I meant to post this yesterday and now invoke my ethnic background to excuse my tardiness.
While my laptop’s already suffering from too much spyware to withstand finding a cure for HIV, I did want to note World AIDS Day in some way. Via Anupam Chander, I see that HIV+ women in Golaghat, Assam joined a rally “to acknowledge they are living with AIDS and should not be shunned.” From what I can tell, India is doing surprisingly well, particularly compared to some African nations, in admitting its HIV crisis. When I last visited in 2003, there were bilboards with giant pictures of condoms, which is something I’ve never seen even in Houston or Dallas, where conservatism appear to be greater than in Bombay and Hyderabad. Though the government is unwilling to say just how big the population of HIV+ Indians is — as a NYT editorial puts it, “India is providing numbers no one believes” — it has not gone through the lengthy period of denial that the U.S. government did in the 1980s, which allowed HIV to threaten to become epidemic among margnialized groups.
The problem now is getting treatment to sufferers, and unlike the issue of accepting the existence of the disease (though that certainly is far from complete, and contributes to the difficulty of accessing treatment), seems likely to get worse, not better. The WTO is supposed to be giving developing nations more time to comply with patent rules, but Indian already reformed its laws last year. This has had the benefit of drawing large pharmaceutical companies who previously feared that their investments would be unprotected. On the downside, however, are millions of Indians who cannot afford the cost of a patented drug and whose salvation previously had been the cheap generics that local drug makers had pirated.Fierce advocates of intellectual property claim that no cure for HIV/ AIDS ever will be found if pharmaceutical companies cannot be secure in reaping the rewards of past R&D and in making money from any future discoveries. I take little stock in this argument for several reasons, chiefly because the initial round of treatment medications developed during the late 1980s were funded by grants from the government and medical foundations, but also because I think there is sufficient incentive to commit resources for a cure even if some developing nations do not respect the patent on it.
In the short term, the cost of patent-protected AIDS treatment is prohibitively high, and the lure of more pharmaceutical companies’ working on a cure doesn’t outweigh the negative of the patients who will die — often orphaning children thereby — without medication.
Random Note: When I was in high school and convincing my parents that I should go to law school, I used to gather examples just of Indian Americans in the legal field. Now that there are so many — there’s even a desi helping to lead the Federalist Society, one of the whitest games in town — I’m focusing on Indian law professors, who have gone the extra step of becoming academics instead of enslaving themselves to Skadden.
Chander is one. Another is Anup Malani, a professor at my alma mater currently visiting UChicago Law and posting on their faculty blog. Or at least he’s listed on the sidebar; I haven’t spotted a post from him yet, not even in response to Martha Nussbaum’s multi-part on “India: A DemocracyÂ’s Near Collapse into Religious Terror.” Nussbaum’s been on this tear for some time.
india has giant pictures of condoms… argentina has pictures of ..
R&D is expensive – yes – but their sales and marketing expenses are way out of whack – and their r&d seems to be spent mostly on converting capsules to pills etc. to extend patents – the pricing model reeks of usury – they agreed to bring down the price for the aids cocktail for africa after mbeki committed to import the drugs through cipla, ranbaxy.
the industry, to a layperson like i needs a shakeup – but would be interested in an insider’s view.
You know what is wrong with the picture? The woman walking by the sign most probably cannot read and write in English to understand what it says or means. Therein lies the whole battle against AIDS – lack of education.
Does anyone have information on campaigns in Hindi, Urdu or Bengali? I have not seen them in these major languages on the subcontinent because I haven’t been there for a while, but I’m curious to see the wording used.
I’ve realised people aren’t all that fussed.
DesiPundit kindly linked to a thread I wrote about AIDS in Asia on Pickled Politics. It received 13 clicks (one of DP’s coolest features).
Desibabes was linked the other day and (as the poster predicted) I counted 194 clicks when I checked.
People like sex. Just not worrying about the down sides.
And therein lies the problem (as well as lack of education, as Reincarnation says).
The English message is truly ironic, nay moronic. Couldnt they find a vernacular painter?
KK:
There was a very succesful campaign carried out in Maharashtra called the Balbir Pasha campaign that focused on the issue of AIDS. The campaign consisted of huge cut-outs and posters stuck on billboards with some drawings (usually the silhouette of a woman) and a sidebar which carried in large font the words: Balbir Pasha ko AIDS hoga kya?
The slogans included:-
The campaign was pretty successful and in fact won numerous awards. One would have assumed that given the bold nature of the campaign the government would have taken an issue. But surprise of surprise it was the NGO’s who took issue. They found the campaign incredibly sexist as it was unfair to women and may send the wrong message that women are responsible for spreading AIDS.
I remember one particular person opposing it had said.
But the creativity award as always belonged to the Amul advertising guys. They used the same format of the poster, the same colour combination, woman’s silhouette et. all. and created the slogan:-
The government pulled out the campaign and the last I heard it was reinstated with newer posters.
Birbal pasha kare tamasha roz asha ki sath condom laga ke bas jayega AIDS ka na lagega hath.
this is my own slogan.