Posted on 08/02/2008 12:22:48 PM PDT by neverdem
Updated federal estimates of the annual number of new HIV infections in the United States, released today, reveal that while the AIDS epidemic here is worse than previously thought, prevention efforts appear to be having some effect.
Even though the number of Americans living with HIV has risen by more than a quarter million people since 1998 -- largely the result of life-extending antiretroviral drugs -- the number of new cases each year has declined slightly over that period. That suggests that a person's likelihood of transmitting the virus to someone else is substantially lower now than it was a decade ago.
The new, if indirect, evidence that prevention programs are paying off was one of the few encouraging findings in an update on the American AIDS epidemic released today by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on the eve of the 17th International AIDS Conference, in Mexico City.
"Over 95 percent of people living with HIV are not transmitting to someone else in a given year," said David R. Holtgrave, an expert on AIDS prevention at the Bloomberg School of Public Health at Johns Hopkins University. "What that says is the transmission rate has been kept very low by prevention efforts."
Those include targeting public health messages to high-risk groups, promoting widespread AIDS testing, and getting quick medical care for newly diagnosed cases, which in most cases lowers the person's infectiousness.
The CDC spends about...
--snip--
The epidemic in the black community is distinctly different from the national epidemic.
From 2001 to 2005, 38 percent of the new diagnoses in African Americans were in women, and 46 percent of new infections overall were from heterosexual contact. Among whites during the same period, 16 percent of new infections were in women, and 16 percent were from heterosexual transmission...
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
Have you bothered to read what AIDS Rethinker scientists have dug up on AZT? The paper you cited (and many others of a similar nature) has been refuted dozens of times.
All one needs to read is Duesberg's "paper" in an Indian Medical Journal:
http://www.duesberg.com/papers/chemical-bases-various-aids-epidemics.pdf
By the end he is not discussing science but rather crying about peer review and whining about an unfair system trying to censor his 'research'. It's more conspiracy theory ramblings than good science. To add to that, the people privately funding him are a bunch of Paulbots, listed at the end of his diatribe, and one wouldn't be surprised if they thought 9/11 was an inside job too.
http://fundrace.huffingtonpost.com/neighbors.php?type=name&lname=Kennedy&fname=Michael+S.&search=Search
http://fundrace.huffingtonpost.com/neighbors.php?type=name&lname=Morrill&fname=Christopher
http://www.newsmeat.com/fec/bystate_detail.php?city=Danville++++++++++&st=CA&last=LEPPO&first=ROBERT
HIV is real, AIDS is real, and they are connected. They emerged from the same hellhole that has graced us with Ebola, Marburg, monkeypox and heaven knows what else nature can brew up with man and monkeys living in proximity.
I think that may explain part of it, but I haven't seen citations supporting it with hard data. I wonder if it has to with chemokine(sp?) coreceptors ccr5 or cxcr4.
I entered (ccr5 or cxcr4) and bubonic plague into PubMed's query box. That was one of 16 hits involving CCR5.
==HIV is real, AIDS is real, and they are connected. They emerged from the same hellhole that has graced us with Ebola, Marburg, monkeypox and heaven knows what else nature can brew up with man and monkeys living in proximity.
Can you be more specific. Are you saying that AIDS was originally spread by monkeys?
PS c-y-c, it would be nice if you could simply make a point, rather than issuing (badly formatted) quote bombs. Make SPECIFIC arguments, cite your sources, and I will be glad to engage.
If HIV is completely harmless/does not cause AIDS, you might as well be talking about how many angels can dance on the head of a pin.
I keep hearing that from you but what I read are long winded rants against this or that but nothing of value. On the other tread I left much of what I posted here but since you’re convinced that HIV has nothing to with AIDS the only possible explanation for all the studies contrary to your beliefs is a conspiracy.
So which one of those “dozens of times” studies would like me to read?
I am stating (and have NIAID’s link above) that proves by every modern scientific test that HIV is causative of AIDS.
Genomes were identified as early as 1959 in plasma samples taken from a man in the Congo. HIV is highly likely to have been a derivative of SIV. Zoonosis is not uncommon when you have a bunch of people hunting and eating monkeys.
LOL! Thanks for the feedback.
If you sit down, keep your mouth shut and don’t stick things in your body that don’t belong there, chances are good that you won’t contact HIV/AIDS.
Read the following, and then tell me if you still believe the AZT trial followed proper scientific protocol.
Note: they are specifically referring to the paper your abstract is referring to:
http://www.rethinkingaids.com/GalloRebuttal/Farber-Gallo-32.html
In a brilliant move by our government, it is against the law to divulge the diagnosis of putative HIV patients to medical personnel who care for them.
