FOUNDER'S FORUM

FOUNDER’S STATEMENT
January 9, 2009

LIVE CONSORTIUM will provide HIV and anti-stigma education and social support to allow all people, regardless of status, to live a healthy and full life.  Through education and outreach, LIVE CONSORTIUM will encourage open, proactive, and interactive prevention and treatment participation by all people in comfortable, compassionate, and non-clinical environments.  LIVE CONSORTIUM will sponsor and promote the full range of HIV educational and social forums to encourage all clients to learn, socialize, network, and share personal knowledge and experiences.  State of the art HIV initiatives will empower all to live healthy and full lives in a world with HIV.  Finally, LIVE CONSORTIUM will aggressively fight HIV stigma. 

HIV stigma prevents individuals from getting tested, seeking treatment, and receiving emotional support.  HIV stigma is the major contributing factor in the increasing number of HIV infections in Houston, the United States, and around the World.  LIVE CONSORTIUM will unite individuals regardless of HIV status, age, race, nationality, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, religious belief, economic status, and education level.  By providing each with accurate, accessible, and affordable HIV information and education, LIVE CONSORTIUM will eradicate the stigma and significantly neutralize the virus.  As the stigma is eliminated, healthcare professionals will be better able to identify individuals with HIV and provide treatment.  As a result the World will move one step closer to the eventual extinction of HIV.

Leading a new era in HIV education outreach, LIVE CONSORTIUM is excited to introduce specifically engineered and uniquely designed cutting-edge programs and services to provide accurate HIV information to the children of the modern age.  LIVE CONSORTIUM will embrace the many new and evolving challenges in the modern fight against HIV.  Through hard work, vigilance, and your support, LIVE CONSORTIUM will accomplish its mission. 

LIVE CONSORTIUM honors the many who have lost their lives to AIDS and are currently in its horrible grip, the activists who fought for government and community response to the epidemic before the virus had a name, and those involved with the advancements in research and treatment which, in turn, have saved millions of lives.  As a direct result of those sacrifices and achievements, HIV+ individuals today can live healthy and full lives, give birth to HIV- children, and be sexually intimate and live active lives without fear of infecting their partner, family, friends, and neighbors.  Yet, despite the revolutions in medical science, the epidemic continues to grow at an alarming rate and people are suffering in greater numbers throughout the United States and around the World.  HIV has mutated again, however this time, into a virtually resistant strain.  The “HIV Virtual Virus” is the spawn of the evolution of communication and the stigma that surrounds HIV.

The “HIV Virtual Virus” (“HVV”) enables HIV to thrive despite a world with the medical ability and health information to contain it, treat it, and ultimately eliminate it.  HVV is the undesirable product of the Communication Revolution and Age of Information.  These two major historical technological milestones perpetuate HIV misinformation, champion HIV complacency, denial, and ignorance, and have created a new breeding ground for HIV.

Ironically, marvels in HIV treatment and research have also been catalysts for HVV.  The illusion of a forthcoming phantom vaccine and/or cure in the immediate future has, unfortunately, legitimized HIV complacency.  The unchallenged proliferation of HIV myths from the 80’s and 90’s has, in large part, welcomed an aura of HIV apathy.  Prevention programs, successful in the past, are now less effective.  Even advancements in HIV treatment, in many cases, are useless as a direct result of HVV.  

Individuals, communities and nations around the world permit HVV to thrive by propagating uninformed and statistically incorrect HIV information and promoting isolationism and separatism through campaigns of false facts and misguided political perceptions.  Examples of HIV ignorance include continued articulation that HIV infiltrates and seeks the annihilation of a single small faithless demographic, lack of common knowledge of how HIV is transmitted, and the resistance to common sense education of proactive HIV prevention through safe sex and abstinence.  Despite overwhelming scientific data, advanced medical knowledge, and aggressive, but antiquated, prevention and treatment outreach, legions of humans are presenting for the first time with AIDS or, after diagnosed with HIV, choose to consciously live a life of denial and, by refusing treatment, play a significant role in the survival of the virus by introducing it to new unsuspecting hosts.

