Experts Say AIDS Prevention Pill Close

[Roon]

ATLANTA -- Twenty-five years after the first AIDS cases jolted the world, scientists think they soon may have a pill that people could take to keep from getting the virus that causes the global killer.

Two drugs already used to treat HIV infection have shown such promise at preventing it in monkeys that officials last week said they would expand early tests in healthy high-risk men and women around the world.

"This is the first thing I've seen at this point that I think really could have a prevention impact," said Thomas Folks, a federal scientist since the earliest days of AIDS. "If it works, it could be distributed quickly and could blunt the epidemic."

If larger tests show the drugs work, they could be given to people at highest risk of HIV - from gay men in American cities to women in Africa who catch the virus from their partners.

http://www.thedenverchannel.com/health/8298080/detail.html

[CottonBear]

1. Wow! What good news! n/t

[cynatnite]

2. And the rw nutjobs will come out against it...

They did when a possible vaccine for HPV was publicized.

It'll promote promiscuity :sarcasm:

[muntrv]

3. If they do,

it'll be just another racket for the mafia to get into.

[Lone_Star_Dem]

8. Yes, they will

But I don't think they have the ability to stop this from being made available.

[kestrel91316]

14. You got that right.

[BlueEyedSon]

4. Oh man, people are going to be f*cking in the streets!

[CornField]

5. That's such wonderful news!

My hopes and prayers are that this is it.

[WestSeattle2]

6. Keeping my fingers crossed...

that this one works. Still losing friends to that disease....It saddens me to see ignorant young people engaging in risky sex, thinking they can just "pop a pill" everyday, should they contract HIV.

The daily cocktail of drugs that keeps patients alive, ravages the human body also. It truly is a miserable disease that no one deserves.

[Maven]

7. Not so fast, this is NOT a vaccine

You have to take it every day, like a vitamin. Except vitamins don't have any side effects. This is not a vaccine--it's basically like doing the "morning-after cocktail" often given to those who suspect they've been exposed, except every day as a prophylactic.

I'm still waiting to see what happens with ceragenins (CSA-54).

[varun]

11. exactly

Although I belong to the "High Risk" category (I am a sexually active gay man), I will not take this "vaccine" till it has been tested long enough (10+ years) for side effects.

[SPKrazy]

9. delete

[WestSeattle2]

10. Monogamy would work except....

we're dealing with human nature. Theoretically, monogamy would eliminate cheating too, but I'm not betting on that either.

Sometimes all of us need help saving us from ourselves. Doesn't matter if it's cigarettes, alcohol, food, sedentary lifestyle, risky sex, or being a republican.

[Lone_Star_Dem]

12. True indeed

Then there's the fact that in Africa most of the women contract HIV from their husbands. The wife being monogamous doesn't save her life and she has no real control over her husbands actions. Of course this would work in reverse as well, it's just not the norm for their culture.

After the husband and the wife die the children are often left to raise themselves. The problem is that monogamy by the wives who die, or the children who are left parentless in a world where there is no safe guards for orphans, didn't help them.

HIV is a pandemic that is killing millions of people. It's not a moral issue.

And... Welcome to DU! :hi:

[darkmaestro019]

13. pleeeeeeeeease. my near and dear and very queer brotha Reverend Murder..

has told many amusing bedtime stories about the Orgy at the End of the Plague. (smirk) I know, I know, other diseases, morality, blah blah--but I can't resist the lovely life-affirming celebratory magick of that visual. (le sigh)

In all seriousness, I hope and hope and hope they're right about this. Orgy or not, gods only know how many lives we've lost to this, how much potential for love and life and art and science and engineering and, everything! Not to mention the distusting, evil, ha-ha-that's-what-you-get-faggots irrational, hateful leverage that disease has given the RW against the GLBT community. (AND the sex industry....)

[GreenPartyVoter]

15. I hope that it will be affordable.. That's the biggest issue, that people

in the most AIDS and poverty-stricken areas of the world can get and maintain access to this. I am worried because given that treatments after getting HIV is so scarce in those poor nations that this will be out of the realm of possibility for them. :(