Drugs May Offer AIDS Prevention 230
FlipFlopSnowMan writes "There is an interesting article on MSNBC about the possibility of preventing AIDS using the same pills that are currently used to fight the virus in affected individuals." From the article: "The drugs are tenofovir (Viread) and emtricitabine, or FTC (Emtriva), sold in combination as Truvada by Gilead Sciences Inc., a California company best known for inventing Tamiflu, a drug showing promise against bird flu. Unlike vaccines, which work through the immune system -- the very thing HIV destroys -- AIDS drugs simply keep the virus from reproducing. They already are used to prevent infection in health care workers accidentally exposed to HIV, and in babies whose pregnant mothers receive them."
Ah, man.. (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Ah, man.. (Score:2)
Have they really tested this drug on THAT many accidentally exposed healthcare workers? Isn't it possible that perhaps the people exposed just didn't get the disease?
Re:Ah, man.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Ah, man.. (Score:2)
Hmm...I wonder if the divorce rate will go up and marriage rate down...I mean, I think the aids scare has driven a lot of men into marriage where they hope to have 'regular' sex with a partner...
Since that usually fades....I wonder if a cure for aids will also be a cure for monogamy?
Re:Ah, man.. (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Ah, man.. (Score:2, Interesting)
Yeah no kidding. Even if you fuck someoone bareback who definitely has AIDS, the odds of transmission are still only like 1 in 10,000.
Have they really tested this drug on THAT many accidentally exposed healthcare workers? Isn't it possible that perhaps the people exposed just didn't get the disease?
No, nitwit. "Accidentally exposed healthcare workers" generally means needle pricks and contact with infected blood. Google "post exposure prophylaxis" [google.com] (PEP) to see what's done now. This treatment would certai
Go for prevention! (Score:2, Insightful)
1- Navigate to the My Video folder.
2- Click on one of your numerous porn clips.
3- Wank!
See folks. Stopping the spread of AIDS is easy...and its on your hands*.
*-Three sessions of thirty seconds per day recommended. Lubricants, may apply.
Re:Ah, man.. (Score:3, Funny)
Yeah, especially since - as we all know - reading slashdot is the favorite pastime of sex workers worldwide.
Quit your worrying... (Score:3, Funny)
Re:...stereotypes... (Score:2)
Cash cow? (Score:5, Insightful)
A. Obvious - sell it to people who don't have AIDS as well as people who do.
As I understand, these drugs are very expensive, and personally I can't see any justification for using them prophylactically.
Re:Cash cow? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Cash cow? (Score:2)
If, for example, you worked with HIV-positive people you couldn't trust or were sexually active within a high-risk group you might have a different opinion. I don't condone visiting prostitutes, but I can see that HIV/AIDS infections among
Re:Cash cow? (Score:2)
But with the fear factor and efficient commercials:
. Take your pills before you trip to thailand/africa, don't take risks
. Wifes/Husbands cheat on their partner? HIV-Positive people loose their job and friends? Don't take risk, take a pill.
. A lot of teens have unsafe sexual relationship don't take risk,
Re:Cash cow? (Score:2)
I would agree that no one is going to buy these drugs at the retail rate of several hundred dollars/month as a prohylactic thou
Most wouldn't take them regardless. (Score:2)
Hell, I know HIV-positive people who can't keep on their meds because they just get sick of all the side-effects. So, how they think people who aren't infected are going to stick to them "just
Re:Most wouldn't take them regardless. (Score:2)
Re:Cash cow? (Score:2)
Re:Cash cow? (Score:2, Insightful)
i hope you are only using these as an example, because straight people can get AIDS too ya know, and not just from going to see a prostitute.
of course if someone is having sex with so many different people they fear that they need such a drug, well maybe instead they should think about changing their lifestyle, they might actually be happier
All about the odds (Score:3, Interesting)
Regardless, say 50% of the AIDS cases are in the male gay community. The male gay community is between 1.5% and 3.5% of the US population. That
Re:Cash cow? (Score:2)
I am married- Is there a possibility that my wife will cheat on me, and the person she cheats with will have aids, and she will get it, and I will get it? Yes. Is that a large possibility? No. Is
Err... (Score:2)
Re:Err... (Score:2)
Re:Cash cow? (Score:2)
A. Obvious - sell it to people who don't have AIDS as well as people who do.
IMHO, that's not how the drug industry operates.
