We're all gonna die!

High-fructose corn syrup will kill you.

The ozone hole is reacting to more chemicals.

President McCain.

AIDS and where it actually came from.

Never say these things to a teacher unless you want to be cut up for the next craft project.

From bones to security

The church decorated with bones.

Global warming is making plants grow around the northern latitudes.

Surviving Mengele.

Bee venom is good for something... destroying HIV cells.

A woman speaks out about how men should be taught not to rape... and gets truly ugly threats about rape.

Unknown microbes found in Antarctic ice lake.  Isn't this how the horror story begins?

The frightening buildup of hate groups in reaction to a black president and the gun control movement. (pdf)

Getting rich off of schoolchildren.

Policy Basics: Top Ten Facts about Social Security

Sunday, Sunday...

Martin Bashir calls out the GOP.

Bryan of Why Now? deals with the Florida voting rumpus.

Ladies do not need to talk about lady problems.  Let men do it for you.

Paul Krugman, European rock star.

Catholic hospital says no meds to HIV man.  Steve Bates predicted this asinine move.

Via Marcellina of the Practice Room, Das Rad (with English subtitles):

It's Monday, so here are some things to make you smile

Um... is he allowed to do that?

David Attenborough stands up against creationism in school.

Online gamers crack AIDS enzyme puzzle

Stockbox Grocers to Convert Shipping Containers into Local Grocery Stores in Food Deserts

Bush and his AIDS project in Africa

That everyone touts as a wonderful thing, just remember this:

Under President George W. Bush , the United States withdrew from its decades-long role as a global leader in supporting family planning, driven by a conservative ideology that favored abstinence and shied away from providing contraceptive devices in developing countries, even to married women.

Bush's mammoth global anti-AIDS initiative, the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, poured billions of dollars into Africa but prohibited groups from spending any of it on family planning services or counseling programs, whose budgets flat-lined.

The restrictions flew in the face of research by international aid agencies, the U.N. World Health Organization and the U.S. government's own experts, all of whom touted contraception as a crucial method of preventing births of babies being infected with HIV, the virus that causes AIDS.

The Bush program is widely hailed as a success, having supplied lifesaving anti-retroviral drugs to more than 2 million HIV patients worldwide.

However, researchers, Africa experts and veteran U.S. health officials now think that PEPFAR also contributed to Africa's epidemic population growth by undermining efforts to help women in some of the world's poorest countries exercise greater control over their fertility.

AIDS went up with Bush's abstinence program.

And he cut programs:

BUSH LIED ABOUT THE AIDS FUNDING HIS ADMINISTRATION IS PROVIDING, AS WELL AS ITS TIMING "Mr. Bush's other foreign aid initiative, announced in his State of the Union address, is $10 billion in new money to fight AIDS in Africa and the Caribbean over five years. But his budget falls short of that promise. He is proposing only a $550 million increase over the global AIDS money in this year's spending bill now in Congress. Since the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria would be an effective channel for the aid, there is no excuse for the initiative's leisurely start. Mr. Bush's 2004 budget for the Global Fund, $200 million, actually cuts in half what Congress is likely to do in 2003. Mr. Bush has also found part of the money for his AIDS programs by cutting nearly $500 million from child health, including vaccine programs. Child survival is the biggest loser in the foreign aid budget — a scandalous way to finance AIDS initiatives. With the budget dominated by defense spending and huge tax cuts for the wealthy, the White House should not be forcing the babies of Africa to pay for their parents' AIDS drugs." 2.17.03

So while the Bush Legacy buffers search for something ... ANYTHING... that Georgie did while president that was good, this was not as gloriously wonderful as they would have you believe.

Bush's Legacy: AIDS in Africa

Shorter Bill Frist: Bush saved 10 million lives! He did! As a physician I can tell these things! He saved Africans from AIDS with his anti-AIDS program!

Really?:

Although the U.S. has been looked upon as a leader in the fight against
HIV/AIDS, the Bush administration has been criticized for playing to
fundamentalist views at the expense of girls and women and effective
comprehensive approaches.

[snip]

The U.S. has also been under fire for its Global Gag Rule that withholds
funding from any organization that even mentions abortion to its clients as
a family planning option. As a result, many clinics providing condoms to
clients shut down for lack of funds,.

In 2003, rather than put all the U.S. funds for AIDS into the multilateral
Global Fund to fight HIV/AIDS established the previous year, President
George W. Bush set up a separate unilateral program called the President’s
Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR).

Though widely seen as insufficient for the enormity of the task, the $9
billion in new money spread out over five years was a significant
contribution and encouraged other nations to do their share. Yet PEPFAR came
with restrictive funding requirements that, according to Boonstra, have hurt
countries in combating AIDS.

In accepting U.S. money, countries must use one-third of all funding to
promote abstinence. As a result, countries had to cut back on other
essential programs. The Government Accountability Office (GAO) found that
the cutbacks included slashing programs that prevent mother-to-child
transmission and others using comprehensive approaches such as condom
distribution to high-risk, sexually active teenagers.

What was that about saving lives?

BUSH LIED ABOUT THE AIDS FUNDING HIS ADMINISTRATION IS PROVIDING, AS WELL AS ITS TIMING "Mr. Bush's other foreign aid initiative, announced in his State of the Union address, is $10 billion in new money to fight AIDS in Africa and the Caribbean over five years. But his budget falls short of that promise. He is proposing only a $550 million increase over the global AIDS money in this year's spending bill now in Congress. Since the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria would be an effective channel for the aid, there is no excuse for the initiative's leisurely start. Mr. Bush's 2004 budget for the Global Fund, $200 million, actually cuts in half what Congress is likely to do in 2003. Mr. Bush has also found part of the money for his AIDS programs by cutting nearly $500 million from child health, including vaccine programs. Child survival is the biggest loser in the foreign aid budget — a scandalous way to finance AIDS initiatives. With the budget dominated by defense spending and huge tax cuts for the wealthy, the White House should not be forcing the babies of Africa to pay for their parents' AIDS drugs." 2.17.03

Did Frist just phone this in after watching Bush on videotape?

If people insist on using condoms

Make them afraid of them:

The head of the Catholic Church in Mozambique has told the BBC he believes some European-made condoms are infected with HIV deliberately.

Maputo Archbishop Francisco Chimoio claimed some anti-retroviral drugs were also infected "in order to finish quickly the African people".

The Catholic Church formally opposes any use of condoms, advising fidelity within marriage or sexual abstinence.

Aids activists have been angered by the remarks, one calling them "nonsense".

"We've been using condoms for years now, and we still find them safe," prominent Mozambican Aids activist Marcella Mahanjane told the BBC.

The UN says anti-retrovirals (ARVs) have proved very effective for treating people with Aids. The drugs are not a cure, but attack the virus on several fronts at once.

How on earth did someone think this was a good idea in the first place, socially awkward celibates advising sexually active people on sexual activity?

Abstinence-only connected to rise in AIDS.

Uganda's falling rates of AIDS is now on the upswing because of the Bush abstinence-only program.

Americablog:
"The reasons for the increase are not clear, but there has been a shift in the message from Uganda's leadership. Between the early 1990s and early 2000s, HIV prevalence fell sharply in major cities among pregnant women - the group most commonly monitored because they have contact with health services - as President Yoweri Museveni worked to raise awareness of the dangers of HIV and put the authority of his office behind condom use.

But in recent years the message on condoms has been diluted in favour of greater emphasis on sexual abstinence until marriage - in line with the thinking of the Bush administration, which is spending millions of dollars on HIV prevention and treatment. Critics say many women are not in a position to abstain from sex and that many are infected by their husbands."