In New Study, HIV Prevention Pill Truvada Is 100% Effective

An anonymous reader writes: A study published in the journal Clinical Infectious Diseases details the recent trial of a drug named Truvada, which researchers think might excel at preventing HIV infections (abstract). The scientists administered the drug to 657 people at high risk for contracting HIV, including users of injected drugs. At the end of the study, every single subject was still free of the virus. This is encouraging news in the fight against AIDS, though it shouldn't be taken to mean the drug is perfectly effective. Since researchers can't ethically expose people to HIV, we don't know for sure that any of the subjects were definitely saved by the drug. Other studies have also had to be stopped because it was clear subjects who were on a placebo were suffering from noticeably higher rates of infection. Leaders in the fight against AIDS say this new study closes a "critical gap" in existing research by demonstrating that Truvada can work in real-world health programs.

Comments

solid.

[Anonymous Coward]

I can continue to never wear a rubber.

Re: solid.

[Anonymous Coward]

You know what they say,

Rattlesnakes and Condoms. Two things I don't fuck with.

Re: solid.

[Anonymous Coward]

I can continue to never wear a rubber.

Yeah, virgin lifestyle is pretty much unaffected by this breakthrough.

Re: solid.

[willworkforbeer]

Yeah, virgin lifestyle is pretty much unaffected by this breakthrough.

Like they say, don't think of it as a "virgin lifestyle," think of it as "recursive iso-monogamy."

Re: solid.

[Anonymous Coward]

Have fun with all the other nasty STDs you'll end up with.

Re: solid.

[The Grim Reefer]

Have fun with all the other nasty STDs you'll end up with.

Why, has his hand been sneaking out while he's asleep or something?

Re: solid.

[Anonymous Coward]

Billions and Billions spent all so men can fuck each other up the ass with impunity.

Re: solid.

[danceswithtrees]

I can continue to never wear a rubber.

Whats the difference between herpes and true love?

Herpes lasts forever. Does Truvada do anything for true love?

Re: solid.

[Anonymous Coward]

Women have assholes too.

Re: solid.

[Anonymous Coward]

the label should be monosexual

Re: solid.

[Opportunist]

Compared to the metric ton on tax money lost because organizations peddling the existence of an invisible sky daddy are exempt it's an amount that doesn't even register.

Re: solid.

[Anonymous Coward]

That pretty much describes the /'ers.

Re: solid.

[Anonymous Coward]

With PrEP the users are tested for stds with blood work every three months. This helps detect all stds not just hiv. The only stds not curable by antibiotics are HPV and herpes. You can get gardasil for HPV but herp is forever. Most people who are barebacking without condoms and taking risks already have it.

Re: solid.

[Anonymous Coward]

HPV isn't only an STD. It can be passed along from mother to child or through skin contact, such as holding hands.

If you have ever had a wart, then you have HPV. Approximately 80-90% of the population has it. Fortunately it is asymptomatic in most people, though there is an increased risk of cancer, especially for women.

Re: solid.

[Talderas]

Manussexual.

Truvada made of cash

[Anonymous Coward]

They just found the cure for aids! All you have to do is inject yourself with all your cash. Woohoo!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Au0GRWUbqN8

Good.

[Anonymous Coward]

Suck it, fundamentalist Christians: AIDS is not your dead, false gods' revenge on homosexuals, because we lowly humans found a way to prevent it. Chalk up another in the 'win' column for science, technology, and reason.

Re:Good.

[trout007]

Yes. Continue promiscuous behavior and see what other diseases will evolve.

Re:Good.

[Anonymous Coward]

But you see, God made that pill, in order to give us recognition for his mercy.

Behold, the Glorious Wonder of the Lord, and tremble!

Re:Good.

[chaosmind]

Good comeback. I like your use of the word "evolve."

Re:Good.

[sexconker]

Considering we "lowly humans" modified it and dispersed it in the first place, I don't think stopping it decades later is a "win".

Re:Good.

[ArmoredDragon]

Actually that's been one of the real concerns of the drug. Apparently people on the drug are seeing higher incidences of HPV (genital warts), herpes, gonorrhea, chlamydia, and syphilis.

I am curious though -- why isn't this drug able to effectively shut down the virus in infected patients? I understand why it could never cure it (there would be plenty of hiding places for the virus that the drug likely wouldn't end up) but not why it can't remove all of the symptoms. It's not a vaccine, so it doesn't rely on your immune system to remove an early infection, hence you'd figure it would work on somebody already infected. Can somebody explain the biochemistry on that? I'd like to know.

Re:Good.

[epyT-R]

Those who are prideful and refuse to bow down shall be laid low and made unto dust.

Re: Good.

[Anonymous Coward]

Promiscuity is only a problem for followers of the anti- sex death cult known as Christianity.

Re:Good.

[Anonymous Coward]

Your lips are moving like you're talking, but all I hear is MOOOO, MOOOOO!!!

Re:Good.

[Anonymous Coward]

As someone who is gay, I have done a fair bit of research in to HIV, the way people become infected, treatments, preventative measures, etc. I am not HIV positive, so perhaps not as much research as someone who is HIV positive... but in being gay, HIV is a topic that pops up. I am not a biochemist, but I know the basics.

Truvada IS one of the drugs you can take if you become infected with HIV. If you are HIV positive, it works in combination with other drugs to prevent the virus from replicating itself. It inhibits some process the virus uses to attach to other cells in order to get the cell to manufacture new copies of the virus. This means the virus is unable to replicate itself in your blood stream.

When you become HIV positive the virus also lives in parts of your body other than your blood stream. The HIV medications can't reach these locations so they just live there and it doesn't compromise your immune system for the virus to be in those parts of your body. Your blood stream is clear of the virus so your immune system operates more normally and can fight infections. But once you stop taking the drug, the component of the drug that inhibits its replication in the blood stream is no longer there. So the virus is able to then start replicating itself in your blood stream again and symptoms return.

Truvada as a preventative works because the virus can never gain a foot hold in your blood stream to make it to the other parts of your body it can live outside of the influence of the drug. If you get exposed to HIV while on Truvada, the virus just enters your blood stream, can't replicate, and it eventually dies.

Re:Good.

[TWX]

What other parts of the body does the virus reside in?

Being forced to take a drug forever to keep the virus at-bay with no cure, profitably for the pharmaceutical company, sounds like good fodder for conspriacy theorists.

Re:Good.

[TWX]

So, like, all of the religious pundits that constantly want to use their religion to force public policy?

Re:Good.

[MightyMartian]

Humans have been promiscuous since before there was anything vaguely promiscuous. People fuck, and they fuck a lot, and they often fuck people other than the people they've promised to be the only ones they'll fuck, and they fuck even when fucking means they get bad diseases, so anything that makes fucking safer is a good thing.

Re:Good.

[Anonymous Coward]

Advise seeking help for your anger issues.

Re:Good.

[mark-t]

AIDS being God's revenge on homosexuals is not actually a fundamentalist Christian belief.

The fundamentalist Christian view is that disease, all disease, exists because of man's rebellion from God. This is alleged to be not so much revenge on God's part because you can't blame a fire for not keeping you warm if you don't stay near it in the first place.

Re:Good.

[Anonymous Coward]

God has a full panoply of diseases to punish sinners and is probably creating new ones as we speak!

Typically, church going people don't have aids, though.

Remember, prayer saves lives!

Re:Good.

[es330td]

After AIDS, there was NRS, after NRS, there was UBT.

Re:Good.

[Anonymous Coward]

What other parts of the body does the virus reside in?

Pretty much anywhere and everywhere. That's the problem with a virus.

Re:Good.

[Anonymous Coward]

A well-known evangelist prophesies that the upcoming Blood Moon is a signal of the End Times.

A Scientist predicts that the world won't end that day any more than it did on the 40-something previous Blood Moon series since 33 AD

Whose prediction will you believe?

Re:Good.

[es330td]

I have psoriatic arthritis, an auto-immune condition that is effectively the opposite of HIV. Instead of a weak immune system, mine is so jacked up it causes harm to my own body (it does mean I never get the flu and rarely ever have colds.) I have to use Humira to keep it at bay, and if I don't I will be crippled sooner, at a cost of nearly $3K a month. No conspiracy to it and I am sure it is profitable for the company. I am probably in the same boat as a person protected from AIDS by this drug; taking it is the difference between life and an early, miserable death.

Re:Good.

[kheldan]

I'm not going to speak for anyone else, but personally I find your 'God' of blood, vengeance, and death, to be significantly less than warm-and-fuzzy, so I think I'll just stick to atheism, OK?

Re:Good.

[Anonymous Coward]

Nice straw man. I've never heard a Republican say that. No, they hate people that aren't rich, and have you ever met a rich gay guy? No. That is why they hate us and want us to die. They stabbed a piece of rebar up my mother's vagina to kill her. That is what those Republicans do.

Also, they will never allow us to have this cure just as they have prevented us from having all of the cancer cures we read about nearly weekly here. There are so many cures for cancer. So many. It's just that the Republicans won't let us have them.

Re:Good.

[ArmoredDragon]

My guess is similar to how the virus that causes chickenpox (varicella) remains in your body permanently even after your symptoms are gone. Usually that's areas where there's no blood but there is fluidic tissue that provides homeostasis that it can survive in. For example, spinal fluid, brain tissue, etc.

Given that HIV is a really small virus (that is, smaller than most viruses) I'm sure there are plenty of areas that it can reside in.

Re:Good.

[ArmoredDragon]

How does it eventually die? AFAIK all it requires to just survive is homeostasis, which your blood provides. Unless its protein jacket has a very short chemical half-life or something.

Re:Good.

[slew]

I'm not going to speak for anyone else, but personally I find your 'God' of blood, vengeance, and death, to be significantly less than warm-and-fuzzy, so I think I'll just stick to atheism, OK?

Not sure why people think that a supreme being should be warm-and-fuzzy. If you were a supreme being, would you be warm and fuzzy? Not that we should make any god in our image...

On the other hand, if 9/10 people believed in something (like global warming) and you didn't want to believe in it because it didn't make you feel warm and fuzzy, would you be a denier? Just food for thought, OK?

Re:Good.

[davester666]

This kind of solution is really the only kind that drug companies are actively researching and bringing to market.

They have no interest in one-pill fixes, because they don't make nearly the profit that 'forever' pills do.

Re:Good.

[rasmusbr]

What other parts of the body does the virus reside in?

