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First Phase of AIDS Vaccine Trials Successful
rbarreira writes "Xinhua online is reporting on the success of the first trial phase of an AIDS vaccine, which was started on March 2005. From the article: '"Forty-nine healthy people who received the injection showed no severe adverse reactions after 180 days, proving the vaccine was safe," said Zhang Wei, head of the pharmaceutical registration department of the SFDA. "The recipients appeared immune to the HIV-1 virus 15 days after the injection, indicating the vaccine worked well in stimulating the body's immunity," he told the press conference.' After the results are further analyzed, 800 more voluntaries may be needed for the second and third phases of the vaccine's trial."
"Forty-nine healthy people who received the injection showed no severe adverse reactions after 180 days, proving the vaccine was safe,"
Okay, success is good, but...
This is not proof. It isn't even close to it.
How long was Fen Phen tested? Thimerosal? RotaShield? Whoops.
I hope that this does work but stating that the vaccine has been prooven safe is very misleading.
It could be worse, it could be Monday.
2000 yuan AIDS you!
If this goes well we won't have to close the pools.
Does it work though? Have these people been exposed properly to HIV and did they really reist picking it up?
All it takes is one night in the wrong club at the wrong time and no matter what kind of protection you have -- it could be too late.
The dangers of knowledge trigger emotional distress in human beings.
"The recipients appeared immune to the HIV-1 virus 15 days after the injection, indicating the vaccine worked well in stimulating the body's immunity," Doesn't it take a little longer to know if HIV is going to take hold? "Immune" is a little presumptive at this point.
According to the article, "The recipients appeared immune to the HIV-1 virus 15 days after the injection." Maybe someone can help with this, but how do you test immunity with fatal illnesses? Obviously you can't simply expose the subjects to the pathogen causing the disesase (not ethically, anyway). Does anyone in a medical field happen to know how this works?
quia potentia mens mentis
. . .see if people infected with HIV actually die.
Yes, indeed they do. I guarundamntee it.
KFG
Why not believe that they had 49 participants? Sure, people like round numbers -- but when you're deciding how many folks you can include in your study on account of your budget constraints, or looking at how many of the folks who signed up to participate qualify, reality sometimes rears its head and results in numbers which aren't so perfect.
Anyhow -- this is very good news.
Okay, smart person, what does cause AIDS if it's not HIV? Goa'uld symbiotes?
Please, for the good of Humanity, vote Obama.
Really, we're supposed to believe the study had exactly 49 participants? Not 50, or 150?
Pssst, there were 150 participants, but 101 of them died.
We know that HIV is the virus which mutates into AIDS. Proof enough? It's like an axiom. Accepted without proof, because we already know it to be true.
The Evidence That HIV Causes AIDS
HTH. IHBT. HAND.
Fuck!
According to the tinfoil crowd, it's the AIDS medicines that cause it.
Man is a slave because freedom is difficult, whereas slavery is easy.
It doesn't "mutate" into aids. It causes AIDS.
I'm curious if this vaccine is being set up for one-time immunizations with possible booster shots, or if it'll be a more frequent thing like the flu shots. One of the vexing traits of HIV is it's rapid mutation rate. The flu and cold viruses are pretty much the same.
"Spring break is coming up! Get your annual HIV immunizations here!"
The only real downside is that if this (or another) vaccine is effective and reliable, then there's the risk of other STDs becoming more prevelant again as people relax their safe sex practices. That includes unplanned pregnancies. Some people really do need a hypothetical gun to their heads to think about using condoms or monogamy.
"Common sense will be the death of us all"
ehh this is sort of good. but 1) 49 people? wth is this experiment? 2) what strand? there are various strands of the virus 3) how does it affect children/old people?
Let me guess, you're one of those idiots that still think AIDS is a disease brought down on homosexuals by the almighty too, eh.
Koch's Postulates and other proof
Short version, HIV causes AIDS.
I'd also say it proves you're an idiot, but we'd have to culture you in isolation as part of the process, and I don't think we can get funding for that.
I like you, Stuart. You're not like everyone else, here, at Slashdot.
We know that HIV is the virus which mutates into AIDS. Proof enough?
No, because, well, you know, viruses cause diseases, they don't mutate into diseases. Even if we're laymen and not scientists, we should choose our words more carefully so as to not spread bullshit and misconceptions.
I'm not a doctor, but I assume they would just expose blood samples to the virus and observe whether the virus is able successfully attack cells & reproduce, rather than expose the people themselves to HIV. By observing under a microscope the virus' activity, they wouldn't need to wait years for the effects to become observable.
The actual press release is more cautious than the excerpt that is quoted here; describing the result of the trials as saying that the vaccine is "safe and possibly effective." Apparently there were no ill effects, and if I interpret the text correctly, they detected antibodies against whatever these people were injected with. Which does not prove at all that the vaccine could be effective, because the envelope proteins of HIV are so variable that buidling up immunity is enormously difficult. However, it is probably as much as one could reasonably hope for in this first phase of trials.
That said, there is nothing in this press release to suggest that this vaccine trial will have a better outcome than the series of failed trials that have already preceded it. Mainly because there is very little information in this press release at all. Obviously, it was written by someone who did not have a clue about the science behind the trials; you can't tell from this what the vaccine consists of and how it is supposed to work. More worryingly, the "director of the National Institute for the Control of Pharmaceutical and Biological Products" is quoted as saying that "The HIV-1 specific cells injected into the recipients were the DNA fragments of the virus which don't cause infection." Which is nonsensical enough to suggest that the aforementioned director, who held the press conference, doesn't have a clue either. Probably he is more remarkable for his political skills than his medical ability.
But maybe these Chinese researchers are on the right track -- who knows? A vaccine against HIV is very much needed, and the hope that we will be able to create one seems to shrink with every new failure.
OK, fine. Maybe perhaps my choice of words wasn't the best. But I wasn't quite ready to feed the troll yet. So I chose a different word.
I atone for my sins.
They probably had 50. (Well, more likely 100, with 1/2 in the placebo group.) One of the non-placebo patients dropped out of the study due to some exclusion criteria not related to the vaccine (such as getting hit by a car) and you end up with the 49. It could even be as simple as the patient having moved to another city. With any clinical trial, you're bound to lose some subjects to follow up.
It would be nice if someone did a control first to see if people infected with HIV actually die.
To this date, noone has managed to live forever (i.e. not die). Please post evidence that people infected with HIV life forever.
Man is a slave because freedom is difficult, whereas slavery is easy.
Really, we're supposed to believe the study had exactly 49 participants? Not 50, or 150?
Pssst, there were 150 participants, but 101 of them died.
Or they got kicked out of the research because they got HIV in a night on the town celebrating that they were now immune to AIDS!
What is best in life? To crush your enemies, to see them driven before you and to hear the lamentations of their women.
Since you're so sure, do you mind if I jab you this needle?
No? Thought so.
That this was a slow gestating virus that could lie dormant for years before going into reproductive mode. How does 180 days of "apparent" immunity (with no control group?!?) make a valid experiment?
Actually, that's not really the case. HIV actually replicates very quickly after infection. Even though one may not show symptoms for many years, that's unusual. Most people develop the first symptoms within weeks of getting the virus. But with or without symptoms, signs of the virus can be found very quickly, particularly in the lymphatic system.
Do not confuse HIV infection and symptoms with AIDS. One isn't considered to have AIDS until their T-Cell count falls below 200 cells per uL. This is usually the point where the person starts developing the kinds of diseases that normally don't affect healthy people. Before that point, you still has a tendency to get sick from a number of more common illnesses.
I'd be more interested in genuine scientific proof of the link between HIV and AIDS. There isn't one you know. I've never unterstood this scientific war. People readily believe that a virus causes the common cold, but for some people, there's doubt that HIV causes AIDS?
Could someone with more insight please explain why there are scientists who deny there's a link?
(Don't forget to mod me down - I said something bad)
No. You just said something that most intelligent people consider stupid, knowing that most Slashdotters (who, in all honesty, are not really as smart as they think they are) will consider it stupid as well. That's why you got modded down.
Man is a slave because freedom is difficult, whereas slavery is easy.
Right, because nobody ever caught aids without having unprotected sex with strangers first. Not one single person, nope. (/sarcasm off)
What about blood transfusions, broken condoms, infected partners that picked it up via adultery, rape victims and dumb kids who don't know any better (since we don't teach them safe sex, and they're too hormoned-up not to fuck)? That doesn't even get into the mess over in Africa. Are you seriously prepared to condemn every single infected person simply due to the fact that many of the dying got that way from carelessness?
An ounch of prevention is worth a pound of cure. That doesn't mean however that you can always prevent bad things from happening, or that we shouldn't care enough to try and find a cure.
And by the way, your arguement can be twisted for just about anything. Why should we try to develop a cure for cancer? Those people should have known to get themselves checked up (many cancers can be detected early, via screening, thereby removing the need for any miracle cure), and should have known to avoid carcinogens (do you check everything you eat?). Yet to take that stance both condemns people for honest mistakes, and condemns the blamelessly unlucky along with the careless by denying them a cure as well.
Erotic is when you use a feather. Exotic is when you use the whole chicken.
Some of them do. A lot of them don't.
HIV is a retrovirus. According to Duesberg, who was a nobel candidate in retrovirology, retroviruses never cause disease.
David Rasnick, who invented protease inhibitors, says that HIV has "never been found in a human being."
Rodney Richards, who helped found AmGen, says that HIV tests are "an illusion."
Kary Mullis, nobel prize winner, who invented PCR, says "I haven't seen any evidence, or even anybody trying to show evidence," that HIV causes the 30 diseases known as AIDS.
Robert Gallo, who announced HIV's connection with AIDS at a press conference, stole his sample from a French lab. What other scientific breakthroughs were announced at press conferences...cold fusion, human cloning.
I didn't see a journal article that corresponds to this clinical trial but I'd be interested to know if the use of this vaccine precludes later HIV testing.
