The Dragon and How to Kill It
Thursday, December 8, 2011 at 12:06PM Dan Haseltine, lead singer of Jars of Clay and founder of Blood: Water Mission, reflects on his experience at ONE and (RED)’s World AIDS Day event, and compares the HIV/AIDS epidemic to a dragon.
THE DRAGON and HOW TO KILL IT:
I’m sitting in a mostly quiet airport eating an international dinner (read: China Panda), trying to remember names and faces and which comments went with the particular faces and names I could remember with a little help from the pocket full of new business cards I acquired. My first thought is, “The Ronald Reagan Airport has great lighting.” My second thought, which has equally little to do with my day is, “I wish the Dunkin Donuts was still open.” But my third thought, the one that has been rattling around in my head since 6:30 a.m., was, “How do you kill a dragon?”
You see, as I write this, I am winding down from a day spent wandering the halls of the Senate, as part of a World AIDS Day initiative. I started my morning with a walk to George Washington University interrupted by a detour into the strategically located Starbucks across from the Jack Morton building where we were going to gather.
The man who stepped in line behind me was obviously a regular, and well-known. I was able to surmise that he was the manager of the building where ONE and (RED)’s World AIDS Day event was being held. I ordered my drink, and stepped toward the bar.
“Do you think you might meet him?” Someone was speaking to the “regular” who managed the building.
In a space about to be inhabited by President Obama, President Kikwete of Tanzania, Muhtar Kent, CEO of Coca-Cola Company, President Clinton and President Bush, it was obvious who they were speaking of… Bono.
It is a strange social economy we find ourselves in these days. I smiled, grabbed my drink, and stepped back out into the cool morning air.
I arrived just as the Secret Service and police forces were making their final security sweep of the building. It is habitual for me to show up early for events such as this. Not just a little early, more like hours before. I do it when I speak, and apparently, I do it when I am just attending.
The event was titled, “The Beginning of the End of AIDS.” It was taken from an impassioned speech given by Senator Hillary Clinton a few weeks earlier, where she brought to light the new and hopeful scientific research surrounding HIV/AIDS treatment and awareness.
The big shocker was that it turns out that treatment IS prevention. The antiretroviral drug regimen actually reduces the virus to a form that is almost non-transmittable, reducing the likelihood of sexual transmission by 96 percent!
This is AMAZING news. It means that the very same drugs that keep people with AIDS alive, is also stopping the transmission of the disease. And what this means is that we may simply be generations away from the end of AIDS.
Last summer, I read J.R.R. Tolkien’s, “The Hobbit,” to my son. It began with a few chapters and then a short encouragement from me often ending in the phrase, “It gets really good later.” It was hard to keep his attention for a bit of the set up, the development of the story and characters. It was hard to remember who all the primary characters were, and not get them mixed up. I found myself backtracking quite a bit so that we could remember which elves were which, what weapons they carried, and why they were significant to the story. “Let’s keep reading… the part with the dragon is coming up,” I would say.
The descriptions of carnage finally came as we read pages describing entire mountains reduced to embers, and whole villages full of people simply gone and the invasion of fear and loss of joy and wealth. It reminded me of something else.
I am not a child of wizardry. I wasn’t raised on fantasy stories. I have never owned a set of recklessly multi-sided dice. But I have read a few novels that seem consistent in their portrayal of dragons. They are superior in intelligence and cunning, and often described as “flying death.” They are able to adapt to the skills and methods of their victims. They are relentless, and indiscriminate in their thirst for wealth and blood. They are difficult to kill. And once they have laid claim to a land and its people, the outlook is most definitely grim.
AIDS has been around for 30 years. In 30 years, it has been responsible for 30 million funerals. When the disease was first discovered, it didn’t even have a name. No one was quite sure what to do with a virus that attacked the immune system and was capable of morphing to adapt to treatments.
It was reported as GRID, and also as, “the gay cancer.” Finally it became, “AIDS”. Whatever it was called, it meant certain death. And that was just the beginning. It wasn’t just a disease that affected the body. It was a carrier of fear.
Human beings are strange and complex things. Without understanding, we tend to react out of fear. We have a bent to want to destroy what we do not understand, even if the act of destruction is more time consuming and costly than the time invested in studying or knowing. We don’t like what we can’t explain. If we don’t know what causes a disease, how can we trust the people around us to keep such a thing from spreading?
