Problem SOLVED! The AIDS Pandemic

When the HIV/AIDS epidemic officially began over twenty-six years ago, very little was known about the disease except that it was thought to be primarily an affliction of gay men.  Fast forward to the present, and we are in a state of global crises.  In the intervening years, numerous extremely expensive drugs and treatments have been created, but both a cure and an immunization for the virus seem as distant today as they were nearly three decades ago.  The disease has therefore swept across the globe -- nearly unchecked in some areas -- and has resulted in a disintegration of social structure in the most extremely effected areas of sub-Saharan Africa.  And while the plight of the African continent is well known, HIV cases are actually spiraling upward most dramatically in eastern Europe and central Asia.

Even diseases that can be immunized against are tremendously costly to combat.  In regards to a virus such as HIV, however, for which there is no known cure or immunization, and for which ongoing treatment with costly drug "cocktails" are required -- cocktails which must be constantly renovated to match the ever-adapting and evolving nature of the virus -- there is no reasonable way to combat the disease simply by throwing money at it.  It is like a house that needs its walls replaced at the same rate a normal house needs new lightbulbs.  For example, in 2003 the cost to provide a Nigerian HIV sufferer with a full anti-viral regimen for a year was $742.  The Gross Domestic Product per capita of that country, meanwhile, was $692.  The average Nigerian HIV patient lives with a fifty dollar a year deficit before even taking a single bite to eat.  Surely, it should be obvious to all that this is not a very efficient existence.  And Nigeria is far from being the worst-affected country.

When considering the overall cost of the disease, though, we must not only take into account the cost of treating the individual patients, nor only the immeasurable social costs that occur when substantial portions of the population are simply removed from circulation -- the hordes of orphans, for instance -- we must also take into account both the literal and the opportunity costs involved with the research and development of treatments for the disease.  We must decide when the benefits of treating HIV are outweighed by both the monetary cost of treating it on a global scale and the fact that our medical researchers could be using their time to reach more practical goals like cures for herpes or male pattern baldness.  In other words, we must decide when enough is enough.

It is time for someone to pose the question, "Would it not be better for all involved if the massive and obvious power of this disease were to be contained, harnessed and steered, if a method existed by which such a task could be accomplished?"

In the meantime, while the world bends under the strain of the HIV/AIDS pandemic, another seemingly separate issue clutches for our purse-strings:  a burgeoning energy crisis.  Globally, we are consuming oil faster than we are producing it from the earth, thus depleting our stored resources of the ultimately finite supply of this thought-to-be non-renewable natural resource.

We feel the pinch of this crisis in several important and salient ways.  For one, it exaggerates the importance of the Middle East, a heavily contested region that would be fought over on religious terms even were it not for the fact that it sits on top of most of the planet's largest oil reserves, or the fact that it is geographically central to the entire Africa/Europe/Asia landmass.  The inflated importance of this region has resulted in the accrual of billions if not trillions of dollars in military investments to keep it "stable."  While I have technically already solved this problem, it should be noted that the added solution I am about to unveil will mitigate it further, or at all should my original advice continue to go foolishly unheeded.

Another unfortunate side-effect of the energy crunch falls on the backs of U.S. auto makers.  Namely, sales for popular and profitable light trucks and SUVs are on the decline due to issues with fuel economy.  The research and development involved with alternative forms of fuel and propulsion are extremely expensive, and the industry would certainly benefit more not from a new fuel, but from a new source of the fuel that is currently used:  something to relieve some of the pressure on the market, and make it OK for everyone to get eleven miles per gallon in gas mileage again. 

Finally, the increasing cost of oil threatens our nation's suburbs.  Since the 1970s, America's white people have counted on cheap gas to allow them to conveniently work in the city while living many miles away from the black and brown people who frighten them so.  It should be possible for white people to maintain this standard without sacrificing, for instance, dresses for their dogs.

Fortunately, there is a singular solution with the ability to alleviate all of these concerns.  Since 2003, the technology has existed to break down all manner of things into oil.  The process is called the thermal depolymerization process (TDP), and it promises to break down a 175 pound man into thirty-eight pounds of oil, seven pounds of gas, seven pounds of minerals and 138 pounds of sterilized water.

Thirty-eight pounds of oil.

Assuming that oil weighs a little over seven pounds per gallon, one could expect to derive over five gallons of oil from just one human body.  That's over a tenth of a tank for the currently discontinued Ford Excursion.

Under my program, all people who test positive for HIV will be required to submit to a test to determine their body mass index (BMI).  Those HIV patients who qualify as "overweight" or greater under these guidelines will be immediately fed into the machine that turns people into oil.  The reasons we single out overweight people are simple.  For one, as they weigh more, they will yield more oil.  Second, should they be allowed to live, their obesity likely will indirectly cause all sort of other health ailments -- ailments that we can likewise not afford to treat.  And, finally, their corpulence makes them less physically desirable, and thus less likely to have sex, and therefore less likely to produce a new crop of HIV-to-oil people.

In 2005 alone, 4.1 million people were estimated to be infected with HIV globally.  It is estimated that nearly sixty percent of all Americans qualify as overweight by the BMI scale, so adjusting downward slightly to compensate for our notorious obesity, we can come to a figure approaching 1.5 million HIV victims to harvest for their component oil.  We could add at least 7.5 million gallons of oil per year simply by culling our fat HIV sufferers.

Those who are not immediately converted to oil will be deceived into thinking that they are receiving the same anti-viral regimens that would have been provided for them before my program was initiated.  In fact, they will be receiving several handfuls a day of placebos -- sugar pills -- laced with minute amounts of human growth hormone (HGH).  The effects of this new HIV regimen will be astounding.  HIV patients will pack on the weight at a frantic pace, and -- at the first sign of a serious health problem -- they will be converted to oil at their new, oil-heavy, hefty size.  It is estimated that 2.8 million people died of AIDS in 2005; since all of them will be fat under my program, we can pencil in another thirteen million gallons of oil each year.

Combined, we will have harnessed the power of HIV to the tune of -- on the low end -- twenty and a half million gallons of oil every calendar year.  Breaking it down, that will amount to roughly one day each year during which we wouldn't have to import a single barrel of oil from OPEC.  Turning a curse into a gift:  that's what I call a problem SOLVED!