At 08:21 AM 3/13/03 -0500, Erik Reuter wrote:"First, a very large number of those who have died from HIV/AIDS or are living with the disease cannot plausibly be blamed for their fate. Nearly 5 million AIDS victims are children, who obviously did not choose to be born HIV-positive. And many other victims are married women who have been faithful to their husbands but became infected anyway because their husbands had unsafe sex with prostitutes. Many wives don't find out that their husbands are infected until they give birth to HIV-positive children.
On Thu, Mar 13, 2003 at 09:48:18AM -0300, Alberto Monteiro wrote:
> But if the oil prices were reduced by a factor of 2 or 3, would his > electors care about how many iraqis were being killed?
Yes.
> Worse: would the press care about them?
Yes.
> How many people die every day of AIDS in Africa because the > Capitalist Corporations insist on keeping anti-AIDS drugs so > expensive as to make country-wide campaings impossible?
Irrelevant, just as "How many people die every day of AIDS because you don't donate your life savings and entire salary to providing anti-AIDS drugs to AIDS sufferers?"
Or, "How many people die every day of AIDS because they didn't keep their fly zipped?"
A second reason why we shouldn't assume we have no moral obligations to people with HIV/AIDS is that in other cases, even when we know that people acquired a medical condition due to their own irresponsibility, we don't deny them medical care for that reason. For example, everybody knows that it's foolish to ride a motorcycle without a helmet. But if a motorcycle rider has a serious accident while not wearing a helmet, we don't refuse to provide emergency and rehabilitative treatment. The same principle ought to apply to people who are infected with HIV through their own carelessness. They should not be denied care on that basis alone.
And third, we are citizens of a wealthy country and should not turn away from the suffering of the poor. Like the person who was helped by the Samaritan in the parable of Jesus, people living with HIV/AIDS are our neighbors in need."
http://www.scu.edu/ethics/publications/submitted/Perry/aids.html
Doug
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