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The sponsors of the largest ever HIV vaccine trial yesterday hailed a "historic" moment as they formally announced the trial's results at an international AIDS vaccine meeting in Paris. The results received rapturous applause from an audience of more than 1,000 HIV researchers. But some scientists are much more sceptical of the findings, arguing that the response of the HIV research community, long deprived of any good news from vaccine trials, is based more on hope than on rigorous science.The US$119-million phase III trial, sponsored by the health ministry of Thailand and the US Army, started in Thailand in 2003....

A team of scientists in the US has discovered two new antibodies that could lead to an HIV vaccine. Researchers from the Scripps Institute in California, the International Aids Vaccine Initiative (IAVI) and US-based biotech companies Theraclone Sciences and Monogram Biosciences discovered these two broadly neutralising antibodies using high-throughput screening of serum from patients infected with HIV.When people are first infected with HIV, they produce antibodies that are specific to the infected strain, but a few years later some start to make antibodies active against other strains of the virus - known as broadly neutralising antibodies. 'There is a huge variability in...

French researchers find new strain of HIV virus in African woman who moved to Paris A new strain of the virus that causes AIDS has been discovered in a woman from the African nation of Cameroon. It differs from the three known strains of human immunodeficiency virus and appears to be closely related to a form of simian virus recently discovered in wild gorillas, researchers report in Monday's edition of the journal Nature Medicine... --snip-- Researchers led by Drs. Lawrence Corey and Jia Zhu of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center found that long after the areas where the herpes...

MANILA, Philippines, May 12, 2009 (LifeSiteNews.com) - A group of Catholic medical professionals based in the Philippines has stated that condom promotion has failed to curb the spread of AIDS.  The group said that it agreed with a widely-criticized recent statement by Pope Benedict XVI in which he endorsed a renewed respect for sexuality in facing the AIDS epidemic, rather than condom use. "Condoms are highly dangerous," said Yolly Eileen Gamutam, head of Asia's Catholic Association of Doctors, Nurses and Health Professionals (ACIM-Asia), in an article on the Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines website. "If we are promoting truthful public information...

1 This essay was originally written circa 1995, revised 2006. [PDF] THE HARD DATA ON HOMOSEXUAL V. HETEROSEXUAL CHILD SEXUAL ABUSE A major study reported in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) concluded “Sexual abuse of boys appears to be common, underreported, underrecognized, and undertreated,”9 citing to other “large scale studies” in which 34% of 1001 men who had sex with men attending a sexually transmitted clinic….reported histories of sexual abuse.”10 The same study—of underreported boy sexual abuse--stressed that males are much more reticent to report same sex child abuse, as an insult to their manliness perhaps, than...

Vietnam wants to increase multifaceted cooperation with the US for peace, stability and development in the region and the rest of the world, said Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung while receiving Senator John McCain in Hanoi on April 7. Mr Dung told his guest that the Vietnam-US relationship has developed well on the basis of positive friendship, mutual respect and multifaceted cooperation. He noted with satisfaction the effective investment and trade ties between the two countries, saying bilateral trade reached US$15 billion in 2008 and the US was one of Vietnam’s top 10 foreign investors. He proposed that the US...

AIDS AIDS is caused by the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV). HIV is a virus that is mainly transmitted by having sex with an infected partner. HIV also is spread through contact with infected blood, which frequently occurs among injection drug users who share needles or syringes contaminated with blood from someone infected with the virus. Women with HIV can transmit the virus to their babies during pregnancy, birth, or breast-feeding. For HIV infections borne by blood, reducing the extent of sharing of needle and injecting equipment among drug users, and sterilizing equipment used in blood transfusions and medical procedures, are...

Thursday March 19, 2009 Harvard AIDS Expert Says Pope is Correct on Condom Distribution Making AIDS Worse By John-Henry Westen   March 19, 2009 (LifeSiteNews.com) - Edward C. Green, director of the AIDS Prevention Research Project at the Harvard Center for Population and Development Studies, has said that the evidence confirms that the Pope is correct in his assessment that condom distribution exacerbates the problem of AIDS.  "The pope is correct," Green told National Review Online Wednesday, "or put it a better way, the best evidence we have supports the pope's comments."  "There is," Green added, "a consistent association...