For the non-biologists: vaccines are often based on exposing the body to a protein from the virus (but not the entire virus). In doing so, the body produces antibodies that recognize the protein. The next time the body sees the protein (i.e. when exposed to the actual virus), the body will be able to quickly destroy the virus particles before the person becomes infected.
However, a lot of tests for viral infection is based on the presence of the antibodies in blood. So, if the person has been immunized using the vaccine, the person will have those antibodies in blood, and it becomes difficult to tell whether the antibodies came as a result of vaccination or infection.
Biology is not my forte, but since the HIV-1 virus was made to NOT cause an infection, how would they know if the vaccine actually worked?
they are not dead, they are pining for the fjords
I'm a rabbit startled by the headlights of life
Because people would like it if they didn't have to restrict their lifestyle because of AIDS?
Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.
you deserve some mod points, that was fucking funny
Everytime you kill a kitten, god masturbates.
A lot of them don't.
.retroviruses never cause disease.
Produce one that doesn't.
. .
Go back and read carefully.
KFG
"(Ooh, someone's going to mod me troll. Nice try.)"
Yeah, no kidding... Was that remark supose to be funny or are you just putting on your insensitive boob hat??
The race isn't always to the swift... but that's the way to bet!
Those are some pretty bold statements to be making without sources. And no, wikipedia is not an acceptable source here, unless it cites some REAL sources.
No, we're more than smart enough to google it and read up on the controversy. We're also smart enough to know that any scientific theory is met with resistance (usually from crackpots).
Plus any theory that has any political influence attached attracts many times as many crackpots as a non-political subject - see Soviet-era Russian biology, creationism, and social darwinism as examples of what happens when politics and science collide. Without exception in history the crackpot theories have been wrong.
(Posting Anon from a different computer to avoid undoing my moderations)
First of all, this is only Phase 1 of 3.
Phase 1 in clinical trials is meant to make sure the drug in general is "safe" and to determine the maximum safe dosage.
Testing if the drug really works as expected, how effective it is etc. is done in Phases 2 and 3 with a much larger group, in double-blind experiments.
Still, before Phase 1 there were many other experiments - i.e. test with animals, computer simulations etc. - which must have shown some promise otherwise they wouldn't spend money on the human trials.
+++ MELON MELON MELON +++ Out of Cheese Error +++ redo from start +++
Hmmm, this was China... I think 8 is the lucky number there. Never mind.
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
Because some people don't want to live their lives by your puritanical values?
I hate to be a dink, but we've had a way to completely control this infection for about 20 years now; it's called abstinence
No need to preach abstinence here; we at Slashdot have been abstaining from sex all our lives (not by choice though :)
Could someone with more insight please explain why there are scientists who deny there's a link?
I suspect it's not the scientists that deny the link, at least not the honest ones.
Are you seriously prepared to condemn every single infected person
Yes, he is. He is a Christian.
Herpes is life-long.
Warts can keep coming back, and they give you cancer.
Plenty of "curable" things leave you (or your baby) with permanent damage.
You are on the verge of trolling, but I'll bite. Your post makes a bunch of claims about what famous people said. According to your logic, because smart scientists say something, they must be right.
You then try to say that because some things presented at press conferences were fakes, that all things presented at press conferences were fakes. Logic 101, anyone?
The overwhelming evidence for the link between the presence of HIV antibodies in human beings and the development of AIDS is convincing enough.
Your arguments are so poor I don't know whether or not you are serious. I really hope you aren't.
You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it dissolve.
Wow a fucking movie... yeah, because movies are NEVER made to push a political agenda. How about some articles in peer-reviewed scientific journals?
Are we going to see this kind of vaccine deployed where it's mostly needed, in the poor african countries that cannot afford to pay by the nose for it? I don't think so... and if some of those 3rd world countries who happen to have the technology to fabricate it when it's done dare to do so (as Brazil has been doing for a long time with many anti HIV drugs) the pharmaceutical industry will go mental. You know... first the money, our patents, then, if it's reeeeally necessary the well-being of others.
The current definition of AIDS includes a finding of HIV. That's plain unfair.
We might just as well define a car accident to be a collision between vehicles which occurs when at least one of the drivers is drunk. Then we could say that all car accidents are caused by being drunk.
An immuno-deficiency can be caused by lots of things. Transplant patients take drugs to cause an Aquired Immuno-deficiency Syndrome. All transplants would have AIDS except that AIDS is defined to include a finding of HIV.
Suggesting that AIDS (the symptoms, not the defective definition) can be caused by non-HIV is perfectly reasonable. Clearly HIV is a big cause. Chemotherapy would be another cause.
And if they do, well, I'm going to the whorehouse!
Monstar L
Perhaps the other 101 participants were testing the South African version of the AIDS remedy: Lemon, Garlic and Beetroots ...
Daniel
Carpe Diem
You evidence is a movie with an agenda... Have you seen anything Michael Moore has ever made, ever? It's fucking trivial to make quotes say anything you want with some creative splicing and dicing.
Only an utter nitwit would ever use a single movie for evidence of anything.
I was overweight and embarrassed to go anyplace. AYDS helped me get back into a size 12.
Mod me off-topic, I don't care. That video is funny shit.
I'll look forward to a cure to cancer the minute I develope a fetish for old people
Or the minute you're diagnosed with cancer yourself. Presumably your dislike for high birth rates doesn't extend to yourself, since there are ways you could take care of that ex post facto if you wanted to.
(By the way, there are plenty of cancers that mainly develop in young to middle-aged people. Two examples are testicular and breast cancer. I know a number of people in their 20's and 30's who've had cancer.)
How about I post evidence that people infected with HIV don't die of AIDS? You can start with the movie The Other Side of AIDS.
Oh, please. This is just like "proving" someone that 9/11 was an inside job by telling that person to watch Loose Change. Citing a bad documentary film as evidence is only proof of you belonging to a group of people with a certain mindset.
Here's a paper by Duesberg and Rasnick
While the question Duesberg poses (whether the current definition of AIDS is a reliable one) is interesting, his answer to this question is less so. From the little I've read (I'm not even a medical student, and I don't know more about AIDS and its causes than an average person does), his hypothesis that AIDS is several different things lumped together doesn't really hold water -- probably because it's based on cherry-picking facts and ignoring others that are related to them.
Man is a slave because freedom is difficult, whereas slavery is easy.
Make sure to get the vaccine first.
I wear the ring.
I hate to be a dink
Doesn't show.
Why is it important to develop a way to allow people who have little regard for their own health to remain healthy?
Because compassion is one of the things that makes us human?
(Leaving aside cold-blooded economic arguments about how you'd much rather have healthy productive workers contributing to your economy than sick people who are draining it. AIDS doesn't make business sense.)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lysenkoism
Anyway, I'm not sure if there is a political angle to the whole AIDS/HIV controversy, outside of places like South Africa. With Lysenkoism, Creationism and social Darwinism, there are all obvious benefactors from propegating bad science, respectively Stalin, fundamentalist christians and racists. Who benefits from the bad science here?
Saying AIDS isn't caused by HIV is essentially a pseudoscientific view ("crackpot" as you put it), but it doesn't benefit anyone with money or power to try and make it look like actual science. Unless there's some angle I'm missing.
Erotic is when you use a feather. Exotic is when you use the whole chicken.
Debilo - thanks for your open minded response. If you give the following link a good read and think I think you will see why there are problems with the hypothesis. Dr Robert Gallo essentially hijacked the research with a non-peer reviewed hypothesis which became mainstream overnight by the NYT.
http://www.virusmyth.net/aids/
spoonerize "magic trackpad"
AIDS seems likely to be caused by many 'lifestyle' choices. Particularly exsessive drug taking (such as methyl and ethyl nitrates).
You could read this for more information.
http://www.virusmyth.net/aids/
And, thanks, I am pretty smart.
spoonerize "magic trackpad"
Wow Troll? I daresay someone didn't get the joke.
Your link contains the statement " AIDS is caused by the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV)." as part of the background. That is not rigorous science at work.
1 7909http://www.virusmyth.net/aids/>
The HIV hypothesis fails Koch's postulates because the victim is not overrun by HIV at time of death as would normally be the case with a fatal virus infection. A circular argument is used to imply that this is the case when it is not.
ahref=http://www.virusmyth.net/aids/rel=url2html-
spoonerize "magic trackpad"
Nice try. I provided a transcript.
Christ, you're such an idiot you can't even comprehend simple English. Transcripts are worthless as I said, you can mangle and change things a lot without anyone noticing. Only an idiot would not realize that. Not to mention that quotes are equally worthless, you can find dozens of people who are equally intelligent and say the opposite.
And as I said, these people make the same claims outside of the movie, in papers and in other interviews.
And yet you fail to provide any of them.
Single movie?? Talk about putting words in my mouth.
You're the one who quoted only a single movie, not me.
TFA says "Forty-nine healthy people who received the injection showed no severe adverse reactions after 180 days".
So.... how many healthy people who received the injection DID show adverse reactions?
nowhere says how many were actually tested.
Okay, I'll buy that. It just didn't sit well with me coming from the state-owned news agency.
:D
If 101 people had died, they probably would have covered up the entire study - not released hopeful findings. But if only one person had died..
Good to see I'm not the only paranoid.
Pharma name? There are some even Chinese companies listed on NYSE these days... is that Chinese company publicly traded? Well, its probably some "national people owned" China company... nevermind
agreed - big pharma took over this science and have earnt billions from an erroneous hypothesis.
spoonerize "magic trackpad"
I cannot be the only one to have noticed that the results of this trial do NOT indicate that the vaccine is effective in protecting against the HIV virus. The trial patients were not ever injected with live HIV viruses.
All that has been demonstrated is that the vaccine doesn't have an immediate lethality in a small group of (presumably) ethnically similary people. They placed HIV virsues in blood samples obtained from these people, and the blood mounted an immune response. I'd like to point out that even people dieing of AIDS demonstrate an immune response to the HIV virus -- this is the very nature of the ELISA test used to diagnose the disease! Further, a demonstrated "immunity" in a small sample of blood is nothing; the body demonstrated immunity to the disease, often for the better part of a decade, before dying of it during the normal course of HIV/AIDS.
