VisualAIDS

HIV & Spirituality at Brooklyn Hospital Center

HIV & Sipirituality

Friday, December 3, 2010 from 9:30 am - Noon

The Brooklyn Hospital Center
3rd Floor Auditorium
121 DeKalb Avenue
Brooklyn, New York

Panelist
Rev. Joyce McDonald
Geneva Musgrave
Rev. Deborah Rice
Angel Luis Torres

RSVP: [email protected] / 718-250-8791

Full Scholarships for HIV Advocates

An HIV research forum held April 20 through 23 in Baltimore is offering 150 full scholarships to advocates working in HIV/AIDS or related fields. The event is titled The HIV Research Catalyst Forum: Treatment, Prevention, Advocacy. The deadline for submissions is February 19, 2010.

Details on http://www.hivresearchcatalystforum.org/scholarship

Artists in Transition conference

Visual/Performing Artists

Health/Disability Conference
 
Artists in Transition, an organization that works with artists and performers facing physical and/or mental health issues is having its inaugural conference on Sunday, April 11, 2010 from 12 noon - 5:00 pm at Western Connecticut State University in Danbury, CT. We are co-sponsoring the conference, along with over 100 other local, state and national arts, health and advocacy organizations.
 
Inspiring architect/sculptor Tom Luckey will keynote and awesome entertainment will be provided by Our Time Theatre. There will be outstanding networking opportunities and 15 information-packed breakout sessions on diverse subjects such as healthcare, maximizing employment potential, grant writing, etc., plus speakers will include artists and performers who themselves are dealing with health and disability issues and making their art and lives a creative force!
 
Please consider attending this informational and inspirational event. Go to www.artistsintransitionUSA.blogspot.com for registration information.

A Body Worth Defending: Immunity, Biopolitics, and the Apotheosis of the Modern Body

 

Book Review:

A Body Worth Defending: Immunity, Biopolitics, and the Apotheosis of the Modern Body

By Ed Cohen

Biological immunity as we know it does not exist until the late nineteenth century. Nor does the premise that organisms defend themselves at the cellular or molecular levels. For nearly two thousand years "immunity," a legal concept invented in ancient Rome, serves almost exclusively political and juridical ends. "Self defense" also originates in a juridico-political context; it emerges in the mid-seventeenth century, during the English Civil War, when Thomas Hobbes defines it as the first "natural right." In the 1880s and 1890s, biomedicine fuses these two political precepts into one, creating a new vital function, "immunity-as-defense." In A Body Worth Defending, Ed Cohen reveals unacknowledged political, economic, and philosophical assumptions about the human body that biomedicine incorporates when it recruits immunity to safeguard the vulnerable living organism.

Inspired by Michel Foucault's writings about biopolitics and biopower, Cohen traces immunity's migration from politics and law into the domains of medicine and science. Offering a genealogy of the concept, he illuminates a complex of thinking about modern bodies which percolates through European political, legal, philosophical, economic, governmental, scientific, and medical discourses from the mid-seventeenth century through the twentieth. In so doing, he shows that by the late nineteenth century, "the body" literally incarnates modern notions of personhood. In this lively cultural rumination, Cohen argues that by embracing the idea of immunity-as-defense so exclusively, biomedicine naturalizes the individual as the privileged focus for identifying and treating illness, thereby devaluing or obscuring approaches to healing situated within communities or collectives.

More info here.

Cover image: Robert Flack, Anatomical Garden, 1990

A World First: Vaccine Helps Prevent HIV Infection

From the New York Times

BANGKOK (AP) -- For the first time, an experimental vaccine has prevented infection with the AIDS virus, a watershed event in the deadly epidemic and a surprising result. Recent failures led many scientists to think such a vaccine might never be possible.

The World Health Organization and the U.N. agency UNAIDS said the results ''instilled new hope'' in the field of HIV vaccine research.

The vaccine -- a combination of two previously unsuccessful vaccines -- cut the risk of becoming infected with HIV by more than 31 percent in the world's largest AIDS vaccine trial of more than 16,000 volunteers in Thailand, researchers announced Thursday in Bangkok.