Like adults, kids who are more spiritual or religious tend to be healthier. That’s the conclusion of Dr. Barry Nierenberg, Ph.D., ABPP, associate professor of psychology at Nova Southeastern University in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, who has been studying the relationship between faith and health. He presented on the topic at the American Psychological Association’s Division of Rehabilitation Psychology national conference on February 27, in Jackson, Fla. “A number of studies have shown a positive relationship between participatory prayer and lower rates of heart disease, cirrhosis, emphysema and stroke in adults,” he says. “Prayer has been shown to correlate to lower...

The First Lady has excited the fashion world, but like Diana she would rather champion the less fortunate than be a mere clotheshorse. Michelle Obama’s flair for fashion has captivated Washington and set the hearts of glossy magazine editors aflutter. She has already eclipsed Carla Bruni, the super-model chanteuse and wife of Nicolas Sarkozy, the hyperactive French president. Not since Diana, Princess of Wales, has there been such a glamorous role model at the apex of society. In her white, one-shouldered chiffon gown, she boogied to Stevie Wonder’s Signed, Sealed, Delivered I’m Yours and slow-danced with her husband at a...

Barack Obama may have an impossible burden of expectation on his shoulders, but one fervent wish of many US scientists should be easy enough to fulfil: simply lead the nation back into the "reality-based community".

Health Tue, December 02, 2008 05:11 PM Washington, DC (CapitalWirePR) December 2, 2008 –On World AIDS Day December 1, 2008 the Latino Commission on AIDS released “Shaping the New Response: HIV/AIDS and Latinos in the Deep South” Report, documenting the extraordinarily high rates of HIV and AIDS diagnoses among Latinos, the apparent contributing factors to this health crisis and recommendations for future action in the Deep South (Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Tennessee, Georgia, South Carolina and North Carolina)*. Shaping the New Response reached its conclusions after two years of research including more than 300 interviews, 8 roundtables covering all 7 states,...

by Gina L. DiorioFew would argue that one of the most sacred responsibilities of churches and synagogues is teaching the difference between right and wrong and encouraging moral behavior. Yet, for some religious organizations, talk of morality has become unacceptable if it interferes with a “do what feels good� doctrine – regardless of the consequences of that doctrine.Case in point: the approach several religious organizations are taking – or, perhaps more accurately, not taking – in addressing the immoral behaviors that often cause HIV/AIDS.To set the stage – today marks the 20th anniversary of World Aids Day, a day when,...

A reader writes: Earlier this week, in your post “The Top Ten Reasons Conservatives Should Vote For Obama”, you wrote under Point 4: “A truce in the culture war. Obama takes us past the debilitating boomer warfare that has raged since the 1960s. Nothing has distorted our politics so gravely; nothing has made a rational politics more elusive.” On the one hand I agree with you; on the other hand, you don't go nearly far enough. An Obama presidency means much more than a truce in the 60’s culture war. It means the end of a much older and more...

SAN FRANCISCO -- In this live-and-let-live town, where medical marijuana clubs do business next to grocery stores and an annual fair celebrates sadomasochism, prostitutes could soon walk the streets without fear of arrest. San Francisco would become the first major U.S. city to decriminalize prostitution if voters next month approve Proposition K -- a measure that forbids local authorities from investigating, arresting or prosecuting anyone for selling sex. The ballot question technically would not legalize prostitution since state law still prohibits it, but the measure would eliminate the power of local law enforcement officials to go after prostitutes. Proponents say...

In the Tenderloin, corner stores sell more alcohol than food, drug-addled pan handlers shake paper cups at passers-by and churches vie for real estate with strip clubs. Now, the federal government is on the verge of crowning this neighborhood a place of national historic significance. Each of the area's 410 historic buildings -- flophouses, parking garages, delis and theaters -- now awaits a gold-colored placard, proudly stating its vintage and history. This month the neighborhood's bid for historic district status will be submitted to the National Park Service, following state approval of the designation in July. The Tenderloin will join...

