Experts: Test Nearly Everyone for AIDS

FOXNews.com ^ | February 10, 2005 | Associated Press

[Tolerance Sucks Rocks]

Urging a major shift in U.S. policy, some health experts are recommending that virtually all Americans be tested routinely for the AIDS (search) virus, much as they are for cancer and other diseases.

Since the early years of the AIDS epidemic in the 1980s, the government has recommended screening only in big cities, where AIDS rates are high, and among members of high-risk groups, such as gay men and drug addicts.

But two large, federally funded studies found that the cost of routinely testing and treating nearly all adults would be outweighed by a reduction in new infections and the opportunity to start patients on drug cocktails early, when they work best.

"Given the availability of effective therapy and preventive measures, it is possible to improve care and perhaps influence the course of the epidemic through widespread, effective and cost-effective screening," Dr. Samuel A. Bozzette wrote in an editorial accompanying the studies, which appear in Thursday's New England Journal of Medicine.

A failure to institute such screening at doctors' offices and clinics would be "a critical disservice" to patients with the AIDS virus and "the future health of the nation," wrote Bozzette, who is from the University of California at San Diego and the Rand Corp. (search) think tank in Santa Monica, Calif.

[Tolerance Sucks Rocks]

I wonder, will this screening be mandatory?

[Tolerance Sucks Rocks]

PING!

[ken21]

is everyone tested routinely for cancer?

if so, i'm getting cheated!

[Paleo Conservative]

Why? most people don't engage in high risk behaviors likely to result in transmission of AIDS. The only reason I get tested is that I regularly donate blood, and I recently got my 4 gallon coffee mug from the local blood bank.

[Doctor Raoul]

I recently got my 4 gallon coffee mug

Switch to decaf...

[vetvetdoug]

Common sense and politically incorrect persons in epidemiology have been saying this since the first GRIDS was isolated and identified. It would have stopped a lot of pain and cost a helluva lot less. This is one disease that the genie got out of the bottle and political correctness and the disease amplifying population spread it with impunity. Politics has created the situation we are in, not the medical professionals that were interested in controlling disease.

[JohnnyZ]

Of course if you test everybody there are that many more false positives..... I wonder what the rate is for that?

Anyone engaging in risky behavior should get tested, of course.

[partridge thatcher]

guess who!

Big Brother, thanks to those who can not govern themselves. We are all losing our freedoms, and privacy.

 

[supercat]

Common sense and politically incorrect persons in epidemiology have been saying this since the first GRIDS was isolated and identified. It would have stopped a lot of pain and cost a helluva lot less. This is one disease that the genie got out of the bottle and political correctness and the disease amplifying population spread it with impunity. Politics has created the situation we are in, not the medical professionals that were interested in controlling disease.

You are assuming that there weren't any gay activists who wanted the disease to spread. After all, what's the good of being a "victim class" if one isn't the victim of something?

A key aspect of the liberal credo is that the more people do a wrong thing, the less wrong it becomes. There appear to be some people for whom this belief extends into diseases. They think that the more people have AIDS, the less bad it will be for the people who have it. While this belief is not completely devoid of foundation (after all, the more people have AIDS, the more money will be spent on research) it is morally bankrupt.

It's amazing how successfully the gay activists are able to blame everyone else for the AIDS crisis when it is they themselves who ensured its spread.

[maine-iac7]

I wonder, will this screening be mandatory?

Well, if it is, here's one ole granny they'll have to haul off to jail.

I don't get flu shots -

I don't get pneumonia shots

I never went on to HRT

(had to fight the docs for years)

and they ain't gonna do any AIDS testing on me...

[Tolerance Sucks Rocks]

HRT? That's hormone replacement therapy, right?

[Publius6961]

I wonder, will this screening be mandatory?

Not possible!
The right to privacy outweighs any concern about public health and the wider concerns of community.

At least that's what I remember the perverts convincing the courts of when they first started spreading their fatal disease through blood donations...

[yankeedame]

is everyone tested routinely for cancer?
Yeah, or TB, or herpes, or head lice, or....

Experts: Test Nearly Everyone for AIDS
Once agan, "Follow the money"

[SalukiLawyer]

Wow. Given the many false positives that will result with low/no-risk folks and the current protocols of "treating" non-symptomatic persons as early as possible to achieve a decrease in "viral load" AIDS would truly become the straight-white epidemic the left has always dreamed of.

Like most AIDS stories, this is 100% political theatre, 0% science.

[yankeedame]

A key aspect of the liberal credo is that the more people do a wrong thing, the less wrong it becomes. ...

Amen,SC! And another facet of the liberal credo is transforming undesirable habits/conditions in to an "illness". After all, its okay -- perhaps even expected -- to get morally indignant over a bad habit [a.k.a vice] and demand the person straightened up and fly right; however, when this same condition i.e. excessive drinking, becomes an "illness" sympathy is supposed to replace moral judgment, and understanding replace indignation.

[Winston7000]

This is another example of junk science run amok...for the gain of glory and grants. It simply boggles the mind that these nannies keep climbing out of the cracks along the floor. Population crises, famines, nuclear winters, lack of flu vaccines, ice ages, global warming, DDT elimination, embryonic cell research, volcanic eruptions, dangerous asteroids...name it. If it isn't one thing, it's another.

[supercat]

Amen,SC! And another facet of the liberal credo is transforming undesirable habits/conditions in to an "illness". After all, its okay -- perhaps even expected -- to get morally indignant over a bad habit [a.k.a vice] and demand the person straightened up and fly right; however, when this same condition i.e. excessive drinking, becomes an "illness" sympathy is supposed to replace moral judgment, and understanding replace indignation.

Interesting observation, especially given that illnesses used to be bad things. If someone got smallpox, there wasn't a 'smallpox victim's advocacy group' that demanded the right to go about freely spreading the disease. Instead, someone with smallpox would be quarantined.

Perhaps the shift in disease handling stems from another aspect of the liberal credo: having an excuse for being wrong is more important than being right. Diseases give people an excuse for badness.

[maine-iac7]

right

[RaceBannon]

http://www.drday.com/aidsinfo.htm

I have read this woman's book, went to the local University Hospital where I had surgery two years ago,

went through their library and photocopied her footnotes,

about 50% of them I found,

And she ain't lying! The medical journals said all the things she said in her book, only it was the opposite of what you have been hearing on the radio and tv back then.

Her predictions about the future have proven inaccurate, though, she was very pessimistic, and with good cause. However, it appears the transmission of AIDS seems to not spread as easily as she feared, but she did PROVE the HIV virus does spread easier than were were previously told.

[Tolerance Sucks Rocks]

Just...WOW!