Being forced to take a drug forever to keep the virus at-bay with no cure, profitably for the pharmaceutical company, sounds like good fodder for conspriacy theorists.

HIV is a retrovirus, which means that it splices its genome into the genome of the infected human's cells, forcing the cells to produce copies of the virus as part of their normal operation. When the cells divide and produce new human cells the virus producing code gets copied to the new cell and when that new cell undergoes cell division the code gets copied again, and so on and so forth.

I guess you could say that there is an evolution-made conspiracy of evil viruses that makes it hard to cure HIV.

Re:Good.

[trout007]

And civilization is based on keeping that under control. While sex may be fun it takes a mother and father to raise children properly. Data shows single parents are a very large risk for all sorts of bad outcomes for kids.

Re: Good.

[trout007]

Which version are you talking about? Catholics are very pro-sex. They want you to have lots of kids. It seems like liberal secularism is the death cult. With abortion, anti-children, and pro euthanasia. That why Western Europe is dying. It will be gone in a couple hundred years.

Re:Good.

[horm]

Obviously, the solution is to contract HIV and see if the two balance each other out.

Re:Good.

[Khyber]

"Apparently people on the drug are seeing higher incidences of HPV (genital warts), herpes, gonorrhea, chlamydia, and syphilis."

Read the summary a bit closer: "Other studies have also had to be stopped because it was clear subjects who were on a placebo were suffering from noticeably higher rates of infection."

Which is rather to be expected since these people think that they can fuck without protection, and were on a PLACEBO.

Re:Good.

[Anonymous Coward]

While true, not really relevant. Sex rarely has anything to do with children. Trying to pretend otherwise tends to lead to problems.

Re: Good.

[PopeRatzo]

Catholics are very pro-sex. They want you to have lots of kids.

They just don't want you to enjoy it, you know? Sex is just for reproduction. All that unnecessary wiggling and grunting was making the priests uncomfortable.

Re:Good.

[Ol Olsoc]

Obviously, the solution is to contract HIV and see if the two balance each other out.

Hesus Christ on a wall wart - that is so fscking rude. Funny as hell, but rude

Re:Good.

[PopeRatzo]

People fuck, and they fuck a lot,

And if it don't move, they give it a shove and then they fuck it.

Re:Good.

[PopeRatzo]

While sex may be fun it takes a mother and father to raise children properly.

You might want to mention that to Bristol Palin.

Re: Good.

[myowntrueself]

Which version are you talking about? Catholics are very pro-sex. They want you to have lots of kids. It seems like liberal secularism is the death cult. With abortion, anti-children, and pro euthanasia. That why Western Europe is dying. It will be gone in a couple hundred years.

According to Nietzsche, Christianity is the death cult since it is opposed to some basic things required by all living things; greed and selfishness.

Re:Good.

[Ol Olsoc]

Not sure why people think that a supreme being should be warm-and-fuzzy.

True enough. I think the idea of a macho god might be palatable.

I'd just prefer him to not be batshit insane. Having read the holy bible, that is pretty evident.

Re:Good.

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you sure it would not work?

Re:Good.

[PopeRatzo]

The fundamentalist Christian view is that disease, all disease, exists because of man's rebellion from God. This is alleged to be not so much revenge on God's part because you can't blame a fire for not keeping you warm if you don't stay near it in the first place.

I don't mean any disrespect, but God sounds like kind of a prick, you know? Creates humans in His image, gives them free will, and then punish the fuck out of them for using it. What an asshole. He's basically saying, "Stop hitting yourself" while beating your ass.

Re:Good.

[PopeRatzo]

Not sure why people think that a supreme being should be warm-and-fuzzy. If you were a supreme being, would you be warm and fuzzy? Not that we should make any god in our image...

On the other hand, if 9/10 [gallup.com] people believed in something (like global warming) and you didn't want to believe in it because it didn't make you feel warm and fuzzy, would you be a denier? Just food for thought, OK?

First, we were supposedly made in God's image and fuck yeah I'd be warm and fuzzy. Why would I be pissed off if I'm the supreme being? What would possibly be worth getting pissed about?

I'd answer prayers from 10-11am every day, have some lunch and then play Playstation 4 for the rest of the day until beer-thirty and then maybe call up some hot chicks and tell them to bring snacks. Why wouldn't I be warm and fuzzy?

Seriously God, why all the anger?

Re:Good.

[Anonymous Coward]

It just took several billion dollars and several million dead to get to where you can fuck men up the ass with impunity.

Should have just let Darwin take it course.

Re: Good.

[Anonymous Coward]

HIV is a retrovirus and integrates into its host cell's genome. So in normal cell activity the cell will go about its normal protein synthesis business and there will be a subroutine hacked in that instructs the cell to create an HIV virion. Enough of those are created and the cell burts and dead cell, more HIV.

The 'problem' is that this host cell is an immune cell that would normally target pathogens.

A current hypothesis as to how the immune system works is that some immune cells are particularly long lived and when they 'learn' to handle a new invader some of those newly created cells are put into a form of stasis. This leaves a small reservoir hanging out to be activated in case that invader is seen again. Since those 'memory' cells can also be carrying the HIV genome, HIV will start back up when those cells are reactivated.

Re:Good.

[Ihlosi]

I am curious though -- why isn't this drug able to effectively shut down the virus in infected patients?

Because keeping a virus from infecting a cell is one thing, and removing all viral DNA from millions of alread infected cells in the body is another thing entirely.

It's like the difference between preventing malware from installing a root kit on your computer, and getting rid of an already running rootkit (without rebooting the computer or reinstalling everything).

Re:Good.

[manu0601]

Can somebody explain the biochemistry on that?

Usually, nucleus DNA gets transcripted into RNA. HIV takes the path backwards (this is reverse-transcription) and use specific biochemistry for that. The drug attacks that pathway.

I guess it must be effective to a much larger class of virus, but don't worry: they will adapt. After all there is no real need to infect the nucleus, RNA is enough for some viruses, ad far as I understand

Re:Good.

[Anonymous Coward]

“Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent.
Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent.
Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil?
Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God?”
  Epicurus

Dude nailed it back when "God" (the Jewish god) wasn't even a blip on the radar!

Re:Good.

[Ihlosi]

I'd answer prayers from 10-11am every day, have some lunch and then play Playstation 4 for the rest of the day until beer-thirty and then maybe call up some hot chicks and tell them to bring snacks.

Doing that for eternity is probably what hell is really about. Heaven has to be even better.

Re:Good.

[Applehu Akbar]

"Yes. Continue promiscuous behavior and see what other diseases will evolve."

Another, less judgy way of looking at this is to think of gay men as the Windows users of the sexual world, encountering all the radical viruses and doing whatever it takes to have fancy cures developed for them, so the rest of us don't have to.

Re:Good.

[Ihlosi]

Dude nailed it back when "God" (the Jewish god) wasn't even a blip on the radar!

It's called "laissez-faire" omnipotence. A hands/tentacles/noodly-appendages-mostly-off approach to godhood.

The people in the other universe (where everything was controlled down to the subatomic level to make even the faintest trace of evil impossible) probably went crazy once they found out. Matrix got that right.

Re:Good.

[PopeRatzo]

Doing that for eternity is probably what hell is really about. Heaven has to be even better.

Except you're the Supreme Being, so you can fix all the bugs in MGSV and Arkham Knight and pwn all the noobs (though I understand Michael the Archangel is internationally ranked on Splatoon).

And, you can change it up any time you want. Have the hot chicks with snacks come at 10am and answer prayers in the evening if you want. Play Xbox One instead of Playstation. Have spicy wings instead of pizza. Do whatever you want because you're the Supreme Being, dammit.

I still don't see what God would have to be so pissed about that He feels the need to send disease and pestilence to humans who didn't ask to be created, after all.

Re: Good.

[Anonymous Coward]

Not "the" republicans. "A" republican. Me. I have the cures. But, I'm not going to give them to you, cuz yer a fuckin ass-fuckin faggot. Ya know what GAY stands for? Got AIDS Yet? Go fuck yourselves out of existence so the rest of us normal people don't have to hear about your fuckin AIDS Pride parades. Have fun engaging in unnatural fuckin freak sex while your not yet a desiccated corpse of your former fag self :)

Re: Good.

[Applehu Akbar]

"Promiscuity is only a problem for followers of the anti- sex death cult known as Christianity."

Or do you mean that other anti-sex death cult that's a lot more of a problem in the present day?

Re:Good.

[epyT-R]

You do not revere the Ori? They ask nothing from us, only that we follow the path set out for us in Origin.

Re:Good.

[Applehu Akbar]

"...have you ever met a rich gay guy?"
http://www.eltonjohn.com/

Re:Good.

[trout007]

Why would I give her a pass?

Re:Good.

[Antique Geekmeister]

> Humans have been promiscuous since before there was anything vaguely promiscuous.

Have you looked into bonobos, or dolphins? Bonobos are quite close primate relatives, and even more promiscuous in general than humans. And dolphins are _quite_ promiscuous. We're evolutionary latecomers, only a few million years old at most. Almost every physical trait and behavior we have was tried by many other species long before we evolved.

Re:Good.

[Anonymous Coward]

Except that God really sucks at Minecraft:

                      https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

Re:Good.

[mark-t]

Epicurus was about 3rd century BC.... well after the founding of Judaism.

However, the problems with it is that it presupposes a moral absolute that if God were truly good, and both willing and able to prevent evil, then He would. But is such a moral absolute justified as necessarily being true? Consider, does a parent who watches as their child struggles learning to walk instead of holding them up as they go necessarily hate their children?

Epicurus also fails to acknowledge that preventing evil thoughts, intentions, or consequences carries an unavoidable implication of denying free will.

Re:Good.

[compro01]

40? Unless we're talking about something different, the blood moon is an annual occurrence.

Re:Good.

[Anonymous Coward]

Hello, kheldan (1460303)! We know its you!

http://slashdot.org/~kheldan

Re: Good.

[Anonymous Coward]

You don't get super immune system and not have a sense of humor about it...

Re: Good.

[Anonymous Coward]

Sex was involved in 100% of cases where kids were created.

Re:Good.

[ArmoredDragon]

I guess it must be effective to a much larger class of virus, but don't worry: they will adapt. After all there is no real need to infect the nucleus, RNA is enough for some viruses, ad far as I understand

That would require quite a mutation, I would imagine; not likely something that would happen in only a few generations, or even a few thousand. From what I understand about HIV, the biggest problem with treating it is that unlike most viruses, it mutates VERY quickly. That said, if somebody does get infected with HIV while on this drug, they should completely abstain from sex, or else it's back to the drawing board.

