Drugs May Offer AIDS Prevention

FlipFlopSnowMan writes "There is an interesting article on MSNBC about the possibility of preventing AIDS using the same pills that are currently used to fight the virus in affected individuals." From the article: "The drugs are tenofovir (Viread) and emtricitabine, or FTC (Emtriva), sold in combination as Truvada by Gilead Sciences Inc., a California company best known for inventing Tamiflu, a drug showing promise against bird flu. Unlike vaccines, which work through the immune system -- the very thing HIV destroys -- AIDS drugs simply keep the virus from reproducing. They already are used to prevent infection in health care workers accidentally exposed to HIV, and in babies whose pregnant mothers receive them."

Comments

This is tough to read over and over again

[Loundry]

As an AIDS heretic, I find articles like these tiresome to read. There have been many, many such articles about "curing AIDS" which have all proven to be sound and fury signifying nothing. I think the reason for this is because AIDS has become something much larger than a disease. It is a way of life for thousands of scientists, a huge cash cow for drug manufacturers, and a political plank for both gay activists and gay-bashing activists.

If you are open to the idea that the orthodoxy about AIDS might not be correct or might not be scientific, then I suggest you read these two pieces of investigative journalism that came out a couple of months ago. They detail in the most succinct way possible how AIDS came about, and that is *VERY* hard to do because of how immensely complex this subject is.

http://www.sparks-of-light.org/HIVGATE%20-%20revie w%20copy.pdf

http://www.sparks-of-light.org/AIDSGATE%20-%20what %20caused%20AIDS%20if%20not%20HIV.pdf

If you think that I'm insane, or that I just want to have a whole lot of unprotected sex, or that I'm a conspiracy theorist, then please just ignore this post. It means that you are not open-minded to criticism of your ideas, and the only thing I want to do is give criticism of the HIV-AIDS hypothesis a fair hearing. I believe that there are HUGE problems with the hypothesis and it has led to many people getting fabulously wealthy off of what has turned out to be misdiagnosis. I am aware that this is a serious charge, and I do not take this subject lightly.

All of that is in effort to say, "Don't mod me down. Don't be a jerk. Don't prevent someone who *wants* to hear what I have to say from hearing it." I hope it works.

Re:Save the melodramatic crap

[Fhqwhgadss]

But I think there's a large social issue here.

You hit the nail right on the head. In the United States at least, AIDS is far more of a social problem than a medical problem. The fact that it firt appeared in the gay male community has had an enormous impact on the way that the disease is perceived.

For society that was founded on puitanical grounds, AIDS has been a godsend (pun intended). The evangelicals had a way to immediately lash out against homosexuality as the cause of all of our problems. When the disease migrated to the straight population, we were inundated with the I-got-AIDS-on-my-first-time stories and told to save ourselves for marriage. Fear, whether of AIDS or the lake of fire, is the puritan's greatest weapon.

Then there's the fact that a large portion of our entertainment industry is gay. With the deaths of Rock Hudson and Liberace on thier minds, entertainers became more open and it gradually became more acceptable to homosexuals to "come out." The most significant positive side-effect of AIDS has been the acceptance of homosexuality as at least real, if not acceptable, to American society in general.

The somewhat ironic thing is that without the wanton promiscuity that came about as a backlash against Amirican puritanism, AIDS would not be nearly as widespread as it is today. If it were acceptable to have sex with more than one person on a regular basis, but within a group of mutually respected, trusted, and loved individuals, containment of the disease would be far easier. As it is we live on two extermes: one of excess and one of fear, and the two ideologies feed each other.

AIDS in the US if far more of a social construct than a medical one. There are very few places outside of sub-Saharan Africa that have a greater than 2% infection rate, and even so a great majority of those 2% are in well-defined high-risk groups. Yes, prevention is needed. Yes, research into medical treatment is needed. But can we stop calling it a pandemic already? Sensationalism does not serve the public interest.