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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.'"
I promise...... Trust me....
I have HIV and I haven't used a condom in several years with dozens of sexual partners.
Nobodoy has called me back saying they have AIDS, so I must not be infectious.
One can only hope that the treatments can be made available at a decent price, so that the folks who are most likely to pass it on--poor people who don't know how to use contraception and the like--will be able to be treated.
Unlikely, though, I dare say...those drug companies do love their income.
In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure dome decree
If this is true, then it effectively means that the world can be AIDS free in a generation. I'm willing to bet it's not going to happen, though. The drug companies have no interest in this.
My UID is prime. Hah!
Can you imagine the shitstorm that would ensue if they're wrong? It takes a whole lot of balls to not just put your reputation on the line like this, but the lives of thousands of people too. I really hope they're right.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
but it does make life possible for those around you.
I sucks but its a step in the right direction. (But will any company take the next step; after all, once YOU're dead, the disease is eradicated.)
Sucks to think like an actuary...
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
I've got some shocking news for you: even if you don't get HIV, you're going to die
It's in the article but non-infectious here does not mean it's impossible for HIV transmission during sex. It's only improbable and of course the probability of transfer is unknown - as even in the studies done with these drugs other protection measures were used (of course). Furthermore this is not new; rather it's a statement made by a few experts based on older research. The statement is meant to be a standard taken throughout the healthcare world.
"What lies behind us, and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us." Ralph Waldo Emerson
I still wouldn't take that kind of risk even if the person that had AIDS (Not necessarily to my knowledge) wasn't "infectious."
Every other STD out there is still just as infectious/contagious, and there are STDs that are more common than HIV. If people would stop sleeping with everybody, there probably wouldn't be any need for this. You're still gonna die a horrible disease ridden death. Work on finding a cure instead of giving HIV patients an excuse to have sex anyway.
You're asking people other than you to change their behavior based on your principles?
If you can figure out how to accomplish that reliably, then every government, armed service, advertising agency, and school wants to speak with you right now.
In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure dome decree
I swear, sometimes the tags are the best part about /.
Thanks for the laugh
Murphey's fighting Occam, and we're in the stands.
You know, for guys in there late 40s, and have good access to healthcare they can expect a good quality of life for almost (if not exactly) as long as their non infected peers. That's not to say it doesn't suck, but HAART treatment is pretty good.
From where I stand, AIDS could eventually be a species killer like in 'I am Legend'. Considering no one who contracts this virus survives.
Just like drug companies had no interest in eliminating small pox? There are plenty of diseases to go around, and more of them turn up all the time.
Admittedly, I'm too young to appreciate the politics that went on when small pox was "eradicated", so it would be nice if anyone can point out what's so different about the small pox issue and the AIDS issue.
If this is proven to be true, would anyone who knowingly has sex when 'infectious' be culpable of criminal negligence? if:
A. you can easily get the treatment to become non-infectious
and
B. it's a well known procedure that you would have a reasonable chance of hearing about
IANAL, but i'd like to know what one might think
Is it just sexually? What about blood transfusions? What about sharing needles?
AIDS is spreading rapidly in different parts of the world by different means. In Africa and India/Asia, it's spreading because of unprotected sex. In eastern Europe and Russia, it's being spread predominately from dirty needles used for drugs.
It is your duty as modern enlightened people to downmod whoever mentions "abstinence" as a response to sexually transmitted infections.
well its obviously not currently working, so i think thats why they're still trying to find a cure/preventative.
HIV can also spread through "dirty" needles [needles re-used in medicine] blood transfusions + rape. then there's the practice of inheriting wives whose husbands have died from AIDS- those who refuse are often rejected by society and left to fend for themselves which frankly is a tough choice for someone who in all probability has children that would die from malnutrition/lack of medical care otherwise.
Sigs are too short to say anything truly profound so read the above post instead.
they've been able to fairly reliably block mother->featus AIDS transmission for a while now
If you cannot keep politics out of your moderation remove yourself from the Mod Lottery.. NOW!
It seems worth pointing out that most people who don't get it are also going to die.
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
Abstinence really is difficult when reproduction is one of the strongest biological urges humans have.
Not to mention the fact that sex isn't the only way to spread HIV (needles, blood transfusions). If there's a way to deactivate it for good, do it.
Is abstinence really that difficult?
You want the average human to stop doing what evolution has spent 300 million years programming them to do? Its kind of like asking bears to not eat trout. Its what they do!
"I am the king of the Romans, and am superior to rules of grammar!"
-Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor (1368-1437)
If you mean they do not carry a sufficient load of antigens and viral packets, then perhaps this is the case.
If you mean they carry such a low number that they are unlikely (below 1 percent) to infect someone through non-invasive sex, then I could see that.
If you mean the virus is basically in a semi-dormant stage, then sure.
But that does not mean the risk factor is 0.000000001 percent. It means it's most likely a very small number.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Since every other post on here seems to be by someone who hasn't read the article... here it is:
Swiss HIV experts have produced the first-ever consensus statement to say that HIV-positive individuals on effective antiretroviral therapy and without sexually transmitted infections (STIs) are sexually non-infectious. The statement is published in this week's Bulletin of Swiss Medicine (Bulletin des médecins suisses). The statement also discusses the implications for doctors; for HIV-positive people; for HIV prevention; and the legal system.
The statement, on behalf of the Swiss Federal Commission for HIV / AIDS was authored by four of Switzerland's foremost HIV experts: Prof Pietro Vernazza, of the Cantonal Hospital in St. Gallen, and President of the Swiss Federal Commission for HIV / AIDS; Prof Bernard Hirschel from Geneva University Hospital; Dr Enos Bernasconi of the Lugano Regional Hospital; and Dr Markus Flepp, president of the Swiss Federal Office of Public Health's Sub-committee on the clincal and therapeutic aspects of HIV / AIDS.
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 goes on to say that this statement is valid as long as:
* the person adheres to antiretroviral therapy, the effects of which must be evaluated regularly by the treating physician, and
* the viral load has been suppressed ( 40 copies/ml) for at least six months, and
* there are no other sexually transmitted infections.
The article begins by stating that the Commission "realises that medical and biologic data available today do not permit proof that HIV-infection during effective antiretroviral therapy is impossible, because the non-occurrence of an improbable event cannot be proven. If no transmission events were observed among 100 couples followed for two years, for instance, there might still be some such events if 10,000 couples are followed for ten years. The situation is analogous to 1986, when the statement 'HIV cannot be transmitted by kissing' was publicised. This statement has not been proven, but after 20 years' experience its accuracy appears highly plausible."
It then states that the evidence for the Commission's current assertion about the relationship between treatment and sexual HIV transmisson is much more informed than what was available in 1986 regarding the transmission of HIV through kissing.
For example, they note, Quinn and colleagues found that in sero-discordant couples the risk of transmission depended on the viral load of the HIV-positive partner, and refer also to a prospective study of 393 heterosexual sero-discordant couples from Castilla and colleagues found that there were no infections among partners of persons on antiretroviral therapy, compared to a rate of transmission of 8.6% among partners of untreated patients. They also note that transmission from mother to newborn also depends on the maternal viral load, and can be avoided by taking antiretroviral therapy.
They go on to assert that effective antiretroviral therapy eliminates HIV from genital secretions. They say that HIV RNA, measured in sperm, declines below the limits of detection on antiretroviral therapy, and that HIV RNA is also below the limits of female genital secretions is, as a rule, during effective antiretroviral therapy. "As a rule," they write, "it rises after, not before, an increase in plasma viral load."
They also assert that although cell-associated viral genomes are present in genital secretions, even on antiretroviral therapy, these are not infectious virions since "HIV-containing cells in sperm lack markers of viral proliferations such as circular LTR-DNA."
>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?
I think TFA concentrates on sexual transmission because dirty needles have really become rarer in Switzerland, and thus play a less significant role in the AIDS transmission compared to before the introduction of these efforts (or compared to other countries where such efforts don't exist).
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
Why?
Just because an idea is popular doesn't make it right.
You're asking people other than you to change their behavior based on your principles?
I'd venture to guess that not having sex if you are infected with AIDS is a pretty universal principle, much in the same way that murder is universally frowned upon.
There is no "I disagree" mod for a reason. Flamebait, Troll, and Overrated are not substitutes.
Scientists come up with a device to make HIV patients non-infections.
This scientific breakthrough will bring hope to millions of people infected with the virus.
Sources indicate it will be named 'condom'.
Is abstinence really that difficult?
Historically it has certainly proven to be. Not everyone on this planet is educated, has enough wealth that prostitution isn't tempting, or even is in a position to say no if they wish to. You're not talking about the abstinence of a few wealthy individuals but of everyone on the planet infected with an STD.
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
and cats. there are many types of feline immuno virii. my cat had one. don't forget cats.
How is it difficult? Can you give me a good reason?
Just because an idea is popular doesn't make it right.
the CDC.