The Nobel Prize in Medicine was awarded Monday to three European scientists who had discovered viruses behind two devastating illnesses, AIDS and cervical cancer. Half of the award will be shared by two French virologists, Françoise Barré-Sinoussi, 61, and Luc A. Montagnier, 76, for discovering H.I.V., the virus that causes AIDS. Conspicuously omitted was Dr. Robert C. Gallo, an American virologist who vied with the French team in a long, often acrimonious dispute over credit for the discovery of H.I.V. The other half of the $1.4 million award will go to a German physician-scientist, Dr. Harald zur Hausen, 72, for...

Drug Companies’ Elusive Profits by: Jesse Masai, September 30, 2008 What is the incentive to develop new drugs? What should it be? Those were the two questions emerging out of a book published and launched last week by the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) in Washington, DC. The book, Innovation and Technology Adoption in Health Care Markets, was written by Anupam B. Jena and Tomas J. Philipson, both from the University of Chicago. “Cost effectiveness analysis may reduce incentives to develop new drugs. Drug firms may have too low incentives to develop new drugs,” they said in a joint statement. They...

An unusually detailed study of people newly infected with H.I.V. in the United States has confirmed that the majority of new cases occur among gay and bisexual men and that blacks are most at risk. But the data show that whites and blacks tend to be infected at different times in their lives with the virus that causes AIDS. Most new infections of white gay and bisexual men occur when the men are in their 30s and 40s, the study found, while black gay and bisexual men are more likely to be infected in their teens and 20s. The results...

The virus that causes AIDS is spreading in New York City at three times the national rate — an incidence of 72 new infections for every 100,000 people, compared with 23 per 100,000 nationally — according to a study released on Wednesday by the city’s Department of Health and Mental Hygiene. The findings, based on a new formula developed by the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, estimated that 4,762 New Yorkers contracted H.I.V. in 2006, the most precise estimate the city had ever offered. But the city stressed that because the method of estimating infections was new, it...

Scientists may one day be able to destroy viruses in the same way that opera singers presumably shatter wine glasses. New research mathematically determined the frequencies at which simple viruses could be shaken to death. "The capsid of a virus is something like the shell of a turtle," said physicist Otto Sankey of Arizona State University. "If the shell can be compromised [by mechanical vibrations], the virus can be inactivated." Recent experimental evidence has shown that laser pulses tuned to the right frequency can kill certain viruses. However, locating these so-called resonant frequencies is a bit of trial and error....

Bill Clinton made a plea yesterday for a new emphasis on monogamy as a key element in the battle against Aids. The former US president, not noted for his ability to keep his own marriage vows, said it was very important to change people's attitudes to sex. In an interview with the BBC recorded in Africa, Mr Clinton said that increasing support for monogamy was not just a problem for the continent worst hit by Aids but for the world. "To pretend we can ever get hold of this without dealing with that – the idea of unprotected sexual relations...

MEXICO CITY — Can a pill a day help prevent infection from H.I.V., the virus that causes AIDS? No one knows. But researchers in a number of countries are conducting trials and planning others to test the unproven strategy that a daily pill, or a combination of drugs, can prevent H.I.V. By mid-2009, more people will be enrolled in such trials than in all of those for H.I.V. vaccines and microbicides, the AIDS Vaccine Advocacy Coalition said in a report issued here on Sunday at the start of the 17th International AIDS Conference. Initial findings of the safety and effectiveness...

Updated federal estimates of the annual number of new HIV infections in the United States, released today, reveal that while the AIDS epidemic here is worse than previously thought, prevention efforts appear to be having some effect. Even though the number of Americans living with HIV has risen by more than a quarter million people since 1998 -- largely the result of life-extending antiretroviral drugs -- the number of new cases each year has declined slightly over that period. That suggests that a person's likelihood of transmitting the virus to someone else is substantially lower now than it was a...

Just found this research piece via Breitbart's posted article, what if everything we think we know about aids is wrong? Read HIV, AIDS and Gallo's Egg by Clark Baker. It's a real eye-opener.

