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

Cash cow?

[Tx]

Q. How to make more money from expensive AIDS drugs?

A. Obvious - sell it to people who don't have AIDS as well as people who do.

As I understand, these drugs are very expensive, and personally I can't see any justification for using them prophylactically.

Re:Cash cow?

[Saulo Achkar]

...personally I can't see any justification for using them prophylactically. Get AIDS and you will find a justification....

Re:Cash cow?

[PrescriptionWarning]

If you are a gay man who has unprotected sex, or are an IV drug user, then these drugs are a good idea.

i hope you are only using these as an example, because straight people can get AIDS too ya know, and not just from going to see a prostitute.

of course if someone is having sex with so many different people they fear that they need such a drug, well maybe instead they should think about changing their lifestyle, they might actually be happier

Tamiflu the con

[scotbot]

Actually, I think you'll find Tamiflu is useless against bird flu!

Same hype as with Tamiflu?

[Opportunist]

Tamiflu is an overhyped, not really effective anti-flu drug. Not more. It would be a bomb in the budget of Roche if we didn't "suddenly" (read: 3 years after it was first detected) get "washed over" (read: Every couple of days we find a dead bird somewhere on the planet) by the "epidemic" (read: Umm... yeah, somewhere in the Far East a handful of people died who pretty much washed their hands in infected bird blood).

Now everyone's crazy to get their hands on Tamiflu. Is it me or does it smell like a well placed marketing hype that the media picked up all too eagerly, since there's nothing else going on that would make people buy their news?

Re:Ah, man..

[dario_moreno]

"odds are 1 in 10000"...rather 1 in 1000, and even more for receptive sex, and if you do it once a day, you get almost a 1 in 2 chance of catching it after 500 days. Check Chad Douglas on google...always on top, positive after 5 years, dead after 15.

Ummm...

[spaztik]

This is all well and good but...

In the United States, wholesale costs are $417 for a month of tenofovir and $650 for Truvada.

Who is going to be able to afford this stuff?

Re:Ummm...

[scrub76]

The answer is, 'right now, not many'. But, and this is a huge but, generic drug manufacturers in places like India and Brazil have shown they can drive down the cost of 1st world med production time and time again. When generic HIV drugs were introduced in India in 2000, the cost was $778 per month. Now the drugs cost about $30 per month. If this approach works, there will be ways to reduce the cost and make it feasible for the populations that need it.

Save the melodramatic crap

[Fhqwhgadss]

What's with the qoute at the end: This is very promising. For us to be involved in a potential solution to the big HIV crisis and pandemic is very exciting.

Pandemic? Really? Tuberculosis affects far more people worldwide but doesn't have all the sensationalism that we see surrounding AIDS. I don't mean to imply that nothing is being done about TB, or that AIDS isn't a problem, but I'm tired of the media treating this disease like we're all living on the set of "Rent"

My father..AIDS! My sister...AIDS!
My uncle and my cousin and her best friend AIDS.
Gays, straights, whites and spades,
everyone has AIDS.
My grandma and my old dog Blue.
The Pope has got it and so do you.
Come on everybody we've got quiltin' to do.
Gonna break down these barricades everyone has AIDS,
AIDS, AIDS, AIDS...

Re:Save the melodramatic crap

[will_die]

(statistics tend to prove this out- people like sex, seek it out, and are generally not monogamous)

Which surveys?
If anything surveys tend show that people are primarily mongamous and are happy in a with a relationship with a single person.
Look at something like the http://www.zogby.com/soundbites/ReadClips.dbm?ID=1 1954 from late 2005. The survey was done online so you would expect that it to be a little high on the anything goes side.
Even there you get over 70% of the people in a monogamous relationship, the majority for over 5 years.
While they may seek it out people don't tend to pay, less then 15%. This number is about the same for various other surveys.
If you get thoses types of numbers in an survey where people had to activly seek out the survey the numbers are going to be a lot less if you did a truly random survey of the population.