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
Visit CryptoGnome in his home.
The act is the biological urge, not so much the end result.
There is a lot more sex for pleasure than for reproduction.
Gone!
Get your own free personal location tracker
Visit CryptoGnome in his home.
I saw an article a year or two ago (Wired, IIRC) that postulated that if you solved AIDS worldwide, you'd have just as many deaths from starvation due to overpopulation. If only it were as simple as solving AIDS, which is, in and of itself, an incredibly hard problem...
If I mod you up, it doesn't necessarily mean I agree with what you've said, sorry.
how was this overrated when i didn't have a rating?!?
Those of us who think they know everything annoy those of us who do.
Please watch "kids" (1995ish).
-Clio
Karma: Bad (mostly from not giving a fuck)
Blog: http://clintjcl.wordpress.com
It's not that bad after the first couple years.
the good ground has been paved over by suicidal maniacs
It's cheap, small, easily mass-produced, easy to use, 100% effective... It's called a CONDOM.
How I wish the various religious groups and governments would endorse proper sex education and provision of a plentiful supply of condoms, instead of pushing the abstinence only bulls---, which has completely failed.
So, even if they are 100% absolutely right for the samples they have, at the time the experiment was conducted, that confidence must fall as you increase the range of HIV viruses and the range of time they have to mutate.
You must also consider that we're on some Nth generation of anti-virals because AIDS has mutated to develop resistance to all of the others. The second that happens with the current generation is the second the risk goes from near-zero to infinity, and nobody knows for sure when that moment will be. Hence the use of all kinds of toxic substances and anti-virals mixed together, so that immunity from one won't help, so minimizing the risk of mutant strains surviving. But you know that they will, sooner or later, and that when they do, they will spread. It might be tomorrow, but I'm guessing it's actually not too likely this side of 2020.
Of course, if everyone considers it safe, and takes no precautions, I imagine the probability of such a mutation surviving and spreading will go up. As such, even if it is "safe" for the moment, it can't be safe forever and when it does develop resistance, it may take years - or decades - for the resistant strain to even get detected.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Firstable, AIDS is not an infection, HIV is. And there is no law against people with HIV/AIDS having sex anywhere that I am aware of, so it is not a "universal principle". In many states and countries, people with HIV are required to inform their partner that they have HIV prior to having sex, however.
-- Julien Pierre http://www.madbrain.com/blog
Doesn't having a child rapidly increase the rate at which AIDS develops for a HIV infected woman not on retro-viral drugs?
Because trying to get people to abstain from sex just doesn't work.
http://www.economist.com/science/displaystory.cfm?story_id=9831189
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/04/13/AR2007041301003.html
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/18136717/
http://thegodcomplex.blogspot.com/2007/12/abstinence-only-education-does-not-work.html
-- Julien Pierre http://www.madbrain.com/blog
Just because kids are stupid, doesn't mean abstinence shouldn't be taught. It should be, along with different types of birth control, and how they work. Plus information on different STDs and the risks of transmitting/contracting them.
Just because an idea is popular doesn't make it right.
In 1987, they discovered that if you force patients to become programmers, the chances of them infecting anyone drops to about 1 in 22 million.
You really don't need to study all of those years and get and MD behind your name to know that this is wrong.
"Empathise with stupidity, and you're halfway to thinking like an idiot." - Iain M. Banks
Don't all jump at once.
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.
We're working on it, give us time.
"Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
Why? What's wrong with you?
I have a strong suspicion that these communities in which AIDS are prevalent have never been properly educated on what AIDS is and how it is spread. There's a lot of superstitious claptrap surrounding it, the origins of which I'm also suspicious of. One such superstition is that if you shag a virgin you'll be cured in no time. Guess what effect that has.
"Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
That's it, I'm going to take a left off Goldney Ave, drive down Clifton Vale for a bit, and tweak your nose for making such a silly comment.
"Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
You have the poorest understanding of evolution, biology and sexual education of anyone outside of Kansas of which anyone outside of Kansas should be proud. Genetic Evolution such as Natural Selection of Aleles and general natural selection still has not been logically or scientifically refuted as of yet. How does creationism or intelligent design imply the creation of morality? I am moral because I realize the effect of the disparity between rich and poor has on humanity and thus am less likely to be killed in a revolution (thus increasing my likelyhood of natural selection). Why do animal mothers protect their young? There is no scientific answer as to why and they certainly don't suffer the compunctions of an enforced morality. Evolution specifically leads us to avoid disease, but Creationism wants us to embrace it as God's will. Is it God's will to allow someone to die of hunger while he has given us the knowledge to avoid diseased meats?
