Aug06

HIV Pill

Posted by Small on Aug 6, 2008 in Features, Media/News, Stuff | 6 comments

Well, i was reading the independent this morning, thinking i’d got past all the important stories by page 13, when a story about the prevention of HIV transmission turned up, on page 13!

Anywho, i thought it’d benefit the world if i spread the word through here, coz its only my parents who appear to buy the independent – so here’s the overview:

Apparently there’s already in use an Antiretroviral drug used during childbirth to limit the possibility of HIV passing from mother to child, and the research going on at the moment is to use the same drug in pill form so people can take it before having sex.

‘The return of of the bathhouse culture among gay and bisexual men, involving sex with multiple partners could provide the scenario in which a preventative pill might be taken’ WOOOOOOO

…that or the whole of developing Africa, obviously…

So apparently “people could pop a pill on Friday night and be covered for the whole weekend” according to Sheena McCormack, an Imperial College HIV prevention specialist.

The trials currently include 2,400 injecting drug users in Thailand, 1,200 heterosexual men and women in Botswana, and 3,000 gay and bisexual men in various countries, nothing conclusive as of yet, but everyone’s got their fingers (and probably their legs) crossed in anticipation.

The full story from the independent can be seen here, coz my leisurely skimming has probably missed something vital

Small

Note: another good story on AIDs and the changing ways to fight it can be found here
Blackett

Obviously this is good news, one of my greatest fears is that I will pick up HIV some where along the line and a pill on a friday night to carry me through would come as a great relief and allow me to kick back and enjoy what ever it is that I get up to.

However education is the way forward and changing the views that the UK and America have about sex would be far more effective. We have such an odd view on what is right and wrong and what is acceptable behaviour that people are unwilling to talk about sexual activity and becasue no one is talking about people don’t learn how to protect themselves.

There needs to be a complete overhaul in how sex is taught in schools from an early age children should be taught public and private places, and as they get older that contraception is a great idea.

Another helping hand would be give out condoms for free in bars and clubs, its worked in the gay world for almost 20 years and as 3/4 of HIV infections are among the heterosexual community this would be a rather niffty idea.

Better safe sex adverts on tv. Those ‘give me what you got’ adverts are all well and good, and are funky but not blatant enough. Not that I want to scare people away from having sex, because sex is awesome. But people should enjoy it in a safe way and they need to be taught how to.

I just hope that if this does become accessable to the general public that it then doesnt change mindsets in the same way that PEP which is medication you can take for a month after being in contact with HIV and should keep you safe. This led people to think that they had a safety zone and it was ok to have sex with who ever you like because of PEP. Not realising that there is a very limited window that you need to start taking the medication in and the effects of it are horrific as it is designed to flush every thing in your system.

But yay, for Africa where education is not always the way forward. And although I have just shown that I am guilty of it myself, greater emphasis should be put on the positives that this will have for developing countries rather than the negatives it could possibly have on this one.
Small

Another little update – a scientist from texas is developing a gene therapy technique that stops HIV in its tracks, throughout the whole body! woop

the good news about this technique is that it doesn’t use any toxic anti-viral drugs

the process called RNA interference stimulates a natural switch within the cells which stops them recreating, and therefore stops the replication of HIV in cells

you can read the full story here

just thought there were some rather exciting leaps and bounds in the treatment, prevention, vaccination and understanding of AIDs and HIV recently that people should know about
Andy

Looking at the bigger picture for a second, a ‘pill’ to fend off infection is useless to those that can’t afford it, and I’d assume that’d be most of the world’s population. Plus, if infection becomes less of a pressing issue in the developed nations I’d expect the research budgets these nations set aside to find a cure to be cut drastically.
Small (Author)

I see what you mean Andy, and the high pricing of life-saving drugs to make profits for drug companies is horrendous behaviour (watch ‘The Constant Gardner’ and Rachel Weisz and Ralph Fiennes will illustrate that point perfectly).

But surely if the spread of infection becomes less of a threat, then the research and funds would be transferred to curing or HIV and Aids in the first place – the only analogy i can think of right now would be if the Red Cross shut down after poverty in the developing world had been conquerred, and left poverty in the developed world to continue.
Andy

Poverty is a relative term anyway, hence why what we consider poverty here is living like a king for most of the world’s population. I see your point though.

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HIV Pill