Re:Good.

[ArmoredDragon]

This kind of solution is really the only kind that drug companies are actively researching and bringing to market.

They have no interest in one-pill fixes, because they don't make nearly the profit that 'forever' pills do.

Honestly the whole "drug companies only make treatments" conspiracy theory is a big load of uneducated horse shit. If there's a cure that "they" don't want you to know about, then go invent it yourself. There are a LOT of diseases that the pharmaceutical industry has cured, and continues to cure. Unfortunately these are mostly just bacterial infections. As it turns out, bacteria are a lot easier to fight than viruses. Same with cancer, which curing it effectively means killing tissue that's part of your own body. And our knowledge of the immune system isn't good enough to be able to cure autoimmune diseases.

So what would you prefer? People just go untreated while we wait for a cure that may never come?

Re: Good.

[Nemyst]

And kids were involved in way less than 100% of cases where sex happened. That's the point.

Re: Good.

[HuguesT]

You forgot anti death penalty. So not so much.

Re:Good.

[serviscope_minor]

You might want to look up what "contraception" is.

Re:Good.

[serviscope_minor]

I'd answer prayers from 10-11am every day, have some lunch and then play Playstation 4 for the rest of the day until beer-thirty

Seriously God, why all the anger?

I'd be angry too if I only got half an hour of games in.

Re:Good.

[serviscope_minor]

However, the problems with it is that it presupposes a moral absolute that if God were truly good, and both willing and able to prevent evil, then He would. But is such a moral absolute justified as necessarily being true? Consider, does a parent who watches as their child struggles learning to walk instead of holding them up as they go necessarily hate their children?

I don't think there's much about the Hebrew god being good, as far as I can tell he's a raging douchenozzle who's also madder than a sack of badgers. As for the learning to walk thing...

Take the Exodus of the Israelites from Egypt. So Moses was all like "let us go", and the Pharaoh was all like "ok" and then god went "lol no. I'm going to make the Pharaoh say no so I can smite him EXTRA HARD" so then the Pharaoh was all "no" and Moses was liek "y u dick??" and then God starts with the smiting.

That's not not picking up kids when they're learning to walk, that's like kicking your kids over when they're trying to walk then punishing them for failing to walk. The only that makes the slightest shred of sense is if you're just a dick.

But don't take my word for it, go crack open a copy of the bible (or just download KJV) and have a read. It's bonkers. It's worth owning a copy, especially of KJV (because it just sounds more biblical) for those times you wonder what it *really* says in the bible. Usually, it's not what people claim and it's usually worse in some way.

For example go and read Genesis 19 (the destruction of Sodom) if you want some colossal WTFs over what's clearly portrayed as an OK think do do.

Re:Good.

[serviscope_minor]

I still don't see what God would have to be so pissed about that He feels the need to send disease and pestilence to humans who didn't ask to be created, after all.

Well the old testament is more along the lines of "worship god or he might just be a complete bastard to you (well OK he be a bastard to you anyway, but you're better off playing the odds)".

Which is at least more internally consistent than the supposed nice god.

The funny thing is that the stories about a supposed supreme being put me in mind of the song "Big Rock Candy Mountain", because that captures intentionally something fundamental which is in a lot of those other stories. The song is about a hobo's paradise. In that version of paradise, nothing has really changed, except that everything individually is better: the hobo in question doesn't even stop getting bitten by bulldogs, it's just that in paradise they have rubber teeth. I like the song because I think it really captures how people think and dream. But because it focusses on a hobo, it's more obviously and intentionally absurd.

I think it strikes at a fundamentally human thing in imagining things to be just a little bit better than they are now. And that's what the supreme being is. With a few thousand years of hindsight and philosophical hindsight we can start to think what omnipotent really means. But back then they were just imagining things a bit better than they were currently.

It's not that the tribes of Israel (for example) weren't getting bitten by bulldogs (or stuck in the desert for 40 years), it's that it didn't hurt as much (i,.e. they survived and eventually found the supposed land of milk and honey).

Likewise getting better from disease is something that happened, so god helping you and curing you seemed like a reasonable leg up. It's not changing the world, it's the same world, but a bit better. The idea of wiping out disease entirely I think required some philosophical leaps which hadn't really happened yet.

Re:Good.

[manu0601]

not likely something that would happen in only a few generations, or even a few thousand.

But how long is a generation for the HIV?

That said, if somebody does get infected with HIV while on this drug, they should completely abstain from sex, or else it's back to the drawing board.

If that is a requirement, it is doomed to fail, but why should people abstain?

Re:Good.

[PopeRatzo]

The funny thing is that the stories about a supposed supreme being put me in mind of the song "Big Rock Candy Mountain", because that captures intentionally something fundamental which is in a lot of those other stories. The song is about a hobo's paradise. In that version of paradise, nothing has really changed, except that everything individually is better: the hobo in question doesn't even stop getting bitten by bulldogs, it's just that in paradise they have rubber teeth. I like the song because I think it really captures how people think and dream. But because it focusses on a hobo, it's more obviously and intentionally absurd.

I never considered the religious implications of that song. Thanks for giving me that, friend.

Re:Good.

[Anonymous Coward]

Not sure why people think that a supreme being should be warm-and-fuzzy.

True enough. I think the idea of a macho god might be palatable.

I'd just prefer him to not be batshit insane. Having read the holy bible, that is pretty evident.

That's fine but there are two separate questions:

1. Does this god exist? (an answer of "no" leads to atheism, as long as there's no other god for which the answer is "yes")
2. Is this god a nice person (answer irrelevant to atheism).

One of the previous posters was suggesting that the nastiness, or batchit insanity if you prefer, of this putative god caused him to go for atheism, but atheism isn't a state of not worshipping a god because it's a nasty god, it's a state of not belkieveing in the existence of gods.

Re: Good.

[Anonymous Coward]

The reverse is also true you know. IT would be difficult to come up with a 'treatment' for bacterial infections that wasn't a cure. Other things not so much.

As for industry curing things, not so much. Most cures come about from publicly funded research, which industry then gets patents for. The public of course get screwed by high prescription prices due to guaranteed monopolies granted by the same government that gave these bastards the research to make the products in the first place.

You're almost funny if I didn't think you're a right wing troll when it comes to inventing one's own cure. They really don't like that, or one's own treatments. Look at how they react to medical marijuana, which had been shown to be effective at treating some things, including side effects caused by the drug industry's products. Hell, look at how the government has saddled us with expensive and sometimes very deadly new pain medicines and cold medicines that don't work because the older effective and, of course cheaper and not pa, ones actually make people feel good and we can't have THAT. (Pain is severely under treated in the US thanks to the DEA thinking it knows what your doctor should be giving you and how much.)

Re:Good.

[mark-t]

That's not not picking up kids when they're learning to walk, that's like kicking your kids over when they're trying to walk then punishing them for failing to walk.

Bad comparison, because God does not voluntarily cause evil to happen, it is allowed to happen because it is a consequence of man's abandonment of God, and if God simply spared us from all of the repercussions of that choice, however far more etxreme they might be than man might have imagined before turning away from God, then there would not have been any point in giving man a free will in the first place.

Re:Good.

[mark-t]

God didn't make Pharaoh do or say anything that was not already there... the notion of hardening the Pharoah's heart does not suggest that God revoked the Pharoah's free will or somehow made him say no to Moses, but more like forcing him to act out on what was already there. God forced the Pharoah's hand, as it were, but didn't cause the Pharoah to do anything that wasn't already in his heart.

While one might criticize God for deliberately "poking the bear", as it were, if He had not done so, it can be argued that the Pharoah would have only released the Hebrews earlier than he did due to mounting pressure from the plagues, and not because the Pharoah's resolve to defy the so-called God of Moses had been finally broken.

Re:Good.

[mark-t]

Creates humans in His image, gives them free will, and then punish the fuck out of them for using it.

God doesn't punish us for using our free will to defy him... the "punishment" is separation from God, which is what the person chose to do. Doing anything else would not be respectful of that person's free will. That this might somehow be unpleasant and perceived of as punishment is simply a manifestation of the fact that by being separated from God, one is not fulfilling their ultimate purpose for existing in the first place.

Re:Good.

[Anonymous Coward]

I think it's funny how many people have said "created man in his image" and then go on about how he's a dick. Well, yeah, if we were created in his image, and we as a race are a bunch of massive dicks, what would you expect from god? Though that being said, all of the dickness in humanity isn't really originating from actively being a dick, per say. It's mostly rooted in apathy. That guy slowing you up on the road isn't actively doing it to be a dick (usually), just too apathetic to care that his actions are negatively affecting other people and can't be bothered to assert the small effort to remedy it.

Re: Good.

[Anonymous Coward]

Unless you consider that leaving murderous scum alive to kill again is pro-death.

Re:Good.

[Opportunist]

Well, at least they don't get tested.

Re:Good.

[Opportunist]

Are you kidding? I know a lot of gay people who are rather well off. No kids, no college to pay for, double income, how the heck could you NOT end up with surplus money?

Re:Good.

[serviscope_minor]

Bad comparison, because God does not voluntarily cause evil to happen,

Yes he does. He hardened the Pharoah's heart in order to make him do evil by not releasing the tribes of Israel. It's Exodus 9:12. That is god being a dick and making the Pharoah do evil.

it is allowed to happen because it is a consequence of man's abandonment of God

Unless god feels like forcing it as in Exodus 9:12.

and if God simply spared us from all of the repercussions of that choice,

How is hardening the Pharoah's heart sparing from reprecussions of the choice? The Pharoah was going to make the opposite choice until god diddled his brain and changed his mind.

then there would not have been any point in giving man a free will in the first place.

It's not free will if god makes you chose the way he wants, which is preisely what he does in Exodus 9:12.

Re:Good.

[serviscope_minor]

I mean Exodus 7:3, not 9:12.

Re:Good.

[serviscope_minor]

That's a massive stretch. The LORD as it were hardened the Pharoah's heart specifically so he could do some epic smitin' and show everyone how awesome he is.

Exodus 7:3.

You could argue he might have refused anyway. Well how will we know? God took away his free will and made him make only one decision of two possible.

