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AIDS Can Fight AIDS
dptalia writes "Scientists at the University of Pennsylvania have announced that they have engineered a strain of the AIDS virus that fights AIDS. This strain of AIDS works like a vaccine and improved the immune system of the test subjects. After three years on this new therapy, no side effects have been observed."
... for this to turn into something big, but I think it's a hopeful start. A lot of people are laboring under the mistaken belief that the drug cocktails available now will somehow stop AIDS. But even if somehow made available inexpensively worldwide (which ain't gonna happen any time soon), it still wouldn't be enough. We need radically better treatment. It needs to be inexpensive, easy to administer, and something that only needs to be administered once.
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Saying Java is nice because it works on all OS's is like saying that anal sex is nice because it works on all genders.
Um, that's like adding dry wooden supports to a house that's on fire... not going to work.
You need some way of blocking the virus from exploiting the new T-cells as "fuel". This new virus is kind of like a fire ring; Burn/infect it first in a controlled way to stop the real fire/infection from spreading further.
If you've already got HIV, what have you got to lose?
In countries where education is available, and methods of protection are cheaply available, yes HIV and AIDS are controllable. But in the place where HIV and AIDS first orginated, the virus and the disease are widespread. Drugs are not widely available, and education in the disease and safe practices are lacking. Hence HIV is spreading at a fast rate and is affecting many many women and children in particular, because of the willful ignorance of husbands and men in their society. Witness the South African government minister who said that showering an encounter protected him from HIV. That attitude combined with the general attitudes toward women in that part of the world make HIV and AIDS a lot harder to combat and control. Judging by the rest of the world's inability to really care about Africa (millions have died from war and disease in the last 10 years), this problem--no this epidemic--will be with us for some time. This new AIDS virus-attacking-virus, if it can be cheap enough, will certainly go a long ways to help. But my point is that while we in the west have the means to attack the problem and prevent it in the future, there's a lot of work to be done in Africa and other places in order to change attitudes about HIV and AIDS, and protect people from them.
If we were more agressive with quarantining we wouldn't need to wait for drugs, or drug research. Sounds like our morals are already wanting if we're allowing more infections to occur because we value people's 'privacy' (the right to carry a lethal virus undetected and spread it around?!) over the lives of their victims.
occultae nullus est respectus musicae - originally a Greek proverb
I think the moral question is more that quarantine assumes that someone with the virus would knowingly infect others. It's quite possible for someone with the virus to go about a relatively normal life and the means of transmission are few and very well defined - by segregating that person from the rest of society you are raising some serious moral issues; essentially you're saying they can't be trusted not to commit acts which might spread the virus. That being the case, why stop at HIV? You could then go on to make a case for segregating sufferers of lots of other illnesses. Carry on down that route and you end up with a society where the sick are a sub-class.
Long-term parental abuse of a child does permanent psychological damage to the child. It frequently turns the child into an abuser themselves, potentially of children and potentially in the wider sense of becoming some kind of sociopath. So it's basically contagious. Like HIV, it doesn't always transmit. But the proliferation of child abuse demonstrates that it goes on enough to keep passing it from generation from generation. So lets isolate parents. You know, keep parents from having the chance to beat their kids. Quarantine is a viable way to break the spread of anything that is contagious and sufficiently unpleasant in our minds, right?
Sorry, no sale. In any good and reasonable society, we don't punish people for what they MIGHT do. Otherwise, I'd have you locked up right now on the off chance that you'll strangle someone to death with your bare hands or buy an SUV or something. HIV sucks, but it's completely possible to protect yourself. Everyone who catches HIV through sex played at part in that by not engaging in the vigilance necessary to protect themselves. Condoms are cheap and bountiful. Even in places like Africa, they're emminently affordable -- people just don't like to use them. That doesn't obviate people with HIV from their own responsibility to not infect others of course. People with HIV that have unprotected sex should be charged with murder and thrown in an isolated jail cell forever. But the person who didn't get that stranger they met in a bar to wear a condom has gotten a delayed death sentence for irresponsibility.
You'll forgive me then if I find your assertions unconvincing, and indeed morally wanting. I value freedom above simple survival. Rats survive; Humans should expect to do a bit more, to have at least a shred of dignity and respect for the freedom of others.