"US pledges $150m more to fight AIDS" by Lauran Neergaard | Associated Press, July 24, 2012
WASHINGTON — Science now has the tools to slash the spread of HIV even without a vaccine — and the United States is donating an extra $150 million to help poor countries put them in place, the Obama administration told the world’s largest AIDS conference Monday.
Such chump change when you consider the trillions spent on wars and Wall Street. And not to be insensitive on the matter, but now Americans are being told to accept austerity. Maybe we could use the $150 million for AIDS patients here?
‘‘We want to get to the end of AIDS,’’ declared the top US HIV researcher, Dr. Anthony Fauci of the National Institutes of Health.
For $ome rea$on I don't think that is going to happen.
How long it takes depends on how quickly the world can adopt those tools, he said — including getting more of the millions of untreated people onto life-saving drugs that come with the bonus of keeping them from infecting others.
‘‘No promises, no dates, but we know it can happen,’’ Fauci told the International AIDS Conference.
Some 34.2 million people worldwide are living with HIV, and 2.5 million were infected last year.
Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said the goal is an AIDS-free generation. That would mean no babies would be born infected, young people would have a much lower risk than today of becoming infected, and people who already have HIV would receive life-saving drugs so they would not develop AIDS or spread the virus.
‘‘I am here today to make it absolutely clear the US is committed and will remain committed to achieving an AIDS-free generation,’’ Clinton told the more than 20,000 scientists, people living with HIV, and policymakers assembled for the conference.
But it will require smart targeting of prevention tools where they can have the greatest effect — including to high-risk populations that are particularly hard to reach because of stigma....
Clinton said the United States has invested more than $1 billion toward that goal in recent years and is providing an extra $80 million to help poor countries finish the job.
Yes, the globalists that bring you wars and sanctions also care so much.
In a separate study announced at the conference, scientists said preliminary findings suggest that an alternative may be found to battle tuberculosis, even if it is resistant to today’s two main drugs. The lung disease is the leading killer of people with AIDS.
There have not been new medications to treat tuberculosis in four decades. But the experimental three-drug combination being tested by the Global Alliance for TB Drug Development is one of a list of promising compounds under intense testing around the world.
Why did the Constant Gardner just flash through my mind?
Tuberculosis claims the lives of more than 1.5 million people each year, mostly in developing countries....
Related: It Is the Cold and Flu Season
Drugs are not the only effective protection. Fauci said male circumcision is ‘‘stunningly successful,’’ too, at protecting men from becoming infected by a heterosexual partner. Clinton said the United States will provide $40 million to help South Africa reach its goal of providing voluntary circumcision to half a million boys and men this year.
Maybe, but they really want to stick and cut you, don't they?
Related: HIV rates are high for gay, bisexual black men
A tougher issue is how best to reach particularly high-risk populations: gay and bisexual men, sex workers, and injecting drug users. In many countries, stigma and laws that make their activities illegal drive those populations away from AIDS programs that could teach them how to reduce their risk of infection, Clinton said.
‘‘If we’re going to beat AIDS, we can’t afford to avoid sensitive conversations,’’ she said.
So the United States will spend an additional $15 million on research to identify the best HIV prevention tools to reach those key populations in different countries, and then launch a $20 million challenge fund to support country-led efforts to implement that science.
Where is all this money going to come from? The defense budget?
The world spent $16.8 billion fighting AIDS in poor countries, the hardest-hit, last year, and the United States is the leading donor.
But Bill Gates, the Microsoft founder and philanthropist, said the world is facing incredible uncertainty about whether wealthy nations will continue funding AIDS programs with the same vigor as in the past.
‘‘As these budget tradeoffs are made, the voices of the AIDS community and the global health community are going to have to be louder than ever,’’ said Gates, whose Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has pledged more than $1 billion to global AIDS efforts.
Related: Did Bill Gates Make the Bats Sick?
Sure looks like experimentation to me.
Another $7 billion a year is needed to get to 15 million people in low- and middle-income countries by 2015, a United Nations goal. A record 8 million received potentially life-saving drugs last year.
‘‘This gap is killing people,’’ UNAIDS chief Michel Sidibe told the conference. ‘‘My friends, the end of AIDS is not free. It is not too expensive. It is priceless.’’
The prices of generic AIDS drugs in developing countries are dropping every year. One philanthropy, the Clinton Health Access Initiative, said 70 countries in Africa, Asia, Eastern Europe, Latin America, and the Caribbean that participate in its drug-procurement program now can purchase the main combination for less than $200 a year.
What happened to all that Haiti aid loot, Bill?
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Related: Alan Cantwell, MD On The ManMade Origin Of AIDS
Was AIDS Man-Made?
