I'm still reeling at the idea that if only someone had told everyone to wear condoms, then we wouldn't have hardly the AIDS problem we do.

Probably only slightly exaggerated though - if done in the right way. Cause there are lots of ways to put forward that message that it won't be listened to. (And it has to done in tandem in things like making condoms available in some way that you can pick them up without being shamed. And you have discourage the idea that only "bad people" carry condoms, cause good people won't ever do anything that require them.) But yeah if widespread condom use had been encouraged as soon as we dected aids, then yeah, we would not have anything like as large a problem . "Hardly any" - I don't know. Another big chunk is needle sharing among drug users - so you need needle exchanges and either decriminalization, or at least tacit tolerance in certain areas with free needles as part of the package.

If we had has someone less socially conservative than Reagan as President durning the early days of the aids epidemic, we might well have done stuff not only in the U.S. but worldwide that would have cut aids in half at least -maybe by more than that. From stuff you've let slip I gather your mother has expertise in public health. Don't know if she has ever done stuff specifically in the HIV area, but I'll bet she's at least somewhat familiar with literaterature. Ask her; I'll bet she says the same.

there are lots of ways to put forward that message that it won't be listened to

That's been my point all along--see my comments about cultures and ethnicities and different approaches to AIDS prevention.

Right - was agreeing with you there. Oh I see, you were objecting (as I was ) to Gus's assertion that we don't need to pay attent to cultural and racial differences in spreading the message.

I think Gus was taking the position that because races have no biological reality that hey can be ignored in medicine. But the problem with this is that races have social reality and cultural reality - thus must be paid attention to. For example Julian Bond and other major African-American leaders are planning to made aids a top priority in their agenda. And they are not going focus on black people in American with exactly the same techniques that were used to reach gay white men.

Yeah OK, I get you. If Gus wants us to pretend to "not see color" in a world where color socially makes a pretty damn big difference in how you live, that is fairly mind boggling.

Well, the message "use the damn condoms" is universal, the delivery method varies according to culture.

I don't know that color is a factor so much as culture in that second bit. And that first bit is, horrifyingly, far from universal.

I'm tossing race and considering ethnicity. The reason you can't reach a black Jamaican the same way you reach a black American is because they're different cultures and ethnicities, although the same race. That white Jamaican? You can probably reach him the same way you reached the black one.

And while AIDS may not care who you are, other diseases can be pickier. That's why they're studied the ways they are.

I'd make an argument that a person's culture is a combination of location, class, race, ethnicity, and possibly other things. I'm not necessarily part of the same culture as my neighbor OR some random white American, much less some random white European, or African.

Right - it is all statistics. But you can't tailor a messge person by person. You have to direct it to groups. And if you are talking about American, Black people do (on average ) live in a different culture than white people for various reasons

Also you are right that many of the socially constructions called race or ethnicity are associated with genetic subgroups. So if you are studying sickle-cell anemia, or tay-sachs disease, you need to pay attention to race in the first and ethnicity in the second.

I'd make an argument that a person's culture is a combination of location, class, race, ethnicity, and possibly other things.

I go with a definition of ethnicity that's bigger than yours: it embraces what you call culture.

a social group or category of the population that, in a larger society, is set apart and bound together by common ties of race, language, nationality, or culture

Encyclopedia Britannica's definition is pretty much what I've been going by.

I think Gus was taking the position that because races have no biological reality that hey can be ignored in medicine.

Uh. But races do have a biological reality. Which is why, as Strega pointed out, they aren't ignored in medicine. (You used a simple "because" without any qualifiers, so I wasn't sure whether you were agreeing with his belief or not.)

a social group or category of the population that, in a larger society, is set apart and bound together by common ties of race, language, nationality, or culture

I think what I'm trying to get at is that the culture of people of German descent in Wisconsin is probably pretty different from the culture of people of German descent in France or Zambia. All of those people are the same race and ethnicity but different cultures. I'd say. Today.