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Today is a remarkable day. Today, we come together, as a global community, across continents, faiths and cultures, to renew our commitment to ending the AIDS pandemic – once and for all.
–President Obama, December 1, 2011
In commemorating World AIDS Day, it’s good to take a look at where we stand. A lot of releases are hitting my inbox today, including several from the White House. First, a frank look at the epidemic that airs on public TV today. In The Life Media:
Tonight, public television stations across the country will begin airing 30 Years Positive, an episode of the award-winning documentary series IN THE LIFE looking back at multiple decades of media coverage of the HIV/AIDS epidemic. The episode also premieres online on World AIDS Day, held annually for the global community to gather in the fight against HIV/AIDS, to show support for people living with HIV, and to remember those who have passed.
30 years after the first AIDS case was reported in the United States, more than a million Americans are HIV-positive. The most recent statistics report that one in five HIV-positive Americans don’t know they are HIV-positive, and that 56,000 are newly infected each year. However, mainstream media coverage has given little attention to the epidemic’s ongoing impact. Says Marjorie J. Hill, PhD, Chief Executive Officer of GMHC, in the episode: “We’ve been able to stabilize the HIV epidemic – not stop, not reduce – stabilize.”
The episode concludes with a frank discussion about HIV prevention and the National AIDS Strategy featuring Gun Hill Road actress Harmony Santana and Reverend Charles King, CEO of Housing Works, who criticizes the White House for inaction on the epidemic, saying: “I feel that President Obama needs to be called on HIV and AIDS just like President Bush needed to be called on it.”
Watch IN THE LIFE’s 30 Years Positive here: http://www.itlmedia.org/
The President has issued a proclamation (read the full document here); I’m sharing a key snippet:
My Administration is taking action to turn the corner on the HIV/AIDS pandemic by investing in research that promises new and proven methods to prevent infection and better therapies for people living with HIV. In the past year, the National Institutes of Health has reported important progress. We now know that treatment of HIV not only improves clinical outcomes, but can also dramatically reduce the risk of transmission. Studies on the use of antiretroviral medications to prevent infection of HIV-negative individuals show promising results. And research is ongoing to devise new prevention methods that may one day offer innovative ways to prevent the spread of HIV, like microbicides that can curb the risk of infection in women. By pursuing the next breakthrough treatment in the fight against HIV, continuing research to develop a vaccine, and incorporating new scientific tools into our programs, we are taking important steps toward an AIDS-free generation.
To combat the HIV epidemic in the United States, we are implementing the first comprehensive National HIV/AIDS Strategy in our country’s history, which calls for strong, coordinated policy initiatives, enhanced HIV/AIDS education, collaboration across the Federal Government, and robust engagement with individuals, communities, and businesses across America. As part of these efforts, we are embracing the best science available to prevent new HIV infections, and we are testing new approaches to integrating housing, prevention, care, and substance abuse and mental health services related to HIV/AIDS. We are implementing the Affordable Care Act, which mandates new consumer protections and new options for purchasing health insurance for all Americans by 2014, including those with HIV. We are also striving to secure employment opportunities for people living with HIV by working to end discrimination based on HIV status.
In light of that, the Obama administration has released a lengthy document outlining the planned efforts, Fact Sheet: The Beginning of the End of AIDS. A key section (definitely click over for the full text):
Creating a Coordinated National Response to the HIV Epidemic
National HIV/AIDS Strategy: The National HIV/AIDS Strategy is the Nation’s first comprehensive plan to fight the domestic epidemic. The Strategy provides a roadmap for moving the nation forward in addressing the domestic HIV/AIDS epidemic with clear and measurable targets to be achieved by 2015. The development of the NHAS is an important effort to reflect on what is and is not working in order to improve the outcomes that we receive for our public and private investments.
- The Federal Implementation Plan. In conjunction with the Strategy, the White House Office of National AIDS Policy (ONAP) released the Federal Implementation Plan, which outlines initial critical actions to be taken by Federal agencies in 2010 and 2011.
- The Agency Operational Plans. Released in February 2011, these plans detail activities and new initiatives across lead federal agencies to implement the Strategy.
- Ongoing Efforts to Improve Coordination across Government. The Health and Human Services Assistant Secretary for Health was tasked with improving operational coordination across key departments and agencies, including HHS, Housing and Urban Development, Departments of Justice and Labor, the Veterans’ Administration, and the Social Security Administration.
- Engaging Communities. The Obama Administration has taken extraordinary steps to engage the public. While developing the Strategy, the White House Office of National AIDS Policy hosted 14 community discussions across the country and organized a series of expert meetings on HIV-specific topics. This fall ONAP convened five “Dialogues” across the country to support state and local implementation of the Strategy.
Learn more at: http://aids.gov/world-aids-day/
18 Comments
If I might make my semi-annual push….
You can help find a vaccine for HIV. The HIV Vaccine Trials Network, http://www.hvtn.org, is a collaborative, international effort to develop a vaccine against HIV. There are 13 testing units in the United States: Atlanta, Birmhingham, Boston (two sites), Chicago, Nashville, New York City (two sites), Philadelphia, Raleigh (NC), Rochester (NY), San Francisco and Seattle. Nine additional sites have been opened to help with one of the largest tests yet, called HVTN 505: Annandale (VA), Bethesda, Cleveland, Denver, Dallas, Houston, Los Angeles, Orlando and a third site in New York City. The full list, with their contact information, can be found here.
Volunteers are needed for vaccine trials: you cannot get HIV from the vaccine, and you will be compensated for your time. In addition to vaccine research, there are studies being done within the network on “effective cures” such as pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP), basically using anti-HIV meds proactively in various forms to prevent infection. To my knowledge, most of these studies are being done in Africa, but something might be available in your area.
If you cannot participate in a study, each of these sites has a Community Advisory Board which serves as a liason between the work at the unit and the local community, both to make sure the community is heard and to educate the community about the research. CABs strive to reflect the diversity of the community, so people of any race, gender, orientation or gender identity are welcome to get involved.
Why I don’t give this administration any marks for doing anything about HIV/AIDS…
On World AIDS Day 2011, the Obama White House announces $50 million to help with HIV/AIDS both foreigh and domestic.
On the same day, the US Central Bank infuses billions (with a B) more into failed banks so that rich can get richer.
$50 million for HIV vs Billions for banks (though perhaps trillions, who knows).
Obama administration, your actions speak louder than your words.
I pays to be cynical. If O says it, it can’t be true. This is just empty rhetoric to get the LGBT vote in 2012.
Does anyone know what happened to the $15 billion in 5 years for AIDS relief in Africa that W promised? Did any of it ever materialize in any program other than abstinence. Is there a final accounting anywhere? If so I missed it.
And we know that W was a more honest prez than O.
Do you know about the science of making vaccines against viruses? If so I have a bunch of Qs, namely surrounding the fact that viruses (and I think this is particularly true of AIDS) mutate so quickly that it is nearly impossible.
Why flu shots are worthless. As I understand the process, docs try to figure out what this year’s flu virus will look like by some kind of allegedly predictor variables. Don’t ask me for details; I have only the vaguest bits of info picked up from the ether. (But I was a science major in undergrad school, so am capable of understanding subject if it is explained to me.)
This October, flu shot month, I saw a headline that said flu shots worthless bc the predictor model of the annual mutation is bunk. Since the headline fit into my priors, I didn’t bother reading the article.
Would like to learn more about the vaccine/AIDS program, as it would seem from what I think I know, to be a dry hole (oil drilling analogy).
$50 million for AIDS, $7.7 trillion for banks.
Need one cite a more powerful example of denial.
If I may make a more general point about “medical” research.
Doctors are NOT scientists. In the U.S. they are trained monkeys. Trained to send you out for a battery of expensive tests that will reveal nothing, write a script for antibiotics after a 5 min face-to-face.
If you read any article in NYT (or like general audience publication) on medical “science,” the final sentence in the article will be: There were 132 subjects in the study.
Now, whatever the 132 # actually reported was, it is far too small to show anything. Docs, who are trained to follow orders (the closer one is to PTB, the more one adheres to hierarchy and the less one adheres to intellectual curiosity & honesty), know nothing about scientific methodology.
I think there is a NYT (worthless) supplement mag once/year on medical issues. One would think, but one would be wrong, that it would be a fascinating collection of essays.
The year I scanned it, one article caught my attention. It mentioned that half of what docs know is wrong. The problem is, no one know which half.
It’s been real, talking to myself.
Hey, I’m listening!! I highly recommend Candace Pert’s tome, Molecules of Emotion. It’s an excellent treatise on the chauvinistic hierarchy of the medical community, and an enlightening examination based on her research of HIV and the mind’s impact and power over the immune system and health generally, both mental and physical. It’s a very good read on the subject. (:>
Well, if Obama personally cured Aids tomorrow you wouldn’t give him any “points”. Most of you FDLers are sound little different than Republicans. The fact that you profess to be gay particularly sickens me. He’s accomplished more for gay rights than all Presidents put together. And he did this DESPITE dumb mother=fuckers Dan Choi and Jane Hamsher. And before you tell me how all of his reforms aren’t let me tell you this: Your sources, along with most FDL sources are lying. You think that because you’re critical that you’re objective. You’re just blinded by the love of your own disdainful superiority.
As it happens, I am on the CAB for the Seattle HIV Vaccine Trials Unit. I was also a trial participant from 1997 to 1999.
The flu “season” begins in Asia during the rainy season, around January and February. The reason for Asia is complex: most varieties of influenza transfers easily among humans, pigs and horses, and the agricultural set-up in most Asian countries makes such transfers a lot more common there, meaning that there is a much higher likelihood of a novel mutation able to outcompete the other flu strains floating around. This dominant spreads slowly in the northern hemisphere, were spring and summer mean fewer people are in the warm, dry, enclosed environment that makes contagion easier. In the southern hemisphere, however, flu season peaks during their winter, June through August. As the northern hemisphere heads into winter, the flu begins to appear in Europe and North America. By the end of that winter, most of the people who are likely to get the flu have already been exposed to the strain that is pandemic that year, making way for the new strain that is already incubating in Asia.
Yes, influenza mutates, but it mutates pretty slowly: the strain that emerges in Hong Kong or Shanghai in January will still be identifiable as the same strain when it hits London nine months later. This gives plenty of time for the emerging strains to be identified and made into a vaccine. Typically, the annual flu vaccine will contain between two to four different strains, starting with the primary one for that year and the primary one from the year before. The vaccines are not 100% — no vaccine is — but efficacy is very high, in the range of 95% to 97% if given time to work. It takes several weeks to build up full immunity: if you got your shot and are exposed to the flu a week later, your chances of getting sick are much higher than if you are exposed five weeks after getting the vaccine. Also, getting the flu vaccine does not protect you from getting some other kind of respiratory infection. Whoever told you that the seasonal flu shot is worthless was handing you ten pounds of crap in a five pound bag.
HIV is RNA based, not DNA. RNA virus mutate much more rapidly; while it takes two to three years for a given strain of influenza to require a new vaccine, HIV can change its appearance every three or four months. This is one of the reasons why it is taking so long to develop a vaccine: the need to isolate the parts of the viral envelope that do NOT mutate and train the immune system to recognize and attack the virus using those parts. Another reason for the long time is that the vast majority of vaccines use live but weakened viruses: you cannot do that with retroviruses like HIV because the risk to human health is far too great. (Most viruses work by highjacking a cell and forcing it to produce hundreds of thousands of new viruses at once. Retroviruses work by “reprogramming” a cell and tricking it into making new viruses a few at a time.) HIV vaccines are engineered to make a harmless carrier virus look like HIV. It has been slow work, but we are closing in several promising leads.
Now THAT adds to the discussion in a meaningful way. /s
Bunkum and hogwash.
Wow, thanks so much for your long reply. I learned from it. I’ve never dismissed flu vaccines as “worthless” but I rarely have gotten a flu shot and never get the flu. My doc was fairly insistent this year, so I got one, several weeks ago.
I appreciate the thoughtful comment!
Thanks for letting me know I got to you.
You’re damn right I’m critical. I don’t know everything about HIV, but I do know that $50 million doesn’t meet the most-pressing and immediate HIV needs here in North Carolina — much less the entire country or world, or even the R&D needs to work toward that cure you flippantly refer to.
Rest assured finding a cure would mean something to me. I’m HIV positive, though fortunate enough to have health insurance and a healthy immune system and undetectable viral load.
We can take the gay rights debate to another thread.
Speaking of “chauvanistic”. I’m reminded of what people say about opinions . . .
Next time you get sick, remember that you weren’t being positive enough and you brought it upon yourself.
You may be interested in Barbara Ehrenreich’s book Bright-Sided, which debunks “the mind’s impact and power over the immune system and health generally” and shows why the whole “positive thinking” meme is harmful.