Posted on 03/09/2020 5:29:45 AM PDT by karpov
A year after the “London Patient” was introduced to the world as only the second person to be cured of H.I.V., he is stepping out of the shadows to reveal his identity: He is Adam Castillejo.
Six feet tall and sturdy, with long, dark hair and an easy smile, Mr. Castillejo, 40, exudes good health and cheer. But his journey to the cure has been arduous and agonizing, involving nearly a decade of grueling treatments and moments of pure despair. He wrestled with whether and when to go public, given the attention and scrutiny that might follow. Ultimately, he said, he realized that his story carried a powerful message of optimism.
“This is a unique position to be in, a unique and very humbling position,” he said. “I want to be an ambassador of hope.”
Last March, scientists announced that Mr. Castillejo, then identified only as the “London Patient,” had been cured of H.I.V. after receiving a bone-marrow transplant for his lymphoma. The donor carried a mutation that impeded the ability of H.I.V. to enter cells, so the transplant essentially replaced Mr. Castillejo’s immune system with one resistant to the virus. The approach, though effective in his case, was intended to cure his cancer and is not a practical option for the widespread curing of H.I.V. because of the risks involved.
Only one other individual with H.I.V. — Timothy Ray Brown, the so-called Berlin Patient, in 2008 — has been successfully cured, and there have been many failed attempts.
...
As a young man, Mr. Castillejo made his way first to Copenhagen and then to London in 2002. He was found to have H.I.V., the virus that causes AIDS, in 2003.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
To think how many lives could have been saved with the same resources spent on someone who almost certainly got the disease through homosexual behavior, as almost all AIDS cases do.
Translation: I found an angle to make a few $'s.
A behavior based disease. I have to admit, the LGBTXYZ was pretty clever in the way they marketed the case for funding a ‘cure’ - they had Quilt rallies, got sympathetic news coverage, threatened corporations to indoctrinate employees with the homosexual agenda, etc. They’ve been fairly successful.
And the even made that Adam (?) kid, a hemophiliac, their poster boy, as if to suggest everyone was vulnerable, and this was a ‘blood disease’ and not a behavior based disease.
will he stop bug/bum chasing?
If an alcoholic gets a new organ they have to accept lifestyle changes so as not to have the same problem again.
If the “self quarantined” approach being taken with the corona virus together with the testing of each individual having contact with an infected person, had been religiously taken with HIV, it would not have become the global scourge that it did. But that would have required an end to sexual promiscuity. Sexual promiscuity won, and HIV with it.
Apparently, his immune system is now resistant to the virus
That is correct. His immune systems unsusceptibility to hiv might be protection for a while...but could he could be a short term carrier...that is he could be infected...but infects someone else before his body clears the hiv. Plus no one knows if a rapidly mutating virus like hiv might mutate to a form which attaches to other receptors on white cells or other tissue for that matter. We already know that hiv attacks kidney and brain tissue. We dont know what happens to these rare folk after long term exposure to hiv without dying from immunosuppressive disorder. So it would be best to, having dodged a bullet, stay outta firing range.
He could still get syph, herpes, or other stds.
Reminds me of the joke in the 80s, where the gay man came out of the office all happy.....He was asked, “Why are you so happy?”, and he replied, “IT’S SYPHILIS!”
Well, how about a remake of The Omega Man offering his blood to save the world.
Keith Richards should do that.
It’s not always behavior that causes the disease. I lost my niece at 9 years old because she got it from her scumbag mother at birth. We didn’t know she had it until she was too sick to help. Her birth mother died 8 years earlier and the cause of death was listed as cancer. Watching that innocent little girl die from that virus still haunts me to this day.
Reminds me of the joke in the 80s, where the gay man came out of the office all happy.....He was asked, “Why are you so happy?”, and he replied, “IT’S SYPHILIS!”
Some context: When the AIDS epidemic really started to hit America, it was often called “4H Disease” after the people at most risk: Haitians,
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