World AIDS Day 2004

Today, December 1, is World AIDS Day. This is the day the entire world pays attention to the big problem of acquired immune deficiency syndrome and wrings its hands and what to do about, and the American media go along with it so they can get back to meatier issues the following day, like Julia Roberts's twins and Scott Peterson's sentencing. Pardon me for being a curmudgeon, but why do we need a specific day to focus on the problem of AIDS when it's a year-round problem?

And by the way, while AIDS is indeed a terrible problem, why does the world act like it's our only major catastrophic health problem when we haven't even conquered cancer? More people have died of cancer than AIDS, and four people in my family have had different forms of cancer. The truth is, there are several health crises in the world - cholera and diphtheria are still rampant, and tuberculosis has been making a comeback here in the United States. We shouldn't let any disease, or any epidemic, be overshadowed by another.

By the way, one celebrity I shall not name insisted once that apart from Hitler, AIDS was the worst thing to happen in the twentieth century. That must have come as a surprise to both cancer patients and survivors of Stalin's gulags.