shut their eyes for this problem and to limit the battle with it by just raising the higher moral standards, but who may judge what is moral what is not? If even the reasons of disease are considered immoral and contradicting the nature of the human being, should the society leave the problem as it is? No doubt the moral aspect plays important role in combating the disease but it would be wrong to limit the problem by the moral issues only.
The Essay on Stressful Situation Aids People Hiv
... do enough time already?" (Klitzman, 95) People infected with AIDS go through stressful situations everyday not only ... heavily stigmatized and raises a series of moral issues in patients' and others' eyes. The ... may already infect one to two million Americans and spreads to forty thousand more people each year." ... groups to help. One such social group is a "Body Positive social for HIV-positive people." ...
If the grown ups are punished for their sins by the Maker, then what is the guilt of the newly born children with congenital disease, or what is the guilt of patients in the hospitals who are accidentally infected by the medical staff during the injections? Another alarming issue is that the disease does not choose. In this way it is democratic in the worst meaning of this word. It means that it made all people equally facing this threat, drug takers and outstanding singers, poets and sportsmen. Some of the observers consider that the roots of the AIDS are in poverty and social inequalities. The scientific progress has not been enough to tackle Aids however, because the shape and scale of the epidemic has been driven by social inequalities and directed by politics2. It is really true because Africa is the continent which is suffering most of all.
The poverty, of course worsens the situation but it can not be the main drive of the epidemics. The situation becomes alarming because according to experts, for example Zimbabwe will have zero percent population growth next year due to Aids3. The social impact of the AIDS epidemics is overwhelming. The epidemic is dangerous because of its psychological impact on infected people as well as on the people who communicate with them in their everyday life. One of the brilliant poet and writer Mark Doty while passing the awful stages of the disease narrated his feelings and views on the reality in his Heaven’s Coast: A Memoir. In his book he calls for the mercy to the mortally ill people.
He shows that people with AIDS really need the support rather than condemnation. Condemnation is useless because what the condemnation is when the people are mortally ill and they have already paid off in the full measure for their sins. Mark Doty narrates the psychological state of him and his partner. When someone reads the lines of Doty he realizes all depth of his despair on one hand and his strong desire to support his dying friend that touches and destroys all stereotypes of the relations between the people of the same sex. He compares the virus with the solvent that was dissolving the future. The virus seemed to me, first, like a kind of solvent which dissolved the future, our future, a little at a time.
The Essay on Sub Saharan Africa People Aids Resources
Sub-Saharan Africa has turn into a "virtual killing field" with the world s worst undeclared war. What do you do when an epidemic with no cures sweeps through a nation What do you do when you don t have the needed resources to contain the disease with treatment What do you do when most people within the population do not even know they carry disease AIDS is rapidly killing off the population of ...
It was like a dark stain, a floating, inky transparency hovering over Wally’s body, and its intention was to erase the time ahead of us, to make that time, each day, a little smaller.4 The society needs to be more tolerant and more attentive to the people with the terminal illness. Mark Doty describes that the most dangerous thing which may happen to a human being is the lost of the future. The lost of the future is the ultimate level of despair. The psychological state of the people sick with the AIDS needs special attention because the perception of the reality intensifies and people accept the reality exaggeratedly. The psychological assistance is vitally important for the sick people because they live in the self isolation. They may rely upon their co-fellows only and society if it is civilized needs to turn to the problems of its members. Mark Doty compares his dissolved future with the Apocalypse, but that Apocalypse is not the global Apocalypse described in the bible, but the Apocalypse inside the sick people because the human being is the universe himself.
One sort of apocalyptic scenario has replaced another: endings ecological or nuclear, scenarios of depleted ozone or global starvation, or, finally, epidemic. All my life I’ve lived with a future which constantly diminishes, but never vanishes. Apocalypse is played out now on a personal scale; it is not in the sky above us, but in our bed5. The main achievement of Mark Doty is that he succeeded to attract attention of the society to the psychological problems of the people infected with AIDS. He explains the feelings of a dying person. He stresses attention on the fact that people with the mortal disease need special attitude.
The Term Paper on State Of Nature People Rousseau Society
In this essay, I will attempt to show how Jean-Jacques Rousseau s view of the state of nature differs from that of his predecessor John Locke. I will then compare certain aspects and themes central to each thinker s views and interpretations of the state of nature. Using the concept of the state of nature, Rousseau illustrates that people are essentially good and the negative aspects of society ( ...
We have a kind of myth about illness that it transforms us, that it makes us more noble or better people, or more spiritual. In my experience it makes us more of what we are already — if you’re an angry person youll get angrier, if you’re a fearful person you’ll get more fearful, a control freak becomes more controlling. That’s also true of people who are around the sick6. The psychological support of people infected with the AIDS is the concern of the society and the society needs to take care of its members. The AIDS as described earlier is the most dangerous epidemic the humanity has ever faced. The society needs to re evaluate its attitude towards issues that may seem unnatural. It will worsen the morality of the young generation, no doubt. But there could be a question if the moral values of the youth are better if the youth is grown up in the atmosphere of hatred or callousness.
The question is who is going to benefit from such merciless attitude to the sick people. On the other hand the disease can not be stopped by the raising of morality only. That means that the moral aspect is of great importance to prevent from the infection but it should not transfer to the hatred towards the sick people. Bibliography Aids: ‘The worst yet to come’, BBC News, available at http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/1369902.stm Excerpt from Heaven’s Coast: A Memoir, by Mark Doty, available at http://www.english.uiuc.edu/maps/poets/a_f/doty/he avenscoast.htm The Brilliance of Mark Doty, Owen Keehnen, available at http://www.queerculturalcenter.org/Pages/Keehnen/D oty.html WHO, AIDS: Facts and Figures, available at http://w3.whosea.org/en/Section10/Section18/Sectio n348.htm Citation WHO BBC News Ibid Mark Doty Ibid Owen Keehnen.
