Free Republic

For people who are neither leftists nor caught in the grip of Trump Derangement Syndrome, Vice President Mike Pence is an intelligent, principled, competent man. When President Trump announced on Wednesday that he was putting Pence in charge of coordinating the federal government’s response to the coronavirus, it seemed like an eminently sensible decision. For Democrats, though, Pence is the man who caused an HIV outbreak in Indiana. This, of course, is a lie. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a woman so desperate to drive Trump from the White House that she seemed unconcerned that Mike Pence would become president, summed up...

The state Department of Health has proposed legislation that would make such exposure a misdemeanor, asserting the state’s HIV laws aren’t reflective of current treatments and perpetuate a stigma against people living with the virus. The proposal also calls for more intervention from local and state health officers, allowing them to recommend options ranging from testing to counseling, and even mandate treatment for an individual determined to be placing others at risk. Sen. Ann Rivers, R-La Center and a member of the committee, said she supports efforts to de-stigmatize HIV but said reducing the penalty for intentional transmission diminishes the...

Despite similar rates of enrollment into medical care, youth with HIV have much lower rates of viral suppression — reducing HIV to undetectable levels — compared to adults, according to an analysis funded by the National Institutes of Health. Among more than 1,000 youth, most of whom were newly enrolled in care at treatment centers throughout the United States, 12% had attained viral suppression, far lower than the 32% to 63% observed in studies of adults over age 24. The findings suggest that after they enroll in an HIV treatment program, a low proportion of youth adhere to care regimens....

Aliya Feroe recalls the flustered OB-GYN who referred her to another physician after learning she identified as queer. For Rhi Ledgerwood, who was designated female at birth, identifies as trans and doesn’t have sex with men, it was a doctor advising about condoms and pregnancy prevention. For Tim Keyes, who came out as gay at age 17, it’s when doctors automatically assumed he sleeps with women. Ask any LGBTQ patient about awkward doctor visits and chances are they’ll have a story to tell. When being heterosexual is presumed even in doctors’ offices, those who identify otherwise can feel marginalized and...

Russians flocked to Google for information about HIV tests after an influential YouTuber’s documentary shed light on the scale of the country’s HIV epidemic this week. Journalist Yury Dud’s two-hour documentary addresses what he refers to as an ignored issue that “affects each and every one” of his millions of subscribers. Almost 8 million people viewed Dud’s HIV documentary in the 48 hours since it went online Tuesday. “We filmed this episode to add knowledge and make life a little easier for those with HIV,” Dud says in the video. The number of searches for Russian-language terms relating to HIV...

Over a quarter of a sample of HIV-positive gay and bisexual men in a relationship with an HIV-negative partner did not have an accurate understanding of their current viral load, investigators from the United States report in the online edition of the Journal of Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndromes. Laboratory viral load results showed that a fifth of men who believed that they were undetectable currently had a detectable viral load, and that 7.5% were virally suppressed when they thought their viral load was detectable. Perhaps significantly, the participants were initially recruited to take part in an adherence intervention and 48%...

The U.S. government will spend more than half a million dollars to provide residents of a tiny, poverty-stricken African nation with condoms. The money, $700,000, will help fund a National Condom Strategy launched by the Ministry of Health in Eswatini, a landlocked south African country smaller than New Jersey. Until recently Eswatini was known as Swaziland but its tyrannical ruler, King Mswati III, changed it so the country could break with its colonial past. Estwatini is Africa’s only absolute monarchy and most of its population of about 1.4 million lives in poverty with the world’s highest rate of AIDS and...

The newest of these was a little unusual because it was based on a pre-print of a real scientific paper, (since removed just a few hours ago) uploaded to website bioRxiv, where scientists can present their completed, or near-completed studies, prior to peer-review by other scientists. The work, by a group based in India, was entitled “Uncanny similarity of unique inserts in the 2019-nCoV spike protein to HIV-1 gp120 and Gag.”

Thailand has reportedly seen promising results after treating a coronavirus patient with a mix of two antiviral drugs which are usually used to treat HIV. Medics tested the drug mix on a patient who was in a 'serious condition' with the disease and within 48 hours they were declared disease-free, reports Bloomberg. The drugs, originally used for HIV and influenza treatment, were a success according to a medical briefing given by Dr Kriangsak Attipornwanich. ...

