Posted on 03/18/2005 6:21:08 AM PST by Mother Abigail
March 18, 2005
Rare AIDS Strain Is Very Aggressive, Study Says
By MARC SANTORA
A genetic study of a rare strain of AIDS that led New York City health officials to issue a public warning last month will be published today, allowing experts from around the world to more accurately evaluate the scientific basis of the alert.
The study, appearing in The Lancet, a medical journal, shows the virus to be resistant to nearly all licensed drugs and particularly aggressive. Most of the study's details were disclosed earlier during an AIDS conference in Boston. The report is based on the work of a team of researchers from the Aaron Diamond AIDS Research Center in Manhattan led by Dr. David D. Ho and Dr. Martin Markowitz.
There has been debate about the importance of the discovery of the rare strain since the city went public with the case on Feb. 11, with some scientists saying that a single case did not warrant much concern. Some gay activist groups also reacted skeptically, saying public health officials exploited the case to scare gay men into practicing safe sex.
The City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene has repeatedly defended its decision, but has remained silent about how its investigation is proceeding. For a month, investigators have been working to track down the sexual partners of the man infected with the strain, a difficult job because he does not know the names of many of his partners.
Health workers took more than a dozen blood samples from people believed to have had sex with the man, according to one official involved in the case. They are testing those samples to determine if the virus was transmitted to others, but testing is not complete, the official said.
The case involves a gay man in his late 40's who tested positive for H.I.V. in December. The virus was resistant to nearly every drug treatment and progressed rapidly from infection to fully developed AIDS.
The man last tested negative for H.I.V. in May 2003 and was said to have engaged in unprotected sex with multiple partners in the fall of 2004 while he was using crystal methamphetamine. The man had developed AIDS by January, meaning that he had been infected for as long as 20 months or, according to the scientists familiar with how the virus progresses, as little as 4 months.
On average, it takes 10 years to develop AIDS after infection, but some people develop AIDS after about 20 years, and others within a year or so.
Drug resistance and rapid progression of the virus have both been seen at different times, but the intersection of the two is what the scientists found alarming. "The public health ramifications of such a case are great," the scientists wrote in the journal. Specifically, the genetic study of the virus shows it to be particularly effective at penetrating the human immune cells by being able to latch onto its target at two separate places, called receptors, on the cell's surface. Typically, the virus latches onto only one receptor.
In an accompanying editorial, The Lancet commented, "This case serves as a reminder that H.I.V. remains a frighteningly versatile foe, one that can mutate to escape immune attack or to acquire drug resistance with surprising speed."
That is a lot of years to be soaking up Government benefits, the new virus eliminates the fun by bringing that long drawn out illness rapidly to its ultimate conclusion.
They're not sane, and they want to die.
So what happens if one of these guys gets a triple infection?
This was probably just waiting to happen, because people who are already infected with HIV probably don't worry about catching it afterwards, and if they meet someone else who has HIV probably decide, "oh well, we're both infected, so why worry?"
Now it looks like we are finding out what happens when the AIDS virus mutates into different viruses, and someone gets two or more of them.
I'm glad I'm celibate. Women can catch AIDS from men who swing both ways or who cat around with women who sleep with bisexuals.
Oh, of course not! Why, perish the thought!
Many homosexuals in Manhattan are also doing lots of crystal meth. It's all the rage and you know it's a problem when you see meth help posters in the subways around the Village. I wonder concurrent drug abuse is affecting this or possibly causing the mutations.
I nominate that statement as brainfart of the the century.
No charge for the extra redundancy.
Yes, but there is not really a new version for crack yet, but I am sure the Bush administration is working on it.
There's been speculation for years that some of the AIDS "symptoms" are really caused by drug use. I don't know whether it makes sense medically or not. Drugs can cause genetic damage in humans; could they also produce mutations in a virus? I don't know.
What terrible lives these men lead. I'd want to die, too, I think.
But remember folks, gays aren't mentally disturbed individuals engaging in a self destructive lifestyle... they are just like you and me.... NOT.
Well, good-bye groups and good riddance then.
I know a young man who is gay. I warned him about the new strain of HIV,etc.etc.etc. He's celibate right now (thank God). It's all a lot of self hatred. Just thing about the sex act itself, which strikes me as being an act of assault against the human body. There are many homosexual people, especially men, walking around with a lot of self hatred and no love for themselves. The only gay men I've met that are happy have been with their partners for years. These days, it's a lot of promiscuity and a disregard for life.
BTTT
I've said it before and I'll say it again - if this were any other disease, and any other group of people, the public would be clammoring for a quarrantine.
44% of all new HIV cases come from the gay community - a group that comprises less than 5% of the total US population.
44% from less than 5% - this is nothing short of an epidemic. They are walking Bio-Hazards. Why are the PC police so afraid to state the obvious?
So, this begs the question - who's doing more damage to the sodomite community? Their enablers who seek to trumpet, promote and applaud their destructive lifestyle in the name of "diversity" and "tolerance", or those among us who know that they can be healed of their affliction through the saving power of Christ?
Who's the true "hater" here?
I submit that if any of us truly "hated" sodomites (as the left often says about us), we'd keep our mouths shut and not say a thing - let them carry on in their path of devastation and disease.
To all sodomites - there is hope for you. But it's in the Bible, not on Bravo.
Hey, glass houses! "Extra redundancy?"
I don't think any promiscuous people are happy, whether heterosexual or homosexual. When you value yourself, you expect someone else to want you exclusively; when you don't value yourself, nobody else will, either.
I had some homosexual friends in college. I still pray for them; they were nice guys.
The very use of the drugs is causing the substitution of the resistant strain(s) for the currently prevalent types, just as large scale use of antibiotics leads to the rise of resistant strains of bacterial infection. Continual development of new antibiotics to counter the new resistance is very expensive but much cheaper than the process will be with HIV. The only answer is celibacy for male homosexuals and abstinence with injectable drugs.
If you look back up the thread, you'll see Max was commenting to himself. It was clever, too!
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