Wow. That's really... ignorant.
/. is clinically dead then.
I guess most of
Sex is great and all, but you'd be surprised how good life can be without it.
"Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
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.
Shit, i hate getting deployed and having to go more than 3 months. I can't even imagine getting to deploy to Iraq and having to go 7 to 14 months.
So who wants to be the one to test this hypothesis?
On another note, how can you say for sure if this even works? Usually whenever an AIDS vaccine is tried in humans, it is given to a population of people at high risk of getting HIV(usually gay men). How can you tell if something like this stops people from spreading it, when their partners are interacting with other, infectious people? They are likely to get HIV regardless, if not from the non-infectious person, then from someone else. How do you figure out which partner gave who what?
Beware of bugs in the above code; I have only proved it correct, not tried it.
Maybe English is his fifth language or something.
It's rather silly to dismiss an otherwise valid point because of poor grammar.
Obama likes poor people so much, he wants to make more of them.
It wasn't as fun as having sex, but I had made the decision to not take post-exposure prophylaxis after a needlestick in an HIV positive patient when I learned his viral load was undetectable. Having taken PEP before (crixivan gave me a kidney stone and I pretty much puked non-stop) I know the adverse effects. However, PEP decreases the chance of transmission significantly in the case of blood or sexual exposure to HIV.... but you have to take it for a month.
In my case the infinitesimal increase in a miniscule risk that I would contract HIV from a patient with an undetectable viral load because I didn't take PEP was not worth the certain risk that I would feel craptastic for 4 weeks and possibly have another kidney stone.
And I didn't seroconvert. That was four years ago, when we were only mostly sure.
Once you take a disease and extend the average time from diagnosis to death past a certain point that is greater than the average life expectancy, it ceases to be a death sentence and becomes a chronic illness. If you contract HIV at age 40, and on average people live 35 years after diagnosis, and your life expectancy is 73 years, HIV becomes like diabetes. Its just a matter of extending that time from diagnosis to death long enough.
This is just as much about adults as it is about kids. Most humans have urges to have sex they can't hold indefinitely. Abstinence will prevent HIV, STDs and unwanted pregnancies in theory, but it is impossible actually to put into practice. Do you actually know anyone who will abstain from sex their whole life ? And if you are talking about abstinence before marriage, as is apparently taught in some places, that excludes a whole category of people who can't get married - gays, and who are most at risk for HIV. Also, some straight girls who pledged to remain "virgins" before marriage have substituted intercourse with other even higher-risk behavior like anal sex because they just don't know any better.
What we need a comprehensive sex education program that focuses on safe sex, contraception, and preventing STDs/HIV. I don't think abstinence should deserve more than a footnote in such a program because we already know teaching it alone doesn't work.
Note that 16 states have already rejected funds for abstinence-only education, the most recent of which being Arizona.
FYI :
http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/21606.php
http://www.avert.org/abstinence.htm
http://www.azstarnet.com/metro/221980
http://lawprofessors.typepad.com/reproductive_rights/2008/01/ariz-gov-napoli.html
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A26623-2004Dec1.html
-- Julien Pierre http://www.madbrain.com/blog
Other infections (which of course rev up the immune system to fight them) cause temporary spikes in HIV viral load. They say that to be non-infectious, there must not be any STI (Sexually transmitted infections) present. But what about infections that aren't sexually transmitted? Their presence will still rev up the immune system, causing the temporary spike in viral load. Different infectious agents cause widely differing amount of HIV spiking, probably depending on which particular branches of the immune system are revved up to fight the particular infectious agent.
But it seems they're saying that this spiking only happens with STI's, and that infections that don't happen to be transmitted sexually won't cause HIV levels to spike. I applaud the work, and I don't want to rain on anyone's parade here, but I wonder whether there's a hint of wishful thinking that got mixed up in this mostly logical argument.
Unless they can state that non-sexually transmitted infections don't cause this spiking there's a hole in the argument. (Perhaps there's some crucial work I've missed on the whole HIV "spiking" phenomenon?) Wish I had more answers, but so far I still have more questions.
Hide all sigs: Click HELP+Prefs (top), VIEWING (last on right), DISABLE SIGS (3rd on left) and SAVE (hidden at bottom).
I agree. There's no real need to research further. Spread is prevented, we can ease the suffering of those who have it and use propaganda to convince those who are clean that God has smote the wicked. Problem solved.
"Please describe the scientific nature of the 'whammy'" - Agent Scully
A lot of people in mixed HIV status relationships already have.
