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vetivert

Then why are the people with HIV/AIDS taking these drugs or medications then if these drugs or medications do not work on the HIV/AIDS then. Also then why do they make other drugs to combat this HIV/AIDS and why are these drugs or medications so expensive then.

It might save money on the expensive health care used for AIDS carriers but there could be other, more long-term costs as people have mentioned.

Other diseases or infections that can be earned through incautious behaviour could rise again.

I don't actually see the AIDS/HIV phenomenon as being terribly tragic per se; whatever emotional and manipulative 'spin' might be put on it by the media, rather it is just a kind of 'culling' operation that helps keep down the numbers. Perhaps there is some utility to be found in curbing the excesses of promiscuous types and this is at least one way of doing it.

the drugs work on the illnesses/diseases which arise from the compromised immune system, such as pneumocystic pneumonia. they also work on the immune system itself.

as for expense, well the pharmaceutical companies are all money grabbing bastards, basically.

adversarial - the notion of AIDS being a form of "culling" is too daft for words. AIDS is NOT a sexually transmitted disease. if culling promiscuous people was the purpose, then syphilis would be a far better bet.

The man who might hold the secret to defeating Aids

http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/health ... 326894.ece

Last edited by aspergian_mutant on 15 Nov 2005, 8:59 pm, edited 1 time in total.

He needs to trim that post.

Anyway, I am skeptical about the man being "cured" of HIV, and here's why: HIV is a lentivirus. CAEV (Caprine Arthritis Encephalitis Virus) is also a lentivirus and has a lot of similarities to HIV. I am not well versed in HIV, but I do have a lot of firsthand experience dealing with the CAE virus in goats.

Both viruses are transmitted by bodily fluids, and blood is one of the absolute best ways to transmit the virus. Sexual transmission of CAEV is actually fairly uncommon, but goats only have sex for about one day per year. Generally, if neither party is bleeding on their genitials, you can safely mate a positive and negative animal once without worrying about it (but also consider that goat sex takes all of 4-5 seconds, so there's also less abrasion).

Prenatal transmission occurs, and milk, especially colostrum, is a major route of transmission. They also can get it from common contact over very long periods of time, but these are livestock. Humans don't generally cough bloody sputum into the drinking vessel for a group of many others, ot onto the food that everyone else is eating.

The challenge with eradicating CAEV is that, like HIV, you can have it for a really long time without showing any symptoms at all, AND you can have it while still testing negative. Furthermore, with CAEV, an animal can test positive when stressed, living conditions can improve, and the animal then tests negative again- but that goat will always, ALWAYS test positive again, and it's still infectious even though it isn't testing positive. It's just a matter of time...

And that's why I say that I'm skeptical. My guess is that eventually, and unfortunately, this guy probably will test positive again at some point later in life, especially if he is continuing to expose himself to the virus...

I am not a big fan of condom promotion, though they're probably better than nothing at all. They don't reliably prevent pregnancy, and you can only get pregnant a few days out of the month...and sperm are MUCH bigger than HIV. They just seem like a false source of security to me...

I kept getting stomach viruses. Last time I didnt go to the hospital. I always get really thirsty.

I heard that because of the the black plague, one in ten persons of European descent is not suceptible to HIV. They only ran this test on European-Americans, but I'd guess that the ratio's about the same for all descendents of black plague survivors.

This was on PBS, years ago.

Actually, the HIV virus seems to have mutated already.

There was a recent study reported by New Scientist that suggests that current HIV strains are weaker and less verilient than its early 1980's counterparts.

The researchers are not sure as to why HIV is mutating into weaker strains: possibly because there is an increased immune resistance in the human population, or because of the increased usage of antiretroviral drugs, such as AZT.

By the way, HIV is not a lentivirus, it is a retrovirus. The genes of a Retroviruses are packaged in RNA form that quickly converts to DNA once it infects a cell, using a substance known as reverse transcriptase. This converted DNA then splices itself to the neucleus of the infected cell, becoming part of the cell's genome. It can then start producing millions of viral copies inside the cell with little interferance from the immune system, for the immune system is tricked into "thinking" that the viral DNA is a normal part of the infected cell.