What the New HIV breakthrough Means..

[Scott]

What the New HIV Breakthroughs Mean for the Future of the Disease

By Sarah B. Weir, Shine Senior Writer | Healthy Living

There was exciting news this week in the battle against HIV/AIDS, much of it coming out of the annual Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections (CROI), which took place in Boston. But perhaps the biggest story was that, for the second time in history, a baby born with HIV has been declared free of the virus after early, aggressive treatment.

While “baby cured of HIV” is, for sure, a thrilling headline, scientists are more cautiously hopeful than some media outlets would suggest. “That case is definitely intriguing,” Reilly O’Neal, editor of the San Francisco AIDS Foundation’s blog BETA, who attended the conference, tells Yahoo Shine. “The baby was tested with incredibly sensitive tests.

http://shine.yahoo.com/healthy-living/-what-the-new-hiv-breakthroughs-mean-for-the-future-of-the-disease-002544064.html

[Scott]

A little further down in the article is some information about the CCR5 mutation. which is of interest, as well.

[WitawatWatawit]

Shouldn't this be in the general health section? The issue goes beyond the gay community. Anyway, interesting read.

[sustento]

Shouldn't this be in the general health section? The issue goes beyond the gay community. Anyway, interesting read.

Really? You mean that HIV isn't just a 'gay disease'???

Sorry - I'll get my coat...

[Jingthing]

Shouldn't this be in the general health section? The issue goes beyond the gay community. Anyway, interesting read.

No!

Absolutely not.

Here is why:

Health Forum Rule # 4

4. Posting/pinning of news articles: The forum is for members to seek advice on health/beauty related matters. it is not the place for general dissemination of news, research findings etc. Members are not to post news articles/research findings unless in the context of a discussion specific to a TV member's health/beauty related problem. "

http://www.thaivisa.com/forum/topic/708794-high-protein-diet-is-dangerous/?p=7525725

Edited March 8, 2014 by Jingthing

[sustento]

Shouldn't this be in the general health section? The issue goes beyond the gay community. Anyway, interesting read.

No!

Absolutely not.

Here is why:

Health Forum Rule # 4

4. Posting/pinning of news articles: The forum is for members to seek advice on health/beauty related matters. it is not the place for general dissemination of news, research findings etc. Members are not to post news articles/research findings unless in the context of a discussion specific to a TV member's health/beauty related problem. "

http://www.thaivisa.com/forum/topic/708794-high-protein-diet-is-dangerous/?p=7525725

I see you're modding the gay forum again...

[WitawatWatawit]

Shouldn't this be in the general health section? The issue goes beyond the gay community. Anyway, interesting read.

Really? You mean that HIV isn't just a 'gay disease'???

Sorry - I'll get my coat...

Don't put words into my mouth. I thought you were more intelligent than that. And don't twist my point to suit yourself.

[Jingthing]

I see you're modding the gay forum again...

Sniping. Is it fun?

[WitawatWatawit]

Shouldn't this be in the general health section? The issue goes beyond the gay community. Anyway, interesting read.

No!

Absolutely not.

Here is why:

Health Forum Rule # 4

4. Posting/pinning of news articles: The forum is for members to seek advice on health/beauty related matters. it is not the place for general dissemination of news, research findings etc. Members are not to post news articles/research findings unless in the context of a discussion specific to a TV member's health/beauty related problem. "

http://www.thaivisa.com/forum/topic/708794-high-protein-diet-is-dangerous/?p=7525725

And are you not guilty of the very same thing yourself? The Shine article is informative and of interest to a wide audience. Sustento above seems to think I'm gay bashing because I merely suggested the thread be given wider exposure. If I hadn't spotted it in new content, I might have missed it altogether as I don't visit this forum as much as the general health forum.

[Scott]

First, thanks Jingthing for pointing out the rule on the Health forum. I really hadn't paid close attention to that. I don't generally post much in the health forum, so I didn't even consider it. Second, does anybody have anything to say about the topic?

[Jingthing]

From the article:

While we may still be years away from a cure for HIV, from treatment to prevention, we’ve come a long way from the dark days when a diagnosis was a death sentence. And that's good news now.

