Monday, February 07, 2011 by: Brent Leung
(NaturalNews) "The first and only person ever to be cured of HIV/AIDS is a leukemia patient treated in Berlin with HIV-resistant stem cells." This statement by Daniel J. DeNoon from WebMD comes in response to a paper published this month by the American Society of Hematology on an individual named Timothy Brown who was allegedly cured of HIV infection.
But was he the first to be cured of HIV?
In the 1990s, boxing heavyweight champion Tommy Morrison tested positive for HIV, according to the screening and confirmatory tests he took. He also sustained a viral load and maintained an antiretroviral regimen for a period of time. In 2007 he tested negative for HIV multiple times and was allowed to return to the ring.
Then a few years ago in South Africa, I spoke with doctors whose patients tested positive, but after taking natural medications for their HIV infection they then tested negative.
The multiple cases above are not isolated, as there is much testimony documented regarding scenarios where people who tested positive were later found to be negative. These instances beg the question of whether these individuals were cured of HIV. An equally important question is: were they ever even infected with HIV in the first place?
As shown in the film House of Numbers and in additional interviews taken for the film, the issues with HIV testing are enormous.
Watch: How Accurate is the HIV Confirmation Test
http://naturalnews.tv/v.asp?v=E9FEA...
Before we can state that someone has been cured of HIV, I would like to see the scientific community come to a consensus on criteria for testing whether someone is infected with HIV. It is not plausible to determine if someone is cured unless it is proven that they are infected in the first place.
Another question that should be posed is why so much attention is being paid around the new study published by the American Society of Hematology when Luc Montagnier, the Nobel Laureate for discovering HIV, has already testified that it is possible for HIV to be cured naturally, without drugs.
See the interview with Luc Montagnier where he makes this earth shattering statement: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WQoN...
Intrigued by this study, I sent an inquiry to establishment scientists and The Perth Group for a comment. The Perth Group provided a brief response with a commitment to providing a full breakdown and response of the paper. The Perth Group writes:
"In the Subjects, Materials, and Methods Subjects section of this paper one reads: In February 2007, an HIV-infected patient underwent stem cell transplantation (SCT) due to a relapse of AML with a graft consisting of CCR5A32/A32 donor cells. The pre-transplant conditioning regimen included 100 mg/m2 of amsacrine, 30 mg/m2 of fludarabine, 2 g/m2 of cytarabine (day -12 until -9), 60 mg/kg of cyclophosphamide (days -4 and -3), 5.5 mg/kg of rabbit antithymocyte globuline (in three doses between day -3 and -1), and a 400 cGy total body irradiation (TBI; day -5). ART was discontinued on the day of transplantation, and 13 months later the patient received a second transplant with CCR5A32/A32 stem cells from the same donor due to a second relapse of AML. The conditioning regimen consisted of 100 mg/m2 of cytarabine (day -7 until day -1), 6 mg/m2 of gemtuzumab (day -7 and day -1), and a 200 cGy TBI (day -1)... Twelve months post-transplant, the patient underwent liver biopsy and histological examination confirmed GvHD grade I that was controlled with adaption of immunosuppressive therapy (cyclosporine A, methylprednisolone, mycophenolate mofetil)."
In other words, this particular patient received two transplants of foreign white blood cells, eight different drugs, anti-lymphocyte serum, and body irradiation, and had other drugs in the form of antiretroviral therapy, discontinued.
According to the title, all of this led to 'CURE OF HIV INFECTION BY CCR5A32/A32 SCT.' The administration of CCR5A32/A32 SCT constitutes only one part of a much larger experiment involving multiple drug and other therapies. All of these must be regarded as separate experiments, making it impossible to know exactly what 'cured the HIV infection.' If someone with hypertension is given multiple therapies, including non-pharmacological therapies, and blood pressure returns to normal, how can anyone say which treatment was responsible?
However, in order for the findings of the study to even have a valid platform for discussion, there must first be evidence that HIV exists. Until then, the question of whether someone can be cured of AIDS is moot.
Visit www.houseofnumbers.com to learn more about the HIV debate.
Monday, February 7, 2011
Sunday, January 30, 2011
Luc Montagnier, Nobel Prize Winner, Takes Homeopathy Seriously
Posted: January 30, 2011 11:49 AM
Dr. Luc Montagnier, the French virologist who won the Nobel Prize in 2008 for discovering the AIDS virus, has surprised the scientific community with his strong support for homeopathic medicine.
In a remarkable interview published in Science magazine of December 24, 2010, (1) Professor Luc Montagnier, has expressed support for the often maligned and misunderstood medical specialty of homeopathic medicine. Although homeopathy has persisted for 200+ years throughout the world and has been the leading alternative treatment method used by physicians in Europe, (2) most conventional physicians and scientists have expressed skepticism about its efficacy due to the extremely small doses of medicines used.
