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Experts Claim HIV Patients Made Non-Infectious
Posted by
ScuttleMonkey
on Mon Feb 04, 2008 06:10 PM
from the shot-in-the-arm dept.
from the shot-in-the-arm dept.
Misanthrope writes to tell us that Swiss scientists are claiming that with proper treatment HIV patients can be made non-infectious. "The statement's headline statement says that 'after review of the medical literature and extensive discussion,' the Swiss Federal Commission for HIV / AIDS resolves that, 'An HIV-infected person on antiretroviral therapy with completely suppressed viraemia ("effective ART") is not sexually infectious, i.e. cannot transmit HIV through sexual contact.'"
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I'm not infected baby... Really.... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:I'm not infected baby... Really.... (Score:5, Interesting)
Wasn't there an article a short while ago about how treating concurrent STIs also tended to decrease the rate of AIDs infection in an area? Perhaps this is related?
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Re:I'm not infected baby... Really.... (Score:4, Insightful)
Also, treating STDs would provide opportunity for conversion of high-risk behaviors into lower-risk behaviors, e.g. you're in the office anyway, why not have a little talk about safe sex while you're there?
Hence, treating the other (usually more obvious) STDs would presumably impact the treatment of AIDS for a number of reasons--counselling, earlier detection, and possible reduction of the viral load to a less-dangerous level.
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Re:I'm not infected baby... Really.... (Score:5, Funny)
So...what is it that you do in your office?
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Re:I'm not infected baby... Really.... (Score:4, Funny)
Given that this is on Slashdot, that's pretty much a given.
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Old News (Score:5, Funny)
Nobodoy has called me back saying they have AIDS, so I must not be infectious.
Re:Old News (Score:5, Funny)
"Hey Joe, do you know anyone who has AIDS? No? Cool... 'cause you know me."
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Re:Old News (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re: (Score:3, Informative)
AIDS free world (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Drug companies aside, there's no way this would be used anytime soon in 3rd world countries, so the problem will simply continue to grow there.
What this needs is widespread proof and then some major government backing. Then, maybe.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:AIDS free world (Score:4, Informative)
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Drug addicts less significant in Switzerland (Score:3, Informative)
Because in Switzerland, that's the main mode of transmission by which people may catch AIDS.
There have been extensive efforts against dirty needles. Drug addicts can easily have access to "Kits" that contain proper sterile equipment (syringes, spoons, citrate, alcohol to clean the injection site, etc). They can either buy it cheaply from pharmacies or receive it for free from some organisation. Such efforts have drastically reduced the occur
Small pox? (Score:3, Interesting)
Admittedly, I'm too young to appreciate the politics that went on when small pox was "eradicated", so it would be nice if anyone can point out what's so different about the small pox issue and the AIDS issue.
Re:Small pox? (Score:5, Insightful)
Also, back in the late 1700s, someone couldn't patent a scab off of a cows back.
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Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Small pox? (Score:4, Informative)
With the Small Pox vaccine, once exposed to the alternative, you become immune to Small Pox. HIV is the opposite, once you are exposed, it will kill you.
As bad as it was, Small Pox was a 20-60% mortality rate (see wikipedia), which is horrible, but there was a chance. HIV is a 100% mortality rate, it just takes a bit longer. If we could find a way to create immunity from HIV, it would die out.
Most of the treatments for HIV simply extend the person's life, probably with the hope that they live long enough to find a cure. The drugs are not pleasant, and often make the person ill while trying to swallow them.
I too am too young to really appreciate not having to worry about Small Pox. I'm not even sure I was given the shot, as I was born after it was declared eradicated (1979).
Parent
Re:Small pox? (Score:5, Informative)
How can someone think a rate is 20-60%? That's one to three out of five. It doesn't make any sense. Of course, the source you cite is Wikipedia, which you should know better than, except of course that it says 30-35%, not 20-60% like you claim; at that point it's probably more of a question of measurement differences or other fundamental quality of standard measurements between sample populations.