Well, that's pretty good. But as an unlikely survivor of 1980's San Francisco where so many around me were dropping like flies, I really really really thought by NOW there would be a CURE. Actually at the time I figured it would take about 25 years, don't ask me why. So from my POV, this pace of progress isn't so great.

Edited March 9, 2014 by Jingthing

[sustento]

First, thanks Jingthing for pointing out the rule on the Health forum. I really hadn't paid close attention to that. I don't generally post much in the health forum, so I didn't even consider it. Second, does anybody have anything to say about the topic?

Apparently not...

[Jingthing]

First, thanks Jingthing for pointing out the rule on the Health forum. I really hadn't paid close attention to that. I don't generally post much in the health forum, so I didn't even consider it. Second, does anybody have anything to say about the topic?

Apparently not...

So what was my comment, chopped liver?

[Scott]

Apparently, your bag doesn't match your shoes, so some posters would never respond to your post!

Until there is a cure, or a vaccine, we really aren't going to know what could have been done. The virus has turned out to be a lot trickier than many people thought it would be. Earlier attention and intervention would have gone miles to both slowing the spread of the epidemic and might have also made the treatment options easier for an ever mutating virus.

A friend downloaded a program about the AIDS epidemic. I don't recall the name of it, but it was excruciatingly difficult to watch. Much of it was filmed in San Francisco and they interviewed the movers and shakers of the time. The one thing that became clear was just how the epidemic managed to bring together a rather fragmented gay community.

I doubt that the gay identity, the level of activism and the strides made toward equal rights would have been achieved without the forward push of people who helped to deal with the epidemic and the huge human toll it took.

A group of people who were pretty much reviled around the country, managed to take pretty good care of their own. Once the 'gay cancer' spread to the general population, the foundation was laid for a change in attitudes.

[sustento]

I doubt that the gay identity, the level of activism and the strides made toward equal rights would have been achieved without the forward push of people who helped to deal with the epidemic and the huge human toll it took.

I hate to sound smug but the 'strides towards equal rights' were achieved in the UK without the AIDS epidemic as a catalyst. We have rights in the UK now that the USA still lacks.

[Scott]

I have to disagree with you. You don't seem to mind being smug.

There was activism before the aids epidemic, but it was quite different than after the epidemic. Aids was a definitive focal point. It also was not limited to the US, although the particular show I was watching was primarily filmed in San Francisco.

As far as the funding aspects goes this is of interest:

Five donor governments - Australia, Canada, Japan, Sweden, and the U.S. - reported increased total assistance for HIV in 2012, with U.S. assistance increasing by just more than US$ 500 million. Six decreased funding in 2012: Denmark, France, Ireland, the Netherlands, the U.K., and the European Commission. Three donor governments - Germany, Italy, and Norway - stayed constant in their support in 2012. The report found that the great majority, US$ 6 billion, of international HIV assistance is provided bilaterally.

The United States accounted for nearly two-thirds (63.9%) of disbursements from donor governments bilaterally and multilaterally. The United Kingdom was the second largest donor (10.2%), followed by France (4.8%), Germany (3.7%), and Japan (2.7%)

http://www.unaids.org/en/resources/presscentre/pressreleaseandstatementarchive/2013/september/20130923prfinancing/

[sustento]

You missed a bit off:

"When viewed as a share of national economies, Denmark provided the highest amount of resources for HIV in 2012, followed by the U.K, Sweden, the U.S., and Ireland."

[sustento]

Public information broadcast in the UK in 1987. Broadcast across the TV network. The leaflet was sent to every household in the UK.

[Scott]

Any comment on the HIV breakthrough?

[sustento]

Obviously not. Most of us who used to be regular contributors to the gay forum have lost the will to live or the ability to post. We no longer care

[impulse]

Sounds like so many other promising breakthroughs in HIV and cancer over the years. Promising development, but probably no practical implications for years, if not decades.

In the meantime, there will be the usual arguments about selling it in the west for hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars and how poor people in the rest of the world are being left out, and who has the patents and who should make the royalties. And the argument about who should be covered under insurance and why, and how to pay for the ones who aren't covered but very much deserve to be treated and..and..

And the real possibility that the virus was just hiding and will re-emerge at some time in these kids' lives.

Hope it's for real, but I'm not convinced by a tiny few cases with no long term follow up.

Edited March 15, 2014 by impulse