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Experts Claim HIV Patients Made Non-Infectious
Misanthrope writes to tell us that Swiss scientists are claiming that with proper treatment HIV patients can be made non-infectious. "The statement's headline statement says that 'after review of the medical literature and extensive discussion,' the Swiss Federal Commission for HIV / AIDS resolves that, 'An HIV-infected person on antiretroviral therapy with completely suppressed viraemia ("effective ART") is not sexually infectious, i.e. cannot transmit HIV through sexual contact.'"
It's worth noting that this finding is only valid if there are no other STIs present--so if you've got the clap -and- HIV, you'll still be more likely to transmit it.
Wasn't there an article a short while ago about how treating concurrent STIs also tended to decrease the rate of AIDs infection in an area? Perhaps this is related?
In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure dome decree
It is my understanding anti-retroviral treatment is very expensive. For this to have any effect on the spread of HIV, every infected person in the third world needs treatment.
I wonder how many months in Iraq it would cost to do something like that.
They covered their bases. This is one of the most informative and honest articles I've seen in a long time. They make a point of saying, more than once, that they're not positive a treated person is not infectious, but their certainty is equal to the certainty with which the scientific community asserted in 1986 that kissing cannot spread HIV (an assertion that continues to hold up to this day).
Interestingly, they are not recommending the treatment for widespread use, because many people have trouble rigorously adhering to a treatment schedule, and even a little slip in the treatment could result in the creation of a resistant strain of HIV. I'd hate to be the doctor who has to pass that judgement: "Before I treat you, how do I know you won't skip an occasional treatment, thereby creating a scourge of humankind that's even harder to treat than the HIV we have now?"
The Internet is full. Go away.
Those were my first thoughts, make this available as a way to protect the community.
If we can do bullshit like keep two ounces of mouthwash off a plane, while letting one ounce on, then we can get effective disease prevention to our population.
Then I thought more, since I live in America where reality based communities don't alway align with the faith based government.
My government hates sex. My government hates gays. My government thinks AIDS is a gay disease. AIDS is a sexually transmitted disease, and my government is not going to subsidize someones sex life.
My government will do nothing but continue to say abstinence is the only way to remain disease free.
Captcha = unfair
>You want the average human to stop doing what evolution has spent 300 million years programming them to do?
Really? Evolution has been progrmaming people to kill their mates through disease? Whoa, I've missed a lot in sex ed!
I love how only the most base animal desires get propped out by evolution. I love how people just never say "Hey evolution has instilled logic and compassion into humans." Or "Evolution has instilled moral action" Or "Evolution has instilled guilt and conscious thought." Instead its always fuck and kill, and if you think thats all evolution can do then youre sorely mistaken.
The real question is the ease of being able to control one's sexual desires vs the the control compassion and empathy have on us. Considering your comment could be (and has) been used to justify everything from rape to office sexual harassment, its interesting how society hasnt given up on some basic moral structures. Evolution again! Tricky aint it?
Our healthcare system in the US works quite well if you have a job and insurance (that's one hell of an incentive to get out of bed in the morning and drag your ass to work!). I have personally witnessed "no expense spared" treatments which saved the lives of friends or their children. I work in healthcare and I get to see firsthand the technology the doctors have at their disposal to diagnose and treat health issues. Newsflash: Canada has slums too! In fact little towns called reserves are every bit as bad as any ghetto in the US. The best country to compare the US to is Canada. The reason our slums aren't as large and widespread is partially due to universal health care. Medical expenses are a leading cause of bankruptcy which is a major cause for poverty. Without this sword hanging above your family it's a much more peaceful and healthy place. Ethnically and culturally Canada resembles the US. If you did an analysis the key difference is single payer health care.
And no I haven't watched Micheal Moores propaganda piece, however Canada is an example of how even bureaucratic government wrangling does not obliterate the benefit of universal health care. Of course We lack the sheer incompetences that is the current US admin. Perhaps if it was instituted while enough of the Bush cronies lead the various government agencies, it'd fail as spectacularly as FEMA did during Katrina.
The US problem is they believe free market fixes everything. However this ideology is flawed as very few things exist in an ideal free market. The US health care system isn't a truly free market. Canada's system is probably closer to an ideal free market then the US system. We have a single payer, pay as you go system. Right now it's crunching under a worse case scenario but that will fade soon. All tax payers pay a set amount, and most services are private. From hospital supply companies, drug companies, the MRI scanning company, to the GP. All private businesses to negotiated with a central body for payment. It gives the people a better deal and actually reduces bureaucracy vs the US system. Where there are dozens of insurance companies all doing essentially the same jobs all working off the same actuary tables, in Canada we just have a central body to regulate our finances for health. The goal of the organization is singular "to make people better" while the US system has mixed goals of "produce most profit" and "to make people better". The lack of a profit margin at every level also helps. Canada health does not aim to make 60% profit off your treatment before factoring the profit of all private companies involved. This alone would negate any and all efficiencies the US systems may have. State of the art treatments are invented and used here as well. Likely similar to the ratio of our populations.
"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy."
For every one antibiotic rx I write for an illness that probably doesn't need it (generally because I am a wimp) I have to convince another ten people who are certain that they need antibiotics... that they don't.
Generally the reason most physicians prescribe inappropriately is because asshats like Mr "I have not had a doctor do, or say anything to me that I did not already know since I was about 10" know better that they absolutely do need antibiotics (when they obviously don't). It takes thirty seconds to write the prescription and sometimes thirty minutes to escape the asshat.
I actually had a complaint letter written to the CEO of the hospital where I worked a few years back from a parent who brought their child into the ER with what was obviously a viral syndrome. Their letter literally said I brought my child to the ER to get a prescription for antibiotics, not to be told that he didn't need antibiotics. And I get several complaints yearly from irate people who didn't like my answer that they didn't need antibiotics. I've never gotten a complaint when I prescribed them.
So you can't have it both ways. If you want a doctor who has real clinical acumen, you can't also have him be a prescription vending machine.