`SEX, DRUGS AND CONSEQUENCES' TAKES MIXED-BAG LOOK AT AIDS.Byline: Robin Dougherty Knight-Ridder Tribune News Wire Because of its sexual content, tonight's AIDS special, ``Sex, Drugs and Consequences,'' has a parental advisory attached. Instead, it ought to come with a touchy-feely alert. ABC's celebrity interviewer Barbara Walters, soap star Morgan Fairchild, sports commentator Dan Dierdorf and others gather in a cozy Greenwich Village cafe, the better to fill us in on progress in the fight against AIDS. The result - complete with a demonstration of T-cell activity using the cafe's salt and pepper shakers Salt and pepper shakers are condiment holders used in Western culture that are designed to allow food eaters to distribute edible salt and ground pepper.[1] This is a conjoined term for salt shaker and pepper shaker. - is a mixed bag. On one hand, we get a first look at three outstanding public service announcements designed to run on ABC ABC in full American Broadcasting Co. Major U.S. television network. It began when the expanding national radio network NBC split into the separate Red and Blue networks in 1928. . One notes that more Americans have died of AIDS than were killed in the Korean, Vietnam and Gulf Wars combined. (It adds, ``Who would have thought so many people would die making love?'') Another calls on Jack Kevorkian to give his own grim perspective on behaviors such as unprotected sex: ``Why perfectly healthy people commit suicide is beyond me.'' On the other hand, ABC's attempt to get everyone from Fairchild to ABC medical editor Dr. Timothy Johnson into the act comes off as a coffee klatch centered around a deadly disease. Fifteen years into the epidemic, it's difficult to come up with a new approach to the subject - much less find any good news on it. So ABC can be forgiven for not having anything earth-shattering to tell. Although AIDS activists and researchers are putting their hopes into creation of a vaccine, the best news seems to be that new drug therapies tend to lengthen the lives of AIDS sufferers. In a scattershot scat·ter·shot adj. Covering a wide range in a random way; indiscriminate: "his habit of scattershot comment on whatever issue catches his eye" Howell Raines. approach - a little medicine, a little microbiology, a little social history - we visit many corners of the AIDS-affected world. It's heartening heart·en tr.v. heart·ened, heart·en·ing, heart·ens To give strength, courage, or hope to; encourage. See Synonyms at encourage. Adj. 1. to go along with AIDS patients as they visit their doctors and learn that their T-cell numbers are going up rather than down. But it's somewhat unsettling un·set·tle v. un·set·tled, un·set·tling, un·set·tles v.tr. 1. To displace from a settled condition; disrupt. 2. To make uneasy; disturb. v.intr. to keep returning to the folks at the cafe tables, as though the program - the fifth in a series of annual AIDS specials - were just one more Barbara Walters special. ``Sex, Drugs'' notes that 7,000 people worldwide are HIV-infected each day, but focuses more on people who are living with AIDS, and their caretakers, than on those dying from it. In one segment, a doctor is pricked by a needle and must undergo an AIDS test himself. In another, a physician tells one of her patients that she's no longer going to be caring for people with AIDS The People With AIDS (PWA) Self-Empowerment Movement was a movement of those diagnosed with AIDS and grew out of San Francisco. The PWA Self-Empowerment Movement believes that those diagnosed as having AIDS should "take charge of their own life, illness, and care, and to minimize - the toll of watching people suffer has grown too heavy for her. But the most compelling stories are those of AIDS patients themselves, particularly children who are HIV-positive. ABC is including a toll-free number (800-342-2437) so viewers can reach a hot line run by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), agency of the U.S. Public Health Service since 1973, with headquarters in Atlanta; it was established in 1946 as the Communicable Disease Center. . The best AIDS special will be the one that announces a cure for the deadly illness. In the meantime Adv. 1. in the meantime - during the intervening time; "meanwhile I will not think about the problem"; "meantime he was attentive to his other interests"; "in the meantime the police were notified" meantime, meanwhile , ``Sex, Drugs and Consequences'' is an educational addition to coverage of the crisis. THE FACTS The show: ``Sex, Drugs and Consequences.'' The stars: Barbara Walters, Morgan Fairchild and Dan Dierdorf. When: 8 tonight. Channel: KABC KABC Kaufman Assessment Battery for Children (Channel 7). |
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