==HIV is highly likely to have been a derivative of SIV. Zoonosis is not uncommon when you have a bunch of people hunting and eating monkeys.
Before I comment, could you please reveal where you are getting your information from? Sources please.
http://www.avert.org/origins.htm
http://www.avert.org/evidence.htm
http://www.cdc.gov/hiv/resources/qa/qa3.htm
http://depts.washington.edu/ceeh/News/mot1.html
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9468138
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/static/in_depth/africa/2000/aids_in_africa/aids_facts.stm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AIDS_origin
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/279/5352/801
http://www.fasebj.org/cgi/reprint/15/2/276.pdf
OK, just curious to see where you’re getting your info. from. Have you read the following. The first article gives an overview of how ludicrous many of these papers are, and how embarrassed the MS science journals should be for even publishing them. The second is a scientific rebuttal to the notion that HIV comes from chimps, and it specifically references a number of citations in your list of links:
http://www.virusmyth.com/aids/hiv/rgold.htm
http://www.virusmyth.com/aids/data/dtinterviewlm.htm
Pro and con. Gallo argued in defense of the study. But the central question was whether HIV is the cause of AIDS not debates over protocols. After all even aspirin was used for many years without anyone understanding how it worked let alone run protocols.
I haven’t the background to know whether proper protocols were followed and accusations that they weren’t is hardly proof of anything. Got any evidence?
I read the first link (http://www.virusmyth.com/aids/hiv/rgold.htm) and it there is nothing scientific about it whatsoever. His sophomoric attempt to mock those who actually understand the reason for correct terminology is an embarrassment:
What is known as "HIV science" is replete with extravagant names given by HIV researchers to their speculations. For example, investigators tracking the origin of HIV adore speaking about "molecular clock analysis", "molecular epidemiology", "phylogenetic analysis", "simian immunodeficiency viruses (SIV)", "SIV and HIV gene sequences", "HIV cloning", "zoonotic transmission", "transmission early hypothesis", "transmission cause epidemic hypothesis", "parallel late transmission hypothesis", "phylogenetic history of HIV", and "molecular evolution of HIV-1" (1-9). It sounds as if everything that they describe is real. Using exotic names, researchers give birth to new myths about HIV/AIDS. Additionally, this practice is an example of how HIV researchers and top "scientific" journals, working in tandem, contribute to the widespread hysteria about viral transmission.
That is not science, that is bordering on ad hominem to bolster his point (whatever his point actually is). It did interest me enough to Google up the author which turned up this:
http://www.aidstruth.org/new/denialism/denialists/giraldo-immunoassays
How Immunoassays Work: The Curious Case of AIDS Denialist Roberto Giraldo and his Ignorance of the Basics by John P. Moore, PhD
Roberto Giraldo is employed as a laboratory technologist in the molecular diagnostics laboratory at the New York Presbyterian Hospital, New York. He is not licensed to practice medicine in New York. He has no medical appointment at the Hospital. Again, Giraldo is employed at the Hospital as a technician, not as a medical doctor or a professional academic. Giraldo has no appointment at the Weill Medical College of Cornell University, an institution affiliated to but separate from the Hospital.
On his website Giraldo writes:
The ELISA test is a test for antibodies against what is supposed to be the Human Immunodeficiency Virus or HIV. To run this test, an individual's serum has to be diluted to a ratio of 1:400 with a special specimen diluent. According to the test kit manufacturer this diluent contains "0.1% triton X-100, Bovine and Goat Sera (minimum concentration of 5%) and Human T-Lymphocyte Lysate (minimum titer 1:7500). Preservative: 0.1% Sodium Azide" (1).
I first took samples of blood that, at 1:400 dilution, tested negative for antibodies to HIV. I then ran the exact same serum samples through the test again, but this time without diluting them. Tested straight, they all came positive.
Since that time I have run about 100 specimens and have always gotten the same result. I even ran my own blood which at 1:400 reacts negative. At 1:1 [undiluted] it reacted positive. I should mention that with the exception of my own blood, the patient samples all came from doctors who requested HIV tests. It is therefore likely that most of the blood samples that I tested belonged to individuals at risk for AIDS.
In this article, often parroted on other denialist websites, Giraldo displays scientific ignorance of truly staggering proportions for someone who states: "For the last 6 years I have been working at a laboratory of clinical immunology in one of the most prestigious University Hospitals in the City of New York."
The article continues and pretty well defines Giraldo as not knowing WTF he is doing. He's not licensed to practice here, but he does have a book on the subject for sale (imagine that!)