While one might criticize God for deliberately "poking the bear", as it were,

No, he went into the Pharoah's brain and diddled it in order to get the outcome he wanted.

Re:Good.

[mark-t]

The hardening of Pharoah's heart in Exodus is not God interfering with Pharoah's free will, it is God actually pushing Pharoah to act as he truly intends. Had God not done that, Pharoah may have released the Israelites sooner, but would have done so only because of mounting pressure caused by the plagues, not because Pharoah's resolve to defy God's will had actually been broken.

Re:Good.

[mark-t]

You appear to have made up your own mind, so there's not much point in discussing this further.

Re:Good.

[serviscope_minor]

Well you haven't aid anything to convince me otherwise.

Forcing someone to act on certia thoughts in their head is pretty much forcing actions. What's the point of free will if we hae to act on our worse notions and have no choice to be better?

Re: Good.

[KGIII]

That makes me wonder... Who the hell shares needles in this day and age? I no longer abuse opiates and was an IV drug abuser for years and years. Never, not once, did I share a rig with anyone. For two bucks you can get a ten pack. For twenty bucks you can find someone who gets insulin rigs regularly and buy a box of 1000 from them. I hadn't shot up much prior to the AIDS scare but I had and even then we didn't share rigs. I may have reused my own rig from time to time but sharing it? That's straight up retarded.

Re: Good.

[ArmoredDragon]

As for industry curing things, not so much. Most cures come about from publicly funded research, which industry then gets patents for. The public of course get screwed by high prescription prices due to guaranteed monopolies granted by the same government that gave these bastards the research to make the products in the first place.

The publicly funded research just finds a cause and effect. That's it. The process of formulating a chemical that both A) Target's the cause and B) doesn't kill the patient is a process that costs perhaps billions to do, and even more if there's a deadly side effect and it's necessary not only to recall, but to compensate those who took the drug (i.e. fen-phen.) Clinical trials are NOT cheap; hell just getting to the point of a clinical trial is not cheap. The chemical that results from this process is what gets patented. If they didn't get a patent on it, chances are they'd never bother with it because they'd never recoup their investment.

You're almost funny if I didn't think you're a right wing troll when it comes to inventing one's own cure.

Well you talk like a cure is so damn easy but "they just won't make one" so either put up or shut the fuck up.

Look at how they react to medical marijuana

"They" aren't the pharmaceutical industry. "They" are the federal government. Actually pharma would love for that to be legal. Why? More product to sell. There are literally hundreds of different ways you can formulate treatments based on cannabis, because different parts of the plant are used for different treatment (and contrary to popular belief, these don't involve the psychoactive component, THC.) And you know what else? There are plenty of them likely yet to be discovered, and when they are, patented. So if you want medical marijuana legalized across the whole US, you're pointing your hippie cannon at the wrong people.

Re: Good.

[dotancohen]

That why Western Europe is dying. It will be gone in a couple hundred years.

You haven't been reading the news this month? Tens of thousands of African and Syrian refugees are pouring into Europe, there are standoffs and concentration camps, wall and fences are being built to contain them. The Hungarian state primere has already stated that Hungary does not want any more Muslims in their country, they're loosing their Christian and Hungarian identities.

Europe is already gone.

Re:Good.

[mark-t]

I offered an explanation for what happened in Pharoah's case, but you claimed it was a "stretch", without really offering any basis as to why that was an unreasonable conclusion, and then proffered your own interpretation that served no apparent purpose but to simply almost blindly contradict what I said.

Don't pretend like it's somehow my responsibility to convince you... you are responsible for what you believe in, not me.

Re:Good.

[serviscope_minor]

OK let me try and explain again.

If god hardened his heart then that was overriding his free will. Without the hardening he may have made the opposite decision.

God didn't try to convince him, but ultimately let him make the decision while in full command of his faculties, god altered his mental state. If I altered your mental state (by for example feeding you sodium thiopental), and then persuaded you do do stuff you wouldn't do otherwise, would you be pissed off at me?

If so, why?

And if so, how is me altering your mental state different from god altering the Pharoah's mental state?

Don't pretend like it's somehow my responsibility to convince you

It's called a debate. People with two opposing viewpoints try to convince each other of the opposing viewpoint.

Re:Good.

[Anonymous Coward]

HIV has a very short lifespan in infected plasma and host cells (~2 days IIRC). HIV infections are maintained through constant reinfection and infected cell turnover...this is why HIV mutates so quickly.

There's actually been a fairly common idea that HIV will eventually evolve into something that is harmless to T-Cells, and will become something we all just live with in our system without major issue.

Re:Good.

[mark-t]

I already said how god hardening Pharoah's heart was *NOT* altering Pharoah's mental state.... *YOU* have chosen to reject that analysis, and then proceed to question me about matters that are completely ignoring the point that I said in the first place.

If you are going to dismiss anything that I might say which could otherwise substantiate my position by blindly calling it some sort of "stretch" and discarding it as though it had never been submitted in the first place, that is not a debate... it is simply you having made up your own mind on what you want to believe and merely pretending to be interested in hearing alternative points so that you can shoot them down by repeatedly claiming that your interpretation can be the only possible valid one.

Re:Good.

[Anonymous Coward]

I am curious though -- why isn't this drug able to effectively shut down the virus in infected patients?

It can when taking a full course of Truvada (not PrEP, but the cocktail).; there are 3 typical HIV statuses nowadays (colloquially speaking): Positive, Negative, and undetectable. Most (not all) scientific groups agree that persons with an undetectable status are unlikely to be able to infect others, and seem to have normal lives, without the effects of the virus.

Of course, because the virus replicates so very quickly, they have to take the pill/pills every day, and some of them they have to take at extremely specific time periods, and the side effects of taking a reverse-transcriptase inhibitor are pretty nasty times...but as far as science is able to tell the virus itself is fully-inhibited. Many people have gone from having AIDS (CD4 count of fewer than 200 cells/mm3) to just being HIV positive again.

Re:Good.

[Wain13001]

Lymph nodes are a major spot for the virus.

Re:Good.

[kwyjibo87]

As part of its lifecycle, HIV integrates its viral DNA into the DNA of the cell it infects. In a normal infection, the viral DNA is then processed by the infected cell's own gene expression machinery and the virus starts to replicate. However, sometimes instead of the virus being expressed and made, the DNA is "silenced" by the infected cell, meaning the viral DNA is there but not being actively expressed by the infected cell. These cells then harbor the latent virus for as long as these cells are alive, which for some memory immune cells can be for the rest of your life. This is the virus reservoir. If you take anti-retroviral therapy (ART) drugs, such as the NNRTIs mentioned before or protease or integrase inhibitors, these will inhibit active viral replication, but won't cause any harm to the reservoir viruses that are latent. Randomly* as well, these "silenced" virus DNAs in infected cells that make up the reservoir can become un-silenced, and the virus will start replicating. If you are still taking ART, then nothing happens. If, however, you stop taking the medication, these viruses that pop back up will re-start the HIV infection and within a few weeks you will be HIV+ with viral loads (amount of virus in your blood) the same as before the ART treatment was started. This is why the ART medication must be taken for the rest of the patient's life, not because big Pharma wants to make extra cash.

Interestingly, if you follow patients that have lapses in their ART treatment and sequence the viruses that repopulate the infection, they become more similar (clonal) over time, due in part to the reservoir cells! Since potentially a single virus will do the repopulating from a reservoir cell, you would expect the resulting population of viruses to be more similar to each other than in the original infection, and this is what is observed: Specific HIV integration sites are linked to clonal expansion and persistence of infected cells .

* Random by measurement, not necessarily by mechanism.

Re:Good.

[serviscope_minor]

How is altering the Pharoe's emotional state not altering his mental state?

Hardening his heart is changing his emotions. I don't see how it isn't. Would you care to explain? I've tried to explain my side, and got so far nothing but anger in response.

Re:Good.

[mark-t]

I already answered that question... as I said, God hardening Pharoah's heart wasn't changing his mental state, it was simply forcing to the surface something that was actually already there. God was involved directly in the hardening of Pharoah's heart insomuch as God's actions that had already occurred had given Pharoah the motivation to strengthen his own resolve to continue to defy God. It is not unheard of, after all, for adversity to strengthen resolve... since God was the source of Pharoah's adversity, then to that same extent, God indeed did harden Pharoah's heart. but not in the sense that God directly affected Pharoah's ability to make a free-willed choice.

Of course, when I last offered this explanation, you pronounced it as a "stretch", and decided to ignore that I had ever even said it.

I'm not actually angry.... a little annoyed, perhaps, because you represented yourself as someone who may have sincerely wanted some kind of an explanation and when one is given, you discarded it, substituted your own, and did nothing less than basically congratulate yourself on being right, while challenging me to respond to your own assumptions that completely contradicted what I said.

That's not a debate, that's just deciding what you want to think and ignoring any view that differs from it.

Re:Good.

[Reziac]

Get your thyroid antibodies checked. Psoriatic arthritis can be a symptom of Hashimoto's thyroiditis. (If skin is also affected, it can progress to a form of elephantiasis.) Treating the underlying hypothyrodism can effect a cure.

Re:Good.

[serviscope_minor]

I already answered that question... as I said, God hardening Pharoah's heart wasn't changing his mental state, it was simply forcing to the surface something that was actually already there.

I have many thoughts some of which are not very nice and some of which would get me sent to gaol if I acted on them. But I don't because I consider myself decent person so they're just thoughts. But that makes me feel there's a massive gulf between having thoughts and acting on them. If someone did something to me to force me to act on thoughts which given my own choices remain thoughts, I'd be kind of annoyed.

We all think bad things, now and again, but most people most of the time don't act on them. Forcing them to the surface deprives the person of the free will to choose whether or not to act on such thoughts.

God was involved directly in the hardening of Pharoah's heart insomuch as God's actions that had already occurred had given Pharoah the motivation to strengthen his own resolve to continue to defy God

I disagree with your interpretation: Exodus 4:21

And the LORD said unto Moses, When thou goest to return into Egypt, see that thou do all those wonders before Pharaoh, which I have put in thine hand: but I will harden his heart, that he shall not let the people go.

To me that reads not that God does things and that indicentally causes his heard to harden, it sounds much more like a direct action on god's part. Apart from having a few staves turn into snakes and get eaten by another staff-snake, there had not at that point been any adversity. The 10 plagues (and 70 at sea) had yet to happen.