Their modus operandi is as follows.
Don't research cures for disease.
Instead invent a drug which helps manage the disease - you
have a customer for life.
Re:Cash cow? (Score:2)
Re:Cash cow? (Score:2)
You made that word up didn't you? Come on, admit it
I agree, the drugs are way too expensive to take them on a regular, pre-emptive basis. If the prices came down sure.....but then, taking a pill for the rest of your life just in case? That is something most people are not willing to do. They need to come up with some kind of vaccination that you have to take once every year, ten years, or just once. But yes, this is better the nothing....and the prices will come down when they
Re:Cash cow? (Score:2)
Please tell me you weren't serious about this... have you honestly not heard of the word prophylactic [m-w.com]?
Re:Cash cow? (Score:2)
They gave a group of six monkeys who were taking these drugs a shot of AIDS up the butt every week for 14 weeks and none of them got the disease. In a group of monkeys who didn't get the drug, all but one did contract the disease. That's pretty damned good. Four months later, still no AIDS in the monkeys who got the drug.
If I were in a high risk population I would take th
Re:Cash cow? (Score:2)
Then you must not be getting laid.
LK
Tamiflu the con (Score:2, Informative)
Same hype as with Tamiflu? (Score:3, Insightful)
Now everyone's crazy to get their hands on Tamiflu. Is it me or does it smell like a well placed marketing hype that the media picked up all too eagerly, since there's nothing else going on that would make people buy their news?
Re:Same hype as with Tamiflu? (Score:2)
Incorrect - nearly all of them cleaned up after live or dead birds. The flu virus in birds is secreted out in bird urine/feces and infects by getting back into the respiratory pathways soon after that (both in birds and humans). Birds pecking in "dung" get infected from other birds. People who are cleaning after them (and you have to clean a henhouse quite regularly) get infected as well.
This is
Re:Same hype as with Tamiflu? (Score:2)
No?
Then where's the craze?
My guess is that people go apeshit about it because we all know the "normal" flu, we all have it from time to time, so it's something we relate to something "common", something as ordinary as a common cold.
If it was called a "bird disease" or even "bird killer virus", nobody would bother to listen.
Re:Same hype as with Tamiflu? (Score:2)
Re:Same hype as with Tamiflu? (Score:2)
By the way if you compare what the CDC did and "The First Horseman" [http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/00991840 28/qid=1143573179/sr=1-8/ref=sr_1_3_8/203-3200871- 8807110 [amazon.co.uk]] you will have shivers for a very very very long time.
Resistance (Score:2)
Re:Resistance (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Resistance (Score:2)
You may take this drug, and be able to counter act some strains of the pathogen however if you contract someone else's weakened (but not yet dead) strain, your body could become an incubator for a new strain that tolerates this medication and find yourself infected.
What nobody has mentioned or pointed out, you would have to take these pills for the rest of your life in order for them to be effective. AIDS sleeps mo
Ummm... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Ummm... (Score:2)
Re:Ummm... (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Ummm... (Score:2)
From an interesting history [hawaii.edu] of penicillin:
For initial tests, by Florey, in 1940, on human subjects, it had required two professors, five graduates and ten assistants working almost every day of the week for several months to produce enough penicillin to treat six patients.
What do you suppose penicillin cost in 1940? Here's a clue, in an anecdote about an early patient, from the same history:
In 1946 my osteomyelitis returned....Dad chose a hazardous j
Re:Ummm... (Score:2)
I think this would be great as it's used already -- to treat patients who may have been exposed. If you're a health care worker and you get stuck by a needle, or you had sex last night and the condom broke. $1000/month ($650 is the wholesale price) to take an incredibly powerful antiviral preventatively?
Long term drugs tend to have unexpected side effects. Some are apparently starting to be recognized in ritalin.
