Eideard

The family of an HIV-positive boy sued a boarding school in Hershey, Pennsylvania after it denied admission to the 13-year-old citing safety concerns…

HIV, or the human immunodeficiency virus, is medical condition that undermines the body’s immune system and can make those infected susceptible to lethal cancers and infections. HIV is a precursor to AIDS, or the Acquired immune deficiency syndrome, a pandemic which has killed roughly 25 million people since its discovery in the early 1980s…

…HIV is not transmitted by day-to-day casual contact, such as through shaking hands or a casual kiss. The CDC said it is not possible to become infected from a toilet seat, a drinking fountain, a door knob, dishes, drinking glasses, food, or pets…

The child’s attorneys at the non-profit AIDS Law Project of Pennsylvania sought to compare the school’s actions to the Ryan White case, in which an HIV-positive Indiana boy was expelled from middle school in the 1980s because of the infection. That case led to the Ryan White Care Act of 1990.

Federal and state laws prohibit discrimination on the basis of a real or perceived disability, including having HIV, according to the National Association of State Boards of Education…

“Like Ryan White, this young man is a motivated, intelligent kid who poses no health risk to other students, but is being denied an educational opportunity because of ignorance and fear about HIV and AIDS,” said AIDS Law Project Executive Director Ronda B. Goldfein, who is representing the boy and his mother in the lawsuit.

The boy “is an honor roll student and an avid athlete” who controls his HIV through a regimen of medication that does not impact his school schedule, according to the lawsuit filed with the U.S. District Court in Philadelphia.

The school, which was founded by industrialist Milton S. Hershey in 1909 to care for orphans, said their case is different because it is a boarding school “where children live in homes with 10 to 12 other students” on its campus “24 hours a day, 7 days a week,” McNamara said.

Ignorance, as usual, is not bliss. It is a cause and vector for backwards decisions made by foolish people who haven’t a clue – in this case – about the lack of danger or infection from someone infected by HIV. They have no understanding of the difference between HIV and AIDs. They have no perception of the effectiveness of today’s medications in controlling the effect on someone with the ailment in their system.

The display case at the National Museum of American History holds a section of the AIDS Memorial Quilt, a tactile reminder of the individual lives lost to the virus.

It also serves as entry into two exhibits that mark the 30th anniversary of the first report on AIDS by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The first exhibit is part of the museum’s “Science in American Life” section and focuses on the early phases of AIDS, from 1981 to 1987, as well as its impact on public health policy and politics. In the second exhibit, display cases in the museum’s Archives Center showcase oral histories and artifacts that attempt to bring attention to AIDS and its human toll.

The images in both exhibits immediately bring to mind the passions and anxieties of the 1980s, as the gay and medical communities grappled with the unknown illness. The government acknowledged the beginnings of the epidemic in June and July 1981, when the CDC reported five cases of pneumocystis carinii pneumonia in Los Angeles and 26 cases of Kaposi’s sarcoma in Los Angeles and New York…

The museum’s Archives Center has collected such totems of the crisis as the Hub Cutter, the mailboxlike receptacle for needles that is now commonplace, education panels that Planned Parenthood used for lectures in schools and anti-gay articles that called AIDS a “gay plague…”

The display includes posters from the movies “Long Time Companion” (1990) and “Philadelphia” (1993), and a videotaped discussion with basketball star Magic Johnson and television host Arsenio Hall.

“We wanted to answer the question: How does popular culture reflect the moment?” said Franklin A. Robinson Jr., a curator with the Archives Center.

Bob Witeck, an activist and co-founder of a communications firm specializing in gay issues, said the Smithsonian observation is timely. “Right now 9/11 has to be explained to younger people — HIV and AIDS far more so.”

My cousin died in 1984. Before the US military “realized” they shouldn’t be so helpful to those dying of this disease. The Navy provided superb care – as well as they were able. They transferred him so he might die with his parents in their home.

Thanks, Ursarodinia

More than 500 veterans in Ohio are being contacted by a clinic where they may have been exposed to hepatitis and HIV during routine dental work, according to Ohio Veterans Affairs communications officer Todd Sledge.

The Dayton, Ohio, VA clinic is contacting 535 veterans who received treatment during an 18-year period from a dentist who admitted to not washing his hands or changing gloves between patients. There are 100 to 130 additional patient records still to review, according to Sledge.

“We’re taking a very aggressive approach and a well-planned intervention to make sure that we’re contacting these folks,” Sledge said…

Individuals sought by the center are known to have been treated directly by the clinician between January 1, 1992, and July 28, 2010, according to a release by the medical center.

The center is offering free tests to those involved and the clinic will provide all necessary care and treatment without charge should a veteran test positive for the viruses, Sledge said.

While Sledge said the testing stemmed from “invasive procedures … done by one single clinician,” He did not identify that clinician and he did not release specifics about the clinician’s health…

Last year the clinic closed for a month for “re-education on infection control standards” for the staff, Sledge said.

