AIDSLifecycle 2014 UPDATE #1 (Matthew Mullins, creator of Underground Voice LA, will be riding in AIDS Lifecycle 2014.)

Today, I give thanks for my friends who are living life to the fullest, and pay homage to the ones who have fallen from HIV/AIDS. In support of the mission to fight and put an end to AIDS, I made a very big decision this morning.

From June 1-7, 2014, I'm bicycling in AIDS/LifeCycle with my team, The Payasos. It's a 7-day, 545-mile bike ride from San Francisco to Los Angeles to make a world of difference in the lives of people living with HIV and AIDS. My team plans to raise $50,000, and I hope that you can find it in your heart to donate whatever you can to help make a difference in our community.

On this day of friends and family, I do not celebrate Christopher Columbus and his conquest of annihilating the natives in America. Instead I celebrate my friends and family, all of you so dear to me.

After his first voyage, Columbus was appointed Viceroy and Governor of the Indies, which gave him power he ruled those territories from 1494 to 1500. He created work camps (where Indians were worked to death in as ghastly a manner as anyone in 20th century), led the troops, established slavery & mines.

Christopher Columbus used disease, firearms, and power to try and decimate the Native Americans and Spaniards.

Bartlome de Las Casas said,

'There were 60,000 people living on this island [in 1508], including both Spaniards & Indians. So that between 1494 and 1508 more than three million people died from war, slavery and the mines.'

Even if his figures were exaggerated, either 3 million as he says, a million, as some historians calculate, or some think it was 8 million, it was Columbus,who was responsible for the slaughter of hundreds of thousands of people, in 6 years.

521 years later, we have other problems.

According to AIDS.gov,

'More than 1.1 million people in the United States are living with HIV infection, and almost 1 in 5 (18.1%) are unaware of their infection.
Gay, bisexual, and other men who have sex with men (MSM),1 particularly young black/African American MSM, are most seriously affected by HIV. By race, blacks/African Americans face the most severe burden of HIV.
An estimated 15,529 people with an AIDS diagnosis died in 2010, and approximately 636,000 people in the United States with an AIDS diagnosis have died since the epidemic began.3 The deaths of persons with an AIDS diagnosis can be due to any cause—that is, the death may or may not be related to AIDS.'

AIDS and Christopher Columbus have a lot in common, but AIDS hasn't been stopped and has no 'estimated death date.'

Ending the reign of this virus is part of my mission in life.

Riding in the Haunted Hollywood Halloween Ride

I am HIV negative, and I will stay that way, but I have held more than a few hands of friends as they died from Aids related illnesses. I don't want to lose anymore. Lets stop this TOGETHER. Please donate to me today, I will be eternally grateful, and you will help my friends, my family, our community, and me.

Follow the link to my AIDS Lifecycle homepage: Donation Page for Matthew Mullins

HIV Incidence (new infections): The estimated incidence of HIV has remained stable overall in recent years, at about 50,000 new HIV infections per year. Within the overall estimates, however, some groups are affected more than others. MSM continue to bear the greatest burden of HIV infection, and among races/ethnicities, African Americans continue to be disproportionately affected.

HIV Diagnoses (new diagnoses, regardless of when infection occurred): In 2011, an estimated 49,273 people were diagnosed with HIV infection in the United States. In that same year, an estimated 32,052 people were diagnosed with AIDS. Since the epidemic began, an estimated 1,155,792 people in the United States have been diagnosed with AIDS.3

CDC estimates that 1,148,200 persons aged 13 years and older are living with HIV infection, including 207,600 (18.1%) who are unaware of their infection.1 Over the past decade, the number of people living with HIV has increased, while the annual number of new HIV infections has remained relatively stable. Still, the pace of new infections continues at far too high a level— particularly among certain groups.

 

 

 

 

Opinion: Religion and Creationism Versus Science and Evolution

 

According to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary, the definition of evolution is “a theory that the various types of animals and plants have their origin in other preexisting types and that the distinguishable differences are due to modifications in successive generations.” Creationism is “a doctrine holding that matter, the various forms of life, and the world were created by God out of nothing and usually in the way described in the book of Genesis.” 

For almost twenty years, anthropologists have been comparing the DNA of living humans of varied origins to build evolutionary ‘family’ trees. The science has led to many theories, including how mutations occur in our DNA and will often be passed along to the offspring of our species. It is these differences that tie us all together, but also point to us having many differences through our personal genomes. After awhile, it becomes easy to predict what and where we came from through our DNA. DNA also shows that our species and chimpanzees diverged from a common ancestor species that lived between 8 and 6 million years ago. The last common ancestor of monkeys and apes lived about 25 million years ago. Our past, present and future is predicted through our own DNA.

Creationism doesn’t meet the criteria of being an actual theory, given that there is no feasible way to test it as being true or false. It has no scientific backing and appears to fall under the category of an idea. A scientific hypothesis must be testable and has the opportunity to be false. If the idea has no predictions, cannot be falsified or redeemed, or has no scientific principles, it is not science. With creationism, there are no scientific claims about how to identify our design, what the mechanism of our design is, or when and where the design will or has taken place. 

I believe Creationism is false. One of the leading factors that points to it’s falsity, is the fact that it’s based on doctrine with no scientific backing. The bible doesn’t explain why species vary from one form to the next. Creationists use this as a battle point in the ‘natural selection,’ argument. Natural selection can be described scientifically. All species that move to a different place with different conditions change along with natural selection and adaptation to the surrounding environment. This explains how new species are formed. Animals that didn’t move from their original area, did not need to adapt to a new environment. 

This science is disputed by creationists, such as Henry Morris, author of ‘The Scientific Case Against Evolution, who believe that, ‘if it were a real process, evolution should still be occurring, and there should be many "transitional" forms that we could observe. What we see instead is an array of distinct "kinds" of plants and animals with many varieties within each kind, but with very clear and -- apparently -- unbridgeable gaps between the kinds.”

This is a weak case against evolution. It is hard to dispute through the discovery of new species, such as the four new kinds of legless lizards found in California and announced as recently as last week. According to the founding herpetologists, these new species of legless lizards ancestors date back at least 50 million years. Creationists believe that the world began 6,000 years ago, and the DNA of these lizards disproves the idea of Creationism.