Antiretroviral therapy has increased life expectancy by 13 years, researchers say THURSDAY, July 24 (HealthDay News) -- Since 1996, the life expectancy of HIV patients in developed countries taking antiviral therapy has increased more than 13 years, and deaths have dropped by almost 40 percent, researchers report. Despite these gains, life expectancy still falls short by some 20 years, compared with people in the general population. Life expectancy among injection drug users and those who start their treatment late is even shorter. "People on [antiretroviral therapy] can live a fairly long life," said lead researcher Robert Hogg, from the British...

Hispanics in U.S. Face Unique Obstacles to Diagnosis, Treatment SAN YSIDRO, Calif. -- AIDS rates in the nation's Latino community are increasing and, with little notice, have reached what experts are calling a simmering public health crisis. Though Hispanics make up about 14 percent of the U.S. population, they represented 22 percent of new HIV and AIDS diagnoses tallied by federal officials in 2006. According to a survey by the Kaiser Family Foundation, Hispanics in the District have the highest rate of new AIDS cases in the country. So far, the toll of AIDS in the nation's largest and fastest-growing...

The creation of UNAIDS, the joint United Nations programme on HIV and AIDS, was justified by the proposition that HIV is exceptional. The foundations of exceptionalism were laid when the "rights" arguments of gay men succeeded in making HIV a special case that demanded confidentiality and informed consent and discouraged routine testing and tracing of contacts, contrary to proved experience in public health.1 But exceptionalism grew—to encompass HIV as a disease of poverty, a developmental catastrophe, and an emergency demanding special measures, requiring multisectoral interventions beyond the leadership of the World Health Organization. The exceptionality argument was used to raise...

THE Senate is near to pass ing a massive $50 billion Emergency Plan for HIV/ AIDS Relief - a bill whose priorities are based on myth, just like virtually all anti-AIDS efforts worldwide. The world's top AIDS bureaucrat recently admitted the truth: "It is very unlikely that there will be a heterosexual epidemic" outside Africa, Kevin de Cock, director of the World Health Organization, told London's Independent newspaper. His bosses at the United Nations issued an official denial - but couldn't truly challenge his science.

Diagnoses of H.I.V. and AIDS in men who have sex with men rose significantly between 2001 and 2006 while declining in other demographic groups, the federal Centers for Disease Control reported Thursday. The increase in diagnoses was especially high among males between the ages of 13 and 24, with an annual increase of 12.4 percent, compared to 1.5 percent for men overall. The annual increase was still higher among young African-American men who have sex with men, nearly 15 percent. Among African-American men of all ages who have sex with men, the annual increase in diagnoses was 1.9 percent. Experts...

MINNEAPOLIS, MINNESOTA--The human immunodeficiency virus (HIV-1) responsible for most of the AIDS cases in the world infected people approximately 100 years ago, more than 20 years earlier than previously believed, according to findings presented here this week at the Evolution 2008 meeting. Its lesser known cousin, HIV-2, jumped into humans decades later, from a monkey species that carried the virus for just a couple of hundred years, not the millions of years researchers had assumed, according to other research presented at the meeting. Researchers are trying to pin down the origins of both HIVs to understand how often new human...

The New York City health department plans to announce on Thursday an ambitious three-year effort to give an H.I.V. test to every adult living in the Bronx, which has a far higher death rate from AIDS than any other borough. The campaign will begin with a push to make the voluntary testing routine in emergency rooms and storefront clinics, where city officials say that cumbersome consent procedures required by state law have deterred doctors from offering the tests. “Routine would mean if you came into the emergency room for asthma or a broken leg, we test everyone for H.I.V., if...

The United Nations High Level Meeting on HIV/AIDS took place at UN headquarters in New York this week to review progress made in fighting the global AIDS pandemic. The two-day meeting, which brought together members of government and civil society, was punctuated throughout by calls to end stigmatization and discrimination against people living with HIV/AIDS by expanding rights for "sexual minorities" and "commercial sex workers," including decriminalization of sodomy and prostitution. At the opening panel discussion, a representative from UNAIDS, a joint UN Programme on HIV/AIDS, asserted that the international community "must move beyond the classical understanding" to include sexual...