Fear became stigma and in its path are millions of lives that have been scorched and reduced to embers simply because they were thought to be HIV-positive. People were driven from their families, their workplaces and their homes and communities. They were not allowed to touch their children, or come to their churches. They were left for dead, far before the disease had even begun to stake claim.
Dragons like gold. This was something else I learned from, “The Hobbit.” They can smell gold, and they have a well-developed instinct to horde it. They have no use for it in the economic sense. They simply want to take it from the homes and coffers of their victims. They don’t want just a portion, but every last galleon or coin. Dragon’s sleep on the gold, they brush their hardened scales against it, and let it drip from between their callous talons. It represents a bleeding of sorts of the villages where a dragon’s focus rests. It is a tangible stripping away of power and place. Without a form of wealth, the basic things needed for survival become harder to come by. Villages collapse for lack of productivity that devolves into lack of shelter, food, education and hope. Darkness sets in, and with it, the poison that brings men and women to give up entirely.
Billions of dollars have been spent on HIV/AIDS. It is just the necessary path leading from nothing to understanding. It costs money to fail and then to fail again, until eventually the desired outcome presents itself. I have been in many conversations with skeptics who are quick to remind me that many people have made a lot of money in the, “AIDS business.” And that this is money we will never see again.
“How do we kill it? How do we get close enough to spy a weakness, or a soft spot where we can let our swords or arrows burrow deeply beneath its scales? Does it have a weakness?” These are the questions that the bravest of knights were plagued to answer.
I imagine that the act of killing a dragon could never truly be a solitary act. Perhaps if dragons were soft, meek things, the first person to come upon such a beast might also be the one responsible for immediately destroying it. But as we understand, dragons are not such things.
With breath strained from the act of running for dear life, and choked by overwhelming fear, we hear countless descriptions of the evil lurking before us. Each encounter takes on greater risk, and a clearer picture of what this “thing” is.
Until one day, a weakness is discovered. In “The Hobbit,” the weakness was a soft spot on the underbelly of Smaug.
The US through the incredible formation of PEPFAR (President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief), and the building of the Global Fund, is responsible for providing antiretroviral drugs to more than 4 million people. Those treatments have allowed us to get very close to HIV/AIDS. We have found a weakness.
I can picture the mixed emotions of a village tormented by a dragon when they find out that such a creature has a weakness. It would be a collision of new hope with old defeatism. It would be a conscious effort to clear the mind and focus on the task at hand. People have been laid to waste. They are tired and weary. But at this moment when they are most vulnerable and their enemy is most vulnerable it becomes a choice of who has the soul strength to dig in and make a final stand.
The fight against AIDS is not sexy anymore. It isn’t the hip cause of the month, or media saturating conversation on our television sets. The people and organizations who’ve joined the fight seeking some kind of pittance of glory have fallen away leaving only those of us who share some inherent purpose woven deeply in our souls for wanting this disease to meet its end. We are weary. We have been ravaged by cynicism and disappointment. And we are hearing the words, “The Beginning of the End of AIDS.” We are letting the words roll over in our heads, “We found a weakness.”
We now know that the ARV treatments reduce the potential transmission of the virus by 96 percent. If you add the health benefits of male circumcision and the wonder drugs that prevent mother to child transmission of the disease, we have a found a path to end the evil oppression of this disease.
I have watched enough movies and read enough books to spot a scenario from miles away. It is the commonly used device of nearly killing an enemy. You know the scene. The beast is lying in defeat nearly breathing its last breath, and rather than complete the final act giving the beast over to death, our hero pauses.
We are pausing. We know the path. We have the resources. We have the means to end AIDS. And instead of burying our blade deep into its black heart, we pause.
It was reported that many of the countries that pledged financially to the Global Fund for AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, have not made good on those pledges. It has also been reported that PEPFAR is on the verge of losing funding. The weariness of the fight has set in.
I will write one last thing about dragons. They heal quickly and return to the place of their wounding with great vengeance, fueled by a grudge that only makes them stronger. If someone sets out to kill a dragon, then they must kill a dragon.
We have set out to end AIDS. We must. The most valuable and effective swords that are available to us, are the voices we raise. My flight is about to take off. And the echoes of conversations from earlier today carry a common point. The government will tune its ears to the strongest voice. It will act upon the expressed concerns and cares of its people. We must let government know that we are here to kill a dragon.