Re:Save the melodramatic crap

[beheaderaswp]

Did you even READ the article?? "Just 39 percent of people who took the survey always ask whether a new partner is infected with HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, or other STDs. Nearly one-third said they never check on a prospective partner's sexual health status, and among those with less than a high school education, almost 50 percent never discuss the issue of STDs with a new partner -- troubling statistics given the deadliness of AIDS and rising rates of genital herpes and other diseases." This alone indicates the amount of risk people are willing to take is high!

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.

Re:Save the melodramatic crap

[CosmeticLobotamy]

This alone indicates the amount of risk people are willing to take is high!

Or it means people don't ask stupid questions. If someone knows they have HIV and are still going to have sex with you, they're not going to go, "Oh, yeah, I have AIDS. I just didn't think you'd care."

"Wait, you didn't WANT herpes? Dude, I'm sorry, I didn't know. Totally my bad."

Re:Save the melodramatic crap

[tbone1]

In 1990, over 5 million people worldwide, practically all of them children, were dying of diarrhea. But did you see Bono appear at the Grammy Awards with a brown ribbon on his lapel?

Re:Save the melodramatic crap

[hey!]

Ummm. You may be right if you go by infections. But if you go by mortality statistics, HIV kills more people than any identifiable infectious agent. Period.

In 2002, 3.9 million people died from "lower respiratory infections", 2.8M from HIV, 1.8M from miscellaneous diahrreheal illnesses, 1.6M from TB, 1.2 from Malaria, and 0.6M from Measles, according to the 2003 WHO World Health Report.

Furthermore, one of the major reasons TB is becoming harder to keep ahead of is HIV. The 2005 World Bank Annual Report say of TB: "The disease is the most common opportunistic infection associated with HIV, increasing the number of people with tuberculosis in many countries in Africa."

Terrific Idea

[scrub76]

The evidence that AIDS drugs can prevent infections comes not only from exposed health care workers, but also monkey studies. If monkeys are given AIDS drugs up to 48 hours before exposure to SIV (the causitive agent of simian AIDS), they fail to become infected. That has been known since the late 90s. There is some data suggesting that the drugs can't always protect against multiple exposures to SIV, but those studies used only one drug at a time (not a cocktail of pills, like you would take if you had HIV).

As an HIV researcher myself, I realize that we are not going to have a highly effective, preventative vaccine for HIV any time in the near future. There are no clear 'winners' in the pipeline right now, and even if a vaccine looked effective right now, it would be years (and millions of new infections) before it clears human testing and it broadly available. Issues like viral resistance to the vaccine, incomplete protection from infection, potential side effects, and a false sense of security would plauge any vaccine that is developed -- and these are many of the same issues confronting the use of drugs as HIV preventatives.

One major hurdle to testing these drugs in populations highly affected by HIV is to convince them that this intervention is not a magic bullet. There will be problems, some of which we probably can't predict. There will be breakthrough infections in people taking the drugs. And the long-term health consequences aren't known. So far, these concerns have led to the abandonment of several trials of PrEP (using tenofovir in HIV-, high-risk populations) around the world. Hopefully the new data (using multiple drugs together works better than tenofovir alone) will encourage vulnerable populations that the potential benefits may outweigh the risks.

Re:Resistance

[Andrzej Sawicki]

Perhaps that is the point. Got to keep the business going, no? (Too bad this is only partially a joke.)

Re:Vaccine

[CosmeticLobotamy]

Brilliant! We'll just make vaccines! Why has no one thought of this before? I guess it's just one of those things that seems obvious in hindsight.

