Free Republic

... Currently, the FDA bans men who have had sex with other men “at any time since 1977 (the beginning of the AIDS epidemic in the United States)” from giving blood based on their heightened risk for HIV. Because it still takes about two weeks after exposure to detect HIV—and up to several months in rare cases—the HHS recommends the one-year deferral period to be safe, following in the footsteps of the U.K., Sweden, Australia, and Japan. The new rule would be a step in the right direction from a government that has long clung to outdated conceptions of HIV...

The Food and Drug Administration announced on Tuesday that it would scrap a decades-old lifetime prohibition on blood donation by gay and bisexual men, a change that experts said was long overdue and could lift the annual blood supply by as much as 4 percent. The F.D.A. enacted the ban in 1983, early in the AIDS epidemic. At the time, little was known about the human immunodeficiency virus, which causes the disease, and there was no quick test to determine whether somebody had it. But science — and the understanding of H.I.V. in particular — has advanced in the intervening...

A FDA panel has declined to support lifting the lifetime ban on men who have sex with men (MSM) from donating blood.The ban, which has been in place for over 30 years, has grown increasingly controversial in light of groups such as the American Red Cross and the American Medical Association joining homosexual activists in saying the ban is based upon unscientific discrimination. However, supporters of the policy say keeping it in place is based on sound science and risk assessment, given that a majority of HIV/AIDS carriers are MSM, and the number of MSM who use condoms to prevent...

Government health advisers have concerns about lifting a nationwide ban on blood donations from gay and bisexual men, despite growing pressure against the policy from gay rights advocates, medical experts and blood banks. The ban dates from the first years of the AIDS epidemic and was intended to protect the U.S. blood supply from exposure to the little-understood disease. …

December 1st, is World AIDS Day. In the 35-years of the epidemic, about 80-million people have become infected with HIV and nearly 40-million have died. But great progress has been made in recent years in preventing and treating the disease. UNAIDS – the Joint United Nations Program on HIV/AIDS – has set a goal of ending the epidemic by 2030. An advocacy group says a strategic plan and much funding are needed to achieve that goal.

Again, this is another move under the Obama administration to put the American public in danger while promoting what is clearly an unhealthy lifestyle. The Food and Drug Administration advisors will be meeting the first week in December to talk about lifting a thirty year old prohibition on sodomites donating blood. ------------- Let me ask you America, would you be willing to run that risk of a sodomite donating blood with the slim chance that he may just give you HIV? Wouldn't that be like me offering you a coke with the possibility that it contained only 1% poison? Would...

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>