We will not stand by as we lose our foothold, and watch HIV/AIDS rise up with greater force.
Gather your weapons: http://www.bloodwatermission.com/AIDS, http://2015quilt.com
Reader Comments (12)
As a health care provider, I wonder at how and why some diseases get mascots and fame. Bono, eh? Well, he did take down the apartheid. So that's something.
You say HIV isn't sexy or the flavor of the month, but it did warrant a conference of international superstars. Does pneumonia get a conference with politicians and celebrities? It kills a few million people a year. Does it have a ribbon? A day? Are there benefit conferences in Nashville to take down pneumonia? No. But that doesn't matter. We still work to prevent it and treat it. We have vaccines for some of the most common offenders and antibiotics and public health campaigns for hand-washing, etc. It's been around forever. People are familiar with pneumonia. Most of us have even had some form of it. Pneumonia doesn't need a face, because it has many faces. Pneumonia doesn't have a stigma to overcome, because you get it from breathing or touching stuff. And even your strictest moral and religious guides allow breathing and touching. It's its own dragon. There's a whole fleet (flock, gaggle, school?) of dragons out there: heart disease, diabetes, obesity, depression, cancer, etc.
HIV itself, thanks to countless hours of research, is not as mysterious as it used to be. A virus is not a living thing. It is a particle of DNA or RNA. It doesn't think or feel. Think of your DNA as the pattern and needles that knits you. Each cell's DNA is programmed to use parts of the pattern to knit together proteins that make whatever it's supposed to make. It repeats over and over, making the strands that make you. A virus is a little strand that looks just enough like your DNA, that it sticks its little self on your hard-working helix and the proteins start coming off wrong. Then whatever it was meant to be making, doesn't get made right, and it doesn't work. Sometimes it kills the cell. Sometimes it sends it into uncontrolled growth and cancer. To fight it, your immune system sets off a complicated cascade of events. HIV connects up to important pieces of this cascade and shuts the system down. And that opens the doorway for a lot of other infections to kill you in various ways.
So far the most powerful treatment is prevention. Condoms are simple things. Spermicide is a simple thing. They're not expensive new-fangled technology. How could a bit of latex cause controversy? As a physician, it frustrates me to no end when the simplest and least expensive way to fix something meets a roadblock that makes no sense. That a social stigma stands in the way of saving millions of lives is nothing less than a tragedy. (So. You want your dragon to stop killing the villagers? Have you tried closing the gate? I've watched it. The gate's plenty high enough. Your dragon can't get over. No? You can't close the gate because Bob says it's immoral? You can't close the gate because gate-closing is a conspiracy against something ridiculous? You can't close the gate because people like the view from that direction? The dragon is a punishment for evil-doers, how dare you close the gate and interfere? Closing the gate is too hard and takes too much effort. Ahhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!!!!)
Yes, antiretroviral drugs are a wonderful breakthrough. Making them inexpensive, available, and getting people to take them daily is a must. The problem with meds is that viruses are prone to mutation, and sometimes a resistant strain breaks through. An effective vaccine would be the next most important tool in our arsenal. Vaccines are by far the most important discovery medicine has ever brought to mankind.
If you'd like my opinion on how to slay, or at least tame, this dragon, here it is. Kill the stigma. It's your real enemy. Education and prevention are your most powerful weapons. And continue to pay researchers to learn how treat those with the infection and find a vaccine. This is doable.
You're lucky you only have one dragon to champion. I've gotta get back to slaying the herd. Thanks for caring.
The paradox of our species is that we fear both life (and death) beyond any other fears. Yet little do we know how all of our fears are completely unfounded. Everything we perceive as darkness in this world is simply an orchestrated divine opportunity to transcend this world. Our perceptions of dragons only grow power if we see dragons and believe them capable of such.
No illness, disease, or fracture has ever been cured by the sciences or medicine of men. Can intention heal? Yes. The sciences (read: the ego of academics)? No. Just as money is an illusion of proportions we may never grasp, so is life. There is only One who is qualified to educate us about this life, and without doubt, none will find what we seek in science, politics, or money. These are simply diversions to distract our focus away from "My Heavenly".
