I’m going to try and keep this short but I make no promises…
In the early-mid 80′s, I was in junior high. I was concerned about boys, being smarter than my parents and generally being a rotten, pain in the ass child. At that time, AIDS was born. It was a gay mans thing. It was a thing for people to be ashamed of. It was a brand on a group of people that other people didn’t understand or accept. It was terrible and horrible and no one understood it. I’m pretty sure that I was not really paying attention to what was going on because I was self-centered, in the 7th or 8th grade, and was more concerned with my budding boobs. I do remember that it was all over the news and you couldn’t escape hearing about it, the horrors of it all.
As time went by, we all learned that it wasn’t just a gay man’s disease but a disease that impacts everyone and anyone. But for a long time, none of us knew anything about it or how you got it or where it came from. All we all knew was that it would eventually kill you in a long and horrible way. And people were really afraid, especially of those that had it.
Fast forward to 2001 and I participated in my first ever AIDS vaccine ride. I didn’t do it because I knew anyone with HIV or AIDS or anyone who had died from it, I did it because I wanted to ride my bike across Montana (which is weird since I didn’t own a bike). It seemed like a fun thing to do. The following year I signed up for another ride, this time in Europe. Months before the ride I received an email about a fundraiser taking place in Atlanta, hosted by a group of people that were also going to Europe. I emailed them to see if they’d allow me to train with them and much to my surprise, they asked me to join their team. It turns out that the team consisted of 17 people and while I didn’t know any of these people, I grew to love them and felt like they were family and a group of life long friends.
The ride in Europe kind of sucked. Not because Europe isn’t beautiful and wonderful and full of croissants but because it rained for 6 1/2 of the 7 days that we were there. A cold and wet and miserable rain that totally sucked.
Anyway, that’s not the point of this post.
The organizer of the ride returned a pathetic portion of the money raised to the beneficiaries and as a team, we were pretty pissed. So we decided that as a group, we could do better. When we returned we formed a 501c3 called Action Cycling Atlanta that puts on and organizes a 2 day, 200 mile bike ride from Atlanta to Athens and back – the Action Cycling 200 (now called the AIDS Vaccine 200). The first year of the ride I think we had 17 riders and raised $35,000 and this year the ride had 138 riders and raised $184,000. A HUGE and ridiculously major accomplishment. The BEST thing about this event – over all 8 years the organizers have returned 100% of ALL the money raised to the Emory Vaccine Center, almost $750,000.
What’s so amazing, and maddening, to me is that after all these years, there’s no cure. There’s no way to stop the spread and no way to eliminate it. Sure HAART (the cocktail) is wonderful and people can live for years and years with it but HAART can have horrible side effects, it doesn’t work for everyone, or it can stop working, among many other things. We can preach all we want about safe sex and monogamy but someone is still diagnosed with HIV every 9 minutes. It takes longer to boil an egg.
There are very few vaccines that have made it into trial and I think only one that’s made it to human trials. Vaccines are crazy expensive to create and then get into trials. Depending on the trial, the drug, and so many other factors, one vaccine can cost between $10,000-35,000 per person to test. That money has to come from somewhere and it’s events like these that help to make this possible.
I know there are a lot of diseases out there, all of them worthy of support and donations and a cure. I wish I could say that I’m still that self-centered young lady that didn’t know anyone with HIV. I wish I could say that they have the vaccine needed, or the magical pill, that has made them all better. But there isn’t. And until there is, I’m going to have to continue to volunteer and raise money and walk and help support those that can make this terrible and awful disease be a footnote in the history books.