Most clinical research conducted on homeopathic medicines that has been published in peer-review journals have shown positive clinical results,(3, 4) especially in the treatment of respiratory allergies (5, 6), influenza, (7) fibromyalgia, (8, 9) rheumatoid arthritis, (10) childhood diarrhea, (11) post-surgical abdominal surgery recovery, (12) attention deficit disorder, (13) and reduction in the side effects of conventional cancer treatments. (14) In addition to clinical trials, several hundred basic science studies have confirmed the biological activity of homeopathic medicines. One type of basic science trials, called in vitro studies, found 67 experiments (1/3 of them replications) and nearly 3/4 of all replications were positive. (15, 16)
In addition to the wide variety of basic science evidence and clinical research, further evidence for homeopathy resides in the fact that they gained widespread popularity in the U.S. and Europe during the 19th century due to the impressive results people experienced in the treatment of epidemics that raged during that time, including cholera, typhoid, yellow fever, scarlet fever, and influenza.
Montagnier, who is also founder and president of the World Foundation for AIDS Research and Prevention, asserted, "I can't say that homeopathy is right in everything. What I can say now is that the high dilutions (used in homeopathy) are right. High dilutions of something are not nothing. They are water structures which mimic the original molecules."
Here, Montagnier is making reference to his experimental research that confirms one of the controversial features of homeopathic medicine that uses doses of substances that undergo sequential dilution with vigorous shaking in-between each dilution. Although it is common for modern-day scientists to assume that none of the original molecules remain in solution, Montagnier's research (and other of many of his colleagues) has verified that electromagnetic signals of the original medicine remains in the water and has dramatic biological effects.
Montagnier has just taken a new position at Jiaotong University in Shanghai, China (this university is often referred to as "China's MIT"), where he will work in a new institute bearing his name. This work focuses on a new scientific movement at the crossroads of physics, biology, and medicine: the phenomenon of electromagnetic waves produced by DNA in water. He and his team will study both the theoretical basis and the possible applications in medicine.
Montagnier's new research is investigating the electromagnetic waves that he says emanate from the highly diluted DNA of various pathogens. Montagnier asserts, "What we have found is that DNA produces structural changes in water, which persist at very high dilutions, and which lead to resonant electromagnetic signals that we can measure. Not all DNA produces signals that we can detect with our device. The high-intensity signals come from bacterial and viral DNA."
Montagnier affirms that these new observations will lead to novel treatments for many common chronic diseases, including but not limited to autism, Alzheimer's disease, Parkinson's disease, and multiple sclerosis.
Montagnier first wrote about his findings in 2009, (17) and then, in mid-2010, he spoke at a prestigious meeting of fellow Nobelists where he expressed interest in homeopathy and the implications of this system of medicine. (18)
French retirement laws do not allow Montagnier, who is 78 years of age, to work at a public institute, thereby limiting access to research funding. Montagnier acknowledges that getting research funds from Big Pharma and certain other conventional research funding agencies is unlikely due to the atmosphere of antagonism to homeopathy and natural treatment options.
Support from Another Nobel Prize winner
Montagnier's new research evokes memories one of the most sensational stories in French science, often referred to as the 'Benveniste affair.' A highly respected immunologist Dr. Jacques Benveniste., who died in 2004, conducted a study which was replicated in three other university laboratories and that was published in Nature (19). Benveniste and other researchers used extremely diluted doses of substances that created an effect on a type of white blood cell called basophils.
Although Benveniste's work was supposedly debunked, (20) Montagnier considers Benveniste a "modern Galileo" who was far ahead of his day and time and who was attacked for investigating a medical and scientific subject that orthodoxy had mistakenly overlooked and even demonized.
In addition to Benveniste and Montagnier is the weighty opinion of Brian Josephson, Ph.D., who, like Montagnier, is a Nobel Prize-winning scientist.
Responding to an article on homeopathy in New Scientist, Josephson wrote:
Regarding your comments on claims made for homeopathy: criticisms centered around the vanishingly small number of solute molecules present in a solution after it has been repeatedly diluted are beside the point, since advocates of homeopathic remedies attribute their effects not to molecules present in the water, but to modifications of the water's structure.Following his comments Josephson, who is an emeritus professor of Cambridge University in England, was asked by New Scientist editors how he became an advocate of unconventional ideas. He responded:
Simple-minded analysis may suggest that water, being a fluid, cannot have a structure of the kind that such a picture would demand. But cases such as that of liquid crystals, which while flowing like an ordinary fluid can maintain an ordered structure over macroscopic distances, show the limitations of such ways of thinking. There have not, to the best of my knowledge, been any refutations of homeopathy that remain valid after this particular point is taken into account.
A related topic is the phenomenon, claimed by Jacques Benveniste's colleague Yolène Thomas and by others to be well established experimentally, known as "memory of water." If valid, this would be of greater significance than homeopathy itself, and it attests to the limited vision of the modern scientific community that, far from hastening to test such claims, the only response has been to dismiss them out of hand. (21)
I went to a conference where the French immunologist Jacques Benveniste was talking for the first time about his discovery that water has a 'memory' of compounds that were once dissolved in it -- which might explain how homeopathy works. His findings provoked irrationally strong reactions from scientists, and I was struck by how badly he was treated. (22)Josephson went on to describe how many scientists today suffer from "pathological disbelief;" that is, they maintain an unscientific attitude that is embodied by the statement "even if it were true I wouldn't believe it."