Re:Canadians (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Canadians (Score:2)
Those companies spend billions developing, testing, and getting FDA approval on a single drug. Then, after that, they have to bear the legal liability if there are unintended side effects
Them's the breaks, if they don't like it they should get out of Pharma and into something less risky. They stay in Pharma though because the payoffs can be huge - but as with any gamble, when it doesn't payoff you lose a lot of money, and maybe even go bankrupt.
Re:Canadians (Score:2)
No, the real problem is that they spend ridiculous amounts of money *advertising* their products.
Vaccine (Score:2)
Re:Vaccine (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Vaccine (Score:2, Interesting)
Easy - because there's no money in the cure. They want your repeat business to feed their cash cow. How are they going to do that with a one-time cure?
Re:Vaccine (Score:2)
Theory: "Easy - because there's no money in the cure. They want your repeat business to feed their cash cow. How are they going to do that with a one-time cure?"
Experiment: [newsobserver.com] "Fourth-quarter earnings released Wednesday [8 Feb 2006] show that [British drug-maker GlaxoSmithKline]'s revenue continues to surge, mainly on strong sales of its vaccines and treatments for asthma and diabetes..."
Save the melodramatic crap (Score:5, Informative)
Pandemic? Really? Tuberculosis affects far more people worldwide but doesn't have all the sensationalism that we see surrounding AIDS. I don't mean to imply that nothing is being done about TB, or that AIDS isn't a problem, but I'm tired of the media treating this disease like we're all living on the set of "Rent"
Re:Save the melodramatic crap (Score:2)
I'm pretty sure you mean the spoof play "Lease" on the Team America movie.
Re:Save the melodramatic crap (Score:2)
And the point of the song from "Rent" isn't that everybody literally has AIDS -- it's that most of us know someone who is affected by it, therefore we're affected by it too.
Re:Save the melodramatic crap (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Save the melodramatic crap (Score:2)
Re:Save the melodramatic crap (Score:3, Insightful)
In 2002, 3.9 million people died from "lower respiratory infections", 2.8M from HIV, 1.8M from miscellaneous diahrreheal illnesses, 1.6M from TB, 1.2 from Malaria, and 0.6M from Measles, according to the 2003 WHO World Health Report.
Furthermore, one of the major reasons TB is becoming harder to keep ahead of is HIV. The 2005 World Bank Annual Report sa
Re:Save the melodramatic crap (Score:2)
Re:Save the melodramatic crap (Score:4, Informative)
Which surveys?
If anything surveys tend show that people are primarily mongamous and are happy in a with a relationship with a single person.
Look at something like the http://www.zogby.com/soundbites/ReadClips.dbm?ID=
Even there you get over 70% of the people in a monogamous relationship, the majority for over 5 years.
While they may seek it out people don't tend to pay, less then 15%. This number is about the same for various other surveys.
If you get thoses types of numbers in an survey where people had to activly seek out the survey the numbers are going to be a lot less if you did a truly random survey of the population.
Re:Save the melodramatic crap (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Save the melodramatic crap (Score:3, Funny)
Or it means people don't ask stupid questions. If someone knows they have HIV and are still going to have sex with you, they're not going to go, "Oh, yeah, I have AIDS. I just didn't think you'd care."
"Wait, you didn't WANT herpes? Dude, I'm sorry, I didn't know. Totally my bad."
Re:Save the melodramatic crap (Score:2)
Re:Save the melodramatic crap (Score:2)
I think that's pretty much an assumption and I'm curious if you can link to anything to verify that?
I do know (or at least am quite sure) that I have seen some stats saying that divorce rates are higher in red states than in blue. Not that I'm saying it's all because of cheating... just saying that there have been stats taken about things like this and if you have anything to back up the quoted sentence I would be interest
easy answer to that (Score:2)
Divorce Rate (Score:2)
I don't know which ones are red and which are blue, but I am pretty sure Mass. is pretty liberal, and Wyoming is conservative. Nevada is highest, but I don't know if it counts. Partly because I imagine there are inflated divorce rates, and partly because Clark County is very liberal, and the entire rest of the state is very conservative.