We must lay our weapons down. All of our weapons. There are no enemies in front of us.
Love ♥
Well said, nkf. There are a host of other deadly diseases that never get even a glimmer of the spotlight as HIV/AIDS. This is not to say HIV/AIDS is not insidious and worthy of medical advancement, but politics definitely moved it to the forefront of causes. I was just starting college when AIDS blew up into an epidemic and it seemed impossible at the time that any effective treatments would ever be possible. It is truly amazing the progress that has been made since the 1980's and I am thankful HIV/AIDS doesn't have to been the automatic death sentence it once was. I do wonder if looking to government is the silver bullet for conquering the disease here and abroad. Dan rightly states "the government will tune its ears to the strongest voice", but aside from the money I wonder how many treatments were held up longer than necessary because of FDA roadblocks and other bureaucracy? My own preference would be for private organizations like Blood Water Mission to lead the way, because government (apart from their money which is mostly borrowed at this point) only delays progress. I guarantee you if the goverment were running Blood Water Mission only a fraction of the existing wells would be in operation.
Great post. You have good points! AIDS has been one of the most dangerous disease the world have ever known. Comparing it with a dragon is just right. When the dragon burst out its flames, many are affected, not just those which were burned (infected by AIDS) but also their families and loved ones.
- Kevin
Two weeks ago a colleague and friend of mine got diagnosed with cancer, a type of leukemia that is not easily treatable. She is the sweetest person I know and it pains me to witness the suffering she is enduring with the aggressive treatments she is receiving. My grandmother died of breast cancer. I have redeemed many yogurt lids and ran miles for the cure. I guess my point is that there most definitely are many battles being fought against various types of human ailments today. It is tiring and the attention of those who have no experience or connection to a cause can easily deviate. So, how to continue to capture the attention of a world that is easily distracted? I can sense the frustration in your message but also the hope that if enough voices are raised another pain can be soothed, avoided, or maybe even eliminated. I’m IN. I’m stoked that AIDS is finally meeting its match and that there are people who care enough to make it possible for those who otherwise would never have access to medication or education on prevention to have access to it now. I share the dream… but also with the understanding that I’m tossing a coin into a well filled with the tears of human suffering in the wild hope that that dream will come true. I have often been criticized by friends and family for joining causes that are not close to home. “Why support Africa and not your own people in your very own country?” I rebel against that mentality. I do it simply for the love of humanity and for the love that has been planted in my heart by a savior that I wait for to make true to his promises to come and take us home. In the meantime I will continue to wait with those who also wait for those tears to be “washed away”.
@ wendybird, I'm sorry to hear about your coworker. Cancer sucks.
@ Mike: any help is good help. The world's governments are necessary because of the enormity of the problem and the infrastructure and funds required to tackle it. Private organizations are good too. I prefer both. A government can set up laws to prosecute rape as the despicable crime it is, and work on a police force that protects people. It can have public education campaigns to teach people what a virus is, how it's spread, how to prevent it, and the importance of early and continued treatment, especially for pregant women and children. It can fund doctors and hospitals that care for all illnesses. Not all nations have a CDC like ours, where certain diseases are reported so everyone exposed can be tested and treated effectively. The CDC is a necessary organization that we take for granted here. Widespread research does best when it has both public and private dollars at its disposal. HIV and AIDS are viewed with superstition and dangerous misunderstanding in some parts of the world, even at the government level. Ignorance is deadly.
AIDS is one of the most fatal disease that many Africans die every year in the last decade.
I knew a woman who had to take blood thinning medication for quite some time and falling pregnant, having an operation or taking the pill could have been detrimental to her health, perhaps even fatal for her. Her husband still refused to wear a condom to have sex. He even got angry when she didn’t want to have sex with him without a condom
The solution in this case was very simple but this man would not swallow his ridiculous pride and accept that he may have to forgo what he thought was his right to have sex without a
condom to lower the risk of his wife becoming ill or even dying.
AIDS is an ugly disease but just as atrocious is the attitude of those who feel that, regardless of risk, having sex without protection their right.
To me, just as important as finding a cure for AIDS…slaying the Dragon as Dan said… is finding a cure for the selfish, arrogant attitudes of many towards sex.
Here in Australia it’s not so much about religious morals as it is about pride. Many men just don’t want to wear condoms, even if it means protecting themselves and their partners from potential disease.