-- Julien Pierre http://www.madbrain.com/blog
That box of chocolates you were considering getting your honey for V-Day? You want to give him/her diabetes and coronary artery disease?
Driving over the posted speed limit, using your cell phone while driving, or driving with less than eight good hours sleep last night with your partner in the car? You want to kill him/her in a fiery motor vehicle accident?
Taking your honey on vacation this year to some exotic locale? Well the extra radiation exposure from the plane flight might cause him/her ultimately to die from cancer. Not to mention the risk of malaria, dengue, etc.
Perhaps you can't pull the pole out of your puritanical ass long enough to realize that the reason you have singled out sex as the object of your ire has nothing to do with the risk to which you place your partner and everything to do with the tremendous amount of cognitive dissonance rattling around in your uptight little brain.
However, consider: those millions of years of evolution made us complex thinking animals who defy the black and white reasoning that you seem to believe rules our decision-making. People's choices reflect the sum of multiple factors with varying levels of influence. A mother who gives her child an ice-cream because he's skinned his knee is not a bad person who has no love for her son. Certainly that sort of use of sugary treats as a comfort may ultimately cause him health problems later on. Mom may even know that.... but her baby is crying and she knows what will make him feel better then. So she may make a decision that is not the perfectly best course of action for her child.
But you weren't talking about an ice cream and a skinned knee, you were talking about faggots having buttsecks. That's different!
No one ever did die of HIV/AIDS. The opportunistic diseases, though, have been a serious problem.
Just because kids are stupid, doesn't mean abstinence shouldn't be taught.
That's not what GP said. He said it doesn't work, not that it shouldn't be taught.
Abstinence should always be taught. But it should never be the only thing that is taught because it has been repeatedly shown that teaching only abstinence is ineffective public policy. If you teach only abstinence, experience shows that more kids will die of sexually transmitted diseases than if you teach about both abstinence and condoms. (and likewise, there will be more unwanted pregnancies, but that's OT.)
This is so well established at this point that anyone who crows "abstinence only" anymore either wants kids to die or is willfully sticking their fingers in their ears and going "nah nah nah I won't listen to the evidence" because they prefer their ideology to practical results that save lives.
I stole this sig from someone cleverer than me.
Yes. Yes, it is, for very good evolutionary reasons: organisms that don't find abstinence really difficult don't end up producing a lot of offspring. None of our ancestors were abstainers. We're all descended from a long line of fuckers.
Of course, sometimes recessive genes manifest, or people get infected with the meme for the most unnatural of all the perversions, chastity. If you're not into sex, that's your right.
But whatever your own choice, you can sit around and moralize and tsk-tsk all you want about how people shouldn't have sex unless it's under whatever set of conditions your socialization approves of; or you can recognize that the vast majority of people are going to continue to spend a lot of effort on getting laid, and how we can shape policies to minimize harm and maximize happiness in the context of that truth.
"A ship in harbor is safe -- but that is not what ships are built for." -- John A. Shedd (as best as I can figure from Google).
Doing anything that is at all interesting entails taking some risk.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
I hope you aren't working in the sciences, or as a doctor...if so, you should have learned long ago how dangerous "100%" is. If you're going to be informative, at least be completely so...HIV does not have a 100% mortality rate. A few ways to look at this: 1) No one dies from HIV, they die from complication brought about by HIV. or 2) if 1 person dies from say...a car accident after being infected, there's no longer a 100% mortality rate. 3) Latent infections. Some rare people can be infected for very long period without showing significant ill effects. How long? Who knows, it's only been recognized for about 30 years.
lol! forking over $$$ for child support & working most of the time will eliminate most of that urge and being a fat, ugly geek will insure what remains will never be utilized. 7-14 months is nothing. Try 5-7+ years at a time as an adult.
the good ground has been paved over by suicidal maniacs
Two people are sitting on a couch. They just ate lunch. There're two candy bars on the table in front of those people. One person is on a diet, and "cannot" have the candy; the other is not. Who do you think wants the candy more?
Yes, it's very hard.
StoneCypher is Full of BS
patents? with so much copyright coverage stuff lately I had to reread the headline several times...
Hmm, that's only 3 reasons. Let me help
4. ????
5. PROFIT!
Shit, that didn't work either...
I put the 't' in electrical engineering.