So, while any development towards a vaccine for the HIV virus is unquestionably a good things, lets not read too far into this.
Even if the number of people with AIDS is not 100% correlated with the number of people who are seropositive for HIV, and 100% mutually exclusive with people who are HIV negative, the millions of people who have died of AIDS since it emerged and whose HIV tests are positive is proof enough for me and most scientists. Especially during the eighties when an HIV positive test result gave you a 6 month to 3 year life expectancy which much more often than not elapsed and resulted in the death of a patient. There is DEFINITELY a relationship between HIV seropositivity and the development of AIDS, while it is not known if HIV is the *only* agent involved in AIDS. The correlation is in the high 0.9s which is a reasonable criterion to establish some kind of causal relationship. Not to mention that viral load tests(which use methods to detect the volume of HIV DNA in the blood) are good at predicting illness, and drugs that target specific aspects of the HIV reproductive cycle(transcriptase inhibitors and protease inhibitors) are effective in preventing full-blown AIDS to people whose previous seropositivity would have resulted in death is good enough proof for me. The burden of proof is on the scientists you bring up to produce a different agent which shows as high a correlation with the development of the immune-related opportunistic diseases with which AIDS is associated. Until they can do this, they are not helping the battle against the AIDS pandemic by raising the specter of doubt over something that is reasonably established.
Also, the lack of 100% overlap between HIV positive people and people with AIDS related disease may be explainable by other, possibly more simple, probably more plausible theories. For instance, there may be some mechanism which in those people without AIDS, left untreated, are able to stop the reproduction of the HIV virus using the human cellular reproduction system. Science's time would be better spent by studying those who are exposed to HIV or are seropositive for HIV but don't develop the disease sans treatment than by discounting the role of HIV in AIDS altogether. Moreover, to account for the seronegativity in people who do go on develop immune deficiencies associated with AIDS: lots of diseases can be infective and still not cause the immune system to produce antibodies, and fairly pronounced diseases can go undetected if the immune system is suppressed to begin with, so that it fails to produce detectable antibody levels.
"The recipients appeared immune to the HIV-1 virus 15 days after the injection, indicating the vaccine worked well in stimulating the body's immunity."
But if they weren't immune, they would have gotten AIDS!
I put the 't' in electrical engineering.
To be honest that would be ok. I wouldn't die. A doctor once did this on Spanish TV 5 years ago and he's perfectly alright. I know that will sound crazy to you.
Try reading this:
http://www.virusmyth.net/aids/
spoonerize "magic trackpad"
Luckily, it's easily curable. Unfortunately, the cure is a rather unpopular one...
Erotic is when you use a feather. Exotic is when you use the whole chicken.
On the other hand, what kind of idiot argues that a safety measure shouldn't be developed?. The "let 'em die" attitude is rather uncivilized.
I know of course. You've put your finger on it there though - the intellectual arrogance here is overwhelming sometimes.
spoonerize "magic trackpad"
You're right. Now why don't you post logged-in so you can increase your credibility?
What else can I add...AZT is a failed chemotherapy from the 1960's, regarded as highly toxic until it was approved for AIDS therapy. AZT is known as a "chain terminator" which means it indiscriminantly attacks all DNA in the body.
People who go on AZT die. Very quickly, in fact.
I wonder if Magic Johnson is taking his meds? Somehow I tend to doubt it.
Good questions. You could try reading this for more info:
http://www.virusmyth.net/aids/
It's a complex issue - good luck, and thanks for not being rude!
spoonerize "magic trackpad"
I wish the US pharmacos had this AIDS vaccine to offer Africa and the rest of the world, instead of China beating "us" to it. Instead they're happier with the half $TRILLION Medicare giveaway, expensive AIDS cocktail "treatments", and ongoing business development^W^Wepidemics.
--
make install -not war
Becuse all those Africans living on "$1 a day" can afford drugs. Sure...
1. Get Aids 2. Cure Aids 3. PROFIT
>Right, because nobody ever caught aids without having unprotected sex with strangers first.
Actually, care to cite some research showing that someone has in fact contracted AIDS from physical contact?
If all your research shows is that someone picked up HIV from someone else, that's not enough. I'm sure HIV gets passed around. But then you have to show that HIV develops into AIDS, which is a lot harder.
Good luck, by the way. People have been working on this for 30 years.
Isn't that your position regarding HIV/AIDS? That a bunch of TV stories told you so, so it must be right?
That's not his logic. His logic is that reasonable tests of the HIV/AIDS theory have shown it to be most probably true, and there is a high correlation between seropositivity for HIV and the development of and eventual death due to AIDS related illnesses. If your argument is that we shouldn't trust *any* fact that we are handed, you are correct: no fact is 100% true. But that makes life unviable, and there are reasonable, recognized criteria for distinguishing between truthful claims and deceptive ones. One of those criteria is the amount of scientific evidence furnished to prove a claim. There is a ton of such evidence for the HIV/AIDS correlation, just like there is a ton of evidence for evolution and global warming.
Your only other response is that smart people aren't to be trusted.
Please take a look at his logic again. You are deliberately changing the sense of his statement. All he said was that smart people shouldn't be trusted just because they have a history of being smart. That is, intelligence is a necessary but not sufficient condition for being correct about intellectual or scientific questions.
Funny, all the people I listed say they've been looking for that link in the science journals and have never seen it.
The link is implied by the amount of data supporting it and widely recognized. There is no scientific paper that is *simply* about the link between HIV and AIDS, but the statistical supporting the accepted link is overwhelming. My other post details why it is these scientists' burden of proof to challenge what is seen as a reasonable conclusion about the relationship between HIV and AIDS.
If you read the link and actually cared about this subject you'd see that malnutrition is also a big factor. Not to mention AIDS tests are not carried out on most African 'AIDS victims'. Have you heard of the word 'glib'?
spoonerize "magic trackpad"
I used to works as IT support for a radiotheraphy group that developed particle accelerators "mods" for cancer treatment.
So it could perfevtly be that the 50th patient died of something else, like car accident, work accident, etc etc.It turns out that the cure worked, it got rid of the optical nerve cancer that was killing the patient. Too bad the patient was had diabetes and died 1 week later. She was 80 as well.
Saying AIDS isn't caused by HIV is essentially a pseudoscientific view ("crackpot" as you put it), but it doesn't benefit anyone with money or power to try and make it look like actual science. Unless there's some angle I'm missing.
Well THAT's a loaded question!
As James Pinkerton noted in his recent Newsday column, AIDS workers in South Africa make "10 times as much money" as non-AIDS workers.
AIDS drugs are very expensive and patentable.
The "viral cancer war" of the 1970's was running out of steam.
And the gay community would hate to admit that their lifestyle is a problem.
Is that enough rationale for ya?
Hey annikin - isn't it frustrating when you supply some good info and the debate stops. At least we're on the same page :-)
spoonerize "magic trackpad"
You're the one making outrageous claims that go against all conventionally accepted wisdom. When you make ridiculous claims, the burden of proof is on YOU. Unless you want us all to think you're a whackjob, which is pretty much what you've accomplished so far. If that's the case, keep doing what you're doing, it works like a charm.
Ummm... the same reason we talk people down off bridges and high buildings? Compassion, maybe? Not to mention the fact that these people end up with others who are more responsable, and simply don't know their partners are infected. Really though, even though you're being modded Troll, you've got a point; but just leaving people to twist in the wind isn't moral from my point of view. We really need to eliminate the attitude of fatalism that some people have, especially young people. You see a lot of articles where people have the attitude of "it's only a matter of time before I get it". Before we can use any of the methods you describe to stop HIV, we need to figure out how to stop fatalism. We also need to stamp out arrogance. You hear a lot of people who think that HIV is a manageable illness like diabetes or herpes. It isn't. Like all successful vices, it buries those who would testify otherwise.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
Homophobes - The evil gays are spreading disease!
Alternative therapy peddlers - I can cure AIDS with homeopathic medicine!
Politicians - AIDS was made by white men to kill black people!
Jackasses - Sure I'm HIV+ baby, but it doesn't cause AIDS!
Oh, forget it. This is too easy.
No it is. In a sample from a viral victims blood or cells there should be a significant amount of virus present that explains the breakdown of the system. If someone died of flu this would be the case. Why not HIV?
spoonerize "magic trackpad"
. . .but the mortality rates of HIV infected vs not HIV infected is exactly the same: 100%
OMG!!!!111!1, Dude, we're all going to . . .
Now, let's not always see the same hands.
KFG
They probly decided they needed a certian level of certianty, say 95%, plugged the numbers into the statistics equations, and came up with n=49.
Even the article says: " The ongoing tests in China include 29 in phase I, four in phase I and II, three in phase II and one in phase III."
So there are hundreds of Phase I trials going on right now around the world. It means very little. Phase I just shows that the vaccine is safe enough to be used in humans fora Phase II trial.
There have been Phase I AIDS vaccines for many years now. A few have made it to Phase III, where they test for efficacy, and none have been shown to be effective, which is why we're still trying new ones in Phase I.
I'm all in favor of these trials but a vaccine going into Phase I is not news. It is something that happens once a month or more often. Phase I is the easy part.
I come to think of something. Why does it actuelly matter if hiv causes aids?
It is a fact that most people who get hiv, and are not treated for it, will be dead within 10 years, so why does the exact cause of death matter?
Garlic!
Umm... From the context of knowing a great deal about the Gay community, due to family connections, people do restrict their sexual activity a great deal due to HIV. They don't like it, but most do restrict their activities.
Another consultant who stuck it out.
"We are the Priests, of the Temples of Syrinx..."
"I dunno how much AIDS scares y'all, but I got a theory: the day they come out with a cure for AIDS, a guaranteed one-shot cure, on that day there's gonna be fucking in the streets, man."
should be fun.