Even more recently, Josephson wryly responded to the chronic ignorance of homeopathy by its skeptics saying, "The idea that water can have a memory can be readily refuted by any one of a number of easily understood, invalid arguments."
In the new interview in Science, Montagnier also expressed real concern about the unscientific atmosphere that presently exists on certain unconventional subjects such as homeopathy, "I am told that some people have reproduced Benveniste's results, but they are afraid to publish it because of the intellectual terror from people who don't understand it."
Montagnier concluded the interview when asked if he is concerned that he is drifting into pseudoscience, he replied adamantly: "No, because it's not pseudoscience. It's not quackery. These are real phenomena which deserve further study."
The Misinformation That Skeptics Spread
It is remarkable enough that many skeptics of homeopathy actually say that there is "no research" that has shows that homeopathic medicines work. Such statements are clearly false, and yet, such assertions are common on the Internet and even in some peer-review articles. Just a little bit of searching can uncover many high quality studies that have been published in highly respected medical and scientific journals, including the Lancet, BMJ, Pediatrics, Pediatric Infectious Disease Journal, Chest and many others. Although some of these same journals have also published research with negative results to homeopathy, there is simply much more research that shows a positive rather than negative effect.
Misstatements and misinformation on homeopathy are predictable because this system of medicine provides a viable and significant threat to economic interests in medicine, let alone to the very philosophy and worldview of biomedicine. It is therefore not surprising that the British Medical Association had the sheer audacity to refer to homeopathy as "witchcraft." It is quite predictable that when one goes on a witch hunt, one inevitable finds "witches," especially when there are certain benefits to demonizing a potential competitor (homeopathy plays a much larger and more competitive role in Europe than it does in the USA).
Skeptics of homeopathy also have long asserted that homeopathic medicines have "nothing" in them because they are diluted too much. However, new research conducted at the respected Indian Institutes of Technology has confirmed the presence of "nanoparticles" of the starting materials even at extremely high dilutions. Researchers have demonstrated by Transmission Electron Microscopy (TEM), electron diffraction and chemical analysis by Inductively Coupled Plasma-Atomic Emission Spectroscopy (ICP-AES), the presence of physical entities in these extreme dilutions. (24) In the light of this research, it can now be asserted that anyone who says or suggests that there is "nothing" in homeopathic medicines is either simply uninformed or is not being honest.
Because the researchers received confirmation of the existence of nanoparticles at two different homeopathic high potencies (30C and 200C) and because they tested four different medicines (Zincum met./zinc; Aurum met. /gold; Stannum met./tin; and Cuprum met./copper), the researchers concluded that this study provides "concrete evidence."
Although skeptics of homeopathy may assume that homeopathic doses are still too small to have any biological action, such assumptions have also been proven wrong. The multi-disciplinary field of small dose effects is called "hormesis," and approximately 1,000 studies from a wide variety of scientific specialties have confirmed significant and sometimes substantial biological effects from extremely small doses of certain substances on certain biological systems.
A special issue of the peer-review journal, Human and Experimental Toxicology (July 2010), devoted itself to the interface between hormesis and homeopathy. (25) The articles in this issue verify the power of homeopathic doses of various substances.
In closing, it should be noted that skepticism of any subject is important to the evolution of science and medicine. However, as noted above by Nobelist Brian Josephson, many scientists have a "pathological disbelief" in certain subjects that ultimately create an unhealthy and unscientific attitude blocks real truth and real science. Skepticism is at its best when its advocates do not try to cut off research or close down conversation of a subject but instead explore possible new (or old) ways to understand and verify strange but compelling phenomena. We all have this challenge as we explore and evaluate the biological and clinical effects of homeopathic medicines.
REFERENCES:
(1) Enserink M, Newsmaker Interview: Luc Montagnier, French Nobelist Escapes "Intellectual Terror" to Pursue Radical Ideas in China. Science 24 December 2010: Vol. 330 no. 6012 p. 1732. DOI: 10.1126/science.330.6012.1732
(2) Ullman D. Homeopathic Medicine: Europe's #1 Alternative for Doctors. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dana-ullman/homeopathic-medicine-euro_b_402490.html
(3) Linde L, Clausius N, Ramirez G, et al., "Are the Clinical Effects of Homoeopathy Placebo Effects? A Meta-analysis of Placebo-Controlled Trials," Lancet, September 20, 1997, 350:834-843.
(4) Lüdtke R, Rutten ALB. The conclusions on the effectiveness of homeopathy highly depend on the set of analyzed trials. Journal of Clinical Epidemiology. October 2008. doi: 10.1016/j.jclinepi.2008.06/015.
(5) Taylor, MA, Reilly, D, Llewellyn-Jones, RH, et al., Randomised controlled trial of homoeopathy versus placebo in perennial allergic rhinitis with overview of four trial Series, BMJ, August 19, 2000, 321:471-476.
