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Pinning down an effective way to combat the spread of the human immunodeficiency virus, the viral precursor to AIDS, has long been a challenge for scientists and physicians, because the virus is an elusive one that mutates frequently and, as a result, quickly becomes immune to medication. A team of Drexel University researchers is trying to get one step ahead of the virus with a microbicide they've created that can trick HIV into "popping" itself into oblivion. Previous image Enlarge Close Next image / Like Us on Facebook Its name is DAVEI - which stands for "Dual Action Virolytic Entry...

ST. LOUIS (KTVI) – It was a story that made international headlines, a St. Louis area baby injected with the HIV tainted blood by his father who didn’t want to pay child support. More than 20 years later, Brryan Jackson is amazed by his health, but his positive spirit and faith. Brryan’s story seemed unbelievable in 1992, when he was just 11 months old, his father, a hospital technician, injected him with HIV tainted blood. The goal was to kill Brryan so he could avoid paying child support. “Anyone in my condition would die in three months they gave me...

A group of Tunisian girls traveled to Syria to participate in “sexual jihad” there have returned to Tunisia pregnant, Tunisian Interior Minister Lotfi Bin Jeddo reportedly said on Thursday. The women “are (sexually) swapped between 20, 30, and 100 rebels and they come back bearing the fruit of sexual contacts in the name of sexual jihad and we are silent doing nothing and standing idle,” Arab news network Al Arabiya reported the minister as saying during an address to the National Constituent Assembly. Former Mufti of Tunisia Sheikh Othman Battikh reportedly said in April that 13 Tunisian girls were "fooled"...

A UN report says that there has been a surprisingly large drop in worldwide deaths due to AIDS, and a significant drop in the number of new cases. BBC: Death rates fell from 2.3 million during its peak in 2005 to 1.6 million last year, says UNAIDS. The number of new HIV infections fell by a third since 2001 to 2.3 million. Among children, the drop was even steeper. In 2001 there were more than half a million new infections. By 2012 the figure had halved to just over a quarter of a million. The authors put the fall in...

The U.S. gay rights movement has achieved many victories in recent years—on marriage, military service and other fronts. Yet one vestige of an earlier, more wary era remains firmly in place: the 30-year-old nationwide ban on blood donations by gay and bisexual men. Dating from the first years of the AIDS epidemic, the ban is a source of frustration to many gay activists, and also to many leading players in the nation’s health and blood-supply community who have joined in calling for change. In June, the American Medical Association voted to oppose the policy. AMA board member William Kobler called...

Daughter of Reverend “God Damn America” Wright and 12 other Democrats are charged with embezzling $16 million in Federal health grants that should have gone to AIDS charities and other programs for the poor and needy. More than one of the defendants has direct ties to President Barack Obama. They allegedly stole from AIDS charities and job training programs among other funds of cash meant to help the poor and needy. These and other Dems are accused of stealing the money for personal use including mortgage and credit-card payments, vacation home payments, and in one case, a Mercedes-Benz, a Cadillac...

A recent series of spectacular medical cases has electrified researchers around the world—cases in which therapy has allowed the HIV patient to permanently keep the virus under control. In 2009, doctors at Berlin’s Charité Hospital reported on a HIV-positive man named Timothy Ray Brown, known as the Berlin patient, who received a bone-marrow stem-cell transplant as treatment for leukemia. The donor was, thanks to genetics, immune to HIV—and the immunity seemed to have passed to Brown, who no longer needed antiretroviral therapy to control the HIV. Doctors eventually declared him cured. In 2013, doctors at Harvard Medical School reported similar...

A third porn star has tested positive for the deadly HIV virus, leaving dozens in the adult film industry quarantined, RadarOnline.com is exclusively reporting. Female porn star Cameron Bay was the first to test positive last month, and her boyfriend and fellow porn star, Rod Daily, announced on Tuesday that he had also tested positive for HIV — but there’s a third infected porn star — a male performer who has done crossover work. “Drumroll please!! I’m 32 years old and I’m HIV positive. Acute HIV, which means I recently was infected. For that I am blessed,” Daily tweeted. [Snip]...

Prosecutors in rural Missouri have charged a man with exposing his partner to HIV and say he may have exposed more than 300 other people to the virus that causes AIDS. **SNIP** Mangum was arrested after his former partner told police that Mangum had lied to him about his status, a police affidavit states. He was arraigned Thursday morning in Stoddard County, about 160 miles south of St. Louis, with bail set at $250,000. The former partner has tested positive for HIV, according to police.

​Sean Sasser from MTV’s “The Real World: San Francisco” has died at the age of 44, his longtime partner said. Sasser, who had been HIV positive for 25 years, died Wednesday from mesothelioma, a rare form of lung cancer. The reality star died in the Washington home he shared with Michael Kaplan. While he was not one of the original cast members on “The Real World,” he became a household name as his relationship with Pedro Zamora was explored during the show’s third season in 1994. The couple’s exchange of vows during a commitment ceremony, the first ever broadcast on...