Smallpox was still active in the 1960s; why you think it was "eradicated in an effort that spanned the 19th and 20th centuries" is beyond me. Maybe you're misreading the "after successful vaccination campaigns" bit in the wikipedia article; this is one of many reasons why reading an encyclopedia article does not match actual knowledge, since what they're talking about are local, single-city eradications. The actual global eradication effort was begun in the early 1950s by PAHO, which Wikipedia incorrectly cites as 1950 (it started in 1952.) The bulk of Smallpox was driven out of the states around the turn of this century, but the last known US case of non-weaponized Smallpox outbreak was in New York State in 1947, and there were isolated rural cases as late as 1965. The actual eradication wasn't certified by WHO until 1980; cases were found in nature in southern Africa until 1977.
Incidentally, HIV, like Vareola, doesn't have a mortality rate; it's syndromes like AIDS and Smallpox, not diseases like HIV and Vareola, which have mortality rates. If you understood disease you'd know this. Many people with HIV never develop AIDS at all, and live healthy lives until they die from a car accident or cancer or a bolt of lightning or bad heroin or getting mugged. Now, mortality rates aren't just percentages; they're rates. That's why the correct way to say it is "Smallpox has a thirty eight percent chance of mortality per week." This makes a big difference, but what makes a bigger difference is that AIDS itself doesn't actually cause death. Associated infection does. The AIDS mortality rate is ZERO.
Why does that matter? Because when you start knowing what you're talking about, you find out that the AIDS associated disease mortality rate is widely different between economic, ethnic and social groups. Why? Because that's not one hundred percent either. Hell, there are two known people who have sero-converted so far (meaning their immune system fought back and won, and they're not even carriers anymore.) We have no idea how they did it, but they did. About five percent of people with HIV do not develop AIDS by the twenty year mark, and show no symptoms whatsoever. The median time between infection and symptoms even displaying is now over ten years. There are known human mutations that create HIV resistance, such as CCR5 delta 32.
You're just rambling about shit you heard. Get off the soapbox. You're full of crap. No disease has a 100 percent mortality rate over any time frame. You're not even measuring using the right kind of units. The AIDS associated opportunistic infection mortality rate in the United States has been 2.21 per 100 per year since 1998, as accepted by the AMA, the WHO and the CDC.
Two point two percent per year. One hundred? Go read a book, kid, you're lying through your teeth.
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Re:AIDS free world (Score:5, Insightful)
Now, the optimistic among us would have hopped that those on drug regimen knew they could spread the disease and modify their behavior accordingly. So this announcement should actually have little affect. If you were doing what the doctors told you to do, you weren't spreading the disease same as before. Maybe this would act as a motivation for some people? But it also might cause people to engage in riskier behavior and compound the issue.
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Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Yes... (Score:5, Insightful)
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Wow (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Wow (Score:5, Interesting)
They covered their bases. This is one of the most informative and honest articles I've seen in a long time. They make a point of saying, more than once, that they're not positive a treated person is not infectious, but their certainty is equal to the certainty with which the scientific community asserted in 1986 that kissing cannot spread HIV (an assertion that continues to hold up to this day).
Interestingly, they are not recommending the treatment for widespread use, because many people have trouble rigorously adhering to a treatment schedule, and even a little slip in the treatment could result in the creation of a resistant strain of HIV. I'd hate to be the doctor who has to pass that judgement: "Before I treat you, how do I know you won't skip an occasional treatment, thereby creating a scourge of humankind that's even harder to treat than the HIV we have now?"
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Re:Wow (Score:5, Informative)
Essentially it went like this: By *religiously* adhering to a multi-drug cocktail treatment (3-4 drugs targeting different portions of the viral replication cycle) over the course of 3-4 years the free virus particles would be filtered out of the body by the lymph nodes and T-Cells at varying stages of infection would be broken down, leaving a person HIV free. They would still test as HIV positive as they would still have the antibodies in their bloodstream, but they would no longer be infectious or subject to relapse.
Obviously starting treatment when still healthy would be preferable, like Magic Johnson did. He was diagnosed with HIV about 3 years after my Father was. Magic Johnson is still alive and healthy 16 years later, but my dad died almost 15 years ago.