(6) Ullman, D, Frass, M. A Review of Homeopathic Research in the Treatment of Respiratory Allergies. Alternative Medicine Review. 2010:15,1:48-58. http://www.thorne.com/altmedrev/.fulltext/15/1/48.pdf
(7) Vickers AJ. Homoeopathic Oscillococcinum for preventing and treating influenza and influenza-like syndromes. Cochrane Reviews. 2009.
(8) Bell IR, Lewis II DA, Brooks AJ, et al. Improved clinical status in fibromyalgia patients treated with individualized homeopathic remedies versus placebo, Rheumatology. 2004:1111-5.
(9) Fisher P, Greenwood A, Huskisson EC, et al., "Effect of Homoeopathic Treatment on Fibrositis (Primary Fibromyalgia)," BMJ, 299(August 5, 1989):365-6.
(10) Jonas, WB, Linde, Klaus, and Ramirez, Gilbert, "Homeopathy and Rheumatic Disease," Rheumatic Disease Clinics of North America, February 2000,1:117-123.
(11) Jacobs J, Jonas WB, Jimenez-Perez M, Crothers D, Homeopathy for Childhood Diarrhea: Combined Results and Metaanalysis from Three Randomized, Controlled Clinical Trials, Pediatr Infect Dis J, 2003;22:229-34.
(12) Barnes, J, Resch, KL, Ernst, E, "Homeopathy for Post-Operative Ileus: A Meta-Analysis," Journal of Clinical Gastroenterology, 1997, 25: 628-633.
(13) M, Thurneysen A. Homeopathic treatment of children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder: a randomised, double blind, placebo controlled crossover trial. Eur J Pediatr. 2005 Dec;164(12):758-67. Epub 2005 Jul 27.
(14) Kassab S, Cummings M, Berkovitz S, van Haselen R, Fisher P. Homeopathic medicines for adverse effects of cancer treatments. Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews 2009, Issue 2.
(15) Witt CM, Bluth M, Albrecht H, Weisshuhn TE, Baumgartner S, Willich SN. The in vitro evidence for an effect of high homeopathic potencies--a systematic review of the literature. Complement Ther Med. 2007 Jun;15(2):128-38. Epub 2007 Mar 28.
(16) Endler PC, Thieves K, Reich C, Matthiessen P, Bonamin L, Scherr C, Baumgartner S. Repetitions of fundamental research models for homeopathically prepared dilutions beyond 10-23: a bibliometric study. Homeopathy, 2010; 99: 25-36.
(17) Luc Montagnier, Jamal Aissa, Stéphane Ferris, Jean-Luc Montagnier, Claude Lavallee, Electromagnetic Signals Are Produced by Aqueous Nanostructures Derived from Bacterial DNA Sequences. Interdiscip Sci Comput Life Sci (2009) 1: 81-90.
http://www.springerlink.com/content/0557v31188m3766x/fulltext.pdf
(18) Nobel laureate gives homeopathy a boost. The Australian. July 5, 2010. http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/health-science/nobel-laureate-gives-homeopathy-a-boost/story-e6frg8y6-1225887772305
(19) Davenas E, Beauvais F, Amara J, et al. (June 1988). "Human basophil degranulation triggered by very dilute antiserum against IgE". Nature 333 (6176): 816-8.
(20) Maddox J (June 1988). "Can a Greek tragedy be avoided?". Nature 333 (6176): 795-7.
(21) Josephson, B. D., Letter, New Scientist, November 1, 1997.
(22) George A. Lone Voices special: Take nobody's word for it. New Scientist. December 9, 2006.
(23) Personal communication. Brian Josephson to Dana Ullman. January 5, 2011.
(24) Chikramane PS, Suresh AK, Bellare JR, and Govind S. Extreme homeopathic dilutions retain starting materials: A nanoparticulate perspective. Homeopathy. Volume 99, Issue 4, October 2010, 231-242.
(25) Human and Experimental Toxicology, July 2010: http://het.sagepub.com/content/vol29/issue7/
To access free copies of these articles, see: http://www.siomi.it/siomifile/siomi_pdf/BELLE_newsletter.pdf
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Wednesday, November 24, 2010
Daily Pill Greatly Lowers AIDS Risk, Study Finds
By DONALD G. McNEIL Jr. Published: November 23, 2010
Healthy gay men who took an anti-AIDS pill every day were well protected against contracting H.I.V. in a study suggesting that a new weapon against the epidemic has emerged.
In the study, published Tuesday by the New England Journal of Medicine, researchers found that the men taking Truvada, a common combination of two antiretroviral drugs, were 44 percent less likely to get infected with the virus that causes AIDS than an equal number taking a placebo.
But when only the men whose blood tests showed that they had taken their pill faithfully every day were considered, the pill was more than 90 percent effective, said Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, head of the infectious diseases division of the National Institutes of Health, which paid for the study along with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
“That’s huge,” Dr. Fauci said. “That says it all for me.”
The large study, nicknamed iPrEx, included nearly 2,500 men and was coordinated by the Gladstone Institutes of the University of California, San Francisco.
The results are the best news in the AIDS field in years, even better than this summer’s revelation that a vaginal microbicide protected 39 percent of all the women testing it and 54 percent of those who used it faithfully.