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:This is tough to read over and over again

[geekyMD]

What a bunch of tripe. Michael Moore would be really proud of the first paper. (I didn't read the second one, sorry) I can excuse the writer if 1/2 of the inaccuracies are from an ignorance of the field, but it honestly seems like she's trying to dissuade. Virtually every 3rd paragraph contains and inaccuracy or inappropriate insinuation that is subtle enough to be missed by someone who isn't trained in these fields. The author focuses her arguments by looking at small segments of the literature and history and ignoring the broader sweeps. For example:

The paper's initial assertion is that AIDS was introduced as a polio virus. Simple logical disproof: 1) polio vaccine is given across social/habitual classes. 2) There has not been 1 case of AIDS where the person didn't have one of the following three risk factors: blood transfusion, risky sex*, IV drug use. 3) Not everyone in the US has previous three risk factors. 4) If 2 is true 1 or 3 must be false or at least excruciatingly improbable. 5) 3 is true, therefore 1 must be false. QED. (*risky sex = sexual activity where both partners are not exclusively monogamous to each other at any time during or prior to their relationship)

Several pages deal with the controversy surrounding the initial discovery of the HIV virus. There was also controversy surrounding the discovery of DNA, therefore we shouldn't believe DNA is the 'source code' of life?

She makes light of the microliter aliquots used in the CBC tests but fails to mention that all CBC tests (test which count the types and number of cells in your blood) uses these metrics. We shouldn't trust tests for hundreds of diseases including leukemia, polycythemia, or even iron deficiency based on this implication. (for example, look at the normals on this page: http://www.saintfranciscare.com/11377.cfm)

She also does not respect the validity of the HIV Load test, saying that since it uses PCR (a very common technique in medicine) it cannot be accurate. (no more genetic testing, goodbye cancer diagnosis, goodbye endocrinology) She also asserts that the HIV Load assay will give false-positives and is inaccurate if the procedures are not followed. Yes, it does give false positives, it is a HIGHLY sensitive test, with a low specificity. It is not a screening test, and it cannot be used for one because of its high false positive rate. Additionally, I challenge anyone to find a test in any field that is valid when its procedures are not followed. (magnetism doesn't attract wood, therefore magnetism is false)
http://www.labtestsonline.org/understanding/analyt es/viral_load/test.html

But the coup-de-gras for me was her statistics that showed how low CD4 counts don't correlate to AIDS. (AIDS is, incidentally, practically being defined by low CD4 count)

* "61% of people with CD4 count = 200 in 1997 were AIDS free"
* -response: Yes, CD4=200 is the upper limit at which you see AIDS symptoms, this is expected

* "190,000 Americans in 1993 with CD4 count=200 were AIDS free"
* -response: See above, plus in 1993 the AIDS definition was changing so you see changes in the statistics. Additionally, that number is far less than a quarter of the number of AIDS cases in the US that year. (http://wonder.cdc.gov/wonder/data/aidsPublic.html )

* "No studies have been done to show removal of anti-retrovirals = disease"
* -response: No, but anti-retovirals have been tightly correlated to increased CD4 counts, and their withdrawal to lower CD4 counts. It has also been shown repeatedly (and even in this paper!) that low CD4 count correlates with disease.

The list goes on and on. I just pointed out a few of the most egregious and most easily refuted examples. It just goes to show that if someone really wants to believe someth

But...

[Theatetus]

... what if one of the various "environmental factors" models is right rather than the "single pathogen" model? IE, retroviruses start multiplying in people whose immune systems are shot already -- it's the symptom; not the cause.

I know we like single-pathogen disease models but frankly those are pretty rare. Especially with autoimmune and immunodeficient disorders, it's not as easy as people think to even define the given disorder in the first place, let alone establish a pathogenic cause. Take lupus: the diagnostic criteria is a list of 11 symptoms of which the patient must present 4. AIDS *was* like that for a long time, now it's defined by presentation of a short list of symptoms and presence of HIV antibodies. But then again, any death in Africa by pneumonia is counted as an AIDS case; antibodies are not even tested for. At any rate, there are numerous other that stress environmental factors.

Single pathogens are sexy for epidemiologists. They let you focus funding on a single area and clean up a mess with some drugs (which, btw, makes lots of money for pharmaceudical companies, who fund a lot of the research in the first place). Environmental causes are less sexy. They are hard to identify. They are hard to correct. And correcting them can cost a lot of money to the people funding your research.