They found that all four of these spike protein inserts appear as matches to at least one sequence in at least one variant of the HIV virus. The sequences come from the gp120 and Gag proteins in HIV, the former of which is also a viral envelope recognition protein. This has led many to credulously assume that this is evidence, or even a strong indication, that 2019-nCoV was engineered from its bat ancestor by humans inserting HIV sequences. But they’re wrong; it’s still not engineered. An analysis of the paper clearly reveals that: 1. There is nothing remarkable about the...

Oh my god. Indian scientists have just found HIV (AIDS) virus-like insertions in the 2019-nCov virus that are not found in any other coronavirus. They hint at the possibility that this Chinese virus was designed ["not fortuitous']. Scary if true. https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.01.30.927871v1.full.pdf

INTRODUCTION Sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) are infections acquired from another person mainly through the pathway of sexual activity. STDs are very common and are responsible of a heavy burden to public health in many countries. Luckily, these diseases are treatable. Some of them are curable, and most importantly, all of them are preventable. In the United States, about 20 million new sexually transmitted infections occur every year. That means that the average American has a 6% annual probability of getting an STD. Of course, this probability varies widely depending on many factors, and homosexual intercourse tends to be highly placed...

SALT LAKE CITY (KUTV) — The Utah Department of Health (UDOH) confirmed Wednesday that the governor's office asked that branded condoms stop being distributed so the packaging messages can be reworked. The campaign called "The H is for Human," launched on Monday and focuses on raising HIV awareness and includes a new website, HIVandME.com.

HIV that is being transmitted in large population clusters in the United States is more likely to cause high viral load in people who acquire it, leading US researchers to conclude that natural selection is causing HIV in the United States to become more infectious and virulent. The study by Dr Joel Wertheim of the University of California San Diego, Dr Walid Heneine of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and colleagues is published in Nature Communications. Scientists have previously theorised that rapid onward transmission of HIV after primary infection would tend to favour the selection of HIV variants...

More than one-quarter of HIV-negative millennials report that they avoid hugging, talking, or being friends with someone who is HIV-positive, according to a new study from the Prevention Access Campaign and the phamaceutical company Merck. The study uncovered widespread ignorance and stigma from young people when it comes to HIV. Thirty percent of HIV-negative millennials (people between the ages of 23 and 36) said they would prefer not to interact socially with someone with HIV. One in three Black and Latinx millennials reported avoiding even shaking hands or sharing drinks or utensils with someone with HIV. In reality, the disease...

Close to one-third of a $1.5 million federal grant meant to fund HIV prevention efforts in DeKalb County could go unspent by an end-of-the-year deadline, state records show. Budget documents from the Georgia Department of Public Health, which won the money from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to fund projects in DeKalb, show a projected balance of almost $462,000 when the grant expires at the end of December. Unless federal officials extend the funding deadline, both the county and the state could lose that money. “The DeKalb County Board of Health is actively working with our state and...

With donated drugs and services provided by major pharmacy chains, 200,000 uninsured Americans will gain access to H.I.V.-preventive medicines at no cost, the Trump administration announced on Tuesday. The announcement, by Alex M. Azar II, the health and human services secretary, essentially explained how the government plans to distribute the drugs for pre-exposure prophylaxis, or PrEP, that were promised in May by the drugmaker Gilead Sciences. PrEP describes a strategy of preventing infection with H.I.V. by taking a single pill a day, either Truvada or Descovy. Both are made by Gilead. The strategy is 99 percent effective at preventing infection,...

The world's first sperm bank has launched for HIV-positive people in an effort to reduce the disease stigma. Sperm Positive has begun with three male donors from across New Zealand who are living with HIV but cannot pass the virus on.

Scientists using advanced DNA sequencing technology have documented a previously unidentified strain of HIV under the group that is responsible for the vast majority of human infections. The previous strain in that group was documented in 2000. The latest strain was found in just three people, but the findings by Abbott Laboratories —a maker of HIV tests—are expected to strike up a broader conversation about how to classify new viral strains that could surface. The company described its findings on Wednesday in an academic journal. Strains from Group M are the most common in humans and are responsible for the...

The United States President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), administered by the Centres for Disease Control, Department of Defence, and the US Agency for International Development (USAID) are set to identify and provide treatment to at least 60,000 people living with HIV in Lagos State. The US Consul-General to Nigeria, Claire Pierangle, who made this known during a courtesy call on the Lagos State Governor, Babajide Sanwo-Olu Thursday, said the US government has increased budget for HIV control activities in Nigeria, with an additional focus for Anti-Retroviral Treatment (ART) surge activities in Lagos State. She said Lagos remains significant...