• clips

    Madonna On Helping Malawi Orphans: "It Gives You Such An Appreciation For Life"

    Madonna's new documentary, I Am Because We Are, aired last night on the Sundance Channel. The film explores the lives of of children in Malawi orphaned by AIDS, and, in a clip (posted after the jump) Madonna talks about her own loss: "I can't compare my suffering to other children, but when I was six years old, my mother died," she says. "I think I really have a connection to children who lose their parents." In another clip from the film, also seen after the jump, Madonna says, "People always ask me why I chose Malawi…I tell them I didn't," she claims. "It chose me." More »
  • proof positive

    HIV Proven To Be Older Than John McCain (And His Bad AIDS Policies)

    Scientists researching the origins of the Human Immunodeficiency Virus now estimate that it made the jump from chimps to humans in Cameroon decades earlier that initially thought — sometime between 1884 and 1924. They date the virus to that time period based on viral samples discovered from two different people in what is now Kinshasa in the Democratic Republic of Congo in 1959 and 1960, samples that different enough to push back the date of HIV's origins to the 19th century. Scientists think that the movement from rural to urban areas helped spread the virus, which might have otherwise died off — which could have implications for preventative efforts, because, as Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, says, "The only way we are going to get our arms around this is through prevention." Try telling that to John McCain. More »
  • Leftovers

    Planned Parenthood Brings Sex Ed To Hipsters • Number Of Child Brides Rising

    Planned Parenthood has launched a new sex education website called Take Care Down There that spreads the message about sexual health with hipsters in t-shirts. • The number of child brides in poor countries who marry before the age of 18 will double to 100 million in the next decade, putting them at risk of AIDS, death in childbirth, poverty, and lack of education. • A new report by the Poppy Project has found that there are over 921 brothels in London being advertised in newspapers with a "large and growing" number of young women who are trafficked as sex slaves. • More »
  • Planet In Peril

    AIDS Risk On The Rise As Starving Women Trade Sex For Food

    I'm back from the sunny shores of Lake Superior, a place brimming with walleyes and Dairy Queens and sweet corn, and now feel horribly guilty for my vacation gluttony upon reading that the rise of global food prices coinciding with an East African drought have driven women into prostitution, and with that exchange of sex for food comes a swath of new AIDS infections. According to Reuters, 50 million more people went hungry in 2007 compared to 2006. Stuart Gillespie of the International Food Policy Research Institute spoke yesterday at a major AIDS conference in Mexico: "Recent studies in Botswana, Swaziland, Malawi, Zambia and Tanzania have shown associations between acute food insecurity and unprotected transactional sex among poor women." Even if newly infected women are getting AIDS medication, the scarcity of food in several regions including the South Pacific and Sub-Saharan Africa make it difficult for the medicine to be effective. More »
  • Leftovers

    Anti-Circumcision Movement Gains Ground In Egypt • Vaginal Infection Linked To HIV

    A grass-roots movement against female circumcision in Egypt (where 96% of married women are circumcised) is gaining momentum with mothers considering circumcision for their daughters. • Male contraceptive options will "perpetually remain five to 10 years away." Why? Pharmaceutical companies believe they aren't marketable, although many men disagree. • Nazmunnahar Beauty had to struggle through orphanhood and poverty to make it to Olympics, much like the rest of her Bangladeshi teammates. • Keren Dunaway, a Honduran tween who was born with HIV, is one of the most prominent AIDS activists in Latin America, where she edits an educational children's magazine about the virus and speaks at major conferences. More »
  • clips

    Madonna "Appreciates" That People Are Cynical, Suspicious Of Her

    Madonna was on Today this morning, in a pre-taped interview with Ann Curry, to promote her documentary about AIDS orphans in Malawi I Am Because We Are, which premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival this week. It's nice that she is doing some good stuff with her money and fame, but, as Curry says to her in the interview clip above, it's kinda hard to believe that this whole altruism thing isn't just another one of her fads — kinda like Madonna's accent, which isn't as British as it was two years ago. Clip above. More »