Evolution instilled fucking : a few hundred million years. Evolution instilled logic : a few hundred thousand to maybe 1 or 2 million. Modern human : a few ten thousand ? One hundred thousand ? So.... You really freaking think something as basic and instinctual will be overrided by a recent development ? Please demonstrate it. All I know is demonstrable is that the most basic emotion (fear etc...) and our basic instinct relatively easily override our logic thinking. Not the other way around. Last I heard sex is also part of this, even if some people refuse adamantly to see it that way.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
Instead of seeing a person as a patient, and quite frankly, the single most experienced person with their body, you see an "asshat".
False dichotomy. Patients can be asshats. If you are working at a McDonald's and some jerk keeps on demanding you serve him a Whopper is he or is he not an asshat? Is it worth arguing about for 30 minutes?
You, someone who thinks that 30 minutes is WAY to long to discuss a persons treatment.
I'm not a doctor and I think 30 minutes is WAY to long to convince someone they do not need antibiotics when you are not going to give them antibiotics anyway and there are others in need.
I have no doubt that if you went into a restaurant, and the waiter told you what you were going to order, you would tell him no, and order what you actually like. Why in the world would you think that someone would take less part in their own health.
A bartender would have been a much better analogy. If you want to a restaurant and were obviously blitzed out of your mind, you might demand to be served, but the bartender will probably tell you no. You'll eventually leave or be thrown out and try to get your drink on elsewhere.
Likewise, if you go to a doctor for antibiotics and his professional opinion is that you don't need them, then leave. Get a second opinion if you think he's a moron.
"Experts find way to make sexually active HIV folks non-infectious."
Today, tens of thousands of hopeful HIV men were gathered in a room as experts promised they had figured out a way to make them all non-infectious.
Once the men were inside, they locked the doors and proceeded to castrate them all.
Poor bastards.
I'm Tom Tucker, with Channel 9 news.
If I knew the wedgies I gave you back in 6th grade would have resulted in this . . . I might have taken a moments pause.
Evolution in very simple terms means "the members of the species who have the most babies are the ones who continue it". Logic would appear to suggest that in most cases, the members of the species best suited to their environment are the ones who have the most babies.
If intelligence isn't necessary in order for one monkey to reproduce a bit more than his rather dumb cousin, then it won't have much impact on which one makes the most baby monkeys.
So yes, evolution does have a hand in encouraging people to have sex. It is only human intelligence and compassion which acts as a brake to that.
No, this is absolutely NOT the case, and shows a complete misunderstanding of the story.
If we exclude the 3rd world for the moment, 99% of HIV transmission in the West is between people who don't know they are infected. How the hell is this meant to prevent that? Highly active anti-retroviral therapy (HAART) is a huge pill burden, and is usually only given to people currently when their CD4 cell counts drop below a certain threshold anyway, but even if that does change, they still need to be diagnosed. Most people get diagnosed because they're showing symptoms, and by then it's too late - if they're sexually active they may well have already passed it on. At this stage they will be told not to have sex, and 99% of normal people will listen, but the damage is done. Even if they become uninfective, so what? Nothing's changed.
If we include the 3rd world in on it then we also have the problems of drug costs, which you glossed over, but that's really not the problem here.
The only big development I can see MAYBE is for pregnant mothers, and a reduction in HIV transmission through needle-stick injuries, and the fact that it inherently shows development in HAART, which is great.
HAART isn't easy by the way. Whilst non-nucleoside reverse transcriptase inhibitor-based therapies are easy enough, and have few side effects, resistance develops in most patients, who then have to progress onto things like protease-inhbitors, which have problems like greatly increasing cholesterol (and hence probably vascular disease), huge pill burdens, metabolic problems, and such.
Is abstinence really that difficult?
Every wise man must know that it's foolish to rely on people for safety, mainly on people's will.
You just got troll'd!
Fact: Everything I say is fiction.
Who is willing to relay their lifes on it?
I mean, that who non-HIV positive is willing to have sex with a HIV positive using the drug?
Oh wait, never mind this is slashdot.
©God
It isn't so much random-druggie-stabbers that the nurses have to worry about, but their own negligence. If they aren't following proper procedure they can cause a Needle Stick Injury (poking themselves or others with a used sharp).
If you look at most hospital regulations, the drugs that they receive are normal antivirals. HIV is - of course - a virus, so antivirals are a common treatment, but that does not necessarily make it an HIV only medicine. They are not "only available to members of certain professions who have been exposed accidentally," they are available to anyone with a prescription and good insurance. They are amazingly expensive, and make you wish you were dead (intense pain, bad side effects).
