I told my students if they attended the talk on the AIDS epidemic, if they wrote me a short paper about it, they could get extra credit. One student's comments prompted this email. The talk itself had a strong impact on my students who attended, however, there was one comment I wanted to ask you about...

One student wrote that "Cashel expressed that the spread of this disease is completely dependent on immoral human behavior." I realize this was probably taken out of context, however, I would appreciate a reply to it. Surely you are not suggesting that everyone who has AIDS or HIV has exhibited immoral human behavior.

I realize that a large proportion of those infected may be due to immoral behavior; I am concerned about the implication in that statement. In my class, I emphasize that by controlling their behavior, my students can avoid such a disease (for the most part).

Please clarify this issue so that I may pass this information on to my students.

Peter Cashel-Cordo:

I stated that the spread of the disease was completely dependent upon human behavior. I am guessing that the students are reading into that statement that since the disease is primarily a sexual disease that the behavior is immoral. I did not make that judgment. It is true that cultural practices in the most heavily affected parts of Africa tend to reflect male dominated societies where male virility is prized. This leads to outcomes, especially the lack of economic and social status of women, that foster the spread of the disease. One of the outcomes that was discussed was the social acceptance of prostitution. A woman has little alternative for an economic livelihood outside of marriage and many rely on the sex trade as a means for economic support of their families. Again, this was stated in neutral normative terms. The student(s) are imposing their own value structures on the situation. The primary causes for these social structures are the patriarchal nature of many societies as well as abject poverty. One reply to these students is to remind them that the structure of US and European societies were not to terribly different 150 years ago.

A good portion of the lecture focused on the spread of pediatric AIDS and the number of orphans that have been and will be left behind as their parents die from the disease. Furthermore, one cause for the spread of the disease that was discussed was the lack of government intervention a decade ago, when demographers and epidemiologists began the warnings of an impending disaster. The competing claims on scarce resources in the world's poorest countries was given as a possible explanation for the lack of vigor in initially fighting the disease.