(ps. I know this is a vaccine, not a cure, but it kinda amounts to the same thing)
'This writing business. Pencils and what-not. Over-rated if you ask me. Silly stuff. Nothing in it' - Eeyore
Imagine being willing to be shot up with a dead form of the AIDS virus. Which, for all you know, might well end up giving you AIDS.
For the equivalent of $250.
Damn.
Editor Emeritus and Senior Writer, TeleRead.org
However, upon reading the article, it states:
and that makes a lot more sense now.
HD Trailers
Kary Mullis - PCR is a general genetics technique, no knowledge of HIV or AIDS was needed to develop it, and while his name is given as the inventor of PCR, the invention was clearly a group effort, not a solo one. Kary is also well known for his LSD use and disbelief in both global warming and CFCs causing ozone damage, and his possible alien abduction.
Dr. Andrew Herxheimer - His quote says nothing about the HIV/AIDS link. All he's suggesting is that AZT isn't effective and could be dangerous. If that's the best proof you have, you've got a long ways to go.
I could get an equally qualified group to suggest that AIDS can be prevented by circumcision, or that autism is caused by mercury in vaccines. We should look at those possibilities, but when it's a few random doctors on one side and every major medical group on the planet on the other, I think it's safest to go with what the overwhelming majority is convinced of. Sure, sometimes we find that ulcers are cause by bacteria, but when that happens it should be easy to show the connection or lack of one - in this case there's no data, just a willingness to believe.
"This is useless" would say-the Health Minister for South Africa, Manto Tshabalala-Msimang.
w sid=50037
She has her own "very effective" approach against AIDS/HIV. She sais it is vital for people to build up their immune system so she strongly
believes in giving people the choice between antiretroviral drugs and taking traditional remedies, such as lemons,
garlic and beetroots. In fact she promotes mostly the second while her boss, never acknowledged that HIV is the cause of AIDS.
http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/healthnews.php?ne
You dare to propogate a medical lie? A lie on the same magnitude and absurdity as Holocaust denial/revisionism?
I will have none of it. Get out. Now
I'd also like to be able to walk down the middle of the freeway without getting hit and killed. So, everyone stop driving, dammit!
are you joking or being serious?
spoonerize "magic trackpad"
Thanks for clearing that up.
What an impressive website. Though, one must wonder how a successful treatment (antiretroviral compounds in a cocktail) appear to be successful in reducing the viral load to (here's a word) *undetectable* levels?
Considering I can find websites on the internets that claim we were ruled by an alien lord 95 million years ago, how serious would you expect me to take the claims of a site like this?
Granted- there's a lot of good information on the internet... but please.... let's get a little filter going in what's presented as fact.
Another consultant who stuck it out.
"We are the Priests, of the Temples of Syrinx..."
Well, why don't you describe your reasoning? The slashdot community can then analyze these claims, briefly debate their merits, and everyone can carry on. There are plenty of people who will be able to understand your points.
Those Phase I testers have some major balls or testicular-equivalents.
"Yeah, okay, your tests came back, you're clean. So now we're gonna stab you and your friends with this needle full of some HIV we hacked up, and if any of you guys die we'll know we screwed up somewhere."
"Sounds good. Let's do that."
I don't know what it'd take to convince me to do that. Brr.
Yahoo! Pipes are awesome. How awesome? http://pipes.yahoo.com/jesdynf/slashdot
Or maybe those who do hold "IP" in the rest of the world should get their shiny asses into gear and actually *use* their "IP" for something constructive. If China has an HIV vaccine that won't be available in the US/EU/AP because of silly legalities, I'd expect a fairly large scale protest, and at a mimium, large scale public disobedience. And a boom to the Chinese tourist industry.
Forget thrust, drag, lift and weight. Airplanes fly because of money.
I'm sorry, but this is quite an odd story.
I don't think so. A real Christian would have pity, even for those who "made a mistake" or "were careless", and would not want them to suffer and die, leaving behind friends and family, who also suffer. Therefore, every Christain should support the search of an AIDS vaccine in an effort to reduce suffering. Therefore, the grandparent poster is not a Christian, or at least is quite far from understanding Christ's teachings fully.
The article is pretty garbled. But what they appear to be saying is that this was a DNA vaccine, that it generated an immune response, and that people didn't get sick from it. None of that is particularly surprising. In fact, just about every AIDS vaccine ever tested has generated an immune response and hasn't made people sick. The problem is whether it's effective against the real virus, and, so far, no AIDS vaccine has been, and chances are this one won't be either.
because it would take a book to do it. I made a short offhand comment and then thought I should defend it as it is very important. Briefly, there are problems with HIV/AIDS hypothesis which are subtle but crucial. Do some research on Dr Robert Gallo and see how he hijacked the research in an unscientific way and how things developed from there.
spoonerize "magic trackpad"
If you need a book to show (in brief) how something is a circular argument, your IQ is not 154.
How does a RV - essentially a bit of RNA (no cell walls) - attack a white cell? No one understands.
e ates/1993/mullis-autobio.html
So one guy hijacked a whole branch of medical research, and everyone else just followed him. I don't buy it.
Science does make mistakes like this from time to time. But it's all out there - research him.
If that's true, then you're just flat out wrong about HIV not being present in AIDS patients.
HIV is found in most AIDS patients but not all. And then you have to think about the validity of the HIV test itself - is it valid? It doesn't appear to be. It works but detecting antibodies to the HIV RV itself but will always false positive if the blood sample is not diluted 400:1. And why the antibodies anyway? The inventor of the PCR test (used in HIV testing ) himself doesn't believe the link between HIV and AIDS. He's called Kary Mullis - check him out too.
http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/chemistry/laur
spoonerize "magic trackpad"
That's just silly.
spoonerize "magic trackpad"
http://www.virusmyth.net/aids/books.htm
Here are some books that explain the position. Complex arguments cannot always be explained in soundbite analysis.
spoonerize "magic trackpad"
Insightful! Not many people know about AZT causing AIDS symptoms. The weaker version (1/5th or less of the potency) marketed for animals has health warnings all over it. The potent human version is marketed for promoting health and well-being. Giving AZT to healthy people (even diagnosed "HIV positive" (should be classified as "HIV negative" actually - but that's another topic) but lacking any real symptoms) is a death sentence in itself.
Homophobes don't really care what causes the disease. For them, it's not the vector, but rather its type of victim that matters.
Peddlers I'll believe. Ditto jackasses. Neither has much in the way of political clout however. For just about anything medical or scientific you'll have that lot arguing with the mainstream. They aren't on par with, say, Stalin and Lysenkoism, which is the comparison the person I responded to made - nobody would argue that homeopathic types have as much influence on our society as Stalin did on Soviet Russia.
As for politicians, I have seen what you're talking about, but that seems to be confined to Africa.
I see why those people benefit from bad fringe science, but they aren't on par with the examples given by the OP (Lysenkoism, creationism, and social darwinism). I.e. there aren't powerful people or groups pushing bad science on the masses to justify their ideology.
Erotic is when you use a feather. Exotic is when you use the whole chicken.
> > The overwhelming evidence for the link between the presence of HIV antibodies in
> > human beings and the development of AIDS is convincing enough.
> >
> Funny, all the people I listed say they've been looking for that link in the science
> journals and have never seen it
Funny that! For more reading check out "Kicking the Sacred Cow" by James P. Hogan. It would appear that your reason and logic are falling on deaf ears.
Can someone please post links to peer-reviewed scientific journal articles that prove that HIV causes AIDS? If we truly are to believe this, then the burden of proof is on them to prove it, not us to disprove it.
Absolutely serious. What, did you think I was trying to scare you or something?
The religious get away with this, mate? Never heard any of them use it before.
And besides, it has been done before in the scientific community. Why do you so willingly accept mathematics basics?
I know this is an odd story. AIDS is a very odd story. I clipped this from this website:
http://aliveandwell.org/
According to the 1999 World Health Organization (WHO) report, the total number of actual diagnosed AIDS cases on the African continent is about equal to the total for AIDS in America even though Africa, with its 650 million people, has more than two times the population of the USA. (61) Africa is often cited as a worst case example of what could happen in America despite figures that demonstrate that 99.5% of Africans do not have AIDS, and among Africans who test HIV positive, 97% do not have AIDS. (62)
Unlike in the United States, AIDS in Africa may be diagnosed based on four clinical symptoms -- fever, involuntary loss of 10% of normal body weight, persistent cough, and diarrhea -- and HIV tests are not required. (63) The four clinical AIDS symptoms are identical to those associated with conditions that run rampant on the African continent such as malaria, tuberculosis, parasitic infections, the effects of malnutrition, and unsanitary drinking and bathing water. These symptoms are the result of poverty and other problems that have troubled Africa and other developing areas of the world for many decades.
The idea that AIDS originated in Africa remains popular although there has never been scientific or epidemiological evidence to substantiate this notion. News reports suggesting that HIV began in Africa as Simian Immunodeficiency Virus (SIV) are based on elaborate speculation about species-jumping viruses rather than reliable evidence.
SIV induces only flu like symptoms in some experimental laboratory monkeys and does not cause any of the 29 official AIDS-defining illnesses. Unlike HIV infection which is said to cause illness only years after exposure and despite the presence of protective antibodies, SIV will cause illness within days of infection or not at all, and wild monkeys retain SIV antibodies throughout their lives without ever becoming ill. Only monkeys in unnatural circumstances -- lab animals with undeveloped immune systems who are injected with large quantities of SIV -- become ill. (65)
spoonerize "magic trackpad"
Psst... only 99 of them died. The other two just wouldn't stop being so irritating...
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
Okay, then let's put your bullshit to the test:
Let's inject you directly with some blood from an HIV+ person.
I'm sure we can find someone of your blood-type, with no other known pathogens - just HIV. Heck, if you're scared of contracting something else that we can't test for, I'm sure we could get some purified samples of HIV to inject you with.
After all - if it's lifestyle choices and not the virus, you'd have nothing to fear, right?
Since I can't tell them apart, I treat all ACs as the same person.