Also, Truvada, a combination of tenofovir and emtricitabine that prevents the virus from replicating, is available by prescription in many countries right now, while the microbicide gel is made in only small amounts for clinical trials.
The protection, known as pre-exposure prophylaxis, is also the first new form available to men, especially men who cannot use condoms because they sell sex, are in danger of prison rape, are under pressure from partners or lose their inhibitions when drunk or high.
It “does not involve getting permission from the other partner, and that’s important,” said Phill Wilson, president of the Black AIDS Institute, which focuses on the epidemic among blacks.
Michel Sidibé, the head of the United Nations agency that fights AIDS, called it “a breakthrough that will accelerate the prevention revolution.”
AIDS experts and the researchers issued several caveats about the study’s limitations, emphasizing that it looked only at gay men and Truvada. More studies, now under way, are needed to see whether the results can be duplicated, whether other antiretroviral drugs will work and whether they will protect heterosexual men and women, prostitutes and drug users who share needles.
There is no medical reason to think the pill would not work in other groups, since it attacks the virus in the blood, not in the vaginal wall as a microbicide does. Pre-exposure prophylaxis became possible only in recent years as newer, less-toxic antiretroviral drugs were developed.
Some scientists fear that putting more people on the drugs will speed the evolution of drug-resistant strains, though that did not occur in the study.
Because Truvada is available now, some clinicians already prescribe it for prophylaxis, Dr. Fauci said, but whether doing so becomes official policy will depend on discussions by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Food and Drug Administration, medical societies and others, which could take months.
Although the C.D.C. would prefer that doctors wait for further studies, more will probably prescribe the drugs now that this study is out, said Dr. Kevin Fenton, chief of the agency’s AIDS division, so the C.D.C. will soon release suggested guidelines.
The agency will suggest that the drug be prescribed only with close medical supervision and used only with other safe-sex practices.
“The results are encouraging, but it’s not time for gay men to throw away their condoms,” Dr. Fenton said.
AIDS advocacy groups were very excited by the results.
“If you comply with it, this works really well,” said Chris Collins, policy director of amfAR, the Foundation for AIDS Research. “This is too big to walk away from.”
Mitchell Warren, executive director of AVAC, an organization that lobbies for AIDS prevention, called the study “a great day for the fight against AIDS” and said gay men and others at risk needed to be consulted on the next steps.
In the study, 2,499 men in six countries — Brazil, Ecuador, Peru, South Africa, Thailand and the United States — were randomly assigned to take either Truvada or a placebo and were followed for up to three years. For ethical reasons, they were also given condoms, treatment for venereal diseases and advice on safe sex. There were 64 infections in the placebo group and 36 in the group that took Truvada, a 44 percent risk reduction.
Two in the Truvada group turned out to have been infected before the study began. When the remaining 34 were tested, only 3 had any drug in their blood — suggesting that the other 31 had not taken their pills.
Different regimens, like taking the pills not daily but only when sex is anticipated, also need testing.
Also, many men in the study failed to take all of their pills, and some clearly lied about it. For example, some who claimed to take them 50 percent or 90 percent of the time had little or no drug in their bloodstreams.
The pills caused no major side effects, though men who began to show signs of liver problems were taken off them quickly. Some men stopped taking the pills because they disliked relatively minor side effects like nausea and headaches. Also, some stopped bothering once they suspected that they might be taking a placebo.
“People have their own reasons,” Mr. Collins said. “People don’t take their Lipitor every day either.”
A major question now is who will pay for the drug.
In the United States, Truvada, made by Gilead Sciences, costs $12,000 to $14,000 a year. In very poor countries, generic versions cost as little as 40 cents a pill.
Globally, only about 5 million of the 33 million people infected with the AIDS virus are on antiretroviral drugs, and in an era of tight foreign-aid budgets, that number is not expected to rise quickly.
Hundreds of millions of Africans, Eastern Europeans and Asians are at risk and could benefit from prophylaxis, but that would cost tens of billions of dollars.
In this country, insurers and Medicare normally pay for the drugs, and the Ryan White Act covers the cost for the poor, but none of these payers yet have policies on supplying the drugs to healthy people.
No participant in the study developed resistance to tenofovir. Three were found to have strains resistant to emtricitabine, but investigators believe that all three were infected before the study began at levels low enough to have been missed by their first H.I.V. tests.
Another concern was that the participants would become so fearless that they would stop using condoms, but the opposite effect was seen — they used condoms more often and had fewer sex partners. But that can also be a result of simply being enrolled in a study and getting a steady diet of advice on safe sex and free condoms, the investigators said.
Other trials of pre-exposure prophylaxis have about 20,000 volunteers enrolled around the world. Their results are expected over the next two years.
Healthy gay men who took an anti-AIDS pill every day were well protected against contracting H.I.V. in a study suggesting that a new weapon against the epidemic has emerged.
In the study, published Tuesday by the New England Journal of Medicine, researchers found that the men taking Truvada, a common combination of two antiretroviral drugs, were 44 percent less likely to get infected with the virus that causes AIDS than an equal number taking a placebo.