Re:Ah, man..

[xnderxnder]

Yeah no kidding. Even if you fuck someoone bareback who definitely has AIDS, the odds of transmission are still only like 1 in 10,000.

Have they really tested this drug on THAT many accidentally exposed healthcare workers? Isn't it possible that perhaps the people exposed just didn't get the disease?


No, nitwit. "Accidentally exposed healthcare workers" generally means needle pricks and contact with infected blood. Google "post exposure prophylaxis" (PEP) to see what's done now. This treatment would certainly help matters, as I understand the PEP treatment is really harsh on your body.

Re:Time for the....

[Guppy06]

I don't get it, personally. How many Slashdotters are actually at risk? The only way I could see someone around here getting it is from a blood transfusion.

Go for prevention!

[barefootgenius]

Yes folks! The next time you want to do the wild thing with one of those crazy ladies of the night. Go for prevention. Its simple its easy and its cheap.

1- Navigate to the My Video folder.

2- Click on one of your numerous porn clips.

3- Wank!

See folks. Stopping the spread of AIDS is easy...and its on your hands*.

*-Three sessions of thirty seconds per day recommended. Lubricants, may apply.

are you nuts!

[Anonymous Coward]

as an AIDS counsellor, I've worked with many people who are taking these drugs on a daily basis. While they are a brilliant development and have already saved millions of lives, they are EXTREMELY TOXIC; they are totally unsuitable for preventive purposes, apart from being very expensive, they require regular blood tests for specialised medical monitoring (to check your body's responses, get the doses correct, etc), and there are often really grim side effects (such as vomiting, diahoerrea, nausea, fatigue, depression, etc etc); I know many who have chosen to come off the drugs because the quality of their life had got so bad from the side effects that they would rather die with a bit of diginity.

They hammer your immune system; it's like taking poison every day, it's a bit like chemotherapy in ways.. in fact, that's not a bad analogy: why don't we all start on an ongoing course of chemotherapy as a preventive measure against getting cancer?

ps. I'm not an Anonymous Coward, I'm a *Lazy* Anonymous Coward from Ireland

Re:Vaccine

[MirrororriM]

We would all be better off if there was simply a vaccine for viral diseases, instead of drugs which have been proven to stimulate the evolution of resistant strains. Vaccines on the other hand have been proven to not only reduce the incidence of disease, but also virtually completely eradicate them, e.g. smallpox.

Easy - because there's no money in the cure. They want your repeat business to feed their cash cow. How are they going to do that with a one-time cure?

All about the odds

[alexhmit01]

Look, it was a big deal a few years ago when straight people hit the 50% make of HIV infections in the US, hit as high in the upper 50s, and then saw a rise in the gay community. Some speculated that while the 50% mark made it easier to sell AIDS as a problem for everyone, not just the gay community, it also caused the gay community to take their eye off the ball.

Regardless, say 50% of the AIDS cases are in the male gay community. The male gay community is between 1.5% and 3.5% of the US population. That means that 2.5% of the population is responsible for 50% of the cases, and 97.5% is responsible for the other 50%.

AIDS remains a GAY problem, because you are 40x more likely to contract AIDS in the gay community. A single, moderate income gay man in an urban area may be more than happy to spend $1,000/mo. from his disposable income to engage in this behavior. In urban areas, the heterosexual community is rarely focused on future financial planning and preparing for children, I can't imagine that the gay community is MORE focused away from hedonism then their straight neighbors.

That said, can you get AIDS from heterosexual sex? Of course, but not likely. The transmission rate from a man to a woman via vaginal sex is a fraction of the rate from anal sex... less than half. And the transmission rate from a woman to a man via vaginal sex is EXTREMELY low.

What does this mean? A man having sex on occaision with a prostitute is mathematically unlikely to catch HIV, but if he does, it is more likely that he passes it to his wife than it was that he got it. However, that same prostitute has a decent chance of getting HIV if a few of her customers have it.