Of course, when I last offere,d this explanation, you pronounced it as a "stretch", and decided to ignore that I had ever even said it.

I didn't ignore it, I just don't think it fits what's written.

I'm not actually angry.... a little annoyed, perhaps, because you represented yourself as someone who may have sincerely wanted some kind of an explanation

It's a debate. I don't really have any skin in the game in that I'm not invested in a view of this. I have however formed an opinion from thinking about such things. I've also debated biblical matters here before and changed my opinions of some parts. I see your explanation and I understand what you're saying, I just don't think it accurately reflects what's written in the bible.

Re:Good.

[mark-t]

Well, I've offered what seems to me like an entirely plausible explanation for it... if that's not acceptable to you, that's not my problem.

Re:Good.

[serviscope_minor]

Well you've done exactly what you accused me of and ignored my quite detailed explanation of why I think your explanation isn't plausible.

Re:Good.

[delt0r]

I actually did work on HIV. Current treatments effectively shut down the virus in the *blood*. But it archives itself in different tissues such as the lungs. These tissues just keep popping out previous successful versions of the virus to freshly reinfect at any time they go off treatment. This would be enough different "types" of HIV to prevent such a thing from working.

Compared to when you get infected, it is fairly widely accepted that only 1 or 2 virions seed the initial infection. A completely different case.

Re:Good.

[delt0r]

Lung was the classic reservoir. But other tissues do as well. Such as the liver etc. This is not a conspiracy theory, it is well established and published.

Re:Good.

[mark-t]

Actually, you haven't been very detailed at all on why you think my explanation isn't plausible beyond stating that the verses themselves and how those verses read to you.

While this offered a decent explanation for why you think what you do, you haven't offered any sort of explanation for the implausibility of what I have suggested, beyond that it simply doesn't support your theory that God is actually evil or a "raging douchenozzle", to use your own words.

You originally alleged that God was not good because of what he did to Pharoah. and then basically proceed to allege that your interpretation of what he did to Pharoah is the only plausible one, which supports your original supposition that God was actually being evil in those sections of the Bible.

Go ahead and believe whatever you want. I'm done here.

Re:Good.

[Anonymous Coward]

Because corporations are almost always ruled by Republicans, and they hate us and want us to die. That makes us poor since the rulers of our country hate us. Hate us so much. Want us to die. To die. Also, the medical bills from being beaten are expensive. My last trip was well into six figures after I was late going home one night and had to take a different bus. This one was full of guys in suits so you just know they're Republicans. They hated me and beated me.

Re:Good.

[serviscope_minor]

Actually, you haven't been very detailed at all on why you think my explanation isn't plausible beyond stating that the verses themselves and how those verses read to you.

I've tried. We both seem to agree that God had some effect. I think he forced the Pharoah to make a different decision and you stated that he simply brought something to the surface that was there anyway.

Would you agree with my interpretation of what you said?

Re:Good.

[Anonymous Cow Ward]

It's still mostly immune cells, but often immune cells that don't circulate in the bloodstream very much. Macrophages in the brain are a particularly hardy reservoir, along with follicular helper cells, which can be in lymph nodes and a couple other places.

I'm sure there are lots of conspiracy theorists out there who do think that, but the sad fact of the matter is that it gets a lot of places and it's just hard to get rid of. We'll probably get there eventually, but it'll take time.

Re:Good.

[mark-t]

Against my own better judgement, I am going to respond here. Last time. Really, I'm done.

Yes, that is what I said.... but you allege that I am proclaiming that God somehow forced this kind of thing out of Pharoah against his free will, but I did not say that.

I said that Pharoah strengthened his own resolve to continue to defy God as his direct response to the things God had done. While that can readily be described as God doing something to Pharoah (God caused the plagues, the plagues as a source of adversity strengthened Pharoah's resolve to fight God, thus God harden's Pharoah's heart from that perspective), it certainly isn't an example of God poking around with Pharoah's free will.

You allege that somehow this interpretation is implausible because it talks about hardening of Pharoah's heart before God did anything at all, but the only time the text actually says that before the plagues is when God is proclaiming prophetically that is what he will do after the plagues start to hit. When God is saying that he will be hardening Pharoah's heart earlier, while no adversity has happened yet, God, being omniscient, knows how things are going to play out even before anything starts, and tells Moses this to prepare him for the worst, so that he does not get discouraged when it happens.

Foreknowledge does not necessarily imply active manipulation (it *CAN* sometimes imply that in human experience, but it does not necessarily mean that such manipulation happened), so God proclaiming how Pharoah was going to react does not inherently mean that God was mucking around with free will.

The issue of resolving God's foreknowledge of the future with the existence of free will is extraordinarily complicated, and I am not going to even pretend that I have all the answers. What follows is my own best attempt at it.

You can sometimes exactly predict how somebody you know very well is going to respond to something that you do long before you do it, that does not mean that you are meddling with their mental states either. The only difference between humans and God in that respect is that while there might be some chance that a human prediction could be wrong, God wouldn't be, and the only reason God wouldn't be is because he knows everything, not because he determines the outcome. That one might liken such foreknowledge to somehow fixing what future events are going to unfold is only a manifestation of our inability to comprehend how God can know with certainty something that appears to us to not be knowable.

Re:Good.

[es330td]

I have actually wondered this exact thing. If the consequences of being wrong weren't so harmful I would be curious to see how my body would react to various pathogens. I do know I once had a staph infection a doctor friend said would take a week to heal. Mine was gone in two days.

Re: Good.

[es330td]

Not necessarily. A female friend also has a similar condition and is unable to have a baby because her system sees the embryo as something to be eliminated. Very hard for a woman whose friends all have kids.

The Republicans will kill this...

[Anonymous Coward]

like they killed every single other AIDS cure that has been found.

Re: The Republicans will kill this...

[Anonymous Coward]

Just like they won't let us have any of the cancer treatments we read about here several times a month. You should never. Ire for a republican.

How long?

[frank_adrian314159]

How long until resistance is developed? Or how does this drug prevent it?

Re: How long?

[Anonymous Coward]

Resistance it develops in the presence of a virus. No virus. No resistance. Now somebody who is nonadherent might have drug levels low enough to become infected. After that if they continue to only take the one pill, they may develop resistance to those medications.

Re:How long?

[Anonymous Coward]

People don't become resistant. Viruses become resistant. And that only happens AFTER infection, in the replication process. Prevent infection and you prevent the development of resistant strains. Treat HIV-positive people so they do not transmit their virus - a significant body of research and experience shows that HIV-positive people with undetectable viral loads simply do not transmit the virus - and give HIV-negative people effective tools for prevention, and resistance is a non-issue.

Re:How long?

[slew]

People don't become resistant. Viruses become resistant. And that only happens AFTER infection, in the replication process. Prevent infection and you prevent the development of resistant strains. Treat HIV-positive people so they do not transmit their virus - a significant body of research and experience shows that HIV-positive people with undetectable viral loads simply do not transmit the virus - and give HIV-negative people effective tools for prevention, and resistance is a non-issue.

AFAIK, there are already commonly observed HIV mutations resistant to the these type of nucleoside reverse transcriptase inhibitors: M184V, M204V/I/S, L80V/I, V173L and L180M... Apparently, most of these mutations make HIV less virulent, but still able to reproduce. This is why these treatments are primarily aimed for PrEP (pre-exposure prophylaxis, or basically given to a high risk patient) because you are inherently less likely to get infected with these weaker mutated strains.

It also somewhat targeted at PEP (post-exposure prophylaxis, e.g., if you fear you have been recently exposed like you got raped or your partner fessed up about something), but not yet ill. Unfortunately, with the PEP regimen, if you have been exposed to a resistant strain, this NRTIs may not work as well (in the PrEP case the drug is already circulating in you blood when you are exposed), but of course given there is nothing else to do now, it's better to try these classes of drugs than do nothing. The only PEP cases that has been shown to be highly effective with these drugs is when HIV researchers get accidental needle sticks at work and of course they start take the drug immediately after exposure (not a few days later)...

For someone already with full blown HIV infection, they will currently need a cocktail of drugs to keep the virus at bay, these all-in-one pills like Truvada are not gonna do it for them... HIV is known to hide out and replicate/mutate outside the reach of the drugs we currently have and these NRTIs only attack one part of the problem.

Re:How long?

[Anonymous Coward]

People don't become resistant. Viruses become resistant. And that only happens AFTER infection, in the replication process. Prevent infection and you prevent the development of resistant strains. Treat HIV-positive people so they do not transmit their virus - a significant body of research and experience shows that HIV-positive people with undetectable viral loads simply do not transmit the virus - and give HIV-negative people effective tools for prevention, and resistance is a non-issue.

AFAIK, there are already commonly observed HIV mutations resistant to the these type of nucleoside reverse transcriptase inhibitors: M184V, M204V/I/S, L80V/I, V173L and L180M... Apparently, most of these mutations make HIV less virulent, but still able to reproduce. This is why these treatments are primarily aimed for PrEP (pre-exposure prophylaxis, or basically given to a high risk patient) because you are inherently less likely to get infected with these weaker mutated strains.

It also somewhat targeted at PEP (post-exposure prophylaxis, e.g., if you fear you have been recently exposed like you got raped or your partner fessed up about something), but not yet ill. Unfortunately, with the PEP regimen, if you have been exposed to a resistant strain, this NRTIs may not work as well (in the PrEP case the drug is already circulating in you blood when you are exposed), but of course given there is nothing else to do now, it's better to try these classes of drugs than do nothing. The only PEP cases that has been shown to be highly effective with these drugs is when HIV researchers get accidental needle sticks at work and of course they start take the drug immediately after exposure (not a few days later)...

For someone already with full blown HIV infection, they will currently need a cocktail of drugs to keep the virus at bay, these all-in-one pills like Truvada are not gonna do it for them... HIV is known to hide out and replicate/mutate outside the reach of the drugs we currently have and these NRTIs only attack one part of the problem.

Maybe you should stop swinging your dick and read what you responded to.

Your response makes zero sense. Did you mean to respond to another thread?

Well that's half informative

[quantaman]

The scientists administered the drug to 657 people at high risk for contracting HIV, including users of injected drugs. At the end of the study, every single subject was still free of the virus.

Can anyone who can view more than the abstract tell me how many they would normally expect to contract HIV?

Re:Well that's half informative

[quantaman]

The scientists administered the drug to 657 people at high risk for contracting HIV, including users of injected drugs. At the end of the study, every single subject was still free of the virus.