Even though the benefit is modest, ''it's the first evidence that we could have a safe and effective preventive vaccine,'' Col. Jerome Kim told The Associated Press. He helped lead the study for the U.S. Army, which sponsored it with the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.

The institute's director, Dr. Anthony Fauci, warned that this is ''not the end of the road,'' but said he was surprised and very pleased by the outcome.

''It gives me cautious optimism about the possibility of improving this result'' and developing a more effective AIDS vaccine, Fauci said. ''This is something that we can do.'' (read more here)

2009 National LGBTI Health Summit

This summer, Chicago will be playing host to the 2009 National LGBTI (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Intersex) Health Summit. Beginning August 14th and running through lunch on Tuesday the 18th, the Summit will focus on “Health Through the Life Course” and is dedicated to preserving and improving the emotional, physical, spiritual, intellectual, psychological, environmental, and social health and wellness of LGBTI people of all races, ages, and professional/non professional backgrounds; from urban and rural settings; representing every socioeconomic class.

For more info visit www.2009lgbtihealth.org

Review Symposium of the 17th International AIDS Conference

Far too many New Yorkers are being infected with HIV and dying of AIDS.

From New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene

New York City remains the epicenter of the HIV/AIDS epidemic in the U.S. More than 100,000 New Yorkers are living with HIV, but thousands don’t know they’re infected. New York City has the highest AIDS case rate in the country, with more AIDS cases than Los Angeles, San Francisco, Miami, and Washington DC combined. HIV is the 3rd leading cause of death below age 65 in New York City. HIV is also the health problem with the largest racial disparity; 80% of new AIDS diagnoses and deaths are among African Americans and Hispanics. Prevention, testing, and treatment programs are being expanded, but more must be done.

Barriers create disparities in access to care

Approximately 1 in 70 New Yorkers is infected with HIV, but the proportion of people in different groups who are infected varies widely:

• 1 in 40 African Americans.  
• 1 in 25 men living in Manhattan.  
• 1 in 12 black men age 40-49 years.  
• 1 in 10 men who have sex with men.  
• 1 in 8 injection drug users.  
• 1 in 5 black men age 40-49 in Manhattan.  
• 1 in 4 men who have sex with men in Chelsea.

The epidemic is increasingly affecting women, who now constitute a third of new AIDS cases – up from 1 in 10 at the start of the epidemic. More than 80% of new AIDS diagnoses and deaths are among African Americans and Hispanics. Black men in New York City are 6 times more likely to die of AIDS than white men; black women are 9 times more likely to die of AIDS than white women. Hispanic men and women are 4 times more likely to die of AIDS than white men and women.

Continue reading here.

XVII International AIDS Conference Updates

The XVII International AIDS Conference in Mexico City, will be held August 3-8, 2008.

Click on the widget below for daily reports and webcast.  You can also add this information to your blog, by clicking on "get & share" or visit www.kaisernetwork.org/aids2008

AIDS, Medicine & Miracles Retreat

AIDS, Medicine & Miracles will hold its Annual Retreat
on August 10-12 at UC Berkeley, Clark Kerr Campus.

     For over 19 years AIDS, Medicine and Miracles has been providing life-changing empowerment programs for ALL people with HIV/AIDS including their loved ones and service providers. Our annual retreats offer interactive programs that build community and empower people to live healthy and responsible lives filled with hope. We provide a safe, nurturing, empowering environment for people to address the profound impact that HIV has on one’s life.

     Lectures, discussion, ritual, meditation, yoga, support groups and experiential workshops that cover a broad base of topics are only a few of the experiences you will take home. AM&M retreats are a welcoming and affirming place where people living with and affected by HIV receive support, community, rejuvenation, and share knowledge and understanding. Some of this years speakers are Lark Lands,PhD, River Huston, Nelson Vergel, Ryan Kennedy and Gregg Cassin.

For more information contact:
AIDS, Medicine & Miracles
3288 21st. St., #201, San Francisco, CA 94110
PHONE: 415-252-7111        FAX: 415-252-7117;;
[email protected] / www.aidsmedicineandmiracles.org