Not really funny, but for those who don't know --
About 8 yuan Chinese currancy (also known as RMB) is 1 dollar.
Most probably got that though from context (call me pendantic).
Also (though I don't remember the exchange rate) in Hong Kong, they often refer to a Hong Kong Dollar as a "buck"
Did I mention my wife is a Chinese national?
My wife mentioned this news about 2 days ago. I was wondering when it would break in the West.
Letter To Iran
Again, we don't need every detail. Just an outline would do. Also, most of your books suggest that AIDS is caused by a factor other than HIV. That doesn't make the definition, or anyones argument I've seen, circular.
I've lived here for more than three years now. It's hard to explain without sounding like a dick, but the threshold for what is an acceptable 'white lie' is a lot lower here than in other places. I'm not saying that everything you hear from a Chinese person is a lie, but you just need to be careful. They're not less honest than Westerners -- I lie all the time about stuff. But it's about stuff that it's you'll understand as culturally acceptable to lie about. Different culture, different idea about what's 'true'.
Although you are certainly being a complete "dink", you COULD have had a point, if you had put a little more thought into it.
What bothers me is the fact that HIV/AIDS research is getting an inordinately large ammount of funding (both public and private). Other diseases, which kill many more people, are getting much less funding than HIV/AIDS research.
And, yes, AIDS is 99.99+% preventable over all, and 98% preventable, even if you continue to be extremely promiscuous (but use a condom). Yet many other diseases, which kill more people, are NOT preventable at all, or at least not in any reasonable way.
Even a disease like lung cancer has a much higher than 2% chance (IIRC) of infecting an individual who has never smoked in their life. That, despite the fact that lung cancer gets inordinately less funding than other diseases, because it is looked upon as taboo, and a preventable disease.
Why AIDS has such incredibly special status, has long been a mystery to me.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
The United States, via government agencies like NIH/NIAID or USAID, funds and performs extensive research on HIV/AIDS, malaria, and tuberculosis in situ throughout Africa and Asia. When you get a free moment, take a look at CHAVI or NIAID, maybe do a few Google searches on the scientists' names. And all of these projects' participants, all the way down to admin staff and IT types like me, realize the current heavy burden of these three diseases on Africa and Asia (both socially and economically). I realize you have issues with large pharmaceutical companies, but please don't think that they are the only ones who do medical research here and abroad.
I'm proud of my Northern Tibetian Heritage
Still wrong I'm afraid - AIDS isn't exactly a disease. It's a syndrome: Acquired Immuno Deficiency Syndrome.
I'm no expert but my understanding is this basically means your immune system is kaput. Hence nobody really dies from AIDS, per se - they die from pneumonia or flu or any other number of (normally non-lethal) diseases, because their immune system cannot fight them off.
I was just pointing out that there are many personal and professional reasons that someone could have that would affect their views on AIDS. As for homophobes, if they can make the argument that AIDS is caused by drug use (as one person on slashdot has suggested) then the gay people are only suffering from their own actions, and don't deserve as much pity/help. If it's really caused by a virus, then they'd have to fall back to the "AIDS is Gods punnishment for homos" and "the Bible says so" arguments to connect homosexuality with evil, which are much weaker.
Geez!! You're not going to tell me you truly believe that the millions of HIV-positive worldwide trying to figh off the infection with nasty drugs in the hopes of delaying as far as possible the onset of AIDS, plus the millions that already died as a result of AIDS, are all nothing but an incredibly elaborated hoax?! Exactly what do you think HIV (Human Immunodeficiency Virus) does?
Does its name not say anything to you? Whenever it finds itself in a suitable host, it does pretty much what every other virus does. It attempts to clone itself, as rapidly and violently as possible, using the mechanisms provided by the cells it invades. Only this one does it with a twist: it specializes in attacking certain components of our immune systems, and since our immune systems can't fight it off, we become immuno-compromised over time. That is to say, our body's ability to fight off every other bug decreases dramatically as the HIV infection progresses.
Hence the condition associated with an advanced-stage HIV infection: AIDS. It stands for Acquired Immuno-Deficiency Syndrome. And it HAS been proven that the agent responsible for that 'acquired immunodeficency' is, when we're talking about AIDS, the HIV virus. There are very clear rules defining the criteria you need to meet to associate a pathogen with a specific disease/condition. And these are clealy met when it comes to attributing AIDS to the HIV virus.
Of course, you CAN become immuno-compromised as a result of many different illnesses, you can be born immuno-compromised, the anti-rejection drugs you have to take after a transplant can make you severely immuno-compromised. So there isn't any clear cut way to determine whether an immuno-compromised person (even if they are HIV-positive), has become immuno-compromised as a result of an HIV infection (ie, has AIDS). There are only guidelines, elimination criterias, that allow you to diagnose someone as having the AIDS syndrome. But the same can be said about many other illnesses and syndromes where successful diagnose can only be achieved once a range of other (more likely, less statistically improbable) diseases have been thrown out. Parkinson's, for e.g., can't be diagnosed through a direct lab test or scan. You have to rule out other possible explanations for the symptoms. It doesn't make it any less real (remember the last years of Pope John Paul II?), nor the diagnose any less accurate or scientific.
To say that there is no proof of any link between the HIV virus and AIDS isn't just innacurate. It's just plain stupid. And, if I were you, I would seriously question the validity and merit (if not even the intent) of whomever it is that's feeding these misconceptions to you.
Finally: about HIV infection and AIDS being fatal. Strictly speaking, no one really dies of AIDS nor of an HIV infection, not as such. But you DO die as a RESULT of the syndrome CAUSED by an HIV infection. When your body, as a result of HIV infection, ceases to have a functioning immune system and can't fight off even the most common of viruses or bacterias, it becomes the perfect breeding ground for ANY bug that happens to enter your body. And when this happens, when a stupid, silly, common-cold-like virus/bacteria, finds itself rampaging through your body completely unimpeded, it will only stop when you're dead. It will infect every cell, in every tissue, eventually damaging your vital organs (heart, kidneys, lungs, brain, etc), until your body no longer offers the conditions it needs to proceed (ie, you're a cadaver). So I guess you can accurately say that AIDS does kill, by rendering your body completely defenseless (especially if you take into account the fact that we all have, at any time, a score of germs/pathogens coursing through our bodies).
In any case, although this is just a preliminary study, and the vaccine's efficiency is yet to be proven, and we're yet to know if it works for all sub-types of HIV-I (including the rare recombinant forms), which I seriously doubt, and the fact that this has nothing to do with a cure, but rather a possible future protection for anyone NOT HIV-positive, it's still good news. Every little advance in these areas of Medicine and Pharmacology are good news, doubly so when it pertains to such a terribly wide-spread disease.
The end result is that you're holding up the inventor of the Pyrex test tube (test tubes having already been invented) as expert on pregnancy, simply because one of the currently used pregnency tests (out of many) is refered to as "The Test-Tube Test".
Second, Kary Mullis is a nutjob. A fullbown global warming is a hoax, CFCs don't deplete the ozone layer, HIV doesn't lead to AIDS, LSD using, UFO abductee nutjob.
So? Yes, it's possible the HIV doesn't cause AIDS. But there's always that "exraordinary claims require extraordiary evidence" issue. The burden is on you, and all you've shown me is one intelligent crackpot and that there are unanswered questions.I don't think they're the only ones doing research. I do think that Chinese researchers have apparently beaten them to a vaccine. Even if this one is a limited success, it's still beating the American effort. An effort by the biggest, most educated and pampered medical industry in the world, rolling in profits from business as usual. Beaten by the Chinese, whose domestic endemic is not nearly their highest priority for investment.
FWIW, if I thought big pharmacos were "the only ones who do medical research here and abroad", I'd hardly be congratulating a Chinese team on their medical research.
I've tracked the HIV treatment science since I was working premed fulltime in a big NYC area hospital, in the pathology lab, working daily in the blood bank. I got squirted in the eye by a punctured hot bag of just-drawn blood, in 1987 as AIDS was in all the headlines and lunch conversations. I've studied molecular genetics, epidemiological genetics. I've been to Africa several times. I've had friends who got AIDS, and have helped care for strangers. So wind your IT staff experience up in a little pill and take it yourself to vaccinate you against making the kind of totally wrong speculation about my judgement you just broke out in.
I realize the pharmacos are paying your salary, but there's a reason they're not paying you to debate people who actually know how the global epidemic racket works.
--
make install -not war
Looks like you don't know how HIV works if you think 5 years is plenty of time to say that guy is all in the clear.
Here is a page with some details, but I'll snip out the important part that I thought was common knowledge to anyone who had done any sort of rudimentary research into this topic.
Quite frankly fives years ain't jack, especially if you're a healthy specimen in the first place. Sorry, not convinced, even if the website you continually link to in almost every comment on this thread has supporting statements from various experts. People can be wrong and very often are, no matter what background they come from, and people can very often have underlying reasons to say what they do (I'm not saying anyone there has such incentives, I'm simply saying that it's a very bad idea to just say oh that guy's an 'expert', he must know what he's talking about!).
"We invented personal computing." - Bill Gates
"David Rasnick, who invented protease inhibitors" Is it just me, or does that sound like something you would wear to a strip club?
Actually, I recall a study (posted here on Slashdot) said that dollar-for-dollar, AIDS research was the (one of the?) most useful and practical applications of the charitable dollar.
Information wants to be free.
Entertainment wants to be paid.
You just want to be cheap.
Well, it's that time of the year again. We haven't had an AIDS cure post in a few months.
"Things are more moderner than before- bigger, and yet smaller- it's computers-- San Dimas High School football RULES!"
Will you volunteer to be infected with HIV to carry this experiment out?
Since I can't tell them apart, I treat all ACs as the same person.
Inject yourself with HIV infected blood. If you're right, then there should be nothing to fear, right?
Since I can't tell them apart, I treat all ACs as the same person.
Science 101: Correlation is not causation!
It's quite possible, as Duesberg has suggested, that HIV is simply a very weak virus that only really has a chance to multiply inside a compromised immune system. That would explain the correlation.