Can anyone who can view more than the abstract tell me how many they would normally expect to contract HIV?

Nevermind, buried in the NYT article:

That amounts to 388 “person years” of observation.

By contrast, in a 2014 clinical trial among gay men in England, participants who received a placebo instead of Truvada had nine infections for every 100 person years of observation, said Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, the director of the National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Diseases.

So assuming similar populations 388 * 9 / 100 = ~35, of course I'm too lazy to compute the confidence intervals.

Re:Well that's half informative

[Anonymous Coward]

The confidence intervals are [a bit, not very]

Re:Well that's half informative

[Solandri]

At a 9% incidence rate (p=0.09), a 95% confidence interval would be 1.96 * sqrt( p*(1-p) / n ) = 1.96 * sqrt(.09*.91/388) = 0.02847, or 2.8%.

So you would have expected 35 +/- 11 cases.

A 99% confidence interval would be 3.7%, or 35 +/- 14.5 cases. So these are very promising results. Though converting 657 people to 388 person-years may be a bit suspect. Maybe HIV isn't detectable in some people after just a half year post-infection? And I'm not sure how the fact that a person can only be infected once skews the distribution (e.g. a sample of 2 people for 100 person-years has a maximum of 2 infections, while a sample of 200 people for 100 person-years has a maximum of 200 infections.)

Re:Well that's half informative

[Anonymous Coward]

The pdf can be downloaded here: http://cid.oxfordjournals.org/content/early/2015/09/01/cid.civ783.full.pdf+html

No more circumcision?

[FizzyP]

Yay! If we could squash HIV maybe we can finally stop using it as a weak excuse for circumcision. (Don't get me wrong, obviously HIV is a bigger problem than circumcision but it'd be a nice side effect)

Re:No more circumcision?

[Anonymous Coward]

Probably not because that was just an excuse in the first place. I've never seen anything showing US infection rates differing significantly from the rest of developed nations that don't circumcise. From witnessing conversations about circumcision in the US they amount to "It's good enough for me then it's good enough for my son."

More importantly it would require an admission that it was a mistake from the father that his parents did it to him... something that guys seem reluctant to do when it comes to something that sensitive. But hey - that's just my take on it.

Re:No more circumcision?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yay! If we could squash HIV maybe we can finally stop using it as a weak excuse for circumcision. (Don't get me wrong, obviously HIV is a bigger problem than circumcision but it'd be a nice side effect)

In fact I have seen studies that circumcision hardens the head, which in turn makes it less sensitive. This in turn will not stop the guy if he is doing something, which gives him tiny scratches, which opens up for infections. In other words circumcision increase the risk of STDs, including HIV.

I'm not going to dig up this study though as I read about it a few years ago. It could take a while to dig through the archives to find it.

Re:No more circumcision?

[Lodlaiden]

What are you doing that is putting "tiny scratches" on the one thing you don't want polished with any grit grade sandpaper ever?

Re:No more circumcision?

[Jarik C-Bol]

Speaking as a circumcised male, I would not want the tip of my penis to be any more sensitive than it already is. Based on personal experience with my own penis, any increased level of sensitivity there would be damn well debilitating. Obviously, this is anecdotal evidence, and I can't vouch for the sensitivity of any other penises, but I'm just saying, anything more seems like it would be a curse, not a blessing.

Re:No more circumcision?

[Anonymous Coward]

What are you doing that is putting "tiny scratches" on the one thing you don't want polished with any grit grade sandpaper ever?

I think it refers to friction against uneven walls. Imagine having two points on the head right next to each other. Let's call them A and B. During one forward push, A gets jammed against the wall and gets stuck while B moves forward (not hitting the wall). This will cause A and B to move apart until A builds up enough stress to overcome the friction and jump forward to get back into place relative to B.

Naturally there is a limit to how far A and B can be pulled apart. A soft stretchy surface might do quite ok while a hardened and likely more brittle surface is more likely to crack.

That's my guess based on my knowledge as an engineer. I know it to be true if it were say bronze and cast iron. The bronze is soft and would bend easily when exposed to forces while the cast iron is hard and stays in the same shape. However cast iron is very brittle and once it reaches its limit, it snaps spectacularly while bronze stays in one (bend) piece even when exposed to much stronger forces. Afterwards bronze can be bend back into shape while cracked cast iron stays broken. I have a gut feeling that the same laws of physics are at play here, though I have no evidence to back that up.

Re:No more circumcision?

[Anonymous Coward]

I got a disease in mid age (XBO) that required a circumcision. Sex is definitively better with your foreskin still attached IMHO.

Re:No more circumcision?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why? I have masturbated with sandpaper before, more than once.

Re:No more circumcision?

[Antique Geekmeister]

Eager masturbation to achieve prgas? Anal sex, where lubrication is normally applied as part of the act but may prove insufficient partway through the act?

Re:No more circumcision?

[Antique Geekmeister]

s/prgas/orgasm/g

Re:No more circumcision?

[Anonymous Coward]

Uncircumsized means it's covered most of the time. You uncover it primarily for cleaning or as naturally occurs in sex, the latter providing less friction (as the extra skin provides a sliding surface). If there's any extra sensitivity, it's offset in normal life by the covering, only really becoming an 'issue' during sex or if you somehow mistake a piece of sandpaper for a washcloth.

Re:No more circumcision?

[DahGhostfacedFiddlah]

Speaking as a circumcised male, I wish I'd had a choice in the matter. If I found myself too sensitive at age 18, I'd be able to make the right choice for me.

You won't need it

[gwolf]

As long as you don't leave mommy's basement.

Other findings...

[willworkforbeer]

100% of participants also did not get lap dances from a Kardashian.

Causation, correlation, or conspiracy? Choose your own adventure.

Re:Other findings...

[TWX]

100% of participants also did not get lap dances from a Kardashian.

We cannot be sure of that. In fact, if her highly public behavior is any indication of her private behavior, the odds may be better than anyone realizes, depending on the length of the study.

Re:Other findings...

[RabidReindeer]

And on how fast we can run the other way.

Re:Other findings...

[Ol Olsoc]

100% of participants also did not get lap dances from a Kardashian.

Causation, correlation, or conspiracy? Choose your own adventure.

Or just good luck.

Re:Other findings...

[Anonymous Coward]

I was thinking similar. Any study that says something is 100% effective is suspect to fraud. But at the same time I'm willing to bet the study doesn't say any such thing and this is run of the mill media hype.

Re:Other findings...

[Anonymous Coward]

If you are saying this medicine could prevent kardashian then I want some now. Screw that. A mandatory dosing program should be started immediately. The consequences of inaction are far too high.

Placebo

[Anonymous Coward]

Sucks for all the people on the placebo. Kind of a dick move for the drug company IMO.

Re:Placebo

[TWX]

Why is it a dick-move for the company? The subjects of the study were already engaging in the behaviors known to be vectors for HIV spread, not only were they not asked to engage in risky behavior, they were probably not provided any sort of encouragement or discouragement as to the nature of their behavior at all. Nor is this like the Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment, where people known to be infected were intentionally not treated and were lied-to about being untreated. If anything, that the testers felt that the detected spread of HIV in the placebo group meant that there was no reason to continue the placebo/control aspect of the experiment and they wrapped it up early then they're actually being better for it; the patients might not have even known they were HIV infected through their behavior if the study hadn't detected it and notified them.

Re:Placebo

[F.Ultra]

Also the particular study in TFA does not seam to have used a placebo group at all. And the previous study (the PROUD study) gave all in the placebo group the real drug after 12 months.

Bear repelling rock

[Anonymous Coward]

I have this rock to sell you, it repels bears.. do you see any bear around here? See it works.

I'm sorry but unless you can show that the drug has effectively stopped a person contracting HIV it's just a bear repelling rock.

I could take the same example give the sugar pills and if only 50% of the subjects gets HIV does that mean sugar pills have a 50% chance of stopping HIV? (yes I am aware that the reported statistic was 100%, but how many of those within that period were theoretically supposed to get HIV?)

Re:Bear repelling rock

[rmdingler]

FTA:

Multiple studies were cancelled because the placebo group was contracting HIV at an alarming rate.

Re:Bear repelling rock

[TWX]

"Here, I see that you're going into the Alaskan wilderness, along with thousands of other people. We know this is a risky thing to do, please take this widget with you and report back to us on a schedule so we can find out how you are doing. We will give you some basic handling instructions for the widget, but they are simple and won't require you do really do anything special."

And the study gives 500 people the widget that is expected to repel bears, and 500 people a widget that doesn't do anything. Who reports back over time dictates how the study is interpreted. If many more people that received the anti-bear widget report back and if there are reasonable non-bear-related explanations for why those that didn't report back failed to do so, while the control group had several participants that didn't report back and were never seen again, or whose deaths, injuries, or disappearances could be plausibly linked to bear activity, then there'd be quantifiable results. Notice that the participants weren't told what the widget does.

Re:Bear repelling rock

[RabidReindeer]

I have this rock to sell you, it repels bears.. do you see any bear around here? See it works.

Do yourself a favor. Use some other illustration if you're in Orlando.

People DO see bears around there. And occasionally get their pets eaten.

Re:Bear repelling rock

[es330td]

Who reports back over time

My guess would be only the people with the anti-bear widget would report back. The placebo group became lunch.

Re:Bear repelling rock

[TWX]

No, there are lots of people that go into the Alaskan wilderness and do not become lunch. Probably the overwhelming majority even, but if 500 people with the placebo go out and 480 come back, and 500 people with the working widget go out and 493 come back, and plausible explanations beyond bear activity can be found for some of the other seven, then there's statistics to show some effect.

Re:Bear repelling rock

[F.Ultra]

Is 2.7% really a statistically significant value in a group of 1000 individuals?

Re:Bear repelling rock

[Lodlaiden]

if only 50% of the subjects gets HIV does that mean sugar pills have a 50% chance of stopping HIV?

No. It means that the other 50% of the subjects caught HIV from the sugar pill.

Why this is news for nerds

[Rinikusu]

Because the /. editors think you're all gay and at risk of AIDS.

Re:Why this is news for nerds

[serviscope_minor]

Why this is news for nerds

How is science not news for nerds? Has the definition of nerd changed so much since I first joined (a clue: no).

Re:Why this is news for nerds

[ultranova]

Because the /. editors think you're all gay and at risk of AIDS.

