Rare AIDS Strain Is Very Aggressive, Study Says

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."

"Some gay activist groups also reacted skeptically, saying public health officials exploited the case to scare gay men into practicing safe sex."

And this is why we need to take steps to eradicate AIDS. The gays won't. We wouldn't allow the transmission of TB or small pox, or any other disease, we shouldn't with AIDS.

This mutation, and the fact that mutation happens very quickly, is making it very difficult for researchers to do anything. How long before it is transmitted in other ways, putting us all at risk.

In my opinion, we need to expose the left for their disregard for the transmission and silencing of health alerts regarding AIDS. They are putting the whole country at risk by their failure to address this.

All they talk about is the right of homosexuals to practice this deviant behavior regardless of the risk. If there were a disease that was transmitted by heterosexual sex almost exclusively, how do we think the WHO would handle it? You can bet all heterosexuals would be responsible in regard to protecting themselves and others! But homosexuals aren't, whether they don't have the mental capability or what, doesn't matter, they are not getting the information, they are not practicing safe sex, and they are not being helped by these PC policies that are in place. In fact, half the money allocated to AIDS research is funneled to activism.

We have to stop this horrible disease, before the ways it can be transmitted changes to affect us all.

"It's disingenuous to compare the risk homos incur of being infected with the AIDS virus with the risk of getting in an accident on a motorcycle. As it's been manifested, homosexual irresponsibility and outright contempt for society has resulted in AIDS spreading into the hetero community. Persons riding without a helmet will risk hurting only theirselves."

Tell that to family members who have lost loved ones, or have had them permanently disabled. Or for that matter to the taxpayers who often end picking up the tab for the care of those injured by such behavior – it can and occasionally does cause causes enormous emotional and financial damage to families and society.

The way I see it engaging in either unsafe sex (straight or gay) and participating in high-risk sports without reasonable protective gear have at least two things in common: depending on your circumstances either be extremely inconsiderate and selfish acts, and the people engaging in both often have at lot of same ways of rationalizing this fact away.

How do I know this?

Because I used to do the same, and spent a lot of time in the company of others like myself - when I was a young man I loved to look down at the ground from a hang-glider or feel the wind I my hair on a motorcycle, I’m married to a woman who was an avid on and off road rider, and when we were young we had plenty of rationalizations for taking these sorts of risks irrespective of the emotional, financial and occasionally physical harm they might cause others.

Now that I’m older, and some of my friends and acquaintances are dead or maimed, they don’t seem so reasonable.

And this isn’t primarily the result of an intellectual understanding, it’s an emotional shift, and nobody argued me into it (or could have) - like a lot of people who used to enjoy such risks there just came a day when I put a foot on the kick-starter and realized that what I was feeling was at least as much apprehension as anticipation – that maybe it was just not worth it.

Now, I don’t go around telling other people to not to fly, or to wear a helmet if they ride.

Because I know that they are making a decision that appears at the time – to them - rational for their circumstances.

That with maturity and experience, many of them will come to perceive the balance of risk and satisfaction differently.

But that some of them never will: that as long as they are able they will be getting on their bike after a few beers or launching into really marginal conditions.

And I don’t see the evidence that that there is something fundamentally different about the mental state of someone who engages in consensual unsafe sex and someone who engages in other forms of high-risk behavior, it seems to me even in the most extreme cases - gays who deliberately court the risk of infection - has plenty of parallels in my experience, for example the “suicidal” risk taking some hang gliders.

That it's all just crazy human risk-taking behavior, straight or gay.

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