The internet has only proven to exacerbate HVV.  The availability of voluminous treatment information is overwhelming, the exacting nature of on-going scientific research and how it is reported is intimidating, and treatment protocol, theory, and terminology is daunting.  In other words, we are too reliant on the world wide web to provide adequate treatment and prevention information.  It is unrealistic and inhumane to expect newly infected individuals to actively seek, sift, discern, understand, and then apply accurate and individually appropriate HIV treatment and wellness information given the enormous amount of specialized and often inaccurate HIV literature currently available on the web.  

HVV is perhaps best understood through online sex sites.  The virtual bathhouse of our generation, online sex is rampant among every demographic.  Traditional “door front” HIV intervention, prevention, and education techniques are ineffective and obsolete on the new HIV virtual battlefield.  To engage in the modern HIV/HVV fight, intervention, prevention, and education techniques must evolve and new delivery methods designed and implemented.  Virtual reality demands the creation of a new arsenal of virtual weapons to defeat HVV at every existing and future “virtual door front”.

Internet overdependence, activist apathy, and unsubstantiated and unrealistic near-future hopes for and dependence on an HIV vaccine or cure have been the genesis of the insurmountable challenge we face today in the fight against HIV.  The challenge we face today is new.  Where HIV used to be medically untreatable, it is now manageable.  Newly infected individuals, at least those who seek treatment, are expected to live healthy and full lives despite their HIV.  The caveat, however, is that newly infected individuals must present themselves for testing and, upon diagnosis, treatment. 

In the 90’s, HIV+ individuals actively sought treatment information in open, obvious, and interactive forums.  Today, however, HIV+ individuals live in modern isolation.  Isolation, a bi-product of the Communication Revolution, promotes misinformation, precludes peer support, and prevents community action.  Modern isolation also proactively and exponentially exacerbates the affects of HIV Stigma.  Unlike the past, the present challenge is not medical in nature, but educational.  So, how do we communicate and relay accurate, appropriate, and individually effective HIV treatment, prevention and wellness information to all people of the World today?

LIVE CONSORTIUM is a direct answer to the call of that very question.  LIVE CONSORTIUM will breach the communication barrier and educate all people, no matter their status or background, about the reality of HIV and how to prevent it, treat it, and live with it.  Through knowledge, we can all live healthy and full lives, prevent HIV infection of our loved ones, neighbors, and fellow humans, and take the next step in the only current medically viable cure available today:  the neutralization of the virus through prevention and education and the sustained systematic application of state of the art treatment of all people around the World who carry the burden of HIV.

LIVE CONSORTIUM'S first response will be the University HIV Anti-Stigma Campaign.  The purpose of the University HIV Anti-Stigma Campaign is to educate all college students, campus by campus, how the stigma that surrounds HIV effects people of all ages, race, nationality, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, religious belief, economic status, and education level by preventing testing, interfering with treatment, and isolating individuals emotionally and, as a result, the stigma is a major contributing factor in the alarming number of HIV infections in colleges and universities in the United States today.  

There are three other programs in development at LIVE CONSORTIUM.  INSPIRE, The Mentor Program for Individuals Newly Affected by HIV, offers newly diagnosed individuals, their families, and friends the opportunity to seek and receive emotional support, encouragement, compassion, and guidance from someone who is similarly situated, can empathize, and help mentor them through the initial stages of learning to live a healthy and full life with HIV, regardless of status.  SLATE is a series of comfortable social education forums in which professional men and women learn about the latest advances in HIV research, treatment, and health management while also provided the opportunity to network with likeminded individuals.  Finally, The HIVE (HIV Education) provides basic HIV information and useful tools (including what is HIV, how is HIV transmitted, listings of local HIV specialists, counselors, and ASOs) to empower all to live a full and healthy life, regardless of status.

LIVE CONSORTIUM is an extraordinary venture that will make a significant contribution in the modern unified campaign against HIV.  Your involvement, through volunteerism or financial support, will ensure LIVE CONSORTIUM’S short-term success and strengthen its long-term potential.  I am honored, through LIVE CONSORTIUM, to have this opportunity to serve the community, privileged to work with the increasing number of respected, talented, and gifted visionaries who are already dedicated to LIVE CONSORTIUM, and driven by LIVE CONSORTIUM’S awesome potential.  I am confident that LIVE CONSORTIUM will be a powerful force, even in its infancy, in improving the lives of people around the World and play a historic role in the epic fight against HIV.

                                                                       

Very truly yours, /BAM/ Beau A. Miller Founder