It sure looks that way, and all it has done is kill a lot of Africans while making pharmaceutical companies rich with a going concern.
Also see: Obama Abandons Africa to AIDS
Sort of flies in the face of the previous piece above, doesn't it?
Oh, well, that's my newspaper these days.
"Today, 4 in every 10 new HIV infections occur in people younger than 30, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention — and the teen years, just as many youths become sexually active, are key for getting across the safe-sex message."
They just want to take away all the fun, don't they?
Also see: Conferees call for stronger effort to battle AIDS in women
"Researchers report hopeful HIV treatment; Disease quashed in two patients at Boston clinic" by Helen Shen | Globe Correspondent, July 26, 2012
WASHINGTON — In a finding that could offer vital clues to scientists working to cure AIDS, Boston researchers reported Thursday that the virus was quashed beyond detection in two HIV-infected patients who underwent bone marrow transplants while taking powerful drug cocktails.
Scientists from Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard, who presented their research at the 2012 International AIDS Conference, were careful to say the patients had not been cured of the disease....
The Boston patients, who came to the hospital seeking treatment for cancer, share similarities with a man known as the “Berlin patient.” German doctors reported in 2009 that an American, Timothy Brown, was given a bone marrow transplant for leukemia and appeared to have been cured of HIV.
Although multiple laboratories continue to analyze Brown’s samples, most scientists believe that Brown remains the only person to have been cured of HIV....
I think Magic Johnson. That's when I started to believe there was a cure, available only to the elite at first.
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WASHINGTON — Call it a triple win for fighting the AIDS epidemic: Treating people with HIV early keeps them healthy, cuts their chances of infecting others, and now research shows it’s also a good financial investment.
That makes me sick.
The International AIDS Conference closed Friday with the message that getting treatment to more of the world’s 34 million people with HIV is key to curbing the epidemic, short of a vaccine and cure that are still years away....
Former president Bill Clinton, whose foundation funds HIV work, also addressed the group....
Please forgive me for not fawning over genocidal globalists and their good intentions, readers.
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"Medical task force urges broadened screening for HIV; Says all between ages of 15 and 65 should be tested" by Elizabeth Lopatto and Robert Langreth | Bloomberg News, November 21, 2012
NEW YORK — Those with the highest risk, which includes gay men and those who use injection drugs, should be tested every year....
‘‘Not everyone who gets infected has engaged in risky behavior, but none of us ever knows for certain what our partners are doing,’’ Virginia Moyer, a professor of pediatrics at Baylor College of Medicine and the current task force chairwoman, said in an interview. ‘‘So it’s valuable to get tested even if you haven’t engaged in any risky behavior.’’
Nothing like building distrust and fear between people, 'eh? If the test comes back positive I'm blaming the hospital and their needle because that's the only place it could come from.
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The advice of the task force is often used by insurance companies and government programs to decide whether to pay for certain health care procedures. The group recommended in May that prostate cancer screening be discontinued, after scientific studies showed that the number of deaths avoided by the test were ‘‘very small’’ compared with the risks from treatment. The panel also drew criticism in 2009 for questioning the value of breast-cancer screening in women younger than 50.
Now we know why it is important.
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What will we tell the children?
"Boy eyes offer after Pa. school changes HIV policy" by Mark Scolforo | Associated Press, August 08, 2012
HARRISBURG, Pa. — A ninth-grader from the Philadelphia area is considering an admissions offer by a private boarding school after it announced a new policy to treat HIV-positive applicants the same as others.
A lawyer for the boy, whose lawsuit against the Milton Hershey School alleges violations of the Americans with Disabilities Act, said Monday he was thinking about it.
School president Anthony Colistra defended the school’s previous decisions regarding the HIV-positive teenager, using the same pseudonym for him used in his federal lawsuit, Abraham Smith. He said the admissions offer, and an apology, were issued to him last month.
‘‘Although we believed that our decisions regarding Abraham Smith’s application were appropriate, we acknowledge that the application of federal law to our unique residential setting was a novel and difficult issue,’’ Colistra said. ‘‘The US Department of Justice recently advised us that it disagrees with how we evaluated the risks and applied the law. We have decided to accept this guidance.’’
The boy’s lawyer, Ronda Goldfein, said that the school’s actions did not end the lawsuit and that the offer of admission for the coming year was being assessed.
‘‘We’re certainly delighted that the school understands their obligations under the law and intends to follow them,’’ Goldfein said. ‘‘This case is not settled. This is one very important piece of it.’’
The most recent activity in the lawsuit, filed late last year in US District Court in Philadelphia, occurred last week when the judge scheduled a pretrial conference for September.
Colistra said the private boarding school also is developing training on HIV-related issues for its employees and students.
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