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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.
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!
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.
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
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
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)
Smallpox? You kidding me? The eradication of smallpox was a time of big governments, big non-profits, and a concerted effort for the greater good not for profit.
Also, back in the late 1700s, someone couldn't patent a scab off of a cows back.
Actually, having worked in third world medical aid I can say categorically that there is a benefit to the patients receiving these drugs. So it's win win for the people taking the drugs (their quality of life is improved, they live longer) and the community.
Aids is no longer the death sentence it once was. It's like diabetes, if left untreated it is fatal but it can be treated successfully. If they can just eliminate the transmission aspect, then this scourge will be gone in a few generations.
Small Pox was eradicated due primarily to an immunization effort that spanned the 19th and 20th centuries. Unlike HIV (as far as I am aware), there are two viruses that appear to the human immune system as the same. One causes small pox, the other causes Cow Pox. Essentially, the immunization to small pox is to expose a person to cow pox. They get a feaver for a couple days to a week (along the lines of Chicken Pox), but then become immune to Small Pox.
With the Small Pox vaccine, once exposed to the alternative, you become immune to Small Pox. HIV is the opposite, once you are exposed, it will kill you.
As bad as it was, Small Pox was a 20-60% mortality rate (see wikipedia), which is horrible, but there was a chance. HIV is a 100% mortality rate, it just takes a bit longer. If we could find a way to create immunity from HIV, it would die out.
Most of the treatments for HIV simply extend the person's life, probably with the hope that they live long enough to find a cure. The drugs are not pleasant, and often make the person ill while trying to swallow them.
I too am too young to really appreciate not having to worry about Small Pox. I'm not even sure I was given the shot, as I was born after it was declared eradicated (1979).
---You're all I need, When the water runs deep, You're all I need, Now I cry my soul to sleep -- Collective Soul, Needs
>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?
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'.
the CDC.
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
You may have read the article but your missing some pieces of the puzzle. The people who catch and spread aids via condom misuse are those who do not care in the 'heat of the moment'. Birth control pills don't enter the equation because they have nothing to do with the spread of Aids, except perhaps to persuade those who do not have them to use a little more abstinence.
The best way to deliver these drugs would be to use a system similar to implanon if available, whereby any drug are implanted subdermally and released slowly. The benefit is that by having a steady stream lower doses can be used. Secondly, governments are constantly comparing the future costs of care for incapacitated aids patients to current treatment cost. When a sufficiently effective solution presents itself - if the cost benefit is good - governments *will* pay for it.
Actually, around 47% of all people diagnosed with AIDS were infected with HIV through male-to-male sexual contact, while people exposed through heterosexual contact comprise around 17% of the total. Male-to-male sexual contact probably caused the majority (66%) of infections in white people living with AIDS. It's not "faith", it's "fact". When political correctness stands in the way of science it becomes a disease in itself. A mental one.
or if your symptoms were so nondescript it could be a 100 things.
Well shit. If you rule out the hard cases, an RN could do anything a general practitioner doctor can.
That SHOULD be why they make the big bucks - the hard cases with confusing or nondescript symptoms. As a practical matter, most of them bail on anything they can't churn through in a 15 minute office visit. Even specialists are starting to suck. They can't be bothered to do any research, if the usual blood work doesn't solve the problem, they'll just roll through tests until they get lucky, or you just give up. Or die, maybe. And if your symptoms fall between specialties, you're completely fucked, because they can't be bothered to fill in knowledge gaps with...again...research. Which would help them put evidence together with their own expertise to make a successful diagnosis OR at least find the right specialist. But for most doctors, forget it.
i'd say the most likely case here is that the doctor is right, and you just THINK you know better.
I can back up the OP. I had a problem for 8 years that multiple doctors consistently failed at. None even came up with a guess, just saw me for an appointment, sent me off for the wrong test, told me they didn't know what it was, and referred me to someone else. When the 5th doctor in the chain referred me to the first, I said to hell with it and decided to live with the symptoms. I eventually got sick of that, and successfully diagnosed it myself. With Google, effort, and a brain.
