Hacker News Reader

Comment by majikaja | Hacker News Reader

Seems to me like every improvement in medical science will be accompanied by a corresponding decrease in individual responsibility. Just like hardware and software.

I've heard young people basically say 'HIV isn't a big deal nowadays so no need to worry'.

View on HN

Yeah - it's nice not to have to care about and be scared about stuff that is no longer relevant.

Maybe better to keep people a bit fearful, is what I'm saying.

I guess it's just different opinions. What I'm saying is that when given the opportunity to get rid of fear, we should. Same way I'm not afraid of wildlife attacking me, or cholera.

I probably won't die if I get food poisoning but I'm not going to go around eating raw meat for the thrill of it and expect the taxpayer to pay for me every time I get sick.

Ah, so underlying the 'moral' argument is the uncontrollable FEAR that you, a wealthy but unadventurous person, are somehow subsidizing other less wealthy people as they enjoy their lives.

No I am saying young people have gotten the impression that it's completely cured now and can be as reckless as they want which sounds to be incorrect according to the other comments here.

Do you visit gay sex clubs? I do, and I would say that it is far from true that people feel they can be as reckless as they want. Rather, they are generally risk-aware, but within a context where the risk tradeoffs are completely different to the AIDS awareness climate of the late 80s and 90s.

For example, there is a distinction between low risk activity such as oral sex and higher risk activity such as anal. The latter will often involve a brief discussion of risk: condom use, PrEP, status, so that both participants are on the same page.

But you suddenly become dependent on someone else, in this case what if they suddenly increase the price of the HIV medication? Or there is a global shortage? Or we discover that a subpopulation has a resistant variant?

This is what technology does.

If HIV were really not a big deal anymore, why should people still worry? If you could have risk-free sex with the seediest of characters, why would it be "not a responsible thing" to do so?

It's not quite as benign as a common cold yet, is it?

It's definitely not - which is why I said "if it really were". Hopefully, one day technology will get it there.

Note that the treatment in this article, as others have pointed out, is really not that. This is an extremely violent treatment that no one in their right mind would use for HIV - it's just a last-resort treatment for fatal blood cancers that happened to have cured HIV in some patients.

You really should tell your partner if you are infected, on medication or not. You are still dependent on medicine for the rest of your life apart from these cases. So it still is a big deal, but it isn't a death warrant anymore.

Responsibility shouldn't be taught by deadly diseases, you could have said the same about antibiotics.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com