Papadopulos and others point out another possibility - it's uncertain just what is being detected. In the absence of a bona-fide isolation of the virus, it's nothing but guesswork. The proper isolation of the suspected infectious agent is a very basic, fundamental step in dealing medically with any infectious disease - with one exception. AIDS. This shouldn't take more than a couple hundred thousand dollars to do, even assuming that's it for some reason far more difficult to do with HIV than with any other infectious agent known to man. Millions of dollars are thrown around for reasearch on the subject every year, but for some reason no one will spare a couple hundred thousand to actually make sure that the working hypothesis all this money is being spent on is actually correct? Something stinks here.
I don't know if AIDS is caused by HIV or not, but I do know that this is a question that *should* have been settled long ago, and either way, this episode will be one of the textbook examples of the perils of politicising science in a couple decades or so.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Friends don't let friends enable ecmascript.
Here. And here.
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Friends don't let friends enable ecmascript.
Oh, here's some Mullis for you too.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Friends don't let friends enable ecmascript.
Just because you can't get pregnant through your normal sexual conduct doesn't mean you can't ever do so. There are Lesbian's who opt for fertilization through donated sperm, etc etc. In your case, however, my guess is that you have no such plans. Still, people do change their minds, so I guess that as recommended by others a letter of absolution or something along those lines might reduce your docs worries enough for him to prescribe the treatment. That, or finding a doctor who gets your situation a little better.
abstinence from what? How about dentists/doctors/nurses/policemen/firemen who have to work with HIV positive people and thus are in risk of getting the infection? How about kids, who were born to HIV positive mothers/fathers? Are those people responsible for what happens to them?
Rape victims, straight folks, who have accidents with broken condoms? Blood transfusion?
What happens when HIV becomes airborn and spreads like flu virus?
You can't handle the truth.
For those that are really willing to take the risk for on they love, I wonder if tests might eventually branch out into couples where one partner is infected and the other is "clean?"
Certainly there are a lot of other nasty viruses out there, and though an HIV vaccine would be a great boon to many people I wonder how much irresponsibility it would cause amongst others?
Well, considering they recommend about 4 months after your last sexual act with a questionable partner before you can test "clean" and consider it safe (and sometimes a post test a few months later), I'd say it's about a 120-200 day window for signs that can be detected through blood testing.
I've never had any real cause to worry myself, but I have been tested as a just-in-case for the safety of myself and others.
It's quite possible that the number of people infected in various areas is in dispute. It's also possible that many purported AIDS cases in poorer countries are the result of misdiagnosis. Neither of which has any bearing on whether or not AIDS is caused by HIV.
As for the rest of your post, most of it is misleading:HIV-1 and HIV-2 are more genetically similar to SIV strains in monkeys and chimps, respectively, than to each other.
Most strains of SIV don't cause signifigant symptoms in their normal hosts, but in a different host it often results in SAIDS.
SIV and HIV don't normally cross from or to humans because of single mutation in a key protein.
The reasonable conclusion to draw is that humans were protected from SIV strains by their protein difference, a new strain developed that got around that difference, infected a human, and because it's not in its normal host it causes immune difficiancy. Then this happened again with HIV-2.
The duesberg thing looks like he legitimately makes those claims - however his list of publications on his university website shows nothing published since 1997 on the topic, and doesn't even catalog his publications before then.
The perth group website has a bunch of tiny abstracts full of opinions, and oh don't forget some "letters to the editor" complaining about this or that in a certain study. Very little actual science there, a lot of blowing smoke out of their asses.
Either way, you can always find three supposedly legit people who support ridiculous ideas - there are a lot of scientists out there. Show me some recent, real research, not propaganda websites, that is published in a major scientific journal, providing actual experimental study to show HIV doesn't cause AIDS.
HIV has been cultured in vitro. Its genome and DNA have been sequenced and examined. Its infectious process has been observed - hence the availability of therapies to treat HIV disease, which incidentally also produce increased T-cell counts. HIV has also been shown to cause disease in infected animals when infected with pure HIV.
How much more isolation do you want? Despite what Duesberg argues, all of Koch's rules for determining the infectious agent of a disease have been fulfilled. People who say that HIV has not been sufficiently proven to be the cause of AIDS, such as the Perth group, have set up ridiculous standards that are not even fulfilled by other, widely accepted causative agents. The bottom line is: what did 30 million people die of, if not from HIV-caused AIDS? What caused the dramatic fall-off of AIDS related deaths in the US after anti-retroviral drugs were introduced and became affordable? What caused the giant explosion of AIDS in the gay community if something other than the HIV transmission via unprotected sex? How about among hemophiliacs and intravenous drug users? Why, when screening processes were put in place to detect the presence of HIV antibodies in blood donations, did the cases of infection via blood-transfusion go to approximately zero? Good science produces results. Duesberg hasn't produced any results.
Conspiracies on this scale don't happen in an open world. There will always be fringe voices on some radical position against a widely held theory - some of them are being polemicists just for the sake being polemicists, some of them are impervious to reason. The only conspiracies going on here belong to corrupt governments of poor countries who refuse their citizens the vital medical treatment with the justification of exactly the reasons you are giving, while their people die because they don't receive medicines that have been proven to be effective in scientifically rigorous studies and in the field.
Wow, a website registered in france, purporting to be from a guy living in california, who mentions NOTHING about this website on his own site at karymullis.com. Yeah, you really got me convinced.
I still think that's a rather skewed viewpoint of American/European research efforts, but you're right: I'm an IT guy, not a scientist. It is pretty sad that profit-driven research seems to give us yet another treatment for erectile disfunction. I'm glad that biomedical research isn't just the province of Big Pharma, and as much as I don't like how Bill Gates got his money, I really like this part of what he's doing with it.
I'm proud of my Northern Tibetian Heritage
I'm a study patient in a Phase II trial of an HIV vaccine and I personally know of at least one other vaccine in Phase II. This web page seems to confirm that. The Merck Gag-Pol-Nef study started Phase II testing in January 2005 and has positive results. I thought I remembered my study doctor saying is was going to phase three, article on the current HIV vaccine landscape indicated two studies in Phase III. Phase III is where they get 800 people of high risk and give half the vaccine and half placebo and see if the vaccine group stays uninfected.
Either way, there have been quite a number of Phase I trials.
I also question this quote:
How did they determine that? Certainly they didn't infect these people. I think this whole article is just some China-PR person's belch.
for the original parent poster: people do know how the infection happens.
1) person aquires a couple hundred virons in their bloodstream, all of which have a plasma membrane envelope surrounding viron
2) special proteins in this envelope enable the it to merge with the plasma membrane of CD4 T Lymphoctyes (aka. t helper cells)
3) the reverse transcriptase that was packaged with the RNA inside the viron goes to work, transcribing DNA from the RNA of the AIDS virus (reverse transcriptase, et. al.)
4) endonucleases and other associate proteins (which also come in the viral package) insert the viral DNA into the host DNA.
5) Natural host protein manufacturing processes are directed by other viral mRNA sequences to produce huge quantities of both the viral DNA segment and the viral proteins.
6) new virons are packaged and then Pushed out of the plasma membrane of the CD4 cell. This reforms the virus complete with protein bearing envelope ready for infecting another CD4 cell
7) repeat x 1,000,000+
8) original CD4 cell runs out of spare plasma membrane, ruptures, and dies. (think of a firecracker in an orange)
9) A whole bunch more CD4 cells become infected, some are killed others the virus remains dormant (hence the dip in CD4 counts immediately post infection followed by their resurgance.
10) after X amount of time, the viral machinery reactivates and kills the CD4 cells, saturating the host with viral particles
11) Host loses cell-mediated immunity
12) Chaos ensues (AIDS)
13) By the time the patient succumbs to a secondary infection, the CD4 cells have been so depleted, that there aren't any left to produce any virus, so sometimes you see low viral loads at the time of death. Makes sense eh?
Just because You don't understand a thing doesn't mean that Noone understands a thing. I just hate all the tin-foil conspiricists. Go to Africa, watch villages die, come home and take your damn meds so we don't get even more resistant strains of HIV than we already have.
If you would like to call into question if we can really 'Know' any of these steps, you are calling into question the entirity of modern medical science. If you really want to know, take an immunology class (and the prerequisite basic biology class) at your local college. These will hopefully prove to you beyond a doubt the usefullness of the biochemical tools used to come to these conclusions regarding this retrovirus's lifecycle.
Also, please note that watson & crick stole the original data for their DNA research. Do you not belive that DNA is a double helix? Because that was based on stolen evidence too. Of course, they later reproved it a hojillion times, but the same thing has happened with HIV->AIDS.
Regarding those original quotes, most are grossly out of context and the few that are factual, I'm sure the original persons would not be happy to see their words twisted so badly.
You claim it's been "cultured", "sequenced", and "examined" but I note you don't say "purified." Fact is, until it's purified, you don't know what the heck it is you're "culturing, sequencing, and examining."
Reference?
Duesberg, in fact, doesn't argue that at all. You're just so horribly confused here I don't even know what to say. Actually, Duesberg has probably offered the strongest arguments *against* the position you impute to him here of anyone involved.
Opportunistic infections taking advantage of a severely compromised immune system? That's clear. Now the interesting question is, what caused those immune systems to become so compromised. Even though a virus is a politically useful answer, it's certainly not the only logically possible answer. Nor is there any logical reason to deny that there may be different causes for different cases. The immune system is a complex system, and it's hardly inconceivable that it might break down for a number of reasons.
As to Duesbergs lack of results, results require experiments, experiments require money, and the day he opened his mouth and questioned Gallos claims his money has been cut off. And THAT is what we should all be outraged about. Duesberg has submitted countless grant proposals with good research designs that would have settled the issues he raises, one way or the other, with good solid data. Up until he opened his mouth on this issue, he was a top rank grant writer, and he's done a lot of first class science. But now all he can do is write, because experiments take money, and no one is willing to fund experiments that might prove the paradigm that the funding sources have embraced was wrong.
