AIDS denial is immoral

Just because we know of a few cases where people are imune to HIV it doesn't mean the majority of people wouldn't get infected and as a consequence die because of it.
There were some people immune to plague in Europe, still many millions have died because of it and to them the existence of a few resistant people was no big help.

 

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It is a mistake that I have often made, to fail to anticipate the reality of idiocy.

I'd naively thought that it was obvious enough that "reversed", is not just about being immune, but specifically about being tested positive but subsequently tested negative, i.e. clear of the immunological indications of infection, which was evidently the case.

It is about 25 years old, regrettably immature.

Again, that was simply not the point.

The thread is about the morality of it, my point being the demonstrably harmful effect of telling people that they're going to die from it, when this is not necessarily the case, hence the morality of that and whatever evidence, one way or the other.

If there be a placebo effect from thinking a drug to do good, there is presumably the opposite effect from expecting a disease to do harm.

Does the medical profession actually empower you, or does it make more of a victim of you?

Some people would rather die soon but be responsible for that, rather than to make a profession of eternal dependence, or the recommendation of it.

 

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You have the point here. Still, if we go back to plague there is a figure in my mind that one third of European population has died of it.
More than 20 million people have died of AIDS as far as we know, there are more and more infected every year but death rate is in decline due to the drugs which target HIV.
That should give the evidence the drugs do help and obviously if the antihiv drugs help, it should be informative also regarding the cause of AIDS.
Back to your argument - if you are infected and not know about it, than you will eventualy infect your partner and help the disease to spread. It sure doesn't do you any good mentally if you know you are infected, but you can help prevent spreading the infection and be prtepared to be treated the right way when neccessary.

There is a very promissing "cure" in development and testing, cannot post the link, but you can google it your self "VIRXSYS".

 

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According to what? Blind faith?

I have not yet seen anything but hearsay, talk of knowing but with no satistical study plus appropriate methodological detail.

Where was the significant group of individuals who refused medical treatement and were then monitored for a considerable period of time?

I looked for detail with regard for instance to the UK haemophiliacs and ran into all sorts of vague stuff, "Aids related", whatever that may have meant, etc. etc.

When definitions appear to define the results, ad hoc, ad lib, one is not so impressed.

Is anybody taking bets on this?

 

According to research.

That doesn't mean they don't exist. It just means you haven't looked. I can tell you that you have a heart. It's not obvious to anyone, in fact some people might call it hearsay. But I can assure you if we would cut open your chest than we would likely find one. That's because it's documented that people are supposed to have a heart in a certain place.

So please cut the bullshit. These studies exist.

In detail and you can only say 'whatever', and 'etc'. That's not details.

The only thing ad hoc here constantly switching views in a desperation to make an argument for the sake of personal revenge.

Yes, the investors.

 

Sauna, unfortunately I can't link the appropriate pages, but anyway I agree with spuriousmonkey.
Regarding the virxsys - it was quite big news a few months ago, try googling "gene therapy" and "hiv" and you will get a bunch of hits from very reputable sources.
From what I have read it is extremely promissing as in the trials with only small one-time doses (to see how well the patients tolerate it) all the patients have shown a very good response - although the dose was not therapeutic, there was a longterm stabilisation or even an improvement in T-cells count and decline of HIV count although all other antihiv treatment was stopped.
There is an ongoing study which will show some results during this year with therapeutic dosages.

 

J Infect Dis. 1999 Mar;179(3):717-20.
Combination antiretroviral therapy and recent declines in AIDS incidence and mortality.



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Lancet. 1998 Nov 28;352(9142):1725-30


Changing patterns of mortality across Europe in patients infected with HIV-1. EuroSIDA Study Group.

Mocroft A, Vella S, Benfield TL, Chiesi A, Miller V, Gargalianos P, d'Arminio Monforte A, Yust I, Bruun JN, Phillips AN, Lundgren JD.



BACKGROUND: The introduction of combination antiretroviral therapy and protease inhibitors has led to reports of falling mortality rates among people infected with HIV-1. We examined the change in these mortality rates of HIV-1-infected patients across Europe during 1994-98, and assessed the extent to which changes can be explained by the use of new therapeutic regimens. METHODS: We analysed data from EuroSIDA, which is a prospective, observational, European, multicentre cohort of 4270 HIV-1-infected patients. We compared death rates in each 6 month period from September, 1994, to March, 1998. FINDINGS: By March, 1998, 1215 patients had died. The mortality rate from March to September, 1995, was 23.3 deaths per 100 person-years of follow-up (95% CI 20.6-26.0), and fell to 4.1 per 100 person-years of follow-up (2.3-5.9) between September, 1997, and March, 1998. From March to September, 1997, the death rate was 65.4 per 100 person-years of follow-up for those on no treatment, 7.5 per 100 person-years of follow-up for patients on dual therapy, and 3.4 per 100 person-years of follow-up for patients on triple-combination therapy. Compared with patients who were followed up from September, 1994, to March, 1995, patients seen between September, 1997, and March, 1998, had a relative hazard of death of 0.16 (0.08-0.32), which rose to 0.90 (0.50-1.64) after adjustment for treatment. INTERPRETATION: Death rates across Europe among patients infected with HIV-1 have been falling since September, 1995, and at the beginning of 1998 were less than a fifth of their previous level. A large proportion of the reduction in mortality could be explained by new treatments or combinations of treatments.

