DECLARED

I am finally declared! Public Health and Sociology.

I planned out a whole blog entry dedicated to how important Public Health is and how Sociology is amazing and how I am in love with my college direction, but I figured you probably don't want to read about it.

So I'm going to talk about HIV/AIDs instead...which is technically related to both. But everything relates to Sociology and HIV/AIDs is a pretty public issue...that's why Public Health is important and Sociology is amazing.
Anyways, I went to a Medical Sociology panel yesterday and it was pretty mind-blowing. So thank you Ann Swidler, aka the reason why I'm a sociology major. If you are a student at Berkeley and you find this brief synopsis of the topic interesting, look into taking L&S 150A about HIV/AIDs in Africa in the spring next year. Professor Swidler is a brilliant professor and I highly recommend taking a class with her.

Basic HIV/AIDs stuff that they don't tell you in high school.
- HIV is really hard to transmit through vaginal sex. It's only transmitted one out of a thousand times. This statistic decreases substantially if the male is circumcised. (The virus replicates in the foreskin. Removing it through circumcision thereby removes the viruses' ability to do so.)
- Poverty does not affect rates of HIV. In fact, it is the more affluent parts of Africa that is most stricken with the disease. Urban cities (as opposed to rural ones) are more populated so there are more opportunities for sexual partners. Plus, there is much more privacy in a city. In rural areas, where everyone knows each other, scandalous sexual acts are less likely to occur.
- In Africa, there is a culture of multiple "concurrent" partners. In other words, a man could be married to someone, but has a girlfriend or a secret family as well. Long running marriages/relationships are more effective at spreading HIV/AIDs than a thousand one night stands. It's a statistics thing. If 1/1000 sexual intercourses result in successful HIV/AIDs transmission, it is less likely that a person could get the disease even if s/he has multiple sexual partners. If, however, the person is in a relationship with someone who is HIV positive, and has sex with that person on a regular basis (without a condom), chances of transmission increase substantially.
- There is a mismatch in the HIV/AIDs problem and governmental policy. Some governments (e.g. China) use HIV/AIDs as an excuse to tell teenagers to abstain from sex. As mentioned before, this is not the main cause of HIV transmission. The disease is mainly transmitted by IV drug use, male-male sexual relations, and commercial sex workers. Often times, governments do not want to admit that these occur in their society. It is easy to chalk up the problem to hormonal teenagers. Admitting there are drug users, homosexuals, and prostitutes in the country is much harder. Truth is, teen sex is NOT what speads the disease. Promoting condom use and emphasizing the importance of clean needles would be much more effective as a public health policy against HIV/AIDs. In fact, the gay liberation movement in the US could be seen as a highly effective public health move, as it promoted the use of condoms and greatly decrease the rates of HIV/AIDs in the US.

So that was just a highlight of the highlights Ann Swidler gave in her talk about her subject. I hope you found it as mind-blowing as I did.