As for transmission rate of HIV from needle stick injuries: 3 in 1000, for standard gage needles - that's without immediate antiviral treatment. Mostly likely your patient doesn't have HIV/AIDS, so your chances are quite a bit better than that 99.7% chance of staying clean.
*There is a major chance of contracting Hep B from the injury (up to 40% transmission rate for standard gage needles), but only if you were stupid enough to pass on your Hepatitis vaccine.
Just -1, Troll talking to another.
The man who pounds another man's face to pulp is decried as an animal and inhuman. In nature, animals of the same species regularly rip each other to shreds.
The man who pounds a child to death with a rock is decried as an animal and inhuman. In nature, a bear will bite and batter a cub to death in order to make a female receptive to mate.
The man who forces sex unwillingly upon a woman is decried as an animal and inhuman. In nature, young bucks will stalk does -- often in gangs of three or four -- force them to the ground, then engage in non-consensual copulation.
The man who has intercourse with a 15-year-old girl is decried as an animal and inhuman. In nature, females are regularly taken as sexual partners by significantly older males as soon as they start ovulating.
Yet when it comes to simple sex and the question of abstinence, we stand up and cry "we're just animals! Human animals!" Well, sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander. Society demands that we set limits on animal behaviour and use our higher cognitive skills to control ourselves.
Now I'm not going to stick up for abstinence or free-love or anything in between, but the argument "of course we're going to have sex -- we're animals" shows an extreme lack of maturity and leads to the philosophy that we exist purely to feed the id.
So please people, exercise some self-control. But remember that self-control does not necessarily mean "not having sex" -- "choosing to have sex" is a form of self-control too. It's doing it because "you and me baby ain't nothin but mammals" that isn't.
Choose, be responsible for your actions and live with the consequences. Be human, not animal. Peace out!
HAL.
Got them moderator blues I blieve I walk out the do', With these mod-points I been gettin', I 'most never post no mo'
I'm sure Magic Johnson would disagree, he has had HIV for nearly 20 years.
Knowledge = Power
P= W/t
t=Money
Money = Work/Knowledge so the less you know the more you make
I will bet almost everyone you know has had some level of intimacy where alcohol was involved. Almost every guy that I've got to know enough to know how they starting seeing their girlfriend/wife, did it with a few beers in them. Show me anyone who has had numerous relationships, and I will show you someone who likes to drink.
Sex is an amazing experience. We are programmed to enjoy it.
If you can understand why people don't want to give up eating meat, you can understand why people don't want to give up sex.
"I only speak the truth"
Karma: null(Mostly affected by an unassigned variable)
Obviously due to the high percentage of nerds that practice unsafe sex.
- Dan
Finally a chance to attempt my dream: the "Bareback Dutch Congo Line"
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
Really? Evolution has been programming people to kill their mates through disease? Whoa, I've missed a lot in sex ed!
You got it backwards. Human evolution is geared to having humans have sex as much as possible regardless of how well the individual human lives long term, whereas the evolution of a virus is pushed towards propagation any means possible. In the case of HIV it is evolved to propagate through sex.
I'm not justifying human actions that are wrong because of evolutionary traits, I'm saying that it is unreasonable to expect the majority of humans who have no understanding of their biological functions to be able to withstand their biological impulses.
Its like expecting a human to not eat saturated fatty foods versus plain old tasteless if you present it to them when they have had no formal education on the fact that it isn't good for them.
You can't just point at people and say "Don't have sex!". It doesn't work and never will. If it was that easy we'd have gone extinct centuries ago.
"I am the king of the Romans, and am superior to rules of grammar!"
-Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor (1368-1437)
"What is Internet Explorer 7? Are you saying we can't access the normal internet?" - I love tech support. Really.
Find me a whitepaper and the scientific evidence backing this.
http://www.ourcivilisation.com/aids/not/evidence.htm
http://youtube.com/watch?v=i-Hxx7oyRQU
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AIDS_reappraisal
But you won't be taking them witn you using AIDS.
Bring some other means to the party.
