Make A Note: AIDs Protesters Are The Worst

21 Arrested in Arlington Protest of Bush Administration AIDS Policy

Arlington police arrested 21 protesters yesterday after they chained themselves to the front door and one another at Bush-Cheney campaign headquarters during a demonstration against administration policies.
About 120 protesters took part in the demonstration outside the building on Wilson Boulevard that houses the campaign headquarters, police said. The protest began about 2 p.m. and lasted 90 minutes, they said.
The protest was organized by ACT UP and Housing Works, a nonprofit agency that provides social services, housing and health care to people with AIDS in New York, said Robert Cordero, director of federal advocacy for Housing Works.

I believe ACT UP was the same organization that got several protesters into the RNC Convention while Bush was speaking. About three of these protesters were carried out by a platoon of Secret Service officers.
These guys have become dangerous because of their actions. By disrupting the Bush speech, they could have caused a lapse in security. Additionally, they caused as much chaos as possible outside of the convention. Of course, the Secret Service prepares for fanatical protestors like these, but they certainly are not appreciated, and their antics cause a lot of trouble.

I suppose that the protesters do not realize that HIV/AIDs is receiving more funding from the federal government, per infected person, than any other major disease. In 2003, HIV/AIDs research received nearly 2.8 billion in federal funding. This translates to $5,500 for every person identified as having AIDs (which kills about 14,132 per year). Heart diseases, which kill about 700,000 per year, receive only about 2.1 billion in federal funding.
In other words, HIV is disproportionably funded to an extreme. Compared with other common causes of death, it is quite overfunded. The deathrate due to HIV has been plummeting since 1995, from 45,000 in 1995 to 15,000 in 1999 (I am unable to find more recent data).
In 1998, more people of every 5-year age group (one group is 0 to 4 years old, the next is 5 to 9 years old, the next is 10 to 14 years old, ect) died due to suicide rather than HIV/AIDs. With the exception of groups within the 30-year-old to 64-year-old bracket, more people died due to homicide (murder) than due to HIV/AIDs. And, within the 30 to 64 bracket, the death rates are quite close. source. That source may take a while to load, as it is a large Centers for Disease Control document.
So, HIV-positive people not only have an overfunded infection (according to the data), but their disease actually doesn't kill very many people in the US.

Don't get me wrong, every person knowing they are going to die abnormally soon has a right to be unhappy. However, unintentional injuries (which tend to come out of nowhere and with no warning at all) kill far more people than HIV/AIDs does. I believe the protesters had a far greater chance of being killed by a car (accidentally) when leaving the Bush-Cheney HQ than they were to die of HIV/AIDs at the Bush-Cheney HQ. The likelihood that many protesters were not HIV-positive makes this possible.

Keep in mind, somewhere between 2 and 8 people die each year by being crushed by a giant roll of paper. Another 2 to 8 (at the least) are killed by giant spools of wire in a similar fashion.

There are plenty of ways to die, and HIV is a less-common one. However, government insists on ending it with incredible amounts of money, giving the shaft to people with cancer or heart diseases, along with many other fatal problems.


To me, it seems that these protesters are simply fanatics who want to disrupt the democratic process. Actually, that’s exactly what they are, and HIV is an unrelated factor.