OK, you've got a number of people with severely degraded immune systems. They're all homosexuals, part of a 'scene' that involves unprotected sex with many partners (and you can put that 'many' in capital letters and use the blink tab, it was several people a night, every night) as well as heavy hard drug use. You can't think of a single hypothesis to explain this besides an infectious agent? Please.
The immune system is known to have a tendency to go a bit haywire when overstimulated. Heavy drug use is exactly the sort of thing that would be expected to overstimulate it. It's hardly a stretch to consider that a longterm pattern of unprotected anal intercourse with numerous partners could have the same effect, if you think about it. Combine the two, and that seems like a quite possible explanation. It's too bad the empirical work that would allow us to confirm or deny that hypothesis has been consistently denied funding for twenty years, huh?
The decline in deaths might well be related to the decline in new cases. The decline in new cases might well have something to do with the decline in heavy hard drug use, and the decline in massively promiscous unprotected anal intercourse? Just a guess. Again, we'd know, but the experiments that would have provided the data just don't get funded.
This isn't exactly a conspiracy. It's not like all the people controlling the funding, and the people whose experiments they are funding, got togeth
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Friends don't let friends enable ecmascript.
I agree with the grandparent. Proof by book is unacceptable around here for good reason. You're asking us to use up hours of our life merely on your say-so. My take also is that a complex, lengthy argument that can't be summarized in a succinct way is usually wrong. In other words the argument has to be lengthy and complex in order to lose (intentionally or not) the flaws in the argument.
I'm not referring to gays, just people who have sex with many different partners and don't want to live in constant fear of AIDS, be they gay, straight or redneck.
Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.
If there was a vaccine against car accidents, wouldn't you take it?
Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.
Why do you think you've found a fellow paranoid? Failing to report someone who dropped out for reasons not related to the success of the study (which is what the poster suggested) is legitimate, moral and honest -- and thus hardly the stuff paranoia is made of.
In short, what you've just bought is a non-paranoid explanation. (Good for you!)
Arn't you susposed to always have a control group?
So...
"Yeah, you were a given a placebo instead of the real vaccine... Thats right, now you are HIV positive... sorry!, here is your $20 for participation, have a nice day".
Modesty is one of life's greatest attributes
Ay, I agree with you here. And I suppose I hadn't thought about that angle for the gay-bashers - blaming the infected I mean. To be fair, many of the vehemently anti-gay people I've met personally do beleive in the whole "God's punishment" garbage, so I'd kinda assumed that they wouldn't care what specifically causes the disease, as long as it targets a group their religion condemns. I'd forgotten that not all homophobes are religious.
But my basic point remains - the AIDS controversy and surrounding pseudoscience is different from the examples listed at the beginning of this thread (Lysenkoism, creationism and social darwinism). A few crackpots believing that HIV does not cause AIDS is not the same as a powerful individual or organization forcing pseudoscience on the masses to support its agenda. I guess the difference I see is that pseudoscience like Lysenkoism really can be damaging (it set back the biological science in Russia by decades).
It's a matter of scale or severity; bad science in the name of homeopathy can do a little bit of damage, whereas bad science in the name of political ideology or religion can do a lot of damage.
Erotic is when you use a feather. Exotic is when you use the whole chicken.
O-kay Look under bullets 1 - 4(which support the conclusion the pure HIV culture has caused AIDS in laboratory workers(i.e. humans) which is actually a stronger case than animals.
Actually, he does argue that Koch's criteria have not been fulfilled, which is what I said he had argued against.
I can think of lots of hypotheses but the fact remains that a simple hypothesis(the infective agent is HIV) is the most simple, most accurate, most backed-up hypothesis there is.
If your only answer is "drug use" you have a very weak argument. There are very very many cases of people who are not drug-users and who do not engage in promiscuous sex developing AIDS from exposure to HIV through unprotected sex or transfusions. Read the book "Borrowed Time" for instance. There are also very very many cases of heavy drug-users who do not end up with AIDS and are also, incidentally, HIV negative. Asserting that all gay people who develop AIDS are also hard drug users verges on statistically unfounded prejudice , the kind that the Reagan administration used to deny any obligation to help them.
Then the cases not caused by HIV but by other immune deficiency syndrome are not AIDS. I suggest you read this. Look under the justification for the fulfillment of Koch Rule 1. Scientists discovered that a small number of people having a clinical diagnosis of AIDS-like disease actually had a different disorder. Also look at the surveillance statistics.
It does break down for a nubmer of reasons. Those are separate illnesses. The most coherent, simple, and productive explanation is that the constellation and development of AIDS-related illnesses and this kind of immune deficiency are caused by HIV, not any other cause. The simplest answer is usually the right one, as a guiding principle. IN this case, we have a simple answer and the data supports this answer. The fact it is complex points to the idea that one source capable of affecting it in its entirety is responsible - otherwise we have to assume that many different forces are responsible, an idea that on its face and statistically is untenable and violates Occam's razor.
Besides, women rarely, rarely pass on HIV. Even just vaccinating all men would all but annihilate HIV in just a few decades.
I usually never post but that post was so stupid I felt compelled to respond. I think we should do studies on obvious cause and effect... To complete our study, please put the gun provided for you, to your head now.. and pull the trigger.. just so we can see if you suffer any "negative" effects from it. Disclaimer: After reading your post, we have concerns that we may not see any noticeable effect.
No. I ignored the whole movie (as I couldn't have watched it on such a short notice), only reading a couple of reviews for it. In the context of this discussion, this should be enough. These reviews (both positive and negative) provided me enough information to determine what kind of a documentary it is.
When a person ignores arguments as a way of making a "rebuttal", I start to wonder if they have a vested interest.
When a person starts talking about "vested interests" as a way of making a rebuttal, I know he's a crackpot.
Man is a slave because freedom is difficult, whereas slavery is easy.
I hate to be a dink, but we've had a way to completely control this infection for about 20 years now; it's called abstainence.
I can reassure you, you aren't a dink. You're an ignorant asshole.
Ever heard of the hundreds of ways you can get infected without sex? Blood transfusions were a common vector in the early days, before everyone got paranoid about them, for example. You can still get the virus through blood, for example during an accident (with you as the victim, or you as the helper who doesn't wear protective clothes). Lots of kids are infected, and unless you believe they had sex at 3 or so, I'll go with the more reasonable option that their parents were infected.
There are other, less common ways as well.
So no, abstinence isn't a solution. It's just some meme that some people want to spread and they use every opportunity to sell it. If you ask the right people, abstinence probably cures acne and cancer as well, and leads to better eyesight and higher salaries.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
Ummm... the same reason we talk people down off bridges and high buildings?
It's killjoys like you who are ruining B.A.S.E for the rest of us!
Could someone with more insight please explain why there are scientists who deny there's a link?
There are many reasons, one is because a good scientist always questions theories. I mean, until someone goes, "Maybe the Earth revolves around the sun", we'll just grind away at a false theory, like the Arab Astrologers did in the middle ages with the geocentric model.
The second reason is because a room full of people can never agree on a single thing, that's why Government is done by majority, not by unanimous voting, because there will never be a perfect consensus. There will always be a group of people in this world who disagree with something.
Thirdly, money can corrupt, and someone can easily take a wrong stance to make some cash. Like Psychics that make money off of grieving people, "scientist" can sell some books on their false stances on controversial issues. It's sick, but it's capitalism and free speech. Like a website that claims that HIV becomes AIDS only when stimulated by having anal sex.(yes, that's on that website he linked to)
And lastly, our ideas about AIDS has changed. It's unfair to bring up a theory of AIDS in 1987, when our understanding of the disease was much different then today. A good theory about the atoms being composed of the Fire / Air / Earth / Water may have been a sound theory during the B.C., but it's not accepted now.
~~~
Click here, you know you wanna!
Seriously, I've seen my work being used in articles before, in both, computer security and statistics. Sometimes, you wish they wouldn't quote the source. Journalists are good at writing stories. They are bad at knowing anything about their subjects.
My guess would be that the Journalist in question has not the foggiest idea what DNA or RNA are, that his underlying press release did actually mention RNA and the journalist went "RNA? They mean DNA, that gotta be a typo."
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Ooookay. They immunized people and then shot them the virus? No, according to the article they exposed them to the non-infective parts of the virus.
At the same time, they claim that those people were protected from the virus. How do they know it if they only shot them with the parts that are unfit for transmitting the disease?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Incorrect, the 2005 HIV estimate for Sub-Saharan Africa is 6.2%. The highest HIV rate in Africa is in Swaziland, with a 2005 estimate of 33.4% (high estimate of 45.3%).
North Africa and the middle east:
Adult (15-49) rate 2003: 0.2% ±0.1
Adult (15-49) rate 2005: 0.2% -0.1 +0.2
Sub-Saharan Africa:
Adult (15-49) rate 2003: 6.2% -0.7 +0.8
Adult (15-49) rate 2005: 6.1% ±0.7
The worst African country is Swaziland: Adult (15-49) rate 2003: 32.4% ±11.7
Adult (15-49) rate 2005: 33.4% -12.2 +11.9
Global:
Adult (15-49) rate 2003: 1.0% ±0.2
Adult (15-49) rate 2005: 1.0% -0.1 +0.2
Source: 2006 report on the global aids epidemic, Annex 2: HIV and AIDS estimates and data, 2005 and 2003 , UNAIDS, 2006-05. Accessed on 2006-08-21.
Tubal Ligation
A house divided against itself cannot stand.
Surprisingly, you could have answered your own question easily if you had used google instead of rushing to post that. Note the date on the page I gave - "13 March 2005". From the page:
The AACS key is NOT 0xF606EEFD628B1CA427BEA93A9CA9773F
Sorry to burst your bubble, they were 49 from he beginning! ;)
The AACS key is NOT 0xF606EEFD628B1CA427BEA93A9CA9773F
Or maybe you threw some fireworks before the party began. Check again.
