30 Years of AIDS
http://thedianerehmshow.org/shows/2011-05-31/30-years-aids
On June 5, 1981, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported five cases of otherwise healthy, gay men in Los Angeles with the same strange pnuemonia. One month later, twenty-six more gay men had it. But now they were also appearing in San Fransisco and New York City. The disease was called GRID – Gay Related Immunodeficiency Disease, until it began affecting people of all genders, races, ages and sexual orientations. Dr. Anthony Fauci is head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. He’s been involved in the fight against HIV/AIDS since it began. He reflects on the history and future of the epidemic.
Guests
Dr. Anthony Fauci
director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases/NIH.
Program Highlights
Dr. Fauci: AIDS Epidemic a "Game Changer"
Dr. Anthony Fauci remembers seeing the first reports of young, previously healthy people who, in the summer of 1981, began presenting at hospitals across the country with unusual forms of pneumonia and cancer. "I remember very clearly that I literally got goose pimples because I knew that this was something new, strange, mysterious, and that it wasn't going to go away because it smacked of an infectious disease, it smacked of a sexually transmitted disease, but we had no idea what it was at the time."
Fauci refers to the early days of AIDS diagnoses as a "dark part" of his own medical career. "Not as dark as for the unfortunate individuals who were afflicted with this terrible disease, but I went from studying diseases in which I had developed some important therapies that made people well, so my day would be going into a room, seeing a person with a very serious disease, treating them, having
them feel wonderful, having the family hug me and I'm on top of the world to years in the early 80s of, you know, not being able to do anything except palliative treatment."
"It was so painful and frustrating where virtually all of your patients died and almost all of them young men who were at the prime of their lives. It was a very difficult time being a healer who couldn't heal anybody."
An Early Stigmatizing of the Disease
Diane noted that in its earliest days, the disease was called "GRID," (Gay-Related Immunodeficiency Disease) not AIDS. It appeared, at first, to only affect gay men, but Fauci says that pattern quickly changed. "Did that mean, for example, that people in places of power didn't really want to put money into the study thereof?" Diane asked.
"It's very clear that early on, the kind of leadership from political figures was not really apparent from the very beginning," Fauci said.
Fauci developed a very strong relationship with the activist community in the mid-to-late 1980s, which helped him understand the community's treatment and prevention needs much more fully.
From "Death Sentence" to Chronic Disease
"Today, if a 20 year-old comes into our clinic at NIH or any clinic in any hospital that has the capabilities for that and they're newly infected and you put them on appropriate therapy and they take their therapy, you can mathematically model that they'll live an additional 50 years," Fauci said.
Fauci said that although the newest drugs work very well to suppress the virus, someone who is infected must stay on the drugs for their entire life span - which raises concerns about toxicity. "This is a very unusual virus that is very difficult to eradicate," Fauci said. "We don't think it's impossible, but it's very difficult."
Researchers have also determined that if an infected person is treated successfully enough to get the level of virus in their bodies very low, it markedly diminishes the likelihood that the individual will transmit the virus to someone else.
Comments
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What is the difference btw the strain in africa and here in the USA?
If Gaetan Dugas isn't patient 0, then how did the virus get here in the USA?
May favourite A.I.D.S. crank claimed both that H.I.V. does not cause the disease, and that it had been developed at Ft Detrick to eliminate undesirables. (I think the Freemasons had some part in the story at some point, they usually do.)
Gerald: And yet there remains a sick logic to AIDS conspiracy in a country where captive populations are injected with syphilis pathogens or plutonium just to find out what will happen. Think how AIDS materialized just as throwback Reaganism took hold. You mentioned Ft. Detrick, just northwest of Washington, DC, where weaponized anthrax is maintained along with other biological warfare materials. We have never had a good explanation of the anthrax attacks on mostly leading Democrats following 9/11. Did the fascist underworld nearly show its hand in a reckless effort to mobilize greater fear? Don't be too quick to accept manufactured truths and laugh at skeptics. Many times conspiracy theorists have been proven right, or almost right. If there are no conspiracies then why is governmental and corporate secrecy so popular? Sometimes when loose lips sink ships, those sunken ships belong to the enemies of the People.
HIV/AIDS came out at the same time I did in the early 1980s when I was a teenager in Taylor Mill, Kentucky. Over the years I've spent countless hours at the bedside of friends dying from AIDS. And I've worked as a volunteer in HIV prevention in the gay community for the last three decades. Most recently, while living in San Jose, CA, I worked in HIV education/prevention in the San Francisco Bay Area.