I'll take the CDC over some homebrewed conspiracy site with "Docs" who are not what they claim to be. Their "science" smacks of the same nonsense as the 200 MPG hydrogen carburetor people who are claiming that "Big Oil" is conspiring to suppress their important information.
Plenty of people have gotten AIDS from blood transfusions (recall Ryan White) and they had NO history of drug abuse or homosexual behaviour. None. Zip. Nada. Zilch. Zero. As someone commented above, anyone who believes HIV is NOT the root of AIDS is welcome to self-inoculate. So far their have been NO takers.
The second is an interview (by a "French Science Journalist", not a scientific rebuttal.
THIS is a scientific paper that details the SIV-HIV common ancestry (reprinted since perhaps you missed it the first time it was posted: http://www.fasebj.org/cgi/reprint/15/2/276.pdf
It is a peer-reviewed document, not arbitrary ramblings on a conspiracy website. None of the references you cite mention it. Also note that Duesberg is on the board of this (and probably every other AIDS conspiracy site. http://www.virusmyth.com/aids/data2/raboard.htm
...
Preliminary results from a Veterans Administration (VA) study of AZT therapy were presented on 14 February 1991 in Washington, DC, at a special meeting of the Antiviral Drugs Advisory Committee of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA)...
<snip>
The Veterans Administration Study
The main focus of the meeting on Thursday 14 February was Veterans Administration Cooperative Study 298, whose preliminary findings were presented by John Hamilton, MD. This study involved 338 HIV-positive individuals whose T4 cells were in the range between 200 and 500 and who showed some "symptoms or signs of HIV infection", including thrush, oral hairy leukoplakia, zoster, unintentional weight loss of 10% or more, unexplained persistent diarrhea, fever (100.5 degrees Fahrenheit), night sweats, fatigue, dermatitis, or lymphadenopathy. According to "risk group" category, 65% were gay men, 15% were intravenous drug users, and 8% were both gay men and intravenous drug users. Ethnically, 65% were white and 35% were black or hispanic. Patients were enrolled into the study as early as January 1987 or as late as January 1990.
The patients were randomized into two treatment arms: the first (early treatment) received 1500 mg. of AZT per day; the second (later treatment) received placebo followed by AZT at the point where their CD4 count fell below 200 on two successive occasions.
Hamilton stated his overall conclusions twice-at the beginning of his talk, and then again at the very end. His first statement of conclusions is as follows (verbatim):
Early zidovudine delayed progression to AIDS, as compared to later treatment. But no benefit for either treatment arm was detected for survival or the combined clinical endpoints of AIDS and death. Early zidovudine resulted in transitory benefits in whites and neutral or harmful effects in black and hispanic patients.
At the end of his talk, Hamilton expanded his conclusions somewhat, as follows (verbatim): We found that early zidovudine therapy delayed the progression of AIDS. We also found that survival was comparable in the two treatment groups. That is, no benefit-no detectable benefit. We found that early zidovudine resulted in transitory benefits in whites and neutral or harmful effects in black and hispanic patients. And we conclude that further studies are mandatory in minority populations.
I made the two brief transcripts above from listening dozens of times to the tape I made of Hamilton's talk. They are, word for word, what he said. I emphasize this because reports on Hamilton's talk have strangely distorted, or neglected to mention, the conclusions that he himself presented. For the record, there they are.
Hamilton described the toxicities of AZT treatment, all of which were found more often in the early treatment group.Comparing early vs. later, more patients on early zidovudine: were anemic, were neutropenic, had nausea and vomiting, had diarrhea, had central nervous system abnormalities, and had headaches. In response to questioning, Hamilton said that transfusions were given when necessary. (See Table 1 below)
Not only did AZT not confer any benefit in terms of survival, a slightly higher proportion of patients died in the early treatment group (14%) than in the later treatment group (11%). One astounding finding was that in the early AZT group, 10 patients (6%) died without ever progressing to CDC-defined "AIDS", whereas none of the patients in the later AZT group did so. One must ask, then, what these patients died from, if not from "AIDS"; and the answer is that they probably died, at least in part, from AZT poisoning. It would seem a dubious benefit to take a drug that will prevent you from progressing to "AIDS" by killing you first. (See Table 2 below)
By far the most controversial finding was the possibility that AZT treatment might be more harmful to black and hispanic patients than to whites. Among the minority patients, the death rate was significantly much higher in the early treatment group (14%) than in the later treatment group (2%). One can only speculate as to why there should be ethnic differences in the response to AZT treatment. But, at least for the patients in this study, the differences appear to be real.
http://www.duesberg.com/articles/jlsecond.html
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