I feel sorry for others though. I'm a scientist and have good research skills. People shouldn't have to be forced to do their own medical care.
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.
The post I was replying to WAS about the United States. Sigh... it's not our job to police the world. Now that we reestablished the scope - the statistics, sure, you can put a spin on it by omitting the comparison to the 17% of heterosexuals that contract the disease, but that's all it is - a spin. The factual truth is, as far as statistics go, gays comprise the largest single group by far, and yeah, people might say, that DOES make it a gay disease, and yeah, they wouldn't be unjustified in that evaluation. The negative side of the Internet is that people are tempted to try to spin the numbers. The positive side, however, is that anyone with a modicum of critical thinking can look them up. This reminds me of kneejerk reactions to that Japanese guy who implied that your average woman's upper body strength is inferior to that of an average man. Oh no, how dare he cite facts ! That's so rude ! Let's just lie to ourselves instead, it makes us warm and cozy inside (rolls eyes).
Aids is a death sentence. you just have to pick your time horizon. people who have been on antiretrovirals for 15 years are now feeling the effects of basically putting a poison in your body daily for so long. they have severe medical problems that are very expensive to treat and find themselves unable to function. 40 year olds look like they are 65 and have health problems on a similar scale. it's just when you die of kidney failure at 45 have 18 years on the drugs, we don't say AIDS killed you, but that is hiding the issue that still exists.
Wow. So much misinformation in one post.
How can someone think a rate is 20-60%? That's one to three out of five. It doesn't make any sense. Of course, the source you cite is Wikipedia, which you should know better than, except of course that it says 30-35%, not 20-60% like you claim; at that point it's probably more of a question of measurement differences or other fundamental quality of standard measurements between sample populations.
Smallpox was still active in the 1960s; why you think it was "eradicated in an effort that spanned the 19th and 20th centuries" is beyond me. Maybe you're misreading the "after successful vaccination campaigns" bit in the wikipedia article; this is one of many reasons why reading an encyclopedia article does not match actual knowledge, since what they're talking about are local, single-city eradications. The actual global eradication effort was begun in the early 1950s by PAHO, which Wikipedia incorrectly cites as 1950 (it started in 1952.) The bulk of Smallpox was driven out of the states around the turn of this century, but the last known US case of non-weaponized Smallpox outbreak was in New York State in 1947, and there were isolated rural cases as late as 1965. The actual eradication wasn't certified by WHO until 1980; cases were found in nature in southern Africa until 1977.
Incidentally, HIV, like Vareola, doesn't have a mortality rate; it's syndromes like AIDS and Smallpox, not diseases like HIV and Vareola, which have mortality rates. If you understood disease you'd know this. Many people with HIV never develop AIDS at all, and live healthy lives until they die from a car accident or cancer or a bolt of lightning or bad heroin or getting mugged. Now, mortality rates aren't just percentages; they're rates. That's why the correct way to say it is "Smallpox has a thirty eight percent chance of mortality per week." This makes a big difference, but what makes a bigger difference is that AIDS itself doesn't actually cause death. Associated infection does. The AIDS mortality rate is ZERO.
Why does that matter? Because when you start knowing what you're talking about, you find out that the AIDS associated disease mortality rate is widely different between economic, ethnic and social groups. Why? Because that's not one hundred percent either. Hell, there are two known people who have sero-converted so far (meaning their immune system fought back and won, and they're not even carriers anymore.) We have no idea how they did it, but they did. About five percent of people with HIV do not develop AIDS by the twenty year mark, and show no symptoms whatsoever. The median time between infection and symptoms even displaying is now over ten years. There are known human mutations that create HIV resistance, such as CCR5 delta 32.
You're just rambling about shit you heard. Get off the soapbox. You're full of crap. No disease has a 100 percent mortality rate over any time frame. You're not even measuring using the right kind of units. The AIDS associated opportunistic infection mortality rate in the United States has been 2.21 per 100 per year since 1998, as accepted by the AMA, the WHO and the CDC.
Two point two percent per year. One hundred? Go read a book, kid, you're lying through your teeth.
StoneCypher is Full of BS