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My journey for about ten years with HIV has been remarkable. At first I thought I would not survive the first year. After that, I started to wonder if I could handle the next five. Later, I came out of my doctor's office realizing that I was no longer terminally ill.
A long time ago, I accepted my fate – and during a particularly difficult period of my treatment, I even accepted my imminent death – but a small part of myself was always kept hoping. Every few years, I saw an exciting online article on the promise of a new medical breakthrough. After a while, the enthusiasm of those around me numb me whenever these items were shared.
In 2008, when I was diagnosed for the first time, I was told that I had a poor chance to live long enough to be as old as me. Less than five years ago, my doctors hoped that I would reach middle age with the promise of a new, less stressful treatment for the liver and kidneys.
Today, my HIV specialist is giving me good news. I am in good health, my illness is now managed and there is no reason to believe that I will not live a normal life. My very first medicine made me too sick to function. Today, I have almost no side effects.
My life today is so different that I can hardly believe that I survived these years alone. Can you imagine what it would mean for our families and friends if a treatment, a real treatment, could be found? For many people, for example, the recent headlines that "Trump's policy is hard on HIV research" was probably an incredible shock and horror.
Aborted fetus and medical research
On June 5, the Trump administration announced that it would terminate funding for organizations that use aborted fetal tissue for medical research, primarily putting an end to the practice of the National Institutes of Health. The Ministry of Health and Human Services (HHS), quoted by The New York Times, said, "Promoting the dignity of human life from conception to natural death is one of the top priorities of the administration. from President Trump. "The researchers reacted with shock.
Lawrence O. Gostin, a professor at Georgetown University, warned, "This will affect everything from treatments for cancer and HIV to Parkinson's disease and dementia." Gostin continued, "L & # The ban on research on fetal tissue equates to the ban on hoping millions of Americans with deadly and debilitating diseases. "
The LGBT media article linked above baderted that critical medical research on HIV relied on the use of fetal tissue to test experimental treatments. He argues that this practice has existed since the 1930s and has been at the origin of a multitude of medical advances. There is no substitute for research, they say.
But should a person who believes in the equality of human life and the universal value of humanity accept this answer? Is my only hope of living an HIV-free life based on experiments using innocent human beings brutally torn from their mother's womb and thrown out? Can I even imagine looking at these tiny, erased lives with occasional cruelty, and justify that fabric is vital for research?
There is currently no other viable method for testing potential HIV treatments. But can I, in all conscience, accept medical treatment resulting from the disposition of human life?
In 1932, a medical program entitled Tuskegee's Study on Untreated Syphilis in Black Male conducted a medical experiment on 600 black men. People with syphilis were intentionally denied medical treatment that could have saved their lives. This has been excused as a necessary means to discover a viable treatment for the disease.
Men never consented to the experiments. They were completely unaware of what was happening to them. The medical community has taken decades to recognize that this practice is unethical and unethical, regardless of the potential benefits to society. The use of aborted fetuses is not different.
How can we reconcile that?
When a child undergoes a voluntary abortion, his life is determined in such a way as to have little or no value, which justifies getting rid of his body in a terribly cruel way. The only value attributed to these unborn human beings is of utility in medical research.
This kind of neglect for humanity and arbitrary rejection of individuality is what has allowed health professionals of the past to look at black men and believe that they were entitled to torture them for what they thought was a progress. Today, while modern researchers are simply considering the abandoned remains of a human being once living as a "remaining tissue" on which to experiment, I challenge our society to argue that it does not. everything else.
My husband is HIV negative and I expect the extra decades of my life with him as an unexpected and wonderful gift. I want every HIV-positive person today to feel the same hope and the same goal as me, avoiding the years of pain and fear that I fought to get here.
I want a treatment; I want a vaccine. I want to be one of the last human beings living on Earth to have contracted HIV. But I am not ready to exploit the countless innocent lives lost to abortion to get there. As a society, we can never evolve as equal humanity worthy of life and happiness if we believe that the corpses of the most vulnerable are a necessary resource for our progress. We just have to find another way.
Medical research is not lost. The decision to respect the human remains of the most vulnerable people in our society does not put an end to the hopes of those who expect progress in the medical treatment of their diseases. Those of us living with HIV are not condemned to never enjoy the freedom that a treatment could offer, as President Trump has taken a big step forward in recognizing the absolute worth of human beings. humans, whatever their development.
Seeing as many people in the field of medical research claiming that the exploitation of human beings is the only way for the progress of medicine to continue is both astonishing and disturbing. We must be better. In spite of all that I have lived, I can not quietly ignore this atrocity for the still unrealized hope that it could bring us, to many others. My life is no more valuable than any other person on this planet. No treatment is worth the cruel exploitation of human beings.
Chad Felix Greene is a senior contributor to The Federalist. He is the author of the series "Reasonably Gay: Essays and Arguments" and is a social writer who focuses on truth in media, conservative ideas and goals and true equality before the law. You can follow him on Twitter @chadfelixg.
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