That’s a polite way to say, “you lazy SOB’s have been putting our patients in danger!”

Desperate heroin users in a few African cities have begun engaging in a practice that is so dangerous it is almost unthinkable: they deliberately inject themselves with another addict’s blood, researchers say, in an effort to share the high or stave off the pangs of withdrawal.

The practice, called flashblood or sometimes flushblood, is not common, but has been reported in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, on the island of Zanzibar and in Mombasa, Kenya.

It puts users at the highest possible risk of contracting AIDS and hepatitis. While most AIDS transmission in Africa is by heterosexual sex, the use of heroin is growing in some cities, and experts are warning that flashblood — along with syringe-sharing and other dangerous habits — could fuel a new wave of AIDS infections.

“Injecting yourself with fresh blood is a crazy practice — it’s the most effective way of infecting yourself with H.I.V.,” said Dr. Nora D. Volkow, director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse, which supports the researchers who discovered the practice. “Even though the number who do it is a relatively small group, they are vectors for H.I.V. because they support themselves by sex work…”

In most East African countries like Tanzania and Kenya, only 3 to 8 percent of adults are infected with the AIDS virus, far fewer than in southern Africa, where the rates reach 15 to 25 percent.

But among those who inject heroin, the rates are far higher. In Tanzania, about 42 percent of addicts are infected. The rate is even higher — 64 percent — among female addicts, Dr. McCurdy said, and since most support themselves through prostitution, they are in two high-risk groups, and their customers are at risk of catching the disease.

Most of the addicts she has interviewed who practice flashblood, Dr. McCurdy said, are women. For them, sharing blood is more of an act of kindness than an attempt to get high: a woman who has made enough money to buy a sachet of heroin will share blood to help a friend avoid withdrawal. The friend is often a fellow sex worker who has become too old or sick to find customers.

By contrast, on Zanzibar, it is mostly among men, according to a 2006 study in The African Journal of Drug and Alcohol Studies, which found that about 9 percent of the 200 drug-injectors interviewed practiced it.

They’ll all be gone sooner or later. Leaving behind everyone they’ve infected.

Scientists have discovered two potent human antibodies that can stop more than 90 percent of known global HIV strains from infecting human cells in the laboratory, and have demonstrated how one of these disease-fighting proteins accomplishes this feat.

According to the scientists, these antibodies could be used to design improved HIV vaccines, or could be further developed to prevent or treat HIV infection. Moreover, the method used to find these antibodies could be applied to isolate therapeutic antibodies for other infectious diseases as well…

Led by a team from the NIAID Vaccine Research Center (VRC), the scientists found two naturally occurring, powerful antibodies called VRC01 and VRC02 in an HIV infected individual’s blood using a novel molecular device they developed that homes in on the specific cells that make antibodies against HIV. The device is an HIV protein that the scientists modified so it would react only with antibodies specific to the site where the virus binds to cells it infects.

The scientists found that VRC01 and VRC02 neutralize more HIV strains with greater overall strength than previously known antibodies to the virus.

The researchers also determined the atomic-level structure of VRC01 when it is attaching to HIV. This has enabled the team to define how the antibody works and to precisely locate where it attaches to the virus. With this knowledge, they have begun to design components of a candidate vaccine that could teach the human immune system to make antibodies similar to VRC01 that might prevent infection by the vast majority of HIV strains worldwide…

Kudos to the researchers who led this work. It’s now published for peer review here and here.

Fortunately, at least one of those representing me in Congress is bright enough to know that “protein” describes something more than BBQ. He can explain it to the rest.

Researchers at Mt. Sinai School of Medicine have developed a novel influenza vaccine that could represent the next step towards a universal influenza vaccine eliminating the need for seasonal immunizations. They report their findings today in the inaugural issue of mBio™, the first online, open-access journal published by the American Society for Microbiology.

Current influenza vaccines are effective against only a narrow range of influenza virus strains. It is for this reason that new vaccines must be generated and administered each year…

The main reason the current seasonal vaccine is so strain-specific is that the antibodies it induces are targeted at the globular head of the hemaglutinin (HA) molecule on the surface of the influenza virus. This globular head is highly variable and constantly changing from strain to strain.

In this study [.pdf] the researchers constructed a vaccine using HA without its globular head. Mice immunized with the headless HA vaccine showed a broader, more robust immune response than mice immunized with full-length HA, and that immune response was enough to protect them against a lethal viral challenge…

In a related article, also appearing in the inaugural issue of mBio™, Antonio Cassone…and Rino Rappuoli…comment on the research and movement in the future towards universal vaccines.

“Recent research demonstrating the possibility of protecting against all influenza A virus types or even phylogenetically distant pathogens with vaccines based on highly conserved peptide or saccharide sequences is changing our paradigm,” they write. “Is influenza the only disease that warrants approaches for universal vaccines? Clearly it is not.”