After slaying the dragon we must shut the gates to prevent more dragons getting in.
There are women and girls too afraid to demand that their boyfriends to put on a condom. There are rapists, and men who think that wearing a condom is like having a shower in a raincoat. There are prostitutes who are willing (or are forced ) to have unprotected sex for more money.
I agree with Dan that the dragon called AIDS needs to be slayed. The masculine in all of us needs to fix the problem, to eliminate it and learn how to cure it.
But we also need to tap into the feminine in all of us and work out why people don’t care about consequence, why people don’t care enough about others to decrease the risk of infection and work toward changing these selfish attitudes.
We need to prevent, educate and accept some dark truths about ourselves as individuals and as a society if we want to eliminate this disease effectively.
Let’s face it, simply throwing money at this problem and trying to come up with a cure is not really going to stop the problem. Accepting that it’s the attitudes of many that have to be changed and actively doing something to get people to change is much harder, particularly in third world countries I'm sure. But in the long run it will be much more effective.
Just my opinion.
I been reading your tweets about the Abortion is both a problem ..... abortion was set up by Mrs. Mead who was worried about poor people and the over run of the population during the early 20th century. That which was a really dumb idea I am pro life because when i was born the doctors didn't want me to live but i did so here i am....each person has god given role to play in life. Who knows if a child might come up wit the cure for cancer or some new drug to cure HIV or ADIS? abortion show have never been court ruling Mrs. Roe was lead to lie about the whole thing she later sated that she had made a mistake and is now pro life. How would you feel if your wife had gotten rid of your two boys? i also don't care for the killing of people it is wrong and the laws of our USA where based on the the bible. ( the making of usa history book)...abortion show have never been a issue this should have been keep to a woman and her family and doctor.
Dan. Your comments about HIV/AIDS were very interesting. My father has fought with the dragon for his life these past 20 years, going through all the available drug cocktails because the virus adapts fairly quickly. In fact, at one point in his life he had gone through all the available drug cocktails except for the few whose side effects include "death". The drugs are better now a days but some still have very harmful side effects. Living with this dragon is more difficult than anyone can imagine because of all the stereotypes that are associated with it. My father contracted HIV through a dental operation, NOT through having sex. In the 90's there were many in the US who contracted HIV this way. Infected blood banks also contributed to the number of those who are HIV+.
Many people can say "my aunt has cancer, heart disease or diabetes" but when talking about HIV/AIDS, I can only say "my father is ill." It is a secret that I've kept for many years telling only a handful of people that I trust because i'm so afraid of judgment from others. A church we attended for a short period of time turned their backs on us when I was young because they assumed my father had "fallen into sin." It makes me so angry. People shouldn't be afraid to receive a hug from my father or share a meal at our house because he is HIV+, but there is great fear and misunderstanding to this day.
When speaking about HIV/AIDS (this is for everyone) please don't assume that a person has contracted the disease because they have had multiple sex partners and don't want to wear a condom. I understand that a lot of people have contracted the HIV that way but that is not always the case.
It is good to get those who need it the medication, but for a person who is HIV+ or has full blown AIDS it is a temporary solution to a very permanent problem. This makes getting a verity of combo drugs out to remote places vital, but also makes it more difficult.
I would love to see this dragon slain. I'd also love to see a cure!
I just tried to post a comment and I don't see it. I'm not sure If I'm posting 2 comments now and there is a time laps or if it filtered my Amzon link? I could skip the link this time. I've got a great kids book recomendation for you. The Book of Dragons selected and illustrated by Michael Hauge. This book is a collection of dragons stories. Some are whole tales and some are taken out of novels such as The Adventures of Eustace by CS Lewis Or Bilbo Baggins and Smaug by JRR Talkin. Michael Hauge skips to the dragon part of the novel. It's a very good read. Just to be clear my children have had the entire Narnia Chronicles read to them and I understand the pleaser and benifit of reading books in there entirety. However I've never read the Hobbit but I have read all about the dragon. The copy I currently have belongs to the library but you can buy a copy on Amazon if your intrested. In conclusion I would like to express full heartly that I know the battle against HIV/ADS is very seriouse, please don't think I'm trivializing the matter.
Melanie- thanks for the book recommendation. I'm always on the hunt for a great story. :) -D