Truvada, by Gilead Sciences, costs around $13,000 a year in the US |
But when only the men whose blood tests showed that they had taken their pill faithfully every day were considered, the pill was more than 90 percent effective, said Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, head of the infectious diseases division of the National Institutes of Health, which paid for the study along with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
“That’s huge,” Dr. Fauci said. “That says it all for me.”
The large study, nicknamed iPrEx, included nearly 2,500 men and was coordinated by the Gladstone Institutes of the University of California, San Francisco.
The results are the best news in the AIDS field in years, even better than this summer’s revelation that a vaginal microbicide protected 39 percent of all the women testing it and 54 percent of those who used it faithfully.
Also, Truvada, a combination of tenofovir and emtricitabine that prevents the virus from replicating, is available by prescription in many countries right now, while the microbicide gel is made in only small amounts for clinical trials.
The protection, known as pre-exposure prophylaxis, is also the first new form available to men, especially men who cannot use condoms because they sell sex, are in danger of prison rape, are under pressure from partners or lose their inhibitions when drunk or high.
It “does not involve getting permission from the other partner, and that’s important,” said Phill Wilson, president of the Black AIDS Institute, which focuses on the epidemic among blacks.
Michel Sidibé, the head of the United Nations agency that fights AIDS, called it “a breakthrough that will accelerate the prevention revolution.”
AIDS experts and the researchers issued several caveats about the study’s limitations, emphasizing that it looked only at gay men and Truvada. More studies, now under way, are needed to see whether the results can be duplicated, whether other antiretroviral drugs will work and whether they will protect heterosexual men and women, prostitutes and drug users who share needles.
There is no medical reason to think the pill would not work in other groups, since it attacks the virus in the blood, not in the vaginal wall as a microbicide does. Pre-exposure prophylaxis became possible only in recent years as newer, less-toxic antiretroviral drugs were developed.
Some scientists fear that putting more people on the drugs will speed the evolution of drug-resistant strains, though that did not occur in the study.
Because Truvada is available now, some clinicians already prescribe it for prophylaxis, Dr. Fauci said, but whether doing so becomes official policy will depend on discussions by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Food and Drug Administration, medical societies and others, which could take months.
Although the C.D.C. would prefer that doctors wait for further studies, more will probably prescribe the drugs now that this study is out, said Dr. Kevin Fenton, chief of the agency’s AIDS division, so the C.D.C. will soon release suggested guidelines.
The agency will suggest that the drug be prescribed only with close medical supervision and used only with other safe-sex practices.
“The results are encouraging, but it’s not time for gay men to throw away their condoms,” Dr. Fenton said.
AIDS advocacy groups were very excited by the results.
“If you comply with it, this works really well,” said Chris Collins, policy director of amfAR, the Foundation for AIDS Research. “This is too big to walk away from.”
Mitchell Warren, executive director of AVAC, an organization that lobbies for AIDS prevention, called the study “a great day for the fight against AIDS” and said gay men and others at risk needed to be consulted on the next steps.
In the study, 2,499 men in six countries — Brazil, Ecuador, Peru, South Africa, Thailand and the United States — were randomly assigned to take either Truvada or a placebo and were followed for up to three years. For ethical reasons, they were also given condoms, treatment for venereal diseases and advice on safe sex. There were 64 infections in the placebo group and 36 in the group that took Truvada, a 44 percent risk reduction.
Two in the Truvada group turned out to have been infected before the study began. When the remaining 34 were tested, only 3 had any drug in their blood — suggesting that the other 31 had not taken their pills.
Different regimens, like taking the pills not daily but only when sex is anticipated, also need testing.
Also, many men in the study failed to take all of their pills, and some clearly lied about it. For example, some who claimed to take them 50 percent or 90 percent of the time had little or no drug in their bloodstreams.
The pills caused no major side effects, though men who began to show signs of liver problems were taken off them quickly. Some men stopped taking the pills because they disliked relatively minor side effects like nausea and headaches. Also, some stopped bothering once they suspected that they might be taking a placebo.
“People have their own reasons,” Mr. Collins said. “People don’t take their Lipitor every day either.”
A major question now is who will pay for the drug.
In the United States, Truvada, made by Gilead Sciences, costs $12,000 to $14,000 a year. In very poor countries, generic versions cost as little as 40 cents a pill.
Globally, only about 5 million of the 33 million people infected with the AIDS virus are on antiretroviral drugs, and in an era of tight foreign-aid budgets, that number is not expected to rise quickly.
Hundreds of millions of Africans, Eastern Europeans and Asians are at risk and could benefit from prophylaxis, but that would cost tens of billions of dollars.
In this country, insurers and Medicare normally pay for the drugs, and the Ryan White Act covers the cost for the poor, but none of these payers yet have policies on supplying the drugs to healthy people.
No participant in the study developed resistance to tenofovir. Three were found to have strains resistant to emtricitabine, but investigators believe that all three were infected before the study began at levels low enough to have been missed by their first H.I.V. tests.