Any hunter will tell you that when your quarry goes into hiding, you have to flush it out to get a good shot at it. Such is the case with HIV, the virus that causes AIDS. Though antiretroviral "cocktails" can target an active infection, they cannot get at the virus when it retreats inside the host's T cells, where it may lie dormant for decades, waiting for an opportunity to burst forth in a fresh round of infection. What HIV hunters need is a good bird dog. Now, Stanford chemist Paul Wender and his coworkers have found a way to...

WASHINGTON — Researchers must go back to the drawing board before they can develop an effective vaccine against H.I.V., AIDS experts said at a scientific meeting on Tuesday. And Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, the top federal official responsible for AIDS research, agreed that more fundamental knowledge is needed about H.I.V. and the way the body and experimental vaccines respond to it before the goal of a licensed H.I.V. vaccine can be reached. Dr. Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, pledged to re-evaluate the use of all $1.5 billion his agency spends on AIDS research...

Watching the “Reverend” Jeremiah Wright gesticulate like a horny peacock and spew out ignorance, hatred, and bitterness towards America truly inspired my religious faith. Once Wright pointed out that he was “still in Bible country,” I began to “love the hell out of” rich, white people just as much as Wright does. How could so many people not understand that white people have caused all the world’s problems? As Wright pointed out to his congregation, the Bible says it’s so. I’m not sure what verse actually says that, but I’m now betting that rich, white people are responsible for my...

Even the best drugs currently available cannot weed out HIV from all of its hiding places within the body, according to a new study of HIV patients in the United States. The discovery seems to confirm doctors' suspicions that once the virus gains a foothold, it can never be fully eradicated from the body. After years of aggressive drug treatment, the virus still hides out in significant reservoirs, particularly in tissues surrounding the gut lining, the researchers report. Cells in these tissues, a part of the immune system called 'gut-associated lymphoid tissue', remain infected with the virus even though the...

BOSTON--Two prominent researchers have bluntly assessed the depressing state of AIDS vaccine research and have urged the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH) to correct its course. In back-to-back plenary talks at the 15th Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections today, Ronald Desrosiers, director of the New England Primate Research Center in nearby Southborough, said he thought that NIH--the world's largest funder of AIDS vaccine research--had "lost its way," spending too much money on developing and testing products and not enough on basic research. Virologist Neal Nathanson, a professor emeritus at the University of Pennsylvania who formerly headed NIH's Office...

Amid news that, in preparation for Brazil's Carnival celebrations, the government will be handing out millions of free condoms, Reuters indulges in some editorializing: Recife city also plans to distribute morning-after contraceptive pills -- a move that has angered the Roman Catholic Church hierarchy.The church opposes Brazil's much lauded anti-AIDS campaign on the grounds that it promotes contraception.Wait a minute. How exactly does the morning-after pill prevent the spread of HIV/AIDS? That's right, it does not. Therefore, the distrubtion of morning-after pills can in no way be taken as being part of an "anti-AIDS campaign." Furthermore, the church does...

AP Medical Writer In the two decades since AIDS began sweeping the globe, it has often been labeled as the biggest threat to international health. But with revised numbers downsizing the pandemic - along with an admission that AIDS peaked in the late 1990s - some AIDS experts are now wondering if it might be wise to shift some of the billions of dollars of AIDS money to basic health problems like clean water, family planning or diarrhea. "If we look at the data objectively, we are spending too much on AIDS," said Dr. Malcolm Potts, an AIDS expert at...

ALTHOUGH the United Nations recently lowered its global H.I.V. estimates, as many as 33 million people worldwide are still living with the AIDS virus. This pandemic requires continued attention; preventing further deaths and orphans remains imperative. But the well-meaning promises of some presidential candidates to outdo even President Bush’s proposal to nearly double American foreign assistance to fight AIDS strike me, an H.I.V.-AIDS specialist for 15 years, as missing the mark. Some have criticized Mr. Bush for requesting “only” $30 billion for the next five years for AIDS and related problems, with the leading Democratic candidates having pledged to commit...

One of HIV’s strengths — its ability to use human proteins to enter human cells or integrate with host DNA — may prove to be its undoing. Researchers have now identified over 250 of the human proteins that are needed by HIV to help it spread throughout the body, providing a treasure trove of potential HIV drug targets. Antiviral drugs, which typically attack viral proteins, have had a huge impact on the quality and length of life of HIV-positive patients. But HIV mutates rapidly, so these drugs can quickly become outdated. And since HIV only makes 15 different proteins, there...

