From: CurtAdams@aol.com
Date: Thu Mar 14 2002 - 20:01:42 MST
In a message dated 3/14/02 18:26:56, novaeris@hotmail.com writes:
>I got to know some of them
>pretty well & they were very candid about their attitudes toward being HIV
>positive. I usually got either one of two responses: #1 It was hopeless &
>they were going to die anyway so they may as well get strung out or #2 That
>with the medical progress being made, they could continue their destructive
>lifestyle without any additional harm. While these attitudes (especially #2)
>may not make rational sense to us, they are very real in the minds of these
>people & from what they say, this is a common position among HIV positive
I'd call this just rationalization. Most people know how you catch HIV and
how to get risks pretty low. Those who catch it today are a subset of people
who usually have either poor impulse control or a low valuation of distant
events. It frustrates me greatly that our government is so resistant to
HIV education - preventing spread in the drug community is relatively easy
but needle exchange, etc. is generally illegal.
[By way of explanation - poor impulse control and time discount functions
are faults, but not ones people should be forced to die from.]
Do these people respond to the issue that their actions put others at risk?
>But it seems
>like things were set up in anticipation of the test's release this year back
>in 2000, which was well before the date of their IDE. Something didn't seem
>quite right, like they knew they'd be approved for IDE a year before they
>even began trial testing.
My experiences with medical companies included a lot of wishful thinking.
People in these companies generally really believe in their stuff, and are
convinced the FDA will leap to approve it. They're quite shocked at delays
or rejections.
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Sat Nov 02 2002 - 09:12:58 MST