Posted on 03/21/2008 5:39:05 AM PDT by metmom
The two-decade search for an AIDS vaccine is in crisis after two field tests of the most promising contender not only did not protect people from the virus but may actually have put them at increased risk of becoming infected, The Washington Post reported.
Experts are questioning the overall strategy and scientific premises of the nearly $500 million in AIDS vaccine research funded annually by the government after the two field tests were halted last September and seven other trials of AIDS vaccines have either been stopped or put off indefinitely.
The recently closed studies, STEP and Phambili, were halted when it became clear the STEP study was futile and possibly harmful.
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
ping
If the vaccine were accompanied by self-control it might work better. As a matter of fact, aspirin and self-control do a pretty good job of protecting people from AIDS.
It might also be harmful because even the hope of having a vacinne might encourage high-risk behaviour.
NO cheers, unfortunately.
...but still, Happy Good Friday.
thats cuz whitey dont want no cure for da dizease he uzes to keep da black man dowwnn
Self control would almost totally eliminate AIDS. All the billions and billions have been wasted, but hey, its the PC disease.
...rather than containing the spread of it.....
..rather than shutting down the very places where it breeds.
PC will be the death of us.
Our moral compass has been misplaced.
Funny, but most diseases are preventable by self-control. As far as dollar impact on the economy goes, the Common Cold beats HIV/AIDS by a mile, and yet something like 90% of all cold cases could be prevented if people simply washed their hands more often. Yet whenever we have a cold thread, we don't have self righteous moralists lambasting those of us stupid ones who occasionally get colds. Maybe you should spend less time casting stones and more time thinking up solutions to one of the great moral tests of our time.
Retrovirus ping
Actually, the bulk of US HIV/AIDS money is going to containing the spread of HIV/AIDS. So you're pretty much dead wrong there.
..rather than shutting down the very places where it breeds.
You want to shut down sub-Saharan Africa? How would that work, exactly?
You should wash your hands like I do.
The impact of a diagnosis of “common cold” has no comparison to the impact of a diagnosis of “HIV.”
/Just sayin...
Self control is the
OPPOSITE
of the goal.
The whole push for a vaccine/cure and the accompanying tax dollars expended on it are for
eliminating this consequence for chosen sexual behavior.
It’s “liberalism” in a nutshell.
The reason AIDS is such a HUGE issue on the left is that it is an “unalleviatable” consequence for behavior choices, especially sexual behavior choices.
I do wash my hands, AD, but obviously a lot of people don't -- else we wouldn't have tens of millions of cold cases each year. If you want to talk about dollar impact, the impact of all those missed work days on the economy is staggering -- and completely dwarfs HIV/AIDS. Yet the only threads in which the victims of a disease are regularly blamed are HIV/AIDS threads.
Maybe it's because you don't actually know anybody with HIV?
Aspirin is potentially 100% effective in preventing AIDS. One merely need place the aspirin between one's clenched butt cheeks and don't let it fall out.
I take it you're morally opposed as well to Robitussin, since Robitussin just encourages people to make reckless lifestyle choices -- not regularly washing their hands in cold and flu season -- instead of making real, meaningful change?
If Robitussin eliminates the consequence of a poor decision (by masking cold symptoms)... does that make Robitussin liberal?
The last two people I knew with AIDS are now dead. I also know smokers who have cancer and obese people with blown knees and clotted arteries. I have known drunks who died of cirrhosis. Does that all count?
Hmm...
I suppose you can encounter idiots even on Free Republic.
Nice to meet you.
Well, if people with colds were making demands for funding and attempting to hold the rest of us morally responsible for them being sick, I would tell them to wash their hands better.
Cold medications are primarily responsible for people going to work sick and infecting even more people. Employers who encourage the sick to come to work anyway are also responsible. If we were talking about something more virulent than a cold, or if I were a person at high risk for complications if I contracted a cold, I could get really ticked off over that.
Exactly the same problem the HPV vaccine poses.
There are vaccines against many of them (smallpox etc.), but the development of one for AIDS just hit the wall. I am not a doctor or researcher, but IIRC, that particular virus mutates rapidly.
There are anti-viral treatments that reduce an already-infected individual's viral load. The treatments are currently expensive and of limited effectiveness, but progress is being made.
It’s the only STD that was ever afforded civil rights.
Aspirin is also a good birth control. Held between the knees, works every time its tried.
Now, I'll admit I haven't conducted a formal audit of your posts, but I don't recall ever reading you castigating the obese, alcoholics, tobacco smokers, people with blown knees, etc. on any thread I've come across. And even when people criticize tobacco smoking, I have never, ever heard anyone suggest that the CDC should stop funding for lung cancer research because that will just encourage smokers. Nor have I seen condemnation of Lipitor, even though most people wouldn't need Lipitor if they exercised regularly ate healthily throughout their lives... we don't blame the victims there.
And yet... for some reason... every time we have any thread concerning HIV/AIDS, the same folks come out with cruel jokes and snide comments and make statements that you'd never see regarding any other disease. Why do you think that is? Most diseases are preventable. That includes most instances of stroke, most instances of heart disease and most instances of cancer. Why is HIV/AIDS treated differently from them?
Viruses are easy to kill outside of the body. It's when they get inside that they're hard to kill without killing everything else around them.