Fibres may be more important than viral load in determining transmission rates. A component found in semen can enhance HIV transmission by as much as 100,000-fold, researchers have found. The results, if verified in a clinical setting, could identify a new way to help prevent the spread of the disease. "I think this is tremendous," says Christopher Pilcher, an HIV researcher at the University of California, San Francisco, who was not affiliated with the study. "It raises a lot of really fundamental questions about how HIV is transmitted." Over 80% of HIV infections are acquired through sexual intercourse, primarily via...

As regular VC readers know, I am one of several conspirators who is supporting Fred Thompson's campaign for President. I cannot speak for the others, but my reasons for supporting Thompson include his commitment to federalism, his candor on important issues other candidates would prefer to avoid (e.g. entitlements), and his record on regulatory reform and government oversight over the past thirty years. For National Review's pentultimate issue (the one before they endorsed Mitt Romney), I authored an article making the conservative case for Thompson. For those without subscriptions to the print magazine, here is an excerpt: Sen. Fred Thompson...

Abstinence stigma is a term coined by Martin Ssempa, an HIV/AIDS prevention educator in Uganda. It means that children who are staying abstinent are made to feel that there is something wrong with them if they are abstinent. This term can aptly be applied to DC youth and the adults supporting them as they are made to feel that there is something wrong with helping youth to stay sexually abstinent and drug free. Dr. Richard Nyankori has decided to selectively eliminate the ULTRA Teen Choice program based on his personal bias against directive abstinence programs. This is indicated by the...

As another World AIDS Day dawns this morning, prepare for the usual media blitz of stories designed to promote more spending on failed approaches to HIV/AIDS, and more bashing of the Bush Administration despite increases in spending by the billions each year.  Here are some of the questions that the media probably won’t ask the professional HIV/AIDS lobby, which grows ever fatter while the human tragedy rises: • What have American taxpayers gotten for the $20 billion per year (and rising) government spending on HIV/AIDS? • What has happened to the more than half a billion condoms that the...

To activists concerned about AIDS and prisoners' rights, it's an urgent, commonsense step that should already be nationwide policy -- letting inmates have condoms to reduce the spread of sexually transmitted diseases behind bars. Yet their efforts have run headlong into a stronger political force: Authorities' desire not to encourage inmates who flout prison rules against sex. Only one state, Vermont, and five cities regularly hand out condoms to inmates. Mississippi does so only for inmates receiving conjugal visits from their spouses. Left out are the vast majority of America's 2.2 million prisoners -- many held in facilities where sex...

AIDS knows no age limit; more seniors getting busyBy LA PARKER TRENTON — If grandpa’s gettin’ some, he better use a condom. With seniors having sex, it’s important they understand that old sex doesn’t mean safe sex, and HIV and other sexually transmitted diseases know no age limit. “We know that people are not dead sexually once they reach the ages of 50, 60 or 70. They can get sexually transmitted diseases just like anybody else,” said Henry J. Austin HIV Program Coordinator Mary Lou Freund. Freund said a report released last week about more sex among the elderly...

As a longstanding fan of Bill Cosby, it pains me to criticize a man whose comedy and politics have been overwhelmingly constructive. But in the matter of AIDS, he needs to be a bit more forthcoming. A report published Monday by University of Arizona evolutionary biologist Michael Worobey has traced the path of AIDS from its origins in the Congo to the United States via Haiti as early as 1969.  It depicts an HIV epidemic ignited by Haitians returning home from Africa and spreading undetected for over 10 years within their country before expanding to America and, ultimately, throughout the...

TORONTO - Members of Canada's hemophilia community are awaiting a Superior Court judge's verdict Monday in what has been called the worst public health disaster in Canadian history. "At the end of the day, what's important for us is that justice be done and justice be seen to be done," said John Plater of the Canadian Hemophilia Society. "So that's really why we're anticipating tomorrow, and getting a hold of her decision and, in particular, the reasons for her decision." Dr. Roger Perrault, 70, a former national medical director with the Canadian Red Cross, has stood trial with three other...