Sean Sasser, whose relationship with the late Pedro Zamora on MTV's "The Real World: San Francisco" broke cultural barriers on U.S. television, has died, his longtime partner told CNN on Thursday. Sasser was 44. Sasser, who had been HIV positive for 25 years, died Wednesday from mesothelioma, a rare form of lung cancer that was diagnosed just last month, Michael Kaplan said. He died in the Washington home he shared with Kaplan. Sasser was not one of the original cast members but became a household name as his relationship with Zamora was explored during the show's third season in 1994....

More than 80 lawmakers have called on the Obama administration to allow gay men to donate blood. The lawmakers say the administration should change what they say is an "outdated" policy. Eighty-two lawmakers in the House and Senate signed on to the letter, including Sens. Tammy Baldwin (D-Wis.), Mike Enzi (R-Wyo.) and Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.). Enzi was the only Republican to sign the letter. They said Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Kathleen Sebelius should re-evaluate blood donation criteria that ban gay men from donating blood for life.

Barack Obama issued an executive order on July 16, 2013 titled “HIV Care Continuum Initiative” which he claims will be a national movement and federal involvement in the war on HIV/AIDS. According to the executive order, recommendations are that HIV testing be administered for “all individuals ages 15 to 65 years” and this will be overseen by the US Preventative Services Task Force, coordinating with, you guessed it, criminal Kathleen Sebelius’ Department of Health and Human Services.

With almost no public notice, President Obama has issued an imperial decree executive order requiring universal HIV testing. Yasmeen Abutaleb of Reuters published a blandly-title dispatch, "Obama orders stepped up effort against U.S. HIV/AIDS epidemic" that takes seven paragraphs before getting to what should be the lead:

THE BRIEFING ROOM • THE BLOG THE BLOG TUESDAY, AUGUST 4TH, 2009 AT 6:55 AM Facts Are Stubborn Things Posted by Macon Phillips Opponents of health insurance reform may find the truth a little inconvenient, but as our second president famously said, "facts are stubborn things." Scary chain emails and videos are starting to percolate on the internet, breathlessly claiming, for example, to "uncover" the truth about the President’s health insurance reform positions. In this video, Linda Douglass, the communications director for the White House’s Health Reform Office, addresses one example that makes it look like the President intends to...

NOTE The following text is a quote: www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2013/07/15/executive-order-hiv-care-continuum-initiative The White House Office of the Press Secretary For Immediate Release July 15, 2013 Executive Order -- HIV Care Continuum Initiative EXECUTIVE ORDER - - - - - - - ACCELERATING IMPROVEMENTS IN HIV PREVENTION AND CARE IN THE UNITED STATES THROUGH THE HIV CARE CONTINUUM INITIATIVE By the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, and in order to further strengthen the capacity of the Federal Government to effectively respond to the ongoing domestic HIV epidemic, it is hereby ordered...

After Marshall Duer-Balkind, 30, exited a blood donation center on Friday morning, he held up a long green form as evidence that he had been rejected as a blood donor. On the form Duer-Balkind pointed out that section that disqualified him from being a blood donor because of a U.S. Food and Drug Administration policy that bans men who have sex with men from giving blood. After Duer-Balkind showed the form to two volunteers from the National Gay Blood Drive demonstration, the volunteers pulled out a red ink pad and stamped “Rejected” on his forearm. The stamp was proof that...

WASHINGTON, DC, July 8, 2013 (LifeSiteNews.com) - A fact sheet released at the end of June by the US Centers for Disease Control (CDC) warns that HIV rates, already at epidemic proportions, are continuing to climb steadily among men who have sex with men (MSM). "Gay and bisexual men remain at the epicenter of the HIV/AIDS epidemic," says Jonathan Mermin, the director of the CDC's division of HIV/AIDS prevention. The CDC notes that while homosexual men make up only a very small percentage of the male population (4%), MSM account for over three-quarters of all new HIV infections, and nearly...

(CNSNews.com) - Thursday is the 19th annual "National HIV Testing Day," and Health and Human Service Secretary Kathleen Sebelius is urging everyone to be tested for the preventable disease that is spread by contact with body fluids, mainly through sex, and especially among homosexual men."HIV testing is so important because it gives you the information you need to make good decisions about your health," Sebelius said in her announcement. "If you test negative, you can take steps to stay that way (which may include periodic testing if you engage in high-risk behaviors)."Notably, Sebelius said nothing about avoiding "high-risk behaviors" in...

Clinical trial will aim to replicate virus-expunging therapy that worked in US infant. HIV-positive mothers who take anti­retroviral therapies while pregnant can be prevented from transmitting the virus to their babies 99% of the time — a resounding success story in the decades-long fight against the virus. But what about infants whose mothers do not receive the drugs? Energized by the case of the ‘Mississippi baby’ — who seemed to be cured of HIV after aggressive treatment was begun within hours of birth — researchers are hoping to show that these infants, too, can get off to a healthy start....