They go on to note that a universal pneumococcal vaccine is already being discussed, as well as one for HIV. Universal vaccine strategies could also be used to protect against antibiotic-resistant bacteria and fungi for which no vaccine is currently available.

Bravo! Production of universal vaccines would be an enormous step forward for availability and cost.

I’ve worked for more than a decade in the field of HIV prevention. That means working with sex and drugs — two areas where there is no shortage of good science, and an abundance of ideology.

The science tells us, for example, that making clean needles universally available to drug injectors can more or less wipe out HIV transmission in this group. The ideology tells us that providing such services for injectors is tantamount to condoning an illegal behavior that wrecks lives and families and increases crime. If you were running for election, faced with the choice of paying for clean needles and health services for injectors or with putting more cops on the streets and cells in the jails, which do you think would play best with the voters..?

The fact is that many of the most effective public health policies have been put in place by governments that Americans think of as ideological, even undemocratic.

Iran has one of the world’s better prevention programs inside its jails, and sterile needles are available to injectors from dispensing machines around Tehran. The Kyrgyz Republic gives clean needles to prisoners. China makes needles available to injectors through pharmacies at subsidized prices…

At the local level, though, things often look different. Many cities, realizing that they would have to pick up the pieces of the nation’s failed war on drugs, have scraped out their pockets and provided services to injectors. The result has been a huge decline in new HIV infections among drug users and their sex partners; the burden on the health system has of course fallen, too…

This disconnect between national and local policies is instructive about the way democracy works. At a national level, politicians seem to respond to what they think the electorate wants to hear. Ideology and rhetoric rule. At the local level, however, they are more likely to respond to what the electorate really needs — workable solutions to real problems. The only workable solutions are the ones that are based on good, solid, scientific evidence.

In my little corner of public health, the Obama administration is following through on its promise to put the science back into policy. Since the ban on federal funding for safe injecting programs was dropped in December, the sky has not fallen, and if the government falls, it certainly won’t be because of this small piece of pragmatism.

Yes – when science goes up against ideology, Ideology usually wins!

At least, when you’re in a nation where religion trumps reason, superstition cranks up more votes than knowledge, sophistry overrules scientific research.

A Fort Lauderdale nurse has resigned and more than 1,800 patients have been notified that they may have been exposed to diseases such as HIV and hepatitis, after the nurse allegedly admitted to the hospital that she used disposable IV equipment on multiple patients, a violation of safety standards.

Fort Lauderdale Police are investigating to determine whether any crimes were committed after an anonymous caller reported seeing the nurse use the same saline bag and a portion of tubing more than once, during adult cardiac chemical stress tests.

The hospital, Broward General Medical Center, said that a review of the nurse was conducted when administering intravenous fluids during the stress tests and that she was suspended pending the outcome of a full investigation. The nurse subsequently resigned, according to the hospital.

Police have identified the nurse as Qui Lan of Fort Lauderdale…

“It’s heartbreaking to every employee here,” said Cathy Meyer, a spokeswoman for Broward General Medical Center.

“She was aware that she was doing this. It’s no different than changing a sheet, or a BandAid. This is what nurses go into nursing school for,” Meyer said.

“It’s a violation of standard nursing infection control procedures,” she said. “It’s a universal, standard policy which was violated.”

In truth, I’m shocked. Not over sleaziness being tolerated for so long. We grow accustomed to lousy service in every aspect of daily life.

Slackness like this reflects more than individual incompetence.

The medical journal the Lancet has accused Pope Benedict XVI of distorting scientific evidence to promote Catholic doctrine following his remarks about condom use and HIV.

The attack — which also said that the pope did not know what he was talking about and had put millions of lives at risk — followed his statement last week during a visit to Africa that the use of condoms increased HIV infection rates. This was later amended by the Vatican, which said that condom use merely increased the risk of transmission.

The pope’s remarks, made to journalists on a flight to Cameroon at the start of his visit, overshadowed his trip and provoked condemnation from health and aid agencies, as well as protests from the UN and the governments of Germany, France and Belgium.

Today’s Lancet editorial said the Pope’s statement was “outrageous and wildly inaccurate“. It added: “By saying that condoms exacerbate the problem of HIV/Aids, the pope has publicly distorted scientific evidence to promote Catholic doctrine.

“Whether the pope’s error was due to ignorance or a deliberate attempt to manipulate science to support Catholic ideology is unclear … When any influential person, be it a religious or political leader, makes a false scientific statement that could be devastating to the health of millions of people, they should retract or correct the public record. Anything less from Pope Benedict would be an immense disservice to the public and health advocates, including many thousands of Catholics who work tirelessly to try and prevent the spread of HIV/Aids worldwide.”

Good thing The Lancet editors don’t read the crap fountaining from the head-holes of American bible-thumpers. They’d have to increase the size of their publication just to keep current.

Thanks, K B