Blog #12

This will be the last time that I ever blog because although the experience was good with blogging for this class, I just don’t like to chat online. I have really left this class more knowledgeable on this disease and I never thought that I would be leaving this class with such more intellectual depth on this topic. I thought that I would learn a few thing here and there and that only few facts would stick. I found that to be wrong because of all the work that had to be put in for this class. I have never written so much in life for one class, ever! It was worth it nonetheless because this subject is very important in preventing me from contracting a disease and learning how to spread this information to others. I don’t think that I’ll ever have to write this much for a class again but if I could choose what class I would write this amount for it would be this one. I really enjoyed watching all those videos for one of our assignment because those were the moments that really impacted me intellectually and emotionally on this class. The Silverlake video got me the most because the way the video was made was so personal and touching as to see two individuals who loved each other and living with AIDS and ended so sadly with one dying at the end.

Did you know?....
At the Passaic County Jail in New Jersey, two former immigration detainees being held were said to be denied adequate HIV/AIDS treatment during their prison terms (The Body, 2005). A Jamaican man who had spent five years in prison at three different facilities said that he often encountered lapses in his drug regimen because of long delays in the transfer of his medical records (The Body, 2005). A New York University legal clinic that took up the case said that the jail had initially refused to let the man take his pills at 12-hour intervals and that he had become resistant to many HIV/AIDS medications (The Body, 2005). Another man that had also been in the same shoes as the other individual said from December 2003 to April 2004 he missed nearly three weeks of treatment because of delays getting his medical record from Rikers Island prison in New York City and delays in receiving medical examinations at Passaic (The Body, 2005). He also said guards ignored his requests to see a doctor and would openly talk about his HIV status (The Body, 2005). Accoring to the Passaic County Sheriff Jerry Speziale, he say’s that he had not heard of this case but that these are “two people you're talking to me about, two people out of 1,700; I think I'm doing pretty good” (The Body, 2005). He also said that that guards have the right to know who is HIV-positive to protect themselves (The Body, 2005). In July of 2005, Speziale told auditors conducting the review to leave and said he would stop housing detainees (The Body, 2005).

The Body. (2005). Retrieved by November 25, 2009, from http://www.thebody.com/content/art9467.html.