A vaccine works by predisposing the immune system to recognize the invading virus and yank it out of the system before it multiplies. The classic example is polio.
The problem with HIV, and flu (though different families of viruses) is that they change their coat so frequently that the immune system can't keep up. Like some generals, it's always prepared to fight the last war. The flu virus changes in somewhat predictable ways so that a new vaccine can be prepared each year to at least offer some protection against the "new look" for that cycle. HIV is unpredictable at present.
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Yes.
However, the question/statement was out of line, imho.
Great moral tests of all time? What a joke!
If people didn't engage in immoral behavior, this wouldn't be a problem.
There's no need to be wasting money finding a cure for something people could stop dead in its tracks with a change in their behavior. It is not contagious like air or water borne pathogens. It's strictly a behavioral issue.
So what about the moral obligation gays have to the rest of the population in putting a stop to this killer themselves? It's in their court now. They could do it.
I used to, but they all died. The only gay friend who survived is an ex-gay who did some serious thinking about his lifestyle when HIV (back when it was still called GRID) was discovered, realized that he COULD change his behavior, and did. I've lost touch, but he'd been straight for several years and was about to marry last time we talked.
What about people with heart disease? Lung cancer? Have you any idea what the government spends each year on other preventable diseases? How much money could taxpayers save on cardiac research funding if people just exercised right and ate healthy diets?
So again, I repeat my question: Why do posters on FR treat HIV/AIDS differently?
While we haven’t totally done away with polio, I believe that the vaccine has done wonders to stop it in Western civilization.
OH my,
Comparing a cold with AIDS?
I wash my hands and face, I use alcohol swipes on grocery carts and carry something to wipe my hands. I STILL get a cold once in a while.
I have NO Worries at getting AIDS. ahhhh by not washing my hands.
-00-
*Victims* my.... er... foot.
They should be blamed for HIV/AIDS. They brought it on themselves. It didn't just happen to them.
It's not the fault of the person who did it to themselves, it's the fault the government for not spending more money on research, it's the fault of the scientists for not trying hard enough, it's the fault of ____________ (fill in the blank)
Typical liberal victim mentality at work.
Duh. The best prevention is to avoid non-natural sex and to not take drugs with needles.
Why is that so hard for liberals to understand?
The problem with colds and other viruses is that you are usually most contagious the day before you show symptoms, and the first day or so when you really don’t know you’re sick.
Once you’re really into it with the symptoms, the virus is inactive in your body and you’re just dealing with the effects of the toxins-the symptoms. It’s that that Robitussin in dealing with.
Well - I don’t know that I’ve castigated anyone. So far you are making the same point I made. HIV/AIDS can be prevented by self-control. And then I made some points you seem to agree with (many diseases are preventable with a little prevention). I’m glad we agree.
How much good could have $500 million have done elsewhere?
This is despicable because there is a God given solution to prevent to spread of aids. Obey just one of the ten commandments.
This reminds me of a South Park episode two weeks ago:
the cure for AIDS was discovered by examining Magic Johnson’s lifestyle- and they found that it takes exposure to large sums of money to cure AIDS.
Beats me.
Really? How would you frame a disease that has already killed 25 million people, the equivalent of two of Hitler's Holocausts. Somewhere around 40 million people are currently infected -- most will die of the disease -- and 12 million children in sub-Saharan Africa alone are orphans because their parents have died of AIDS. Maybe that's not a moral test to you, and maybe you'd like to visit the sins of the parents on those 12 million innocent children, but if that's the case, you and I have a starkly different conception of morality.
There's no need to be wasting money finding a cure for something people could stop dead in its tracks with a change in their behavior.
The same way we could stop lung cancer and heart disease dead in their tracks by changing behavior? Why is HIV/AIDS different?
Probably because of the GLBT agenda to make their lifestyles, which predispose them to a fatal disease, socially, morally, and physically mainstream; this agenda is foisted on people's children in schools. If you think that there is no anger directed toward the GLBT communities because of this, you are mistaken.
If smokers and fat people pushed their lifestyles on school kids, imagine the anger.
It's clear that you'd like someone to admit being bigoted against the GLBT lifestyle, or "catch" some poor poster in a statement that indicates to you they are bigoted. What are you going to do, if that happens? Jump all over them?
I think the biggest push should be on prevention: educating people about HIV/AIDS and about how they can prevent or limit transmission, just as I agree we should teach kids to eat right, exercise and warn them about the dangers of smoking.
But any time you have 40 million already infected, for whom that news is too late, I think you have to do something more to help find treatments and/or a cure. We do that for people suffering from other preventable diseases -- like lung cancer, the common cold and heart disease -- and we do it for HIV/AIDS. I see nothing wrong in that.
You know the answer to your question, you're just looking for a fight.
I think you're either being just slightly paranoid here or you're mistaking me for someone else. When have I ever talked about the "GLBT lifestyle?"
Any idea how much money is devoted to research for a CURE for lung cancer, vs a CURE for HIV?
I have news for you: HIV outranks them all. Why? What’s makes the sexual lifestyle choice more “special” than the other diseases, like, for instance, breast cancer?
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No, I think he's already done that.
It's clear that he speaks from a morally superior position, you see.
Are you really that clueless?
I don't give heart disease and lung cancer to others by my lifestyle choices.
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