The AACS key is NOT 0xF606EEFD628B1CA427BEA93A9CA9773F
And I wonder if that crazy wacko doctor is going around infecting people with HIV, even though he doesn't show the symptoms of the disease yet. Or maybe he only pretended to jab himself with the needle and actually didn't...
The AACS key is NOT 0xF606EEFD628B1CA427BEA93A9CA9773F
My whole family is plagued with more or less severe psoriasis, inherited by my grandfather's side. If yours is of the more severe kind (as I assume if you want to try anything new immediately), I suggest moving to the seaside as a start. This has improved the situation *very much* for all of us who are plagued with it. I am one of the happy ones who's not so severely affected, but even for my grandfather, the plaques pretty much disappeared. IIRC it has something to do with the saltiness of the air. In case you haven't yet, give it a try, and if only you spend a holiday there to see if it helps, two or three weeks should show a significant improvement already.
Who is General Failure and why is he reading my hard disk?
You ever get an ingrown toenail? Not terribly frightening, right? I can show you pictures of ingrown toenails gone terribly, terribly wrong.
Not to say that genital sores aren't unpleasant, but what you find via google is likely to be a worst-case scenario. Medical journals have a whiff of "hey, Bob, you gotta see this!" to them, despite their scholarly diction.
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
HIV is an STD, people. In most cases, HIV is transfered via sexual contact between either a man and a woman, or a man and a man.
.25% of the population. We cannot afford HIV cocktails for 25% of the population.
One might even go as far to say that HIV is a Male Sexually Transmitted Disease. In fact, statistically, you can probably count the number of Woman to Woman HIV transmissions on your fingers and toes
Realistically, Female to Female transmission probably does occur on some level, but en gross, it is rare. If you solve Male to transmission, the primary means of infection are transfusion and needle sharing; and vaccinating most men would resolve this as well.
If Birth Defects are involved, there remain a couple questions:
A) Do birth defects result from the male side? (Rare, but a possible side effect; sperm deformation).
B) Can vaccinated individuals carry the virus? Are vaccinated individuals infectious?
C) Is the vaccine useful for wiping out existing infections? At what point during the HIV lifecycle will the vaccine still be effective? At what point during the HIV lifecycle will the vaccine still prevent transmission.
Given that it is an STD that is extremely difficult to transmit female to female, vaccinating all men will take a significant bite out of the problem without risking birth defects. This would immediately reduce HIV from a worldwide epidemic to a niche population disease (probably HIV positive gay women whom have multiple sexual partners), one which would be much easier to address via testing/standard prevention techniques, and would also be a much smaller probably area to focus medical resources on.
Mankind can afford HIV cocktails for
WhiteWolf666 an exBush supporter. All you new-school,compassionate,save the children Republicans can rot in hell
So, you're dancing on Isaac Asimov's grave now, then? Dick.
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
It's like arguing with creationists, or global warming deniers.
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
49 is a great number! It's a perfect square.
Sounds like you need to find yourself a lesbian dermitologist.
They don't grade fathers, but if your daughter's a stripper, you fucked up. --Chris Rock
Does this mean /.'ers that sign up for the next phase have a shot at having sex?
Having to work for a living is the root of all evil.
abstinence probably cures acne and cancer as well, and leads to better eyesight and higher salaries
I can personally attest that the last two are not the case. :(
I just don't see how a vaccine will "cure" all those "50%" that are now infected! A vaccine is used withni a prevention strategy, not as a cure. Also, when they claim that the virus was "safe", I'm not sure it means that it works "as a vaccine", but rather, that it did not cause the test subjets to become infected.
You moderators are stupid. Stuuuuuuuuuupid. This is not a troll. A troll is where you say something you don't believe to piss someone off. Flamebait is any message you know will piss people off, but that you post anyway, and the moderators don't like. Learn the fucking difference.
This person obviously believes what they're saying, and so do I, which is why I can believe that they believe it. The simple fact is that doctors don't want to be involved with anything that might cause birth defects or sterility, and furthermore, you can not sign away your rights to sue, which costs money whether you win or not. (Attempting to sign away that right might cause you to lose the case, but is probably unlikely to get the case thrown out because the court would rather not be accused of trampling your rights either.)
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
$5 rebate on NiMH rechargeable batteries. [batteriesnimh.com]
:-)
Well, there's still one way (for women at least) to have constant, safe, enjoyable sex without worrying at such STD's
Yes, my GF (who is Chinese) and other Chinese friends have actually told me not to trust Chinese in various matters - particularly involving money - because they will cheat you. On the other hand, I've found that for some things such as computer parts, the Chinese-run stores offered much better prices on items that often lasted longer than their expensive local-store counterparts, but of course there's a matter of feedback for that.
:-)
Oh, and if you want to see same real bargaining, take a Chinese female to a Chinese market and let her haggle the price of various items for you
After all - if it's lifestyle choices and not the virus, you'd have nothing to fear, right
Not that I'm part of the HIV-doesn't-cause-AIDS crowd, but I'd think the societal stigma of having the former would be enough reason to avoid infection, nevermind the premature and unpleasant death associated with it.
One might also want to take into account that many vaccines do have an effective lifetime. Many of them work by stimulating your body to produce antibodies etc against a particular virus. Your immune system acts like an army encampment that catches enemy scouts, and gets prepared for the possible invasion. Over time though, when no enemy shows up, your system may "stand down" stop producing the antibodies in sufficient number (and then you need a new shot of vaccine).
Having a working vaccine would be great and could definately improve the lives of some people (those with HIV+ partners, for example), as well as reduce the overall AIDS problem, but it would really really such if we find that out the hard way that after 7 years of use it no longer has an effective lifespan without a booster. Of course, the funny thing is that if it did work but have a limited effective term, those having relationships with HIV+ people would stay immune due to repeated exposure (your little army guys are staying on alert due to continued enemy presence).
There have been cases where people have been found to have a resistance to HIV/AIDS, and I do remember hearing of one where after being removed from exposure the ladies (who were prostitutes) in question were later infected years later after again exposing themselves to the virus, which would fit with the concept of their immuno-response lessening after exposure stops stimulating it. Of course it could just be that they were lucky to begin with, as having relations with an infected person does not 100% guarantee infection the first time.... but the risk thereof is enough that one wouldn't want to play the odds.
In fact some lesbian couples do choose to artificially get pregnant and bear a child. Your doctor has absolutely no way of knowing whether you will make that same decision in the future, and he is covering his ass. Many people (gay and straight) who choose to have children do not know they will at some point beforehand. I bet that if you had a tubal ligation he would not raise so many objections.
Sexual orientation has nothing to do with love and raising a family, which I believe is one of the points many of the advocacy groups are trying to get across to middle America.
Build a man a fire, he's warm for one night. Set him on fire, and he's warm for the rest of his life.
An immuno-deficiency can be caused by lots of things.
Yes but the question is not any immune deficiency, but one particular disease.
Transplant patients take drugs to cause an Aquired Immuno-deficiency Syndrome.
Emphasis is mine. You are incorrectly applying the name of a defined disease to a sympton. The "Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome" is a specific disease that has as a symptom an immune deficiency. You are correct that other factors can cause the same symptom, but when referring to this specific disease, the presence of HIV is as much an indicator as the suppressed immune response--because a disease is whatever we define it to be.
By capitalizing at the end of that sentence, what you're doing is like saying "many things can cause a strep throat." Only one thing causes strep throat, but many can cause a sore throat.
Suggesting that AIDS (the symptoms, not the defective definition) can be caused by non-HIV is perfectly reasonable. Clearly HIV is a big cause. Chemotherapy would be another cause.
No, you are confusing diseases and symptoms, which are semantically distinct concepts in medicine even when they use the same words. Symptoms are directly observable but "diseases" are abstract concepts and so only exist as defined.
An immune deficiency (a symptom) can be acquired many ways, but the Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (the disease) is by definition linked to HIV. That might be confusing to you but frankly that is your problem.
Build a man a fire, he's warm for one night. Set him on fire, and he's warm for the rest of his life.
the intellectual arrogance here is overwhelming sometimes.
Science is the process of winnowing the not-true from the true. If we give greater credence to the resulting conclusions, does that make us arrogant? I suppose it does because we won't consider all points of view equally. Tough shit though, it's justified arrogance. If you don't believe in the results of the scientific method I invite you to think hard the next time you go to the doctor.
Learn more about how we know HIV causes AIDS
Build a man a fire, he's warm for one night. Set him on fire, and he's warm for the rest of his life.
The rules of science don't allow one to prove, only to disprove. So you can offer an alternative hypothesis and have people try to disprove it or you can disprove the hypothesis that you are refuting.
Correct. How did he get modded to zero?
certain strains of human papilloma virus CAUSE cervical cancer. some cause genital warts. many are asymptomatic. You can be infected by more than one strain--even at the same time. The recent vaccine for this is expensive and only effective against the main cervical-cancer causing strains.
it also can cause types of penile and oral cancer. it may present as warts, or may not. Your body fights it off with time but you don't necessarily know whether you have it. Something like 50-75% of all who've had sex will get HPV at some point.
Does the name Pavlov ring a bell?
You keep throwing that virusmyth website out- You do realize that right there at the top it's got an "S" replaced by a dollar sign? Nothing screams 'crackpot persecution conspiracy' quite like that does.
We take the time to build footpaths rather than telling people not to walk. Taking the vaccine does not cause problems for others like stopping people from driving would.
Most Christians are waiting in hope for an AIDS virus so that all those people won't need to suffer and die. He is just an asshat.
Let's review. The original claim:
The response (paraphrased):
To break it down a little further, the original claim made was universal. A universal claim can be disproven by a single counterexample; e.g., if you claim that there's no such thing as a black sheep, I can present a black sheep as disproof of that claim. On the other hand, if you'd claimed that there are very few black sheep (or the grandparent poster had claimed that HIV kills nearly all of its victims), then I'd have a considerably tougher time disproving this weaker claim.
But as it stands, your attempt at eye-rolling fails it.
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca