Tag: HIV

After Apparent Missile Attack on Malaysian Airliner, Consider Behavior Modification

~ Pharmer

This would be the best recourse for people at high risk of HIV.  Men who have sex with men, have 19 times greater chance of contracting this horrendous disease, according to the World Health Organization.  Sex workers appear to have a 14 times greater susceptibility, and the incidence is 50 times higher among transgender women.

What relation does this have to the loss of the Malaysian Airliner?  About a hundred of the passengers aboard that plane were HIV researchers flying to a big International AIDS Conference in Australia.  The list includes Dr. Joep Lange, former president of the International AIDS Society, and WHO spokesman, Glenn Thomas were among those lost.   This is a big disaster from the standpoint of medical progress in combating HIV, as well as a personal tragedy for many thousands of people.

Your friendly Pharmer, always a big fan of preventative medicine, suggests behavior modification as a means of preventing infection with HIV, (a rather fastidious bug) which, barring assaults, is not too difficult to avoid in most cases.

The  effects of this act of war on the Malaysian Airlines flight  MH 17 will ripple outward for many generations.

FDA Approves Use of Antiretroviral, Truvada, for HIV Prevention

~ Pharmer

US FDA approves first drug shown to reduce risk of HIV infection | Society | guardian.co.uk.

What happens with the anti-infectives which are used for PREVENTION, instead of treating infections?
Resistance abounds.

The FDA has approved the use of Truvada, an antiretroviral agent with two ingredients, emtricitabine (nucleoside reverse transcriptase inhibitor) and tenofovir, (nucleotide reverse transcriptase inhibitor). This is now recommended for use in a non-infected partner who decides to have sexual contact with an HIV infected partner. The protection rate in the most favorable African study is 75%. Other studies done in the U.S. show results which are not nearly that good. Participants in the Truvada HIV prevention studies were encouraged to also use condoms.

Hope that extra special sex is worth $14,000 per year in the U.S., the still present risk of HIV, the risk of kidney damage, as well as the risk of making HIV strains more resistant to two more drugs, and the combo cocktails which contain them.

Pharmer chalks this FDA decision up with the scores of other irrational choices to misuse drugs without consideration of the present and long term drawbacks.

The Road We Know

~ Pharmer

The Road We Know.

College kids in Botswana toured the country advocating behavioral change, abstinence/exclusivity, to prevent HIV in a country which has the world’s second highest prevalence.

This “radical” strategy and mission  was born from the realization that the condoms/awareness/testing programs were not effective in this country where one fourth of the population has HIV.

Uganda and Kenya have seen positive results from encouraging abstinence.

Dr. Edward Green, of the Harvard AIDS Prevention Research Project  appears in this film….as well as here, Down on the Pharm.

Nations of Africa are making significant  cultural and behavioral changes to fight HIV.  One wonders how long (and how many more deaths)  it will take before the Western progressives  catch up with what we already knew was the best way to prevent AIDs.

The Road We Know Trailer from Citygate Films on Vimeo.

CDC Participates in Plan to Reduce Number of Organ Transplants

~ Pharmer

CDC’s proposed guidelines for transplants say two sex partners is too many for top-notch organ donors – NY Daily News.

Shazaam!  Just in time for Obamacare, all kinds of new standards for preventative exams  (reducing them),  and a means to reduce the desire for transplants, as well as the available pool have been generated.

SUDDENLY there are proposed new guidelines for the rating of organs in risk categories.

Those who participate in the sexual lifestyle touted as normal, by the progressives, are to be classed as high risk donors of organs.

People with two or more  sex partners in the last year will be considered at risk for transmission of hepatitis B or C, and HIV, etc.

The organ will be rated as risky and the potential recipient could be made aware of this, and be less likely to accept the transplant.

Organ transplants are expensive to carry out, and very expensive to maintain.   Obamacare requires that these be much fewer in number in order to avoid immediate failure through insolvency.