Look, if you're too lazy to write a decent troll couldn't you just copypasta old GNAA posts or something? Because this is pitiful enough make me feel bad for you.

Oh. Well played.

Why do we need this?

[Anonymous Coward]

The world does not need to "save" IV drug users, promiscuous homosexuals, or Africans.

Quit hating on HIV, it had done the world a favour. Let it evolve itself out of existence when the last of it's Big Three risk groups dies.

Re:Why do we need this?

[Anonymous Coward]

With luck it will hang around until it gets all the people who don't know what apostrophes are for, too.

Don't tell the Westboro Baptist Church

[Anonymous Coward]

God the almighty must have let this one slip through the cracks.

Editors, lol

[jklovanc]

Headline;

In New Study, HIV Prevention Pill Truvada Is 100% Effective

Summary;

This is encouraging news in the fight against AIDS, though it shouldn't be taken to mean the drug is perfectly effective.

Slashdot needs new editors.

Re:Editors, lol

[mobby_6kl]

Those statements aren't necessarily contradictory. The drug has been perfectly effective in the study - nobody who was on it got infected. At the same time this might not be sufficient to claim that the drug is perfectly effective in general. It's possible that the test group was just lucky or there are people for whom the drug won't work, but they didn't get into the test.

Re:Editors, lol

[serviscope_minor]

OK let me explain it for you:

"In new study, pill is 100% effective"

No one studied got HIV when taking the pill.

"It's not perfectly effective"

Just because it worked for those 650 people doesn't guarantee it would work for everyone always.

Re:Editors, lol

[BalthCat]

So the headline should read "In study [...] was 100% effective", not IS.

Battle #2, the insurance companies.

[SvnLyrBrto]

Great.

Now, let's get mandated to be covered as preventative care, or at least part of the tier-1 formularies, under the ACA. As it is, many health care plans refuse to provide Truvada at all. Or, in some cases where they do, they ignore the FDA's approval and claim its use in PrEP to be "off-label" and classify it at their highest tier (non-preferred and brand-name) and highest co-pay; making it prohibitively expansive for many people.

Re:Battle #2, the insurance companies.

[SvnLyrBrto]

Case in point, I just checked my own health plan's website, and if I wanted to go on Truvada, it would cost me $1762.61 for a 90-day supply.

Rounding to make the math simple... $600 a month is a car payment, for a fairly expensive car. In some places, that could be an entire rent check or even mortgage payment. That's overtly extortionate for a life-saving preventative treatment. And I, at least, would have *some* coverage for it. According to drugs.com, retail pricing runs about $1500 per 30-days. That rises up to a C. Montgomery Burns level of inhumanity.

Re:Battle #2, the insurance companies.

[Dorianny]

Case in point, I just checked my own health plan's website, and if I wanted to go on Truvada, it would cost me $1762.61 for a 90-day supply.

Rounding to make the math simple... $600 a month is a car payment, for a fairly expensive car. In some places, that could be an entire rent check or even mortgage payment. That's overtly extortionate for a life-saving preventative treatment. And I, at least, would have *some* coverage for it. According to drugs.com, retail pricing runs about $1500 per 30-days. That rises up to a C. Montgomery Burns level of inhumanity.

Want to keep your luxury car, then spend $5 on a pack of condoms instead.

Re:Battle #2, the insurance companies.

[FreelanceWizard]

When sold in Africa, or procured by other organizations, it can be acquired for about 24 cents per pill (International Drug Price Indicator Guide).

Without getting into the dark world of drug pricing, it's clear that $18.58 a pill, which nearly a 75x markup, is probably a wee bit too high, particularly for a drug whose two components aren't exactly on the cutting edge of anti-retroviral therapies.

Re:Battle #2, the insurance companies.

[BradMajors]

I looked up the price and got $3978 for a 90-day supply. Which seems like a reasonable price when a new drug costs over one billion dollars to develop.

http://www.manhattan-institute...

Rather than complaining about the drug companies you should be complaining about the high costs the FDA imposes on drug companies in order to obtain FDA approval.

BTW, a generic will be available in 2021.

Re:Battle #2, the insurance companies.

[BradMajors]

You are quoting prices where the patent has expired and a generic is available. Similar prices will be available in the United States when the patent expires in 2021.

Re:Battle #2, the insurance companies.

[Ol Olsoc]

Want to keep your luxury car, then spend $5 on a pack of condoms instead.

You don't have to buy a two year supply of them you insensitive clod!

Re:Battle #2, the insurance companies.

[dfenstrate]

Case in point, I just checked my own health plan's website, and if I wanted to go on Truvada, it would cost me $1762.61 for a 90-day supply.

Rounding to make the math simple... $600 a month is a car payment, for a fairly expensive car. In some places, that could be an entire rent check or even mortgage payment. That's overtly extortionate for a life-saving preventative treatment. And I, at least, would have *some* coverage for it. According to drugs.com, retail pricing runs about $1500 per 30-days. That rises up to a C. Montgomery Burns level of inhumanity.

How much did the drug cost to develop? How big is the market for this drug? And aren't those relevant questions to ask and answer before you start accusing some folks of being cartoonishly evil?

Re:Battle #2, the insurance companies.

[Anonymous Coward]

BTW, a generic will be available in 2021.

And the blood of every single person who contracts or dies from HIV/AIDS in the next six years, is on the Gilead executives' hands.

I hope they're happy.

Your'e an idiot.

[Anonymous Coward]

How dare the statisticians get meaningful data. Such assholes.

Go Science! Go Capitalism!

[Anonymous Coward]

Natural selection already had a cure, but our scientists have discovered an easier way to prevent your social disease at the low low cost of thousands per pill.

monogomous relationships

[Anonymous Coward]

If two homosexuals were in an exclusive, monogomous relationship, they wouldn't have to worry about HIV in the first place. Now, the fact that many homosexuals engage in promiscuous sexual behavior, is a major factor in the high transmission rate of HIV among homosexuals.

Now, if you are suggesting that man made drugs allow people to continue engaging in promiscuous sexual behavior in defiance of God, then you have made a point.

Re:monogomous relationships

[PopeRatzo]

If two homosexuals were in an exclusive, monogomous relationship, they wouldn't have to worry about HIV in the first place.

It makes you wonder why anyone would oppose gay marriage, doesn't it? Like that goofball from Kentucky, says God doesn't want her to do her job and fill out the form in the county clerk's office so gay people can get married, and it turns out she's been divorced three times. Fucking hell. You have to wonder about people who read about Christ in the gospels and come away thinking, "I'm gonna go fuck over some people." I don't know what goddamn gospels they've read, but the only people that Jesus was pissed off at were capitalists who were doing business at the temple and he laid some whupass on them. Other than that, Jesus was pretty chill.

Re:monogomous relationships

[rubycodez]

Jesus also had harsh words for the religious leaders of the day. ""Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You travel over land and sea to win a single convert, and when you have succeeded, you make them twice as much a child of hell as you are."

He accused the money changers of thieving, not capitalism

Re:monogomous relationships

[PopeRatzo]

He accused the money changers of thieving, not capitalism

No difference.

Re:monogomous relationships

[Anonymous Coward]

Didn't want to do her job? HA!

When I looked into it, I reached the part where it says that County Clerk is an "elected official", and stopped. Essentially, end of argument.

Those judges have no business whatsoever ordering the clerk around like that. Since she isn't doing or saying anything that would get the rest of us put in jail, if they have an issue with her performance, then they ought to take it to the voters who put her into office. They have no business jailing her or putting that contempt of court charge on her. They are not supposed to tell her subordinates to disregard her policy (and thereby subvert her authority).

They also don't even have a law. There's nothing in that amendment about homosexuals and no one is out there is credibly arguing that those who passed it where really intending to screw around with marriage. Judges in this nation have no authority to write law - they are only to determine whether or not the law is being obeyed. If they want a law, then they can wait for the legislature to pass it through the commonly accepted formalities.

That said, Law is probably the one thing that our corrupt, adulterous, murderous, blasphemous, and greedy nation doesn't want. Anything even resembling it has gotta go, since Law would ultimately vindicate the people that we'd rather haul off to jail just for having convictions.

Re: monogomous relationships

[Anonymous Coward]

Sorry, wrong. The Supreme Court decided that the right to marriage includes same-sex marriage. Thus, they mandated that such marriage licenses must be issued. This lady decided that, in her position as clerk, she would enforce a different standard for religious reasons - since she doesn't want to issue same-sex marriage licenses, she thought she'd do an end run around the Constitution by not issuing any marriage licenses. Unfortunately for her, that's part of her job as an elected official. As well, as part of the goverment, she is not allowed to enforce a religiously-motivated policy. She might have stayed out of contempt if she'd allowed her deputies to issue them in her stead, but no, she decided to "order" her deputies not to issue them either.

Re:monogomous relationships

[jafiwam]

If two homosexuals were in an exclusive, monogomous relationship, they wouldn't have to worry about HIV in the first place. Now, the fact that many homosexuals engage in promiscuous sexual behavior, is a major factor in the high transmission rate of HIV among homosexuals.

Now, if you are suggesting that man made drugs allow people to continue engaging in promiscuous sexual behavior in defiance of God, then you have made a point.

While this is true, the AIDS virus has one trick that "breaks through" this type of "protection." Basically, for the behavior to work, the participants would have to have a _lifetime_ monogamy of partners. The time period between infection and sickness/death is very long with the AIDS virus. (Not always, but it can be.)

Because that period is quite long it's quite possible to get infected by one serial monogamy partner and then carry AIDS, get a different partner a decade later and then spread it.

If you look at the marriage patterns of folks like the sanctimonious twatwaffle I quoted above where two, maybe three marriages over the course of fertile years are common... they don't have any more protection than any heterosexual couples with long term partners do. And that's without counting all the adultery going on.

Yes, bath houses and glory holes and IV drugs made a huge impact on how fast it spread. But don't be thinking because you behave like your church says you should that you are protected, because you aren't.

Aside from lots of partners, there's one huge risk factor that makes a big difference in infection rates, anal sex. Refraining from anal sex (even where an infected partner is involved) will drastically reduce risk of transmission.

Re: monogomous relationships

[Anonymous Coward]

If she is just some functionary whose job is to take orders from judges and rubber-stamp documents (rather than making decisions or enforcing the will of those who voted her into that office), then why bother with elections?