But, like you said, what does this really mean? There are more reasons to divorce than cheating. Also, there are far mo
Re:Save the melodramatic crap (Score:3, Interesting)
You hit the nail right on the head. In the United States at least, AIDS is far more of a social problem than a medical problem. The fact that it firt appeared in the gay male community has had an enormous impact on the way that the disease is perceived.
For society that was founded on puitanical grounds, AIDS has been a godsend (pun intended). The evangelicals had a way to immediately lash out against homosexuality as the cause of all of our problems. When
Re:Save the melodramatic crap (Score:2)
An epidemic merely is a disease that is occuring at a rate far more prevalent than it's l
Terrific Idea (Score:3, Insightful)
As an HIV researcher myself, I realize that we are not going to have a highly effective, preventative vaccine for HIV any time in the near future. There are no clear 'winners' in the pipeline right now, and even if a vaccine looked effective right now, it would be years (and millions of new infections) before it clears human testing and it broadly available. Issues like viral resistance to the vaccine, incomplete protection from infection, potential side effects, and a false sense of security would plauge any vaccine that is developed -- and these are many of the same issues confronting the use of drugs as HIV preventatives.
One major hurdle to testing these drugs in populations highly affected by HIV is to convince them that this intervention is not a magic bullet. There will be problems, some of which we probably can't predict. There will be breakthrough infections in people taking the drugs. And the long-term health consequences aren't known. So far, these concerns have led to the abandonment of several trials of PrEP (using tenofovir in HIV-, high-risk populations) around the world. Hopefully the new data (using multiple drugs together works better than tenofovir alone) will encourage vulnerable populations that the potential benefits may outweigh the risks.
Patents (Score:2)
This is tough to read over and over again (Score:3, Interesting)
If you are open to the idea that the orthodoxy about AIDS might not be correct or might not be scientific, then I suggest you read these two pieces of investigative journalism that came out a couple of months ago. They detail in the most succinct way possible how AIDS came about, and that is *VERY* hard to do because of how immensely complex this subject is.
http://www.sparks-of-light.org/HIVGATE%20-%20revi
http://www.sparks-of-light.org/AIDSGATE%20-%20wha
If you think that I'm insane, or that I just want to have a whole lot of unprotected sex, or that I'm a conspiracy theorist, then please just ignore this post. It means that you are not open-minded to criticism of your ideas, and the only thing I want to do is give criticism of the HIV-AIDS hypothesis a fair hearing. I believe that there are HUGE problems with the hypothesis and it has led to many people getting fabulously wealthy off of what has turned out to be misdiagnosis. I am aware that this is a serious charge, and I do not take this subject lightly.
All of that is in effort to say, "Don't mod me down. Don't be a jerk. Don't prevent someone who *wants* to hear what I have to say from hearing it." I hope it works.
Re:This is tough to read over and over again (Score:5, Informative)
The paper's initial assertion is that AIDS was introduced as a polio virus. Simple logical disproof: 1) polio vaccine is given across social/habitual classes. 2) There has not been 1 case of AIDS where the person didn't have one of the following three risk factors: blood transfusion, risky sex*, IV drug use. 3) Not everyone in the US has previous three risk factors. 4) If 2 is true 1 or 3 must be false or at least excruciatingly improbable. 5) 3 is true, therefore 1 must be false. QED. (*risky sex = sexual activity where both partners are not exclusively monogamous to each other at any time during or prior to their relationship)
Several pages deal with the controversy surrounding the initial discovery of the HIV virus. There was also controversy surrounding the discovery of DNA, therefore we shouldn't believe DNA is the 'source code' of life?