But no matter how hard we worked to prevent the spread of HIV in the gay community, the rate of HIV infection held steady or increased. Now I live in the Cincinnati area and recently discovered the rate of HIV infection here is going up month after month.
I can't image there is a gay man alive in the U.S. who doesn't know about HIV/AIDS. Do you have any ideas why men are still taking risks and getting infected? What more can we do to prevent this? I've heard that men continue to get infected because of a wide spread problem with depression and low self worth, but I'm not sure.
As a 47 year old gay man who grew up with HIV/AIDS, I have remained HIV negative even while dating someone who is HIV positive. It's easy to remain HIV negative yet men still engage in risky sex.
Are there any studies as to why men continue to put themselves at risk? Is there any answer to this problem?
I'm desperate to save more of my gay brothers from this disease. What can I do?
The use of the term "Conspiracy Theory" is an automatic flag that the person using the term is covering something. It's a cope out phrase to discredit the person asking a question while at the same time avoiding having to answer the question asked: i.e. George W. Bush aspects of 9/11. With regard to HIV, I would bring the speaker's attention to Edward T. Haslam's book Dr. Mary's Monkey - Dr. Mary Sherman. Has he even heard of her?
Diane, you can't have a conversation about AIDs w/out talking about race. ... Thanks
Question: There seems to be an oversize amount of funding given to the symptoms of hiv/aids, ie $15 billion for prescriptions vs. only a few million for funding for a cure. There should be more focus on a cure.
Seems to me, more funding for a cure would be wise -- budget a few billion more for it and once a cure is found, the need for billions for drugs and lives would be lessened.
I am extremely disappointed that you conducted a discussion on HIV/AIDS without the discoverer of the link between the two and the developer of the blood test for their detection, Dr. Robert Gallo. Dr. Gallo is continuing his work on HIV/AIDS prevention at the Institute of Human Virology in Baltimore which he heads. He has been nominated for his work for the Nobel and has received countless awards worldwide for his past discoveries and his continued work. Earlier this month he announced a large grant from the Gates Foundation which will allow for the beginning of clinical trials for a vaccine. Without a shadow of a doubt he is the leading authority on HIV/AIDS from its earliest days until present with his continuing research and his treatment centers in the US, Africa and Haiti. The fact that he was not invited to be a part of your discussion makes me question your own research when preparing for a show. I feel he could have contributed much more to the discussion had he been made a part of it.
The question of the exactly how Aids jumped from African Chimps to humans should have been discussed more. The two plausible theories are (imho) 1)Africans slept with Chimps or 2)the polio vaccination in the Congo theory. I have come to believe that theory 2 make much much more sense than 1. Africans have lived with Chimps for decades. There is just no reason why this jump would happen around the same time as the polio vaccine and not earlier. I think American resources have been put to work to discredit theory #2. Considering everything else that we know (Tuskegee Experiments, syphilis experiments in South america etc. theory 2 fits very well with the medical ethics of the west at that time.
Here in Florida we currenlty have a "waiting list" of over 4,000 people who do not have access to HIV medications. The AIDS Drug Assistance Program (ADAP) is in crisis throughout our nation.
Many people will get sick, many people will get infected, and many people will die if funds are not made available for this program.
Yes, we have come a long way but our health care system is such a mess that we will see a repeat of the 80"s horrors if something is not done.
I suggest people watch this video for alot of details on AIDS and how it may have started that we never hear about. I don't think much of the facts in the video can be disputed, though some may try to dispute the conclusions:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LZs1V8mpcoY
Also, note that experimental hepatitis shots where given to gay men volunteers a couple of years before AIDS appeared.
Yes! This is what I believe happened.
I wish someone would take the issue of the origin of AIDS seriously.
I have never seen proof that the government intentionally infected populations of people but there is a lot of circumstantial evidence that suggests it could have been an accident. The epidemic took off in the gay community after an experimental vaccination program was conducted on a group of volunteers, all gay men in NYC. All of those men were dead of AIDS within a few years. The same is true in Africa, after a vaccination program was conducted by the WHO I believe, the epidemic arrived there.
The labs where these vaccinations were developed were using chimpanzees in research. Considering that it took years to even detect the virus, it's very likely that the vaccines could have been contaminated with an unknown virus. The consequences of finding that the government is at fault (and not the behavior of gay men which is still very much a belief in this society) would be severe, we will never know the truth. I've gotten my information from a couple of books that seemed credible. No theories of eugenics, racism, etc. Just facts.
Reagan's behavior during the epidemic was inexcusable and clearly homophobic. He deserves absolute condemnation for it.