There was also a "Morning After" treatment that showed promise for preventing infection after likely exposure to HIV. It was an 8 week course of drugs similar to chemotherapy but, if completed, had a significant success at preventing infection.
It's good to see they're still working toward these ends, hopefully they can stop it fairly soon.
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It is a risky statement. (Score:3, Interesting)
Its no cure (get it & you're still going to di (Score:3, Insightful)
I sucks but its a step in the right direction. (But will any company take the next step; after all, once YOU're dead, the disease is eradicated.)
Sucks to think like an actuary...
Improbable, Not Impossible (Score:3, Insightful)
By what means are they non-infectious? (Score:3, Insightful)
AIDS is spreading rapidly in different parts of the world by different means. In Africa and India/Asia, it's spreading because of unprotected sex. In eastern Europe and Russia, it's being spread predominately from dirty needles used for drugs.
Breaking news! (Score:5, Funny)
This scientific breakthrough will bring hope to millions of people infected with the virus.
Sources indicate it will be named 'condom'.
Re:Encouraging news (Score:4, Interesting)
I wonder how many months in Iraq it would cost to do something like that.
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Of course ther
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
1) many seem to think they are done learning once they finish med school and get their practice going. They don't seem to have the research mentality that other scientists do. And,
2) they have to deal with so many idiots who don't know or care about their bodies that they think we are all like that. And instead of giving us "dangerous" information that they don't feel we need to know they just give us the meds and send
Re:Encouraging news (Score:5, Insightful)
or if your symptoms were so nondescript it could be a 100 things.
Well shit. If you rule out the hard cases, an RN could do anything a general practitioner doctor can.
That SHOULD be why they make the big bucks - the hard cases with confusing or nondescript symptoms. As a practical matter, most of them bail on anything they can't churn through in a 15 minute office visit. Even specialists are starting to suck. They can't be bothered to do any research, if the usual blood work doesn't solve the problem, they'll just roll through tests until they get lucky, or you just give up. Or die, maybe. And if your symptoms fall between specialties, you're completely fucked, because they can't be bothered to fill in knowledge gaps with...again...research. Which would help them put evidence together with their own expertise to make a successful diagnosis OR at least find the right specialist. But for most doctors, forget it.
i'd say the most likely case here is that the doctor is right, and you just THINK you know better.
I can back up the OP. I had a problem for 8 years that multiple doctors consistently failed at. None even came up with a guess, just saw me for an appointment, sent me off for the wrong test, told me they didn't know what it was, and referred me to someone else. When the 5th doctor in the chain referred me to the first, I said to hell with it and decided to live with the symptoms. I eventually got sick of that, and successfully diagnosed it myself. With Google, effort, and a brain.
I feel sorry for others though. I'm a scientist and have good research skills. People shouldn't have to be forced to do their own medical care.
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You ARE kidding, right? (Score:5, Interesting)
Generally the reason most physicians prescribe inappropriately is because asshats like Mr "I have not had a doctor do, or say anything to me that I did not already know since I was about 10" know better that they absolutely do need antibiotics (when they obviously don't). It takes thirty seconds to write the prescription and sometimes thirty minutes to escape the asshat.
I actually had a complaint letter written to the CEO of the hospital where I worked a few years back from a parent who brought their child into the ER with what was obviously a viral syndrome. Their letter literally said I brought my child to the ER to get a prescription for antibiotics, not to be told that he didn't need antibiotics. And I get several complaints yearly from irate people who didn't like my answer that they didn't need antibiotics. I've never gotten a complaint when I prescribed them.
So you can't have it both ways. If you want a doctor who has real clinical acumen, you can't also have him be a prescription vending machine.
Parent
Re:Encouraging news (Score:5, Interesting)
Our healthcare system in the US works quite well if you have a job and insurance (that's one hell of an incentive to get out of bed in the morning and drag your ass to work!). I have personally witnessed "no expense spared" treatments which saved the lives of friends or their children. I work in healthcare and I get to see firsthand the technology the doctors have at their disposal to diagnose and treat health issues.