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
Yes anyone can claim anything about HIV, if you watched the documentary "The other Side of AIDS". Google it up. In fact that has what Robert Gallo been doing since he told us that HIV caused AIDS. But to tell you the truth after watching the documentary The other side of Aids, I am still not questioning the "theory" that HIV causes AIDS. One reason is because this documentary is not conclusive and that makes it so wonderful. It is not like those Conspiracy theory documentaries that you see and then they tell you to believe them. It makes you think. I am not an expert to question if HIV causes AIDS, but I have enough of common sense and logic to question if an ELISE test or a WESTERN BLOT test(and 30 other approved test kits) which do not detect the HIV Virus at all can be used to determine if a Person is HIV+. Yes I(and a friend) did a lot of research after watching the documentary and we visited a 5 laboratories and spoke to many pathologists and my friend even took an HIV test, and guess what, none of the test detect HIV virus. To make it clear, lets take a malaria test, the malaria test actually detects Vivax or Falciferum(pardon the typos) and even gives a count of how much pathogen is in the blood. But none of the 30 test kits give a count of even detect the HIVirus. All these tests are if-you-get-this-that-means-you-have-the-virus-tests. In fact on many websites selling the ELISA and Western Blot test kits they have a very clear warning saying "This kit does not detect the HIV". Now that was shocking Even though there are group of well known scientists out there who question the accuracy of these tests, people believe that a combination of ELISA and western Blot tests are accurate. I have seen two cases where a T.B. patient and a rare disease(I don't remember the name but he told me that it is a rare disease related to the Immune system) where they were HIV+. Both of them cousins who had the same relatives, one a pathologist and other a doctor. The T.B. patient was the first case. Since the pathologist knows how inaccurate HIV tests are and just because it was his relative recommended that he take a T.B. test and if it was positive(T.B.) then he should cure it and then only take an HIV test again. The doctor(their relative too) also suggested this. Well after a year and half he took the HIV test and it came negative. He took around 5 Different types of HIV tests after that and still was negative. The sad part is that most pathologists and doctors like them know that it is inaccurate but will not "come out in the open". Only their relatives and close friends are saved. They don't speak about it because of the "scorn factor"(which I am going to get over her too :-))
Well so coming to the point.
This means that there are many false HIV positives out there. We don't even know if there are less dangerous germs that will cause the similar antibody responses in a human being. Like maybe waterborne germs.
This could explain why India and Africa have HIV+ in large numbers even though they are not having as much sex as developed nations. Some contribute it to condoms and other things, but people actually living there know what is the truth. These people could be drinking contaminated water and food and that is why they are roaming around with high antibody counts as their body has to continuously fight against a constant "invasion" of germs due the unhygienic living conditions.
I remember a case of a British guy who was diagnosed HIV+ and he took all the possible test to confirm it and then after 6 months was HIV-. No one can explain why, well I think they have to look at the other side.
So that is why many quacks and many ayurvedic healers have "cured" HIV+ patients. Well the truth is they never cured anything maybe Tulsi and garlic are natural germ killers and that would have reduced their anti-body count.
So in this case I feel all these people are not HIV+ at all. That is the reason they are not spreading it. It is just these inaccurate test that are "declaring" them as HIV+.
These scientists migh
What we need is a new wonderdrug. Its the world's most powerful antibiotic. It cures the flu and the common cold. It even cures headaches! And best of all it only costs $15 retail for a 30 day supply. Its called Placebofen and side effects may include nausea, upset stomach, sexual side effects, increased gambling habits, drymouth, and dizziness.
Even those who arrange and design shrubberies are under considerable economic stress at this period in history.
If you're looking for a reason to not trust doctors, try this one on for size - when's the last time you heard of a doctor being fired? If you're like me, that was oh, back in _never_.
It's like that joke about, what do you call a guy who finishes last in his class at med school? Doctor.
One might suggest that this has to do with the very competitive nature of med school admission and med school itself being so demanding that duds just don't make it through. But all you need to do is look at the case of Dr. Charles Smith in Ontario up here in in Canuckistan. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dr_Charles_Smith)
I don't know of any other field where you never, ever, hear about someone being fired. Any profession will likely have a non-zero number of incompetent individuals (for a variety of reasons) but for doctors, it seems they just keep on practicing no matter what.
The plural form of "anecdote" is "anecdotes", not "evidence".
Yeah, you're absolutely right. It was GlaxoSmithKline and Pfizer that lead the charge to eradicate smallpox in India, while the WHO and the UN and other governments didn't care.
Anyway, as I come back from sarcasm land, you seriously don't think that drug companies played any significant role in the eradication of smallpox, do you? It was basically entirely a WHO project. Drug companies, like most in the west, didn't and still don't give a damn about people in the 3rd world dying.
The plural form of "anecdote" is "anecdotes", not "evidence".
Yeah, sure, in the developed world.
Check what's happening in Africa, you see a lot of infants with HIV through the mother-child route.
I heard the statistic tossed around that given standard western treatment for HIV, you can cut the rate of mother-child infection rate by 95%, but it ain't cheap.
The plural form of "anecdote" is "anecdotes", not "evidence".