Our genes are amazing. They win battles for us against some pathogens (malaria), but their victories can leave us exposed to others (HIV). That’s the lesson from a fascinating paper published recently in Cell and Host Microbe.
Researchers looking at data from a large group of American servicemen have found that a genetic mutation which made [...]
Still on the topic of sensible policies to prevent disease among drug injectors, I’d like to pass on the idea of Wisdom reader Pierce Wetter. Pointing out that blackmailing brothel owners delivered very high levels of condom use in Bangkok’s brothels, Pierce suggests we use the same technique for drug dealers. Enlist them to sell [...]
Before AIDS, the sexually active teen’s STD joke-of-choice was “What’s the difference between love and herpes?” The answer, of course, was that herpes was for ever. And so it was, although antiviral therapy, acyclovir in particular, has proven quite good at suppressing it and at reducing outbreaks which often lead to genital ulcers. But those, [...]
I’m sure many readers are aware that there’s been a bit of a debate lately about spending on AIDS in the developing world. Is AIDS crowding out other infectious diseases, other health issues, other development issues? Or has the AIDS epidemic focused attention on the woeful neglect of health in developing countries, and will it [...]
It seems my “I told you so” moment has come and gone. So has my attempt to defend WHO for its softly-softly honesty about where the HIV epidemic is going. The sensible scientist who heads up WHO’s HIV division, and who last week had the audacity to tell the truth about the threat of [...]
A couple of weeks ago I wrote an article in Prospect about HIV prevention among gay men now that near-universal access to treatment is making AIDS virtually invisible in rich countries. This excited a fair bit of comment over at Metafilter, not all of it pretty. But in any case, I was premature in declaring [...]
The WHO has declared an end to heterosexual AIDS outside of Africa, according to Jeremy Laurance, writing in The Independent.
Laurance quotes Kevin de Cock, a thoughtful and honest scientist who happens also to head up WHO’s HIV division, as saying “It is very unlikely there will be a heterosexual epidemic in other countries [outside Africa]. [...]
In a comment on an earlier post, Roger Tatoud drew my attention to a story about high HIV levels in Uganda’s army being a threat to national security.
Some would say that means Uganda’s First Lady is a threat to national security; her enthusiastic embrace of abstinence as the main weapon against HIV is thought by [...]
The head of Uganda’s AIDS commission says his country can’t afford to do any HIV prevention work with gay men, according to the Pink News. Though they’ve got hundreds of millions in the AIDS funding trough, and have their snouts raised for more.
“Gays are one of the drivers of HIV in Uganda, but because of [...]
Even in Texas, I thought when I first saw this story, there cannot be 12 people this ignorant. I thought it a bad joke, not worth mentioning here. But apparently it is true: a Texan jury convicted an HIV positive man for assault with a deadly weapon: his saliva.
I reproduce the Associated Press story [...]
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