[One BIG problem with this cocktail is the ingredient that is missing - MICROBICIDES. Why is this neglected?]
via Washington Post, by Dr. Anthony S. Fauci
In the absence of a vaccine, three bold new approaches to controlling the HIV/AIDS pandemic are being discussed by those working in medicine and public health. These approaches are still in the conceptual and testing phases, but if applied as a group, it's possible they could have a dramatic effect.Read the whole thing. And then leave a comment on the Washington Post if so inclined.
1 comment:
Dr. Fauci, as eminent an immuno-virologist-NIH Director as any, continues to have a blind spot to the need to change human behaviors in order to both curtail the spread of HIV and prevent the outbreak of new blood borne and sexually transmitted disease epidemics. No vaccine, pre-exposure prophylaxis or repeated testing and immediate treatment of those recently infected will stop the continued transmission of HIV and other pathogens to the sexual and drug use partners of acutely HIV infected men and women unless their behaviors are changed through effective and sustained efforts at behavioral modification.
Does Dr. Fauci think that HIV is the only blood borne pathogen that can be unleashed on the human race by mutation and migration of existing "niche" pathogens to ever larger populations through the massive migrations and mixing of populations that we have seen throughout the last half of the 20th century, and expanding now in the beginning of the 21st?
Does he think that the HIV virus, which mutates at a rate higher than just about any other organism known to man, will not quickly develop resistance to the anti-retroviral drugs that he wants to give widely to anybody at risk of getting infected or passing it on to their partners or offspring, thus rendering the current set of life-saving and prolonging therapies useless?
It is this blindness to the importance of sustained behavioral prevention of sexually and drug use transmitted disease that has gotten us into the current situation of rapidly increasing rates of new HIV infections among the most vulnerable sub-populations (minority women, young minority MSM,etc.), migration of the Hepatitis C virus from blood born to sexually transmitted disease status and the recent development of a highly virulent, treatment resistant and symptomless strain of Chlamydia that is now sweeping through urban gay communities in the US.
The writer is the founder of the first gay community health center in the US and the founding PI of the Chicago Multicenter AIDS Cohort Study, the longest running and largest study of the natural and treated history of HIV infection among gay/bisexual men.
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