Re:monogomous relationships

[rubycodez]

Big difference, capitalism has agreement between parties for a transaction, thieving is unilateral.

Re:monogomous relationships

[PopeRatzo]

capitalism has agreement between parties for a transaction

Not the way it's done these days. No sir.

Re:monogomous relationships

[rubycodez]

You are talking of something that is not capitalism then.

You're confused.

People are still having sex

[Anonymous Coward]

https://youtu.be/0ImRyPymRAM

Do you mean Tiger repelling rock?

[Anonymous Coward]

Go to school for 8 years, get masters in chem. Get job at pharma company. Develop a drug that prevents HIV. Get challenged by someone who's scientific credentials are limited to watching "The Simpsons" growing up.

Re:Do you mean Tiger repelling rock?

[Anonymous Coward]

yup, how foolish of me to ask for evidence for a drug and of the actual effect, not statistics based on a test group. don't get me wrong its very exciting but we have been down this road before, Case studies can be manipulated and have been in the past dropping the "outliers" eg. those that get sick or deciding that the person didn't die of a the "virus" just one of the complications. or selectively altering the demographics to suit your results.

More info: http://cid.oxfordjournals.org/content/early/2015/09/01/cid.civ783.full.pdf+html

Note the infections rate in the target area is 1 per day of 862,459 occupants so 365 / 862,459 gives a transmission rate of 4.2% (in-accurate info due to the inability to estimate population os sexualy active people in the target area and population density does not include commuters and tourists) so of 657 people tested in theory 27.5 people would have been infected during the duration of the trial but the margin of error of those selected falls within this range. as you can see without more data studies like this are almost meaningless, its promising but it might have been luck.

Btw, the anecdote of the "bear repelling rock" is not a new concept and certainly not just relegated to the "simpsons" which I have never watched one episode, But used in this way because it's relatable to current audiences.

Can It Be Had?

[JimSadler]

Does the US government have the means and the will to get this drug into the hands of all of the public. Is it cheap to make? We could eliminate AIDS in the US if this stuff works.

Re:Can It Be Had?

[BigDish]

It already is. It has been approved by the CDC since May, 2014 for about a year as a preventive (for HIV) drug. I've actually been on it for about a year (I'm in the US).

Re:Can It Be Had?

[Wain13001]

If you don't mind me asking, are you affording it entirely through your own income/savings/insuarnce? or are there other programs available to assist with the cost of prep?

Re:Can It Be Had?

[BigDish]

My insurance covers the cost completely, except for a small co-pay. Gilead (the maker of Truvada, the pill for PrEP) has a copay assistance card, available at https://start.truvada.com/indi... which covers my co-pay, so the only cost to me is my doctor's copay when I get labwork done. If you don't have insurance, Gilead has an assistance program also available, though I don't know the details of that.

My understanding is that because PrEP is approved by the CDC as preventative, insurance companies have to cover it.

Stage 2

[Anonymous Coward]

Clone Freddie Mercury, Rock Hudson, and Liberace.

Stage 3
Profit

Re:Stage 2

[KGIII]

I was visiting a site with a comments section, as I am wont to do, and I read those comments. Somehow Liberace managed to be the topic in the thread. There were a number of people who claimed Liberace was not really gay. They had links and citations and evidence. I did not check a single bit of their evidence no click on a single link. However, it turned into a rather large discussion and a surprisingly large number of people were adamant that Liberace was not gay.

I am not sure where I'm going with this but, yeah... It was one of the oddest topics (and I read a bunch) I've ever discovered on the internet. It isn't the oddest - I am unable to rank them - but it was certainly odd.

Evolution!

[Ihlosi]

Chalk up another in the 'win' column for science, technology, and reason.

The process of evolution will create a more successful disease, somewhere, sometime. In a competition between a life form with a generation period of 30 years and one in the order of hours, bets should be firmly on the latter.

Re:Evolution!

[Anonymous Coward]

Chalk up another in the 'win' column for science, technology, and reason.

The process of evolution will create a more successful disease, somewhere, sometime. In a competition between a life form with a generation period of 30 years and one in the order of hours, bets should be firmly on the latter.

A succeful disease, in evolutionary terms, is generally a fairly innocous one. Evolution obviously doesn't favour diseases that wipe out their hosts faster than new hosts are produced but more than that, a life form that leaves its host fit and well to reproduce, protect its offspring etc. is way ahead of one that doesn't.

Need to do a definitive study

[Anonymous Coward]

Since researchers can't ethically expose people to HIV, we don't know for sure that any of the subjects were definitely saved by the drug.

Since when is there a shortage of unethical researchers? The Mengele, Wenger, and Milgram Institute for Clinical Research would be happy to accept funding for a follow-up study. And MWM guarantees to never cancel the study regardless of how sick either group gets, provided the money keeps coming in.

Looks like god...

[hyades1]

...sent another second-rate punishment to kill off all them gays. Poor ol' geezer appears to be losing his mojo.

Either that or the ignorant morons who insisted AIDS was god's way of punishing homosexuals for being, um, homosexual, yet again proved to be full of shit.

Re:Looks like god...

[ledow]

I thought most of them had finally jumped on the gay bandwagon now that they've seen their congregation is all for it? Suddenly it's not a sin any more, according to the Pope, etc.?

Ignoring the fact, of course, that clergy have traditionally been so associated with homosexuality that it became a stereotype, and that historically homosexuality has been far more accepted than it is even today (e.g. Ancient Greece and Rome, pre-dating the bible).

Hell, AIDS was such a "punishment" that even Christians who unwittingly offered medical aid to those who caught it were struck down with it... the only way you could interpret that is a) God is a bastard or b) there is no God.

Re:Looks like god...

[ultranova]

Either that or the ignorant morons who insisted AIDS was god's way of punishing homosexuals for being, um, homosexual, yet again proved to be full of shit.

"What biblical character you most resemble" is a popular pastime in those circles, or so I've heard, so just point them to Revelation: "Then I saw a second beast, coming out of the earth. It had two horns like a lamb, but it spoke like a dragon."

Who knows, it might actually result in some self-reflection.

New band name.

[drunk_punk]

Anti-Sex Death Cult! Domain registered.

Ethically Shmetically.

[nospam007]

"...since researchers can't ethically expose people to HIV"

Of course, but if _they_ believe in it an they want _us_ to believe in it, nothing hinders them from exposing _themselves_ to HIV, as many researcher before them did, when they were really sure about a vaccine or a cure.

The dour truth of the matter is

[Anonymous Coward]

whatever allows people to have whatever sort of sex without responsibility and consequences.

A virologist comments on the paper

[Anonymous Coward]

Dr Dr Jose Campione read the paper available here: http://cid.oxfordjournals.org/content/early/2015/09/01/cid.civ783.full.pdf+html and says
"Very suspicious...

The drug of the pill is "Truvada" produced by "Gilead". Gilead was the same laboratory behind Tamiflu and the need for countries to stock on it in preparation for the Influenza Pandemia that never was (Gilead sold Tamiflu to Roche but keeps getting royalties from it). Current Gilead CEO is billionaire John Martin (http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2014-03-03/gilead-ceo-becomes-billionaire-on-84-000-hepatitis-drug) but a previous one was none other than Donald Rumsfeld himself... still in the board of Gilead and receiving royalties from Roche... On this here is one link of many: http://www.globalresearch.ca/who-owns-the-rights-on-tamiflu-rumsfeld-to-profit-from-bird-flu-hoax/1148.

Now, by proposing any drug as a pre-exposure "propyilactic" the target population is no longer the sick, but the much larger population of the healthy... a real bonus for every drug-developing corporation whose single mandate required by law is to fill the pockets (and secret bank accounts in offshore heavens) of its ethically-challenged stockholders. Hence the above: very suspicious...

In the article the authors claim that "The authors have no reported conflict of interest". This wording is quite interesting since it does not categorically deny the existence of any conflict and merely indicates that none has been "reported". If one digs deep enough many potential sources conflict would likely arise as these large academic and research institutions, besides being themselves corporations, are directly or indirectly funded mainly by private money, and in this case, drug companies."

Oh Good!

[Anonymous Coward]

Another excuse for buggerers.

$16000 Truvada or $200 condoms?

[peter303]

This is one of those $10 billion drugs, if given to the half million very active gay men as suggested. A similar result is achieved with less convenient condoms. Someone- insurance subscribers or medicaid- pays for that. There is concern the system cant support that many ten-figure drugs.

Hahaha no

[Anonymous Coward]

Ok but until it prevents yeast infection too, you're gonna be wearing that rubber.

how i cure my hiv

[Anonymous Coward]

HELLO DEAR FRIEND,

All thanks to Dr molleye again for curing my HIV positive to Negative, i do not have much to say but with all my life i will for ever be grateful to him and God Almighty for using Dr molleye to reach me when i thought it is all over, today am happy with my two kids and my husband after the medical doctor have confirmed my HIV status Negative,i have never in my life believed that HIV could be cure by any herbal medicine. so i want to use this means to reach other persons who have this disease by testifying the wonderful herbs and power of Dr molleye all is not lost yet, try and contact him by any means with his email: drmolleyespelltemple@gmail.com

How i was cured of HIV

[Anonymous Coward]

I have been HIV positive for 3 years and long for the day to be free of this disease. I would love to be part of any trial that helped find the cure, i have an undetectable viral load and CD4 count of around 1100.
I have tried almost everything but I couldn't find any solution on my disease, despite all these happening to me, i always spend a lot to buy a HIV drugs from hospital and taking some several medications but no relieve, until one day i was just browsing on the internet when i came across a great post of !Michelle! who truly said that she was been diagnose with HIV and was healed that very week through the help of this great powerful healing spell doctor ,I wonder why he is called the great Dr, Odia, i never knew it was all because of the great and perfect work that he has been doing that is causing all this. so I quickly contacted him, and he ask me some few questions and so i did all the things he asked me to do,He ask me to buy some herbs and which I did for my cure,only to see that at the very day which he said i will be healed, all the strength that has left me before rush back and i becomes very strong and healthy, this disease almost kills my life all because of me, so i went to hospital to give the final test to the disease and the doctor said i am HIV negative, i am very amazed and happy about the healing doctor Odia gave to me from the ancient part of Africa, you can email him now for your own healing too on his email: ( drodiaherbalistcenter@gmail. com ) or call him on +2348077306724. He is always able to help you get your heart desire granted................. I thank Dr, Odia