And no I haven't watched Micheal Moores propaganda piece, however Canada is an example of how even bureaucratic government wrangling does not obliterate the benefit of universal health care. Of course We lack the sheer incompetences that is the current US admin. Perhaps if it was instituted while enough of the Bush cronies lead the various government agencies, it'd fail as spectacularly as FEMA did during Katrina.
The US problem is they believe free market fixes everything. However this ideology is flawed as very few things exist in an ideal free market. The US health care system isn't a truly free market. Canada's system is probably closer to an ideal free market then the US system. We have a single payer, pay as you go system. Right now it's crunching under a worse case scenario but that will fade soon. All tax payers pay a set amount, and most services are private. From hospital supply companies, drug companies, the MRI scanning company, to the GP. All private businesses to negotiated with a central body for payment. It gives the people a better deal and actually reduces bureaucracy vs the US system. Where there are dozens of insurance companies all doing essentially the same jobs all working off the same actuary tables, in Canada we just have a central body to regulate our finances for health. The goal of the organization is singular "to make people better" while the US system has mixed goals of "produce most profit" and "to make people better". The lack of a profit margin at every level also helps. Canada health does not aim to make 60% profit off your treatment before factoring the profit of all private companies involved. This alone would negate any and all efficiencies the US systems may have. State of the art treatments are invented and used here as well. Likely similar to the ratio of our populations.
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Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
My point above was that this is not viable for mass treatment and will only be available to the privileged elite like Magic Johnson. Though you are technically correct about the effectiveness of your method, you've raised a fundamental ethics question: Is saving the species from disease wor
Re:Encouraging news (Score:5, Interesting)
If we can do bullshit like keep two ounces of mouthwash off a plane, while letting one ounce on, then we can get effective disease prevention to our population.
Then I thought more, since I live in America where reality based communities don't alway align with the faith based government.
My government hates sex. My government hates gays. My government thinks AIDS is a gay disease. AIDS is a sexually transmitted disease, and my government is not going to subsidize someones sex life.
My government will do nothing but continue to say abstinence is the only way to remain disease free.
Captcha = unfair
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Re:Encouraging news (Score:4, Informative)
Aids is no longer the death sentence it once was. It's like diabetes, if left untreated it is fatal but it can be treated successfully. If they can just eliminate the transmission aspect, then this scourge will be gone in a few generations.
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Re:Encouraging news (Score:4, Informative)
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Re:Encouraging news (Score:5, Insightful)
The best way to deliver these drugs would be to use a system similar to implanon if available, whereby any drug are implanted subdermally and released slowly. The benefit is that by having a steady stream lower doses can be used. Secondly, governments are constantly comparing the future costs of care for incapacitated aids patients to current treatment cost. When a sufficiently effective solution presents itself - if the cost benefit is good - governments *will* pay for it.
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Re:Your best bet... (Score:4, Insightful)
If you can figure out how to accomplish that reliably, then every government, armed service, advertising agency, and school wants to speak with you right now.
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Re:Your best bet... (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Your best bet... (Score:4, Insightful)
You want the average human to stop doing what evolution has spent 300 million years programming them to do? Its kind of like asking bears to not eat trout. Its what they do!
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Re:Your best bet... (Score:5, Interesting)
Really? Evolution has been progrmaming people to kill their mates through disease? Whoa, I've missed a lot in sex ed!
I love how only the most base animal desires get propped out by evolution. I love how people just never say "Hey evolution has instilled logic and compassion into humans." Or "Evolution has instilled moral action" Or "Evolution has instilled guilt and conscious thought." Instead its always fuck and kill, and if you think thats all evolution can do then youre sorely mistaken.
The real question is the ease of being able to control one's sexual desires vs the the control compassion and empathy have on us. Considering your comment could be (and has) been used to justify everything from rape to office sexual harassment, its interesting how society hasnt given up on some basic moral structures. Evolution again! Tricky aint it?
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Re: (Score:3)
Historically it has certainly proven to be. Not everyone on this planet is educated, has enough wealth that prostitution isn't tempting, or even is in a position to say no if they wish to. You're not talking about the abstinence of a few wealthy individuals but of everyone on the planet infected with an STD.