WI: Better response to the HIV/AIDS epidemic in the 80s?

While rape in prison and health of prostitutes are issues to be handled, "ordinary" consensual heterosexual or homosexual activities remains the major route of transmissions, in addition to contamination of blood products. Also, safe sex practice would cover most routes of transmissions, apart from rape (which while deplorable, is and was not a major route of transmission in both absolute numbers and %), mother-child infection and contaminated blood products.

Actually the term should be safer sex not safe sex. The only truly safe sex is by yourself in the middle of the bed so you don't fall off and hurt yourself.
 
Perhaps the most concrete policy options available early on were relating to drug use rather than sex. A needle exchange program doesn't require a major research commitment.
 
Copy the UK approach. It mostly worked. Much due to Whitelaw.

Don’t Die of Ignorance

While this was a good public education approach, the underlying epidemics were different. HIV in the United States, testing of early viruses has determined, was seeded at an early date, as early as 1970.

https://www.nature.com/articles/nature19827

The New Jersey pediatrician James Oleske, who became known in the 1980s as one of the first doctors dealing with AIDS in children, dealt in the 1970s with a child born in 1973/1974 who had HIV.

https://www.uow.edu.au/~bmartin/dissent/documents/AIDS/River/StarLedger_r1.html

By the end of the 1970s, as HIV had continued its spread in New York City and San Francisco undetected, enough people were developing enough symptoms of HIV infection to make doctors start to wonder if something new was around.

HIV was introduced to the United Kingdom at a later date, some of these HIV introduction perhaps coming directly from the United States, perhaps aided by the visibility of the American epidemic.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1567134816302234

The more aggressive responses may have limited growth, but the British epidemic may have begun up to a decade after the American one. It was inherently more controllable.
 
I wonder, imagine if by the very early 1980s John Paul II was willing to say "I screwed up with Humane Vitae. In the face of a deathly std, it's not wearing a condom what is a sin (unless you're sure your partner isn't infected and you aren't either)". And then the Catholic Church throws itself at the front of promoting safe sex and encouraging condom use. It may not have too much of a direct effect in many parts of the world (people do not listen to Popes when it comes to sex), but if one of the most socially conservatives organizations in the world is tackling the issue head on, how much would other conservatives talk about the pink disease, try to hide aids under the rug or promote abstinence?
Maybe get john paul the first to stay alive.
 
. . . apart from rape (which while deplorable, is and was not a major route of transmission in both absolute numbers and %), . . .
I've read statistics that 1 out of 5 girls is sexually abused before age eighteen, and somewhat lower statistics for boys before age 18.

I still want to emphasize the "social norming" approach. That is, focusing on the majority of step dads who do not abuse a teenager daughter, focusing on the majority of older male relatives who do not do something tricky and abusive, and/or focusing on the majority of just regular guys who don't think it's cool to bully a girl or use alcohol as a weapon, etc.
 
I've read statistics that 1 out of 5 girls is sexually abused before age eighteen, and somewhat lower statistics for boys before age 18.
And the definition of "abuse" in those statistics? I don't want to sound like a jerk, but some activists like to inflate numbers to promote their cause. I'm pretty sure, for instance, that above 90% of teenagers before age eighteen were groped against their will once. And wrong as that is, it has no relevance to the spread of AIDS
 
. . . were groped against their will once. . .
And thank goodness, in many cases it's no worse than that.

However, as I'm sure you and I both know, in many cases with an older relative or an adult "authority" figure, the abuse is really bad and can go on for a long time, sometimes for years.

* typically, it's a male problem in that males commit most of the abuse. However, sometimes in the case of a step dad, the mother knows or suspects what's going on, and she almost makes a conscious decision not to lose an "otherwise" (!) good man or she blames the daughter or something similar kind of crazy. She is not functioning as an adult protecting her child. In such cases, the daughter often has a much harder time later forgiving the mother than the abusive step dad.
 
Fostering Healthy Norms
to Prevent Violence and Abuse:
The Social Norms Approach


Alan D. Berkowitz, 2010

PDF--> http://www.alanberkowitz.com/Preventing Sexual Violence Chapter.pdf


page 4:



'For example, college men tend to overestimate their peers’ adherence to myths

that justify rape, underestimate their peers concern about risky sexual situations faced by

women, and underestimate their peer’s willingness to intervene (Berkowitz, 2003A,

2004A).'
And we can build off of what's going right. For example, give people specific skills to practically intervene in an easy and winning fashion, specific suggestions to say something brief when someone talks some crazy shit, etc.

* yes, people tend to have some way out fantasies, and people like to read exciting sex stories rather than boring sex stories. None of this should get in the way of building a better world.
 
Movie came out I believe in the early 90s called long time companion. While it's not a documentary it's very good movie actually but it gives you an idea of what the public the gay public in particular knew and when they knew it if you want to use it as a timeline to know this is this is when we do that it's a very good source. I don't normally use movies as a source but in this case I think it works well. Another good one is also in a book form is the band played on by Randy Schultz who does the same thing.
 
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