A way to achieve this goal has been provided by the CDC, with the excuse that 12 unexpected deaths from infections have occurred between 2007 and 2010  in transplant patients.

 

Recycling Gone Wild – Flu vaccine syringes!

~ Pharmer

Children told to be tested for HIV after flu vaccines reused | 9news.com.

People have caught the ‘green bug’ — an infection with  enthusiasm for recycling.  This has extended into health care environments where some inappropriate recycling can be observed.

For example certain plastics and containers are recycled, or inappropriately transferred from patient  rooms to be reused in other patient rooms.   This is a danger for the spread of infection, and the rampant spread of  staph and clostridium infections may be resulting from this and other bad practices. Some health care employees cannot be dissuaded from these practices.

Above linked is a news story about a pediatric clinic in Colorado, (Med Peds Clinic of Fort Collins) where some enterprising employee decided to recycle half used   syringe doses of flu vaccine.

Those syringes (to a normal health care worker) are single use items.  Even if it had been appropriate to use half of the dose, the remainder should have been tossed out  in the biohazardous waste.

Instead the  medical assistant changed the needles on the syringe and recycled.

So…….  a lot of kids have apparently received half flu doses, and may have been exposed to infection from other patients.   There is a practice  of pulling back a bit  on the syringe, when injecting a vaccine, to make sure it’s not being shot directly into a blood vessel.

Dr Mark S. Simmons of the clinic stated :  “we are a little dismayed that one of our former medical assistants did not follow procedures when handling this” Recommendations from the clinic are that patients who received the vaccines be tested for  HIV, Hepatitis B and Hepatitis C, (etc.)   There is not a mention of who would cover this expense.

Some things shouldn’t be recycled.

Trash Science News Headline Misleads News Skimmers

~ Pharmer

Doctors Claim HIV-Positive Man Cured by Stem Cell Transplant – FoxNews.com.

1) This is the case of an HIV infected person with leukemia getting a BONE MARROW transplant, (actually two of them).

2) The headline says “stem cells”, without specifying that this is old technology using adult bone marrow cells from a compatible donor.

3) The donor cells in this case lacked  expression of the receptor on CD4  T  cells  to which the HIV virus attaches.

4) The recipient does not have the AIDs  symptoms of HIV anymore, and will not have to take antiretroviral drugs.  He will have to take immunosuppressive drugs after the transplant to prevent  or treat graft vs host disease.   The length of need for these drugs varies.

5) The virus can still potentially be transmitted by a patient to another person  after that form of treatment.

More  detail on this case.

HIV testing at the DMV and Abortion drugs at the Discount Store.

~ Pharmer

D.C. brings HIV testing to the crowd at the DMV.

Washington DC, the HIV capital of the United states wants everyone to know that HIV testing is just a routine thing… conveniently available at the Dept of Motor Vehicles.  You can get an HIV test with your license renewal.

The FDA wanted people to be able to obtain abortion drugs, (ulipristal acetate, ELLA) an analog of RU486, mifepristone, at the discount store pharmacy.

Wouldn’t want people to drive out of their way to address these mattters.

In some states  Washington, for example, a student can be driven after school for an abortion, by a school official.  No parental consent or signature is needed for that extra curricular activity.

The highest value of our governments-gone-wrong is convenience

Veterans Affairs head blasts administration over hospital incident – The Hill’s Blog Briefing Room

~ Pharmer

Veterans Affairs head blasts administration over hospital incident – The Hill’s Blog Briefing Room.

Apparently the Obama administration took three months to send out warning letters to 1800 veterans warning of the risk HIV and other viruses from improperly sterilized dental equipment, after the problem was discovered.

Congressman Bob Filner (D. California) head of the House Veterans Affairs committee, expressed displeasure that Veterans Affairs Secretary Eric Shinseki remained clueless about the problem until a week ago.  A hearing on the issue is projected for next week.

A three month delay……….. welcome to Obamacare.