At 06:22 AM 4/5/00 +0800, you wrote:
>Reflectorites
>
>On Tue, 04 Apr 2000 14:22:59 -0500, Susan Brassfield wrote:
>
>[...]
>
>SB>Stephen Jones quoted a huge amount of the above article but left out these
>>two tidbits:
>>
>>"Last June, following Mbeki's election to the presidency, Manto
>>Tshabalala-Msimang was named minister of health. UNAIDS then brokered a
>>deal with British pharmaceutical company Glaxo Wellcome for cut-rate AZT
>>to be used in Africa to reduce the spread of HIV from infected mothers to
>>their babies. Such AZT interventions reduced the number of HIV-positive
>>babies born in the
>> United States to just 32 last year."
>
>I can't include everything. I did include some opposing viewpoints.
>
>But now Susan has raised it, how do they know it was AZT interventions
>which did the trick? I am suspicious of drug-company financed statistics.
drug companies are not the only ones keeping statistics. No need for
suspicion, raw data should tell the story.Where is it? You pounce on stories
like the one above, but I don't see any data to support your suspicions. I
didn't see any on that website you gave me either. I don't see "XXX many
people from 1979 to 1989 (or whenever before the drugs were widely
available) contracted AIDS and XXX may people died. After the
availablability of drugs XXX people got AIDS and XXX people died." It should
be pretty easy to tell if they are dying quicker and in greater numbers
after taking AZT. How many infants got AIDS from their mothers *before* the
AZT compared to now? That should also be a pretty easy statistic to dig up.
In fact, in about 5 minutes I did dig up one study below.
>If the drug companies have nothing to hide, why are they opposing South
>Africa's commission to find out?
I think they think it's a waste of time and money. It's a delaying tactic.
>I repeat I am *not* denying that HIV causes AIDS, just that there
>is a sizable body of expert opinion that it doesn't. A separate
>question is whether highly expensive, highly toxic drug cocktails
>are effective.
Aactivists have persuaded at least one drug company to give its drugs away
for free. If those drugs kill you, why bother?
>I welcome the South African government's attempt to find out
>the truth about the relationship between HIV and AIDS.
and I applaud the European Union's efforts along the same lines:
----------------
http://sg.dailynews.yahoo.com/headlines/world/afp/article.html?s=singapore/h
eadlines/000331/world/afp/New_evidence_drug_cocktail_boosts_longevity_of_HIV
_victims.html
Friday, March 31 7:01 AM SGT
New evidence drug cocktail boosts longevity of HIV victims
PARIS, March 31 (AFP) -
A cocktail of medications introduced four years ago has immensely increased
the longevity of people with the AIDS virus, according to research published
in Friday's Lancet.
The drug combination, known as highly-active antiretroviral therapy (HAART),
is responsible for an overall decline of 64 percent in the risk of dying