In addition, a man having sex with a prostitute no doubt will add 1-3 additional sexual partners. A woman working as a prostitute will have from 2-12 partners/DAY.

The fact is, there are areas where the return from the drugs may play a benefit to society. Keeping prostitutes from getting HIV could have a HUGE impact on the culture at large. While a VERY small percentage of men go to prostitutes, if you figure that each prostitute has sex with 25 men/week (a low figure) and a 4% transmission rate, then each HIV-postiive prostitute infects one straight male each week. If half of those men are married or otherwise having sex with a partner regularly, then they WILL infect their wife/partner over time, as the transmission rate is around 20%-30%.

So an HIV positive prostitute will cause 1.5 additional infections per week, MINIMUM, assuming that the client and their spouse/partner DOESN'T commit any additional infidelities.

At under $1000/mo./prositute, I bet it is a positive return to give the drug away. When an infected Prostitute causes 75 infections, even if we assume that each case only bleeds the government for $10k (the rest borne by private insurance), avoiding an infected prostitute saves you 750,000/year. At less than $12,000/year for the prevention, if we assume that 1/60 prostitutes is invected, then we spend less than $720,000 to save $750,000 in treatment.... Each saved life is a bonus!

My point is, normal single straight person that has 1-4 partners a year probably won't cough up $1k/month to reduce their already low risk. Extremely sexually active gay male with 4+ partners a month probably will. Gay man in monogamous relationship or in a normal dating patter, 1-3 partners/year probably will. Woman working as a prostitute SHOULD do so, but can't afford it, but might be targetted by a government that wants to stop the spread.

There are people that will cough up the money, or at least should, and areas where society would benefit from doing so, but no, the general population need not be on permenant AIDS treatment.

Re:Ah, man..

[Trurl's Machine]

Why'd you have to release this story? Now sex workers all over the world will be killing each other to get their hands on these drugs.

Yeah, especially since - as we all know - reading slashdot is the favorite pastime of sex workers worldwide.

Re:Canadians

[SSCGWLB]

Somebody has to pay for the R&D on all those drugs the rest of the world takes for granted/steals. Those companies spend billions developing, testing, and getting FDA approval on a single drug. Then, after that, they have to bear the legal liability if there are unintended side effects (Vioxx anybody?). I don't even begrudge them making money, that's why these corporations exist (gasp!). Personally, I am glad I live in the best country in the world that has the innovation and R&D infrastructure to develop a drug like this. That way, if I get sick, they may have developed a drug to cure me!

Thanks for playing,
~nate

What to expect.

[sammy baby]

Expect immediate, heavy resistance from the ultra-right wing, Christian conservative political forces in the US. Experience has shown that if there's a disease that increases the potential negative consequences of having sex, especially those which disproportionately affect women, they will oppose efforts to provide treatment. (Women in heterosexual relationships carry an increased risk of HIV transmission when compared to men, although they have a decreased risk in homosexual relationships. The reasons I leave as an exercise for the reader.)

Case in point: the human papilloma virus, or HPV. Now here's the thing with HPV: it's sexually transmitted, condoms don't protect against it, and doctors believe that it's responsible for seven out of ten cases of cervical cancer later in life. So, if we could develop a vaccine against it, that would be a huge strike against cancer, right?

Well... sure. But ultra right groups like the Family Research Council oppose such a vaccine, even though pharmaceutical companies have already conducted successful clinical trials. Why? Because they want to scare people into not having sex.

"Giving the HPV vaccine to young women could be potentially harmful," Bridget Maher of the Family Research Council told the British magazine New Scientist, "because they may see it as a license to engage in premarital sex."

If this is the reaction an HPV vaccine (or, for that matter, condoms) gets, how do you think they're going to react to a cure to something which disproportionately affects gay men?

Idiotic.

