We're All Golden Sunflowers Inside
I blame the 3rd season of The Real World for giving me the idea that I could, one day, live in San Francisco; I thank it for making me as passionate about LGBTQ & HIV activism.
Kansas Bill Will Allow State To Quarantine People With HIV/AIDS
A proposed bill in Kansas is calling for people with HIV or AIDS to be quarantined.
Lawmakers are close to passing a new law discriminating against those who have HIV or AIDS, forcing them to be isolated or have their movements restricted.
Kansas House Bill 2183, which has passed in the Kansas Senate, will update the state’s public health statute by allowing quarantine of Kansans with ‘infectious diseases.’
Senator Marci Francisco attempted to restore an amendment providing an exclusion for people living with HIV/AIDS, saying the disease is not spread through casual contact and the bill could permit discrimination.
The law was originally intended to remove the need for a firefighter or a paramedic who would have to get the necessary court order to get a victim’s blood for infectious diseases if they had become exposed to it.
In 1988, Kansas banned quarantining those with AIDS. If the law is passed, many are fearing health officials will begin intimidating those with HIV or AIDS with the threat they could be isolated from the general population.
I am so beyond pissed about this.
(via mommapolitico)
Doctors announced on Sunday that a baby had been cured of an H.I.V. infection for the first time, a startling development that could change how infected newborns are treated and sharply reduce the number of children living with the virus that causes AIDS.
The baby, born in rural Mississippi, was treated aggressively with antiretroviral drugs starting around 30 hours after birth, something that is not usually done. If further study shows this works in other babies, it will almost certainly change the way newborns of infected mothers are treated all over the world. The United Nations estimates that 330,000 babies were newly infected in 2011, the most recent year for which there is data, and that more than 3 million children globally are living with H.I.V.
If the report is confirmed, the child born in Mississippi would be only the second well-documented case of a cure in the world, giving a boost to research aimed at a cure, something that only a few years ago was thought to be virtually impossible.
The first person cured was Timothy Brown, known as the “Berlin patient,’’ a middle-aged man with leukemia who received a bone-marrow transplant from a donor genetically resistant to H.I.V. infection.
“For pediatrics, this is our Timothy Brown,’’ said Dr. Deborah Persaud, associate professor at the Johns Hopkins Children’s Center and lead author of the report on the baby. “It’s proof of principle that we can cure H.I.V. infection if we can replicate this case.’’
Dr. Persaud and other researchers spoke in advance of a presentation of the findings on Monday at the Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections in Atlanta.
Some outside experts, who have not yet heard all the details, said they needed convincing that the baby had truly been infected. If not, this would be a case of prevention, something already done for babies born to infected mothers.
“The one uncertainty is really definitive evidence that the child was indeed infected,” said Dr. Daniel R. Kuritzkes, chief of infectious diseases at Brigham and Women’s Hospital.
Dr. Persaud and some other outside scientists said they were certain the baby – whose name and gender were not disclosed – had been infected. There were five positive tests in the baby’s first month of life – four for viral RNA and one for DNA. And once the treatment started, the virus levels in the baby’s blood declined in the pattern characteristic of infected patients.
Dr. Persaud said there was also little doubt that the child experienced what she called a “functional cure.” Now 2½ , the child has been off drugs for a year with no sign of functioning virus.
!
(via mommapolitico)
Scientists at Stanford have genetically engineered cells that are resistant to HIV, opening the door to a possible alternative therapy.
According to a Stanford press release, the procedure uses molecular scissors to cut into T-cells, and then insert a series of HIV-resistant genes. The virus was therefore blocked from entering the cells, which is typically how it invades and then destroys the immune system. …
“Providing an infected person with resistant T-cells would not cure their viral infection,” assistant professor Sara Sawyer, PhD, added. “However, it would provide them with a protected set of T-cells that would ward off the immune collapse that typically gives rise to AIDS.”
As the article points out, this would not provide a “cure” for people with HIV, and there are still several potential complications with the genetically altered cells. But this is undeniably a breakthrough, and it makes me hopeful that we’re working toward ending this disease once and for all.
I just realized that I totally, and completely inadvertently, quoted Annie Lennox’s opening quote from this video for one of my scholarship essays. This is simultaneously awesome and sad.
Today’s World AIDS Day. You may not be infected, but we are all affected by this disease. Please show your support however you can. Volunteer for a local AIDS charity, donate money, go to a World AIDS Day event where you live, but above all, please get tested and protect yourself.
A new campaign from the Centers for Disease Control gives voice to Americans living with HIV and their loved ones. The campaign’s website, ActAgainstAIDS.org , has a bunch more posters and video stories from people living with HIV. Powerful and inspiring stuff! Hopefully, stories like these will help fight the stigma associated with HIV/AIDS and get more people involved in ending the epidemic. We all have a role in fighting HIV and AIDS.
“It is inconceivable to me that in a world filled with iPads and tweets we are still fighting for the rights of mothers to have their children born free of HIV. This should be as easy as creating a Facebook page. So come, let’s use everything we know and every way we can to eliminate mother-to-child transmission of HIV/AIDS today.”
Share this post if you agree with Whoopi!Whoopi Goldberg is a UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador and was speaking ahead of the XIX International AIDS Conference, which is taking place now in Washington, D.C. USA.
To learn more, please visit:
