An end to AIDS?

[TampaYankee]

Sorry, cut and paste loses the paragraphing in the article which is too long to overcome my lazy gene. Worth a read though.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20110601/hl_nm/us_aids;_ylt=AgRXoJm6cOnViv3TmwQ7VI3f47oF;_ylu=X3oDMTMxbXNkanJ2BGFzc2V0A25tLzIwMTEwNjAxL3VzX2FpZHMEY2NvZGUDdG9wZ21wdG9wMjAwcG9vbARjcG9zAzgEcG9zAzgEc2VjA3luX3RvcF9zdG9yaWVzBHNsawNzcGVjaWFscmVwb3I-

[RA1]

Interesting article. I hate to bring this up but isn't there a tremendous difference between a cure and say a vaccine? Both seem far away at the moment. Even with a vaccine, what are the chances that it will be 100% successful? We have an influenza vaccine but people still get the flu, even those that were innoculated. We don't have either a cure or a vaccine for the common cold, another illness caused by a virus. We all know the precautions for avoiding a cold but they are still everyday and common. It strikes me that the human race will have to do things it has never been willing to do before, even with a cure and/or vaccine to really eradicate HIV.

Best regards,

RA1

[BiBottomBoy]

They managed to cure a man of AIDS/HIV earlier this year by implanting the stem cells of an HIV immune man into his body and think that in a few years this will become a mainstream practice.

[Guest BeachBoy]

They managed to cure a man of AIDS/HIV earlier this year by implanting the stem cells of an HIV immune man into his body and think that in a few years this will become a mainstream practice.

I read that article. And cried.

[Lucky]

Another article, this in today's LA Times, takes a look at 30 years of AIDS:

http://www.latimes.com/health/la-he-aids-at-30-20110605,0,2300265.story

(I haven't even started today's NY Times...)

[Lucky]

Also in today's LA Times is an op-ed article by a man I met many years ago, Fenton Johnson. He discusses safe sex, barebacking, and sex in our society:

Thirty years ago, on June 5, 1981, the Centers for Disease Control published a notice of a strange illness affecting five Los Angeles gay men, two of whom died before the report could be published. The illness soon acquired the designation AIDS, along with a burden of fear and misinformation that it has never quite shaken.

The decades of terror and rage and sacrifice and nobility that followed have been chronicled elsewhere, but for the sake of those living with HIV as well as the millions dead worldwide, let us honor those activists who defied silence and hostility and the law to insist that we take action. Because of those in-your-face activists — many dead before they saw the results of their courage — we know that HIV existed decades before its discovery, and that its spread can be prevented through simple, cheap measures, most notably condoms. Because of those activists we are able, if not to cure the disease, at least to manage it. Because of those activists, patients gained a greater voice in their care decisions. Because of those activists, I am alive and so, perhaps, are many of you.

Continue reading:

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-johnson-aids-20110605,0,4195576.story

[Lucky]

Another great article is this first person story in the NY Times today:

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/05/opinion/05trautwein.html?_r=1&ref=opinion

[TampaYankee]

Also in today's LA Times is an op-ed article by a man I met many years ago, Fenton Johnson. He discusses safe sex, barebacking, and sex in our society:

Thirty years ago, on June 5, 1981, the Centers for Disease Control published a notice of a strange illness affecting five Los Angeles gay men, two of whom died before the report could be published. The illness soon acquired the designation AIDS, along with a burden of fear and misinformation that it has never quite shaken.

The decades of terror and rage and sacrifice and nobility that followed have been chronicled elsewhere, but for the sake of those living with HIV as well as the millions dead worldwide, let us honor those activists who defied silence and hostility and the law to insist that we take action. Because of those in-your-face activists — many dead before they saw the results of their courage — we know that HIV existed decades before its discovery, and that its spread can be prevented through simple, cheap measures, most notably condoms. Because of those activists we are able, if not to cure the disease, at least to manage it. Because of those activists, patients gained a greater voice in their care decisions. Because of those activists, I am alive and so, perhaps, are many of you.

Continue reading:

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-johnson-aids-20110605,0,4195576.story

Well said. Society -- all of society -- owes a debt of gratitude to the sung and many unsung heros that brought HIV out of the shadows of society as well as the shadows of medicine. It a disease that affects not only Homos and Haitians but people across the spectrum, especially the young and the poor. No one is immune, even the richest white straight people.

[BiBottomBoy]

This is why the people who brag about "stealthing" in their blogs piss me off so much.