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N Engl J Med. 1998 Mar 26;338(13):853-60.



Declining morbidity and mortality among patients with advanced human immunodeficiency virus infection. HIV Outpatient Study Investigators.

Palella FJ Jr, Delaney KM, Moorman AC, Loveless MO, Fuhrer J, Satten GA, Aschman DJ, Holmberg SD.



BACKGROUND AND METHODS: National surveillance data show recent, marked reductions in morbidity and mortality associated with the acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS). To evaluate these declines, we analyzed data on 1255 patients, each of whom had at least one CD4+ count below 100 cells per cubic millimeter, who were seen at nine clinics specializing in the treatment of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) infection in eight U.S. cities from January 1994 through June 1997. RESULTS: Mortality among the patients declined from 29.4 per 100 person-years in the first quarter of 1995 to 8.8 per 100 in the second quarter of 1997. There were reductions in mortality regardless of sex, race, age, and risk factors for transmission of HIV. The incidence of any of three major opportunistic infections (Pneumocystis carinii pneumonia, Mycobacterium avium complex disease, and cytomegalovirus retinitis) declined from 21.9 per 100 person-years in 1994 to 3.7 per 100 person-years by mid-1997. In a failure-rate model, increases in the intensity of antiretroviral therapy (classified as none, monotherapy, combination therapy without a protease inhibitor, and combination therapy with a protease inhibitor) were associated with stepwise reductions in morbidity and mortality. Combination antiretroviral therapy was associated with the most benefit; the inclusion of protease inhibitors in such regimens conferred additional benefit. Patients with private insurance were more often prescribed protease inhibitors and had lower mortality rates than those insured by Medicare or Medicaid. CONCLUSIONS: The recent declines in morbidity and mortality due to AIDS are attributable to the use of more intensive antiretroviral therapies.

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Sheer hypocrisy.

 

Where was the significant group of individuals who refused medical treatement and were then monitored for a considerable period of time?

What eliminates the placebo effect?

 

Common sense and statistic of big numbers just can't be ignored. All the drug testing include placebo. If placebo would be working, then why develop xy generation of drugs instead of just giving the patients some drug looking candies?

 

Common sense tells me that if somebody is suicidal to be told that they've got HIV, they'll feel that much better to be told that there is a cure.

Whether or not the result is then because of that or because the chemicals exert more of an effect than their own system of belief, that is then another matter, and is very much a moral issue, not please to be ignored.

It intrigues me because those known to be most affected also happen to be those I'd expect to be especially susceptible to the powers of personal suggestion, the Gay community and the African natives.

 

Really?

They give placebos to people actually ill, actually infected, and pretend that it was the real stuff?

That is an interesting moral issue.

 

Antihiv drugs have very bad side effects. Why torture the patients with these if it's all just placebo? The drug companies test for placebo effect, so if it would be only that, then they would give the patients pill looking sugar free candies and they would have the good effect without the side effects. It would be so much easier for the drug companies.
But they don't do that. I wonder why...

 

No, that is standard testing practice. All participants are aware of that fact and until the test is finished nobody knows what he/she was given.

 

How do they do that then?

Do they tell people that they were HIV positive when they were not HIV positive?

That would be news worthy, that would.

 

How do they do that then?

Do they tell people that they were HIV positive when they were not HIV positive?

That would be news worthy, that would.

So some of the patients think that they were treated when as a matter of fact they were dishonestly denied the treatment?

Are you serious about this?

 

Why would somebody do that?

 

How else would a test be valid in terms of proof?

As I wrote before:

In the name of science, HIV as a cause of AIDS is proved when and only when substantial tests are conducted under proper control, double blind, with some subjects with HIV and told so, some with HIV but not told so, and some told so but not with HIV, and in each instance with HIV detected or eliminated per se, not just the antibodies.

 

Denied of the treatment? If you are ill you have standard aproved treatments available. Nobody denies you of that (at least in EU where I live and you don't need to pay for it).
But current aproved treatments for hiv infection don't cure you for good, the virus becomes immune to the drugs so new drugs and treatment approaches have to be tested. To do that pharmaceutical companies enlist volunteers to whom the explain the conditions of the testing. If you don't want to participate, you just go ahead with your current treatment.
To exclude the placebo effect, some of the participants are given placebo, others are given the test drug in different dosages and ways.
Usually nobody knows who was given what until the end of the study to exclude any kind of bias.

 

At the beginning of the pandemic nobody knew but there were big numbers of (at the time) gay men visiting their doctors with similar symptoms. Who told them they are ill?