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The federal government is on the brink of lifting restrictions put in place more than three decades ago when regulators, alarmed by the spread of the virus that causes AIDS, barred men who had sex with other men from donating blood. A Food and Drug Administration advisory panel will begin a two-day meeting on the issue Tuesday, amid growing calls from medical groups, gay rights activists and lawmakers to jettison the ban as outdated and discriminatory.

Just 30 percent of Americans with H.I.V. have the virus in check, putting others at risk of infection, health officials said Tuesday. A report by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that 840,000 of the 1.2 million people infected with H.I.V. in 2011 were not consistently taking drugs that suppress the virus. Of that number, 66 percent had been given an H.I.V. diagnosis but were not getting regular care; 20 percent did not know they were infected; 10 percent were prescribed antiretroviral medicines but were still not able to get the virus under control; and 4 percent were...

Gay men just got a step closer to being able to donate blood. Since 1983, men who have had sex with men anytime since 1977 were barred from donating blood, a policy put in place because of the HIV/AIDs epidemic, which especially ravaged the gay community in its early years. But on Thursday, the Department of Health and Human Services’ Advisory Committee on Blood and Tissue Safety voted 16-2 to tweak the ban, according to Bloomberg BusinessWeek, suggesting instead that men who have had sex with men could give blood, but with a caveat. They’d have to be abstinent for...

Former Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat’s widow, Suha Arafat, believes her late husband is the only who could have brought peace. "Many say that my husband was an obstacle to peace. We saw, after his death, what happened to peace," she said on Wednesday, speaking to the Italian daily La Repubblica on the 10th anniversary of her husband’s death. "History will tell whether Arafat was right to declare the Intifada,” Arafat, who lives in Malta with her daughter, told the newspaper upon being asked about the “armed resistance” advocated by her husband. “But now we have millions of refugees. We...

In the article "An HIV-1 Transmission Case Possibly Associated with Manicure Care," Elaine Monteiro Matsuda and coauthors from Santo André AIDS Program, Adolfo Lutz Institute, and University of São Paulo, Brazil, describe the case of a 22-year-old woman who had advanced HIV infection but no apparent risk factors for acquiring HIV. She reported having shared manicure instruments years before with a cousin who was later found to be HIV-positive. Genetic analysis of the viruses from both patients suggests that they shared a common viral ancestor, indicating the possibility that HIV was transmitted via the manicure instruments.

t’s the holy grail of HIV and AIDS research: the search for a cure for the virus that attacks the immune system, allowing life-threatening opportunistic infections and cancers to thrive. Significant strides have been made with pharmaceutical drugs – antiretrovirals – that help those diagnosed as HIV positive to manage their condition, and live longer, healthier lives. But so far, a cure has proved elusive. Now French scientists believe they have uncovered the genetic path by which two men were spontaneously cured of the HI virus. They believe it’s an exciting discovery which could offer a new strategy in the...

Dallas police arrested Diamond Lawrence Thursday after she allegedly stole $11 worth of frozen food from a Walmart and then attacked the employee who stopped her. She scratched him in an attempt to draw blood and infect him with HIV, police said. Then told him, 'You're welcome.'A woman tried to swipe a stack of frozen dinners from a Texas Walmart by threatening a store clerk with HIV, police said. Dallas police arrested 25-year-old Diamond Lawrence Thursday after she allegedly attacked an employee in a bid to give him the virus and make off with $11 worth of stolen food. Lawrence...

The last time we treated a deadly disease as a political problem instead of using time-tested medical precautions, we doomed many hemophiliacs to early deaths, along with hundreds of thousands of homosexual men. I was thinking about the HIV-AIDS epidemic while perusing the Obama administration’s latest rationales for rejecting mandatory, 21-day quarantines of health care workers and others coming from Ebola-stricken nations. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reports that the incubation period for Ebola is two to 21 days. Why not err on the side of safety? The similarities are striking. When HIV-AIDS erupted in the early...

<p>NEW YORK — Elton John has called Pope Francis "my hero" for his compassion and push to accept gays in the Catholic church, at his annual AIDS benefit.</p> <p>John hosted the event, "An Enduring Vision: A Benefit for the Elton John AIDS Foundation," Tuesday night in New York City. He says Francis is pushing boundaries in the church and told the crowd: "Make this man a saint now, OK?"</p>

U.S. will continue to get a black eye internationally for trying to save the lives of black Africans Stories that the Pentagon manufactured Ebola in a laboratory have been surfacing in a number of U.S. and foreign media outlets, helping to create even more of a panic over the spreading disease. A new variation of an old Soviet charge, it is designed to besmirch the reputation of the United States in black Africa. In the hands of Russian disinformation specialists, it could spark protests against the stationing of U.S troops in Africa to restrict the Ebola outbreak.

Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s Ebola quarantine policy is drawing strong opposition from people who work closely with him on another infectious disease: AIDS. New York State’s imposition of a 21-day quarantine on health workers who have had contact with Ebola patients in West Africa “is not supported by scientific evidence” and “may have consequences that are the antithesis of effective public health policy,” according to a letter released Monday with signatures from over 100 H.I.V. activists, researchers and clinicians. They consider the state’s quarantine policy unacceptable even though, as Governor Cuomo announced Sunday night, affected people will be able to serve...

Ebola virus disease (EVD) was first identified in 1976, in what was then called Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of the Congo). The name comes from the Ebola River, a tributary of the Congo River in central Africa, where the majority of EVD epidemics have occurred. However, recent outbreaks are now in Western Africa, and involve major cities, as well as rural areas. WHO pegs the average EVD case fatality rate at around 50%. Outbreaks in the past have logged case fatality rates of 25 to an astonishing 90 percent. Recently, symptoms of this dread disease have been well-publicized. Indeed,...

The largest U.S. gay-rights organization Saturday endorsed efforts to promote the use of a once-a-day pill to prevent HIV infection and called on insurers to provide more generous coverage of the drug. Some doctors have been reluctant to prescribe the drug, Truvada, on the premise that it might encourage high-risk, unprotected sexual behavior. However, its preventive use has been endorsed by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the World Health Organization, and many HIV/AIDS advocacy groups.The Human Rights Campaign, which recently has been focusing its gay-rights advocacy on same-sex marriage and anti-discrimination issues, joined those ranks with the release...

<p>MONTGOMERY, Ala. (AP) — After listening to his sermons for 24 years, parishioners of the Shiloh Missionary Baptist Church probably thought they knew the Rev. Juan D. McFarland.</p> <p>But from the very pulpit where he preached about God's love and service to the community, he delivered some stunning revelations: He had had affairs with women in the parish — and neglected to tell them he had AIDS.</p>

Centers for Disease Control Director Dr. Tom Frieden compared Ebola with AIDS at a United Nations, World Bank, International Monetary Fund forum held Oct. 9, in Washington, D.C. He stated: “I would say that in the 30 years I've been working in public health, the only thing like this has been AIDS,” Dr. Frieden is right asserts radio talk show host and author Chuck Morse. Ebola and AIDS are similar in terms of the politically correct approach by which both epidemics are being handled. We should learn from the mistakes of history and recall that back in the 1980's the...

The Ebola outbreak has been escalating in the past few months, but could it cause a global pandemic similar to that of AIDS, as was suggested today by a top public health official? Speaking at a meeting in Washington, D.C., today (Oct. 9), Dr. Tom Frieden, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, compared the two diseases. "In the 30 years I've been working in public health, the only thing like this has been AIDS," Frieden said, referring to the Ebola outbreak. "And we have to work now so that this is not the world's next AIDS." Ebola...

The widening Ebola epidemic is reminiscent of the health threat caused by AIDS, the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Thursday, urging action so Ebola "is not the world's next AIDS." "In the 30 years I've been working in public health, the only thing like this has been AIDS," CDC Director Dr. Tom Frieden said at a World Bank and International Monetary Fund annual meeting in Washington, D.C., where many countries pledged funds and services to try to stem the virus ravaging West Africa. "And we have to work now so that this is not the...

http://www.cdc.gov/hiv/pdf/risk_HIV_AfricanAmericans.pdfThe estimated rate of new HIV infections for African American women was 20 times that of white women

Late last month, the journal Pediatrics, published by the American Academy of Pediatrics, released a policy statement entitled Contraception for Adolescents. The statement is an update to the Academy’s 2007 statement on the same topic. The update “provides the pediatrician with a description and rationale for best practices in counseling and prescribing contraception for adolescents,” according to the journal article. The abstract says: The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends that pediatricians develop a working knowledge of contraception to help adolescents reduce risks of and negative health consequences related to unintended pregnancy. The American Academy of Pediatrics seems to have taken...

The outbreak of Ebola that has become a humanitarian crisis in West Africa finally reached the U.S. last week when a patient in Dallas, Texas was diagnosed with the virus. Ebola is not an airborne disease and is only transmitted through close contact with bodily fluids like saliva, feces and urine, but that hasn’t stopped a minor panic from setting in now that it has reached American shores. Global health experts are concerned that now, in the U.S., stigmatization of people from the three most affected countries in the region — Sierra Leone, Guinea and Liberia — could follow. “On...