Gambian president’s dream cure for HIV/AIDS not such an insane idea to U.S. extremist leaders

In the greatest use of herbs and spices since Colonel Sanders, Gambian President Yahya Jammeh announced that he had discovered a cure for the more than 20,000 HIV/AIDS sufferers in his tiny African nation.

Jammeh said the cure was brought to him in a dream by his ancestors, and he’s trotted out “success” stories while booting those who question the cure’s merits out of the nation.

The rational scientific world was horrified, to say the least.

“For a country’s leader to come up with such an outlandish conclusion is not only irresponsible, but also very dangerous, and he should be reprimanded and stopped from proclaiming such nonsense,” Professor Jerry Coovadia of the University of Kwa Zulu Natal in South Africa told CNN.

Such reprimands won’t be coming from the United States, however. For in a nation where a concerted effort has been made to blatantly pervert science to match the thinking of religious extremist and political need, receiving a miraculous cure for HIV/AIDS is something the top level of the government is likely kicking itself for not thinking of first.

Because just as the conservative movement has worked to expand racism, wealth inequality and xenophobia, it has also worked to decrease trust in science while encouraging belief in pseudoscience.

Do you think there was actual confusion in the mind of Presidential hopeful John McCain when asked flat out if condoms could reduce the spread of HIV/AIDS. If McCain honestly couldn’t answer that – which he refused to, by the way – then he obviously is suffering from a learning disability of the type that requires his immediate expulsion from the U.S. Senate.

Because here is a question asked of McCain on the subject, and his answer:

Question: “So no contraception, no counseling on contraception. Just abstinence. Do you think contraceptives help stop the spread of HIV?”

McCain: (Long pause) “You’ve stumped me.”

John McCain has shown himself in the past to have an IQ higher than one. His confusion stems from just one thing – he is unsure whether the truth will fly in the conservative movement. Because Jesus says don’t have sex. And that is law to the religious extremists, and with the 2008 U.S. Presidential election still some ways off, McCain has made it abundantly clear that the extremists will rule his beliefs.

Even more than McCain’s attempts to appease the extremists is the simple fact that we have an extremist leading the nation. Or perhaps, it is the extreme fact we have a simplist running the nation.

Take Dr. Eric Keroack, the George W. Bush-appointed chief of family-planning programs at the Department of Health and Human Services. Keroack oversees $283 million in annual family-planning grants that, according to HHS, are “designed to provide access to contraceptive supplies and information to all who want and need them with priority given to low-income persons.”

Keroack teaches children to abstain, using Bugs Bunny, Popeye and Fred Flintstone to tell kids to hold on to their oxytocin.

Basically, Keroack’s insane ramblings come down to this: if you have pre-marital sex, or even masturbate, you are endangering every relationship you’ll ever have.

In no uncertain terms, Keroack is a delusional religious extremist that has been gladly given the keys to a bank vault full of money so that he can travel the nation and misinform – nay, brainwash – American children. In the name of the United States Federal government no less.

So while the Gambian president has drawn the World’s ire and disbelief, let there be no doubt that the extremists that rule the debate on all things moral in the United States are likely suffering from myopia and not able to understand what the fuss is about.

For as the rest of the World shouts in anger and disbelief at Jammekh’s insane dream cure, those at the top levels of U.S. government are likely wondering how they can package such a cheap and ineffective solution on those in the U.S. fighting the scourge of HIV/AIDS, while they advise those without the disease to just not have sex.

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