Another concern was that the participants would become so fearless that they would stop using condoms, but the opposite effect was seen — they used condoms more often and had fewer sex partners. But that can also be a result of simply being enrolled in a study and getting a steady diet of advice on safe sex and free condoms, the investigators said.
Other trials of pre-exposure prophylaxis have about 20,000 volunteers enrolled around the world. Their results are expected over the next two years.
A version of this article appeared in print on November 24, 2010, on page A1 of the New York edition.
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Tuesday, November 2, 2010
Pastor: "Jesus Was HIV-Positive"
A pastor in South Africa has shocked churchgoers with a series of sermons claiming Jesus was HIV-positive.
"Today I will start with a three-part sermon on: Jesus was HIV-positive," Xola Skosana said in a recent Sunday service in Cape Town, in a move intended to fight the stigma surrounding the virus.
Read more on Skosana's service on HIVPlusMag.com.
While some are outraged at South African Pastor's Xola Skosana's words because they portray Jesus Christ as possibly being sexually promiscuous, the pastor told followers that Jesus frequently put himself in the position of the poor or sick population.
Skosana also said he used the example to illustrate the stigma that HIV/AIDS still has on South Africans and people around the world.
"Of course, there's no scientific evidence that Jesus had the HI virus in his bloodstream," the pastor said according to the BBC. "The best gift we can give to people who are HIV-positive is to help de-stigmatise Aids and create an environment where they know God is not against them, he's not ashamed of them."
Watch House of Numbers to learn more about HIV and AIDS.
Source: http://advocate.com/News/Daily_News/2010/11/01/Sermon_Jesus_Was_HIV_Positive/
Source: http://hivplusmag.com/NewsStory.asp?id=22044&sd=11/01/2010
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Monday, November 1, 2010
One in 22 Blacks will get HIV, CDC Report Says
Written by Special to the NNPA from the Milwaukee Community Journal | |||
Sunday, 31 October 2010 09:39 | |||
According to published reports, health officials estimate that one in 22 African Americans will be diagnosed with the AIDS virus in their lifetime — more than twice the risk for Hispanics and eight times that of Whites. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported the numbers last week; noting the lifetime risk is one in 52 for Hispanics, and one in 170 for Whites. According to the report, Asian Americans had the lowest lifetime risk, at about one in 222. The data is no longer considered shocking. Earlier research has shown that Black Americans have an exceptionally high risk of HIV infection. Given the disproportionately high rate of risk for the disease, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recently expanded its Act Against AIDS Leadership Initiative to increase prevention efforts in the African-American, Latino, gay and bisexual communities, which are hardest hit by HIV/AIDS. The initiative is a partnership of major community organizations and was launched last year to intensify HIV prevention in the Black community. As part of the new effort, the CDC has reportedly increased funding for the initiative from $10 million to $16 million over six years, brought in eight additional organizational partners, two of which focus specifically on gay Black men, and continues to build on outreach efforts already in place in the Black community. Partners include 100 Black Men of America, American Urban Radio Networks, the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation, the National Action Network, the NAACP, the National Council of Negro Women, the National Council of Negro Women, the National Medical Association and the National Urban League. Source: http://www.washingtoninformer.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=4840:one-in-22-blacks-will-get-hiv-cdc-report-says&catid=44:health&Itemid=138 |
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Saturday, October 16, 2010
Sex Survey at D.C. School Sparks Controversy
Published October 15, 2010 | FoxNews.com
The survey, developed by Metro TeenAIDS, a group dedicated to helping young people fight against HIV/AIDS, was intended to raise awareness of sexually transmitted diseases and teach the children how to avoid them, MyFoxDC.com reported.
But some parents at Hardy Middle School complained that the questions crossed the line, sparking the principal to put the survey on hold, the Georgetown Dish reported.
The students were asked their genders -- whether male, female or transgender. And they were asked to identify themselves as straight, bisexual, gay or lesbian or "not sure."
Other questions included: How sure are you that you know the difference between oral, vaginal, and anal sex? Would know where to get condoms if/when you or a friend needed them? Can correctly put a condom on yourself or your partner?
"Unfortunately, the opt-out letter to parents regarding this unit in the health class went home on the same day that the assessment was administered. As a result, there was not enough time to allow for parental response before the unit began," school officials said in a written statement.
“Raising awareness among students about HIV and AIDS is certainly an important and necessary task schools must carry out, and families have an important role to play in the planning and execution of the sex education curriculum," D.C. Mayor-elect Vincent Gray said in an e-mail to The Georgetown Dish. "I hope that the Hardy school leadership, parents, and contract providers can talk about these recent developments to ensure that no one is surprised in the future.”
Metro TeenAIDS says the survey questions are in line with D.C. standards, which outline the kind of information young people are supposed to get at certain ages, as well as national testing questions on the subject.
To parents who are concerned the survey revealed too much information for a 12-year-old, Metro TeenAIDS' executive director, Adam Tenner, told MyFoxDC.com that most of those 12-year-olds are much more experienced sexually than those parents might think.