[Jafafa Hots]

Oh great. All we have to do is have every healthy person in the world spend $20k-$40k per year on drugs that kill their liver and otherwise destroy thier health... for the rest of their lives. What a great solution!

face the facts

[penguin-collective]

what if one of the various "environmental factors" models is right rather than the "single pathogen" model?

That's just not a serious possibility anymore; here are just some basic observations:

• While clinical diagnosis relies on symptoms, HIV infection has been followed in minute detail from initial transmission to death numerous times, in the presence and absence of treatment, in individuals with completely different histories, at the molecular level, at the tissue level, and at the clinical level.
  
• The epidemiology of HIV has been studied extensively: the disease is clearly transmissible and no other factor than an existing HIV infection is associated with transmission.
  
• Drugs specifically targeted at HIV have increased survival rates tremendously, while changes in lifestyle have had limited effect.
  
• The molecular mechanisms of resistance to HIV infection (found in a few percent of the population) are well understood.
  

Single pathogens are sexy for epidemiologists.

Yes, and they are also the rule for infectious diseases. While susceptibility and severity of a disease may vary with environmental factors, for infectious diseases, there is usually a well-defined, clearly characterizable pathogen responsible.

Re:face the facts

[Theatetus]

The epidemiology of HIV has been studied extensively: the disease is clearly transmissible and no other factor than an existing HIV infection is associated with transmission.

Well, that's just not true, and the fact that people keep repeating it doesn't make it so.

• The presence of antibodies is not a determinant of virus load (and in the case of newborns of mothers with HIV, is not even an indication of the presence of the virus).
• Kashala, et al, published in the Journal of Infectious Diseases that the 'African' variety of AIDS (which as your sibling post points out is epidemiologically quite distinct from the North American / European disease, though labelling them by location is increasingly misleading as the clusters spread) can be linked more conclusively to leprosy and TB than to viral transmission.
• One cluster study (one!!!) has linked sexual contact to symptomatic disease transmission in one North American population -- with symptomatic presentations wildly different from those called AIDS in the developing world. No other studies along this line have been published that I can find.
• There are several different (and even conflicting) sets of criteria for the clinical diagnosis of AIDS: WHO, CDC, WHO-NEW, etc. not all of them require any test for HIV (as I mentioned, in most African clinics the simple presentation of pneumonia is sufficient to be diagnosed as AIDS). We don't even know if this is one disease.
• Lederman published a study showing a stronger link between Factor VII and VIII use in haemopheliacs and symptomatic presentation than between HIV antibody presence and symptomatic presentation -- and at any rate, haemopheliacs almost never developed the sarcoma associated with other AIDS populations.

That's just a few examples off the top of my head (with the help of Google for the study citations). IMO, we're in way over our heads here and are trying to fit a 21st-century peg into a 19th-century epidemiological hole. We've been pouring toxins into our environment and our bodies for decades; the days of single-pathogen well-defined epidimics may be passing, if not already past.

Re:MOD PARENT UP

[Mr2001]

AIDS diagnosis as it is practiced today assumes HIV-AIDS causation.

Which makes sense, because the evidence as it is observed today indicates HIV-AIDS causation. See the sibling of your post for details. There's no more reason to believe AIDS is caused by anything besides HIV than there is to believe the moon landing was faked.

Quit your worrying...

[Expert Determination]

This is slashdot. Nobody here is having sex with anyone.

Re:Ah, man..

[LanimilbusLE]

The wikipedia entry for Chad Douglas does not confirm your point. It is not even know if the man is dead or if he ever even contracted HIV. Furthermore he did NOT use condoms in his movies according to the article. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chad_Douglas

Mod Parent Up!

[JesusPancakes]

This motherfucker knows what he's talking about.

About five years ago... No, I'm sorry, six or seven. Anyway, a long time ago, my girlfriend at the time and I were hanging out outside a bowling alley waiting for a ride home and she put her hand down on a hypodermic needle. Now, there was no way of telling whether this had been used for insulin or heroin, and she had to go into a regimen of anti-hepatitis and anti-HIV drugs.

