ladyiapetus | Don't know how many of you are in the know...

...but today is World AIDS day. A day that everyone should do nothing more than just THINK about AIDS for just a few minutes. Just take five minutes out of your day and think about this disease and how it affects the world.

Everyone on my flist probably already know that I'm a Muppet fan (and if you didn't before, you do now). My favorite Muppet performer, Richard Hunt (that'd be the guy in my user icon), died of AIDS twelve years ago. His death is rarely acknowledged, partially due to the fact that he passed two years after Jim Henson's death, but also because of the stigma attached to AIDS and the AIDS virus. The Jim Henson Company rarely acknowledges the fact that Richard's death was AIDS-related; all mention of it comes from obituaries and articles from sources outside JHC. To quote D.W. McKim in a tribute article he wrote for Muppet Central:

By keeping quiet, JHC sends the severely outdated message that AIDS is a disease that only certain "undesirables" in society fall victim to and middle America just can't know that a member of the team died "that" way...this attitude is demeaning, deplorable, and in all honesty, an insult to his [Richard's] life.

Despite the fact that I did not know Richard personally or get the chance to meet him before he died, and despite the fact that I myself am HIV negative, my point is that AIDS is not a disease that only "certain people" get and are affected by. AIDS affects everybody.

For another view, please go read this post about World AIDS Day by

myselftheliar, who sums things up much better than I ever could.