The desperate, HIV infected victims in Africa can be both gullable and stupid. Someone decided to play a little joke and told thousands of patients (mostly male) that having sex with a virgin will cure your HIV AIDS.
As a result, many thousands of victims are kidnapping babies and young children to rape, thinking that their disease will be cured.
What has the human race come to? 
This is insane! Can you paste the source of this subject?
IT AINT CAME TO NOTHING, PEOPLE BEEN LIKE THAT SINCE ADAM AND EVE.
[quote="gerly20'] What kind of nonsense is this. How can a person be so stupid. Hiv education is really needed in these third world countries. These people is only spereading the infection to the young and innocent. How very sad 
how sick can the human race get? they are behaving worse than animals. Raping babies? I really think these people deserve the death sentence ... not to say they are not already in a life-long stage of it but it is really too sick to think of.
It's not quite as simple as that.
The belief that sex with a virgin is curative actually dates back centuries and was common in England in the 19th Century. There are actually some good reasons for thinking that the myth of the virgin cure is not an African belief at all but was actually imported from Europe.
| Bikerman wrote: |
It's not quite as simple as that.
The belief that sex with a virgin is curative actually dates back centuries and was common in England in the 19th Century. There are actually some good reasons for thinking that the myth of the virgin cure is not an African belief at all but was actually imported from Europe. |
i agree... this belief has its roots in many religions. but people should be educated against doing such atrocities. i guess prevention is far more important than cure in this case. quoting from scienceinafrica.com :
| Quote: |
| Nearly 60 children are raped every day in South Africa and while experts agree to disagree as to the causes, or whether the pervasive belief in the so-called "Virgin Cure" prevents/cures HIV/Aids is possibly responsible for this deeply disturbing phenomenon, university researcher, Mike Earl-Taylor suggests it could well be a contributing factor, and a major one at that. Moreover, infant rape appears to be unique to South Africa, however, the Virgin Cure is not. |
here are links to two sites with such articles:
http://www.scienceinafrica.co.za/2002/april/virgin.htm
http://www.buzzle.com/editorials/6-28-2003-42319.aspObviously I completely agree with your point that education is crucial.
My only point was, and is, that this should not be seen as simply another 'Ignorant Africans' problem as so many of the problems of that continent are frequently characterised. The West has played a large part in the problems we see today in Africa - financial and social - and it is all too easy to make outraged comments about how terrible it all is without taking the time and effort to understand some of the reasons why things are so terrible.
That is not to say that the West should be held permanently to blame for every evil that occurs on the continent of Africa. People should be held accountable for the results of their own actions and many Africans have behaved reprehensively in personal, social and public affairs. It is, however, all to easy to think of Africa as a continent inhabited by child-like, semi-barbaric natives in loinclothes and abdicate our own responsibilities by muttering about savages and animals....
Misconceptions and their tragic results have always surrounded the diseases we fear the most. Does anyone else remember attending special seminars in school to teach that "you can't get AIDS from hugging" or "you can't catch cancer from grandma?" We had a kid undergoing therapies for leukemia in my elementary school, and parents actually pulled their kids from her class for fear that something would happen to their children. Now, that's not so tragic as raping babies, but it needs to be understood that with a lack of education, people seem to believe whatever they hear from the sources they traditionally trust. Hell, there are still people who think HIV/AIDS is the curse of a god angry about homosexuality. Not in Africa -- in the US.
| quex wrote: |
| Misconceptions and their tragic results have always surrounded the diseases we fear the most. Does anyone else remember attending special seminars in school to teach that "you can't get AIDS from hugging" or "you can't catch cancer from grandma?" We had a kid undergoing therapies for leukemia in my elementary school, and parents actually pulled their kids from her class for fear that something would happen to their children. Now, that's not so tragic as raping babies, but it needs to be understood that with a lack of education, people seem to believe whatever they hear from the sources they traditionally trust. Hell, there are still people who think HIV/AIDS is the curse of a god angry about homosexuality. Not in Africa -- in the US. |
Whilst I never attended such seminars on hugging* your point is well made. Information is a key element in the fight against HIV/AIDS and misinformation is an enemy which has been and still is used. A couple of examples that spring to mind would be:
*I live in the UK and we don't hug much here, because our stiff upper-lips get in the wayi have a few points to raise here. i live in the gambia, west africa.
1 people in the west always talk about "africa". hey guys, we're a coninent, not a country. that's likke me saying "europe" when i talk about liechtenstein or albabia - are there any similarities between these 2 countries in europe? because of the african history we have the widest mix of cultures and ethnicity on a single land mass.
2 aids/hiv. i have personally conducted a large number of sensisitation workshops here and was amazed on the ignorance about this horrible situation. in a country with a large illiteracy rate it's easy to understand that people are not aware of facts. why are they illiterate? not for lack of trying i can assure you to learn. but that's another topic alltogether and we would have to go back to colonial times and most of africas treatment ever since.
3 ignorance. it's interesting that some of my american friends on some forums may well live in the bush here - the level of awareness there is astoundingly low - maybe it the "western" education systems would be doing something to dispell the myth over there, sad stories like that wouldn't happen in the first place. there has to be done alot world wide to make people aware so as to stop this horrible pourge - we have been looking for a "cure" for a long time and are nowhere - and millions are dying world wide as a result.
what is it going to be that wipes out the human race?
war
pollution
famine
or maybe even aids?
hhuuummmmm
looking at the list, only 2 of them make a profit for the big guys so that's what it's gonna be in my opinion.
cheers I saw a program on discovery a while ago about that, and it's just horrible. But it wasn't because it was a joke, the medicine men told them that, and all that believes in them will think it's true. People lack information and that will result in stupidity. What happened to the witches, because someone said that if those things happened then they must have been true, rides on brooms to Satan and kidnaps kids, people don't know much.
By "little joke" I didn't mean he/she was playing a practical joke for kicks or anything, I meant that it was nonsense; and the people are desperate and will do anything that people tell them will give them a cure.
I do not think that the babies should be raped. I suppose that the people there are so desperate for a cure to try anything to get trid of their disease, but I still can't endorse what they are doing. I mean, if I was sick I would try a lot of stuff to get better, but I don't think that I would go to that extreme, even if I thought it was true.
It's pretty cruel to rape and it's obvious that humans can easily surcome to mass hysteria at times. It's really sad that things like this are happening all over the world, I really wish there was some way to prevent it. If there were some rumors going around our country that gives us something "extra" in return for something "stupid" then we would ALL probably fall for the trick. It's brain washing just like Hitler used.