The side effects were... awesome. She became moodier than she had ever been, went from having a period every three months to having one every three weeks, and cheated on me with two of my best friends and two of my other friends.

Fuck these drugs. :-D

Re:Spreading fear

[lachlan76]

You can't be serious...lets have a comparison:

• The US. To my knowledge, there are quite a few places that take the abstinence-only route. You have a teenage birth rate of 51.1 babies per thousand females.
• Australia. No problems getting sex-ed through over here to my knowledge, and a teenage birth rate of 16.3 babies per thousand females.

While it is not the only factor involved, there is a very big difference.

Re:Stay with me

[geekyMD]

First off, I did not mean to make it personal. Just my own views. I can see how what I said could be insulting, and I really did not mean that. Science moves forward by challenging the establishment. 200 years ago if you told someone that the heard functions to pump blood they would have laughed at you. 50 years ago universal precautions were virtually unknown. Sometimes the 'crackpots' get it right, so its neccicary to regorously examine their claims. I'm sorry you've been insulted for your views, I hope not to do that, but only to engage in debate. I really wish we could sit down over coffee with a couple of text books and journals and really talk about this stuff. Lets move on...

The reason I didn't tackle some of the other issues (and not necciarly the primary 4 you referred to) was that I don't have it. It would require a paper of triple the lenght of the original to compose a fully cited and complete rebuttle. Many of the 'harder issues' I referred to require background that is not easy to impart quickly and briefly. For example, I have no clue how the math works behind the Riemann Zeta equation, and I doubt anything less than months if not years of intense study would bring me up to speed. http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/03/2 7/1315212 The issues at hand are definately not that erudite, but I hope you get my meaning. My point for some my contentions was that the author of the article was making fun of simple ideas like "lightbulbs make light", and so she earned some easy crackpot points for belittling fundamental ideas. (overt anti-establishment thought process to the point of scientific disregard)

To answer your 4 questions:
1) Yes, I will admit that the mechanism has not been elucidated. However, the word idiopathic peppers medical literature, it is not uncommon to not know the exact mechanism, but to know generally whats happening. For example, digoxin (aka. digitalis) has been around since 1756, but the exact mechanism of how it effects cardiomyocytes is still under investigation. There are several theories, some very good, but none have been proven conclusively. A lot of pharmacology is that way. But I digress. What has been shown is that if you take blood from someone with aids, and inject into another person, you get aids in that person too. Furthermore, if you isolate HIV from the blood of an infected person you can induce CD4 cell destruction and AIDS like symptoms in model organisms. Lets hope someone has not tried this on humans. Of course, this explaination will not hold water for you if you do not believe HIV can be isolated, so lets move on to #2.

2) The initial research was flawed, granted. However, their research has been followed by others who have not been as fraudulent. I offer this instead:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd= Retrieve&db=pubmed&dopt=Abstract&list_uids=1656345 8&query_hl=2&itool=pubmed_docsum

Plus, there are more ways than antibodies to detect HIV. HIV is a dsDNA virus with many unique proteins in its repitoire. Yes, there are other retroviruses out there, and some have embedded themselves in our DNA. However, they do not have the same genetic sequence of HIV. HIV like any unique organism has a unique genetic code. It has been sequenced, and is in fact regularly sequenced to determine which drugs the patients are treated with. The correlation is emperical - different HIV sequences have been shown to correlate 100% with resistance or succeptability to certain drugs. There are many sequences due to the innacuracies of reverse transcriptase, and not all of these changes result in a functional modification.

You cannot isolate the HIV DNA sequence from someone not infect

Re:Stay with me

[geekyMD]

Whoops! Strike that, forgot to proofread. HIV is a positive sense ssRNA virus, not a dsDNA virus. Told ya I didn't proofread. Doh! Please substitute RNA for DNA where I'm talking about the virus particle. The discussion of HIV DNA not being found in human genomic segments is still accurate.