She makes light of the microliter aliquots used in the CBC tests but fails to mention that all CBC tests (test which count the types and number of cells in your blood) uses these metrics. We shouldn't trust tests for hundreds of diseases including leukemia, polycythemia, or even iron deficiency based on this implication. (for example, look at the normals on this page: http://www.saintfranciscare.com/11377.cfm [saintfranciscare.com])
She also does not respect the validity of the HIV Load test, saying that since it uses PCR (a very common technique in medicine) it cannot be accurate. (no more genetic testing, goodbye cancer diagnosis, goodbye endocrinology) She also asserts that the HIV Load assay will give false-positives and is inaccurate if the procedures are not followed. Yes, it does give false positives, it is a HIGHLY sensitive test, with a low specificity. It is not a screening test, and it cannot be used for one because of its high false positive rate. Additionally, I challenge anyone to find a test in any field that is valid when its procedures are not followed. (magnetism doesn't attract wood, therefore magnetism is false)
http://www.labtestsonline.org/understanding/analyt es/viral_load/test.html [labtestsonline.org]
But the coup-de-gras for me was her statistics that showed how low CD4 counts don't correlate to AIDS. (AIDS is, incidentally, practically being defined by low CD4 count)
* "61% of people with CD4 count = 200 in 1997 were AIDS free"
* -response: Yes, CD4=200 is the upper limit at which you see AIDS symptoms, this is expected
* "190,000 Americans in 1993 with CD4 count=200 were AIDS free"
* -response: See above, plus in 1993 the AIDS definition was changing so you see changes in the statistics. Additionally, that number is far less than a quarter of the number of AIDS cases in the US that year. (http://wonder.cdc.gov/wonder/data/aidsPublic.html [cdc.gov])
* "No studies have been done to show removal of anti-retrovirals = disease"
* -response: No, but anti-retovirals have been tightly correlated to increased CD4 counts, and their withdrawal to lower CD4 counts. It has also been shown repeatedly (and even in this paper!) that low CD4 count correlates with disease.
The list goes on and on. I just pointed out a few of the most egregious and most easily refuted examples. It just goes to show that if someone really wants to believe someth
Re:Stay with me (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Wrong insult (Score:2)
Before I moved to IT I worked in the restaurant industry. That place is about as queer as a three dollar bill and I loved every minute of it. I never met a promiscuous gay man, and they never bitched about relationship problems at work like the straight people (myself included) did. They were a pleasure to work with. It's a shame that many people condemn people like you and assume you have AIDS. It's really their loss.
But... (Score:2, Informative)
... what if one of the various "environmental factors" models is right rather than the "single pathogen" model? IE, retroviruses start multiplying in people whose immune systems are shot already -- it's the symptom; not the cause.
I know we like single-pathogen disease models but frankly those are pretty rare. Especially with autoimmune and immunodeficient disorders, it's not as easy as people think to even define the given disorder in the first place, let alone establish a pathogenic cause. Take lupus: the
face the facts (Score:4, Insightful)
That's just not a serious possibility anymore; here are just some basic observations:
Single pathogens are sexy for epidemiologists.
Yes, and they are also the rule for infectious diseases. While susceptibility and severity of a disease may vary with environmental factors, for infectious diseases, there is usually a well-defined, clearly characterizable pathogen responsible.
Re:face the facts (Score:3, Informative)
Well, that's just not true, and the fact that people keep repeating it doesn't make it so.
Re:You know (Score:2)
Both of those misconceptions have been shown, clinically, time and time again, to be demonstrably false.
Re:face the facts (Score:2)
*shrug*. I'm more openminded then you may think. But for things like AIDS and mad cow I *have* read the literature and frankly I'm just not convinced that we know what's going on and I think we're getting way ahead of ourselves and possibly making things worse. That would be a fine academic point if we had effective treatments based on our hypotheses but we don't. We have gotten better at keeping the symptoms of AIDS from killing people (and I applaud all the work that people have done to do that), but even
Re:MOD PARENT UP (Score:3, Insightful)
Which makes sense, because the evidence as it is observed today indicates HIV-AIDS causation. See the sibling of your post for details. There's no more reason to believe AIDS is caused by anything besides HIV than there is to believe the moon landing was faked.