“Our local data show that almost 23 percent of middle school students -- and this was in a 2009 survey -- said that they had already had sexual intercourse once,” he said. “We know that we have an STD epidemic that’s 16 times the national average, that our pregnancy rates are three times the national average … so what we know is that young people are sexually active and we need to work together parents, schools, all of us to make sure young people get the information and skills they need to protect themselves.”
Watch House of Numbers to learn more about HIV and AIDS.
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Wednesday, September 22, 2010
Inappropriate water kills more than war, Hiv/Aids
Luanda – The director-general of Eduardo dos Santos Foundation (FESA), João de Deus, said Tuesday, in Luanda, that the number of children that dies of intake of inappropriate water in the world is larger than those killed by war’s Hiv-Aids, malaria and road accident.
João de Deus was addressing in his capacity as host for the 14th FESA events.
He on the occasion cited Maude Barlow, in his book “water-blue covenant” that states that as the ecological crisis deepens, so does human crisis.
Water global crisis, he added, became a powerful symbol of the world’s growing inequality. While the rich drink high quality water, whenever they please, millions of poor people only drink contaminated water, which becomes a true evil of humanity.
To him, in addition to the urgent reflections in the scientific field, there is need for this problem to be addressed, which requires a political public health and ethic approach.
The event comprises four panels and during the four days the participants will tackle such topics as “Water and food for end of poverty”, “Water, sanitation and health for all”.
“Monitoring of indicators associated with the millennium goals”, “Water and climatic changes and natural disasters”, “Water, environmental impact and situation of scarcity” and “The future of water policy and global crisis of environment”, are some of the topics for the event.
Other topics are “Interactive tri-party dialogue between Government, civil society and science, aiming at mitigating and managing disasters”, “Cooperation for adequate management of trans-frontier hydraulic basins” and Preservation of natural ecosystems in the integrated management of water resources”.
“The role of underground waters with strategic water reserves”, “The importance of steering plans on water and sanitation in the success of the implementation of respective projects” and “Water for energy, energy for water” as well as “The financial model for construction of hydrometric monitoring infrastructures, supply of water and sanitation”, are other topics for the meeting.
According to the note, the event will receive addresses from Angolan, Portuguese, Brazilian, Italian, British, American, German, Canadian and Spanish lecturers and will include the topics “Public-private partnership in water management: experiences and opportunities”, “Institutional reform and regularisation as fundamental factor of water and sanitation services”, “Water, juridical reflexes of national and international institutional scope” and the “Role of tariffs in water services”.
To learn more about HIV/AIDS and poverty watch House of Numbers.
Click here to see Luc Montagnier, Nobel Prize Winner for discovering HIV discuss clean water being key for the body and that HIV may be able to be cleared naturally.
www.houseofnumbers.com
Story source: http://www.portalangop.co.ao/motix/en_us/noticias/sociedade/2010/8/38/Inappropriate-water-kills-more-than-war-Hiv-Aids,e0f9dd10-f390-418e-87af-91a6841231d7.html
João de Deus was addressing in his capacity as host for the 14th FESA events.
He on the occasion cited Maude Barlow, in his book “water-blue covenant” that states that as the ecological crisis deepens, so does human crisis.
Water global crisis, he added, became a powerful symbol of the world’s growing inequality. While the rich drink high quality water, whenever they please, millions of poor people only drink contaminated water, which becomes a true evil of humanity.
To him, in addition to the urgent reflections in the scientific field, there is need for this problem to be addressed, which requires a political public health and ethic approach.
The event comprises four panels and during the four days the participants will tackle such topics as “Water and food for end of poverty”, “Water, sanitation and health for all”.
“Monitoring of indicators associated with the millennium goals”, “Water and climatic changes and natural disasters”, “Water, environmental impact and situation of scarcity” and “The future of water policy and global crisis of environment”, are some of the topics for the event.
Other topics are “Interactive tri-party dialogue between Government, civil society and science, aiming at mitigating and managing disasters”, “Cooperation for adequate management of trans-frontier hydraulic basins” and Preservation of natural ecosystems in the integrated management of water resources”.
“The role of underground waters with strategic water reserves”, “The importance of steering plans on water and sanitation in the success of the implementation of respective projects” and “Water for energy, energy for water” as well as “The financial model for construction of hydrometric monitoring infrastructures, supply of water and sanitation”, are other topics for the meeting.
According to the note, the event will receive addresses from Angolan, Portuguese, Brazilian, Italian, British, American, German, Canadian and Spanish lecturers and will include the topics “Public-private partnership in water management: experiences and opportunities”, “Institutional reform and regularisation as fundamental factor of water and sanitation services”, “Water, juridical reflexes of national and international institutional scope” and the “Role of tariffs in water services”.
To learn more about HIV/AIDS and poverty watch House of Numbers.
Click here to see Luc Montagnier, Nobel Prize Winner for discovering HIV discuss clean water being key for the body and that HIV may be able to be cleared naturally.
www.houseofnumbers.com
Story source: http://www.portalangop.co.ao/motix/en_us/noticias/sociedade/2010/8/38/Inappropriate-water-kills-more-than-war-Hiv-Aids,e0f9dd10-f390-418e-87af-91a6841231d7.html
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