Oh goody. (Score:2)
are you nuts! (Score:5, Informative)
They hammer your immune system; it's like taking poison every day, it's a bit like chemotherapy in ways.. in fact, that's not a bad analogy: why don't we all start on an ongoing course of chemotherapy as a preventive measure against getting cancer?
ps. I'm not an Anonymous Coward, I'm a *Lazy* Anonymous Coward from Ireland
Mod Parent Up! (Score:2, Interesting)
About five years ago... No, I'm sorry, six or seven. Anyway, a long time ago, my girlfriend at the time and I were hanging out outside a bowling alley waiting for a ride home and she put her hand down on a hypodermic needle. Now, there was no way of telling whether this had been used for insulin or heroin, and she had to go into a regimen of anti-hepatitis and anti-HIV drugs.
The side effects were... awesome. She became moodier than she had ever been, went from
What to expect. (Score:5, Insightful)
Case in point: the human papilloma virus, or HPV. Now here's the thing with HPV: it's sexually transmitted, condoms don't protect against it, and doctors believe that it's responsible for seven out of ten cases of cervical cancer later in life. So, if we could develop a vaccine against it, that would be a huge strike against cancer, right?
Well... sure. But ultra right groups like the Family Research Council oppose such a vaccine, even though pharmaceutical companies have already conducted successful clinical trials. Why? Because they want to scare people into not having sex.
If this is the reaction an HPV vaccine (or, for that matter, condoms) gets, how do you think they're going to react to a cure to something which disproportionately affects gay men?
Re:What to expect. (Score:2, Flamebait)
After all, it has accellerated the population balance in Africa and South East Asia by increasing the death rate.
AIDS is just Nature's way of say there are too many fucking humans...
OTH, this is one of the few communicable lifetime diseases that has NOT resulted in wholesale quarenteens and sanitariums like leprosy and tuberculosis.
Instead, Typhoid Mary's are allowed to go about their lives, ending others lives wi
Re:What to expect. (Score:2)
There's good reason for that. Last I checked, for example, it's really hard to get HIV by having someone cough on you [state.fl.us].
I suppose I should ask for clarification: what do you mean by "Typhoid Mary's?" Are you suggesting that people with HIV should be quarantin
Re:What to expect. (Score:2)
Re:Spreading fear (Score:2)
I'm not sure whether you're suggesting that right-wing groups have tried to block the approval of this vaccine, or that they are, but it's because they're anti-children out of wedlock, and not anti-se
Re:Spreading fear (Score:2)
Were that even a sane statement, then they would be the number one single biggest supporters of birth control education and availability. What's that they're the ones doing everything in their power to prevent basic simple facts from being taught?
Save the idiotic hateful lies.
Their agenda is to fuck people over for sin of having sex with no regard for how badly they fuck over the children as well.
These people are evil shi
Re:Spreading fear (Score:2)
Were that even a sane statement, then they would be the number one single biggest supporters of birth control education and availability. What's that they're the ones doing everything in their power to prevent basic simple facts from being taught?
Emboldened by their successful assault on the innocence of grade school children in the US through the guise of public education, the leftist smut merchants are now trowling their swill in a UN funded, worldwide pogrom with even more devastating negative conseq
Re:Spreading fear (Score:3, Informative)
While it is not the only factor involved, there is a very big difference.
Comment removed (Score:3, Insightful)
All biases toward the majority view. (Score:2)
YEAAARRRGGGHH! Religion aside, but how culturally biased can you be?!?!?! If our culture included the continual use of gloves and zero contact among our population would we stop the research of antibiotics?
I'm one for a leveled debate, I don't even like the idea of "Culture Engineering" the world but this cons
Re:Time for the.... (Score:2)
Re:Time for the.... (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Time for the.... (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re:In related news (Score:2)
The babies who are being raped in Africa [bbc.co.uk] should be told this immediately.
There's a lot more to AIDS than promiscuous first-worlders.
Re:In related news (Score:2)
Re:In related news (Score:2)
Re:more importantly.... (Score:2)
You sir, are very naive.
Or you live in Norway... Or maybe Switzerland. I hear it is nice over there.
My current city of residence has had about 200+ some murders last year and it isn't as bad as the city across the river. And yes... We had a big rape scandal about some guy who jumped a lady on the subway last summer. I'm sure much more happens and isn't reported.
Either way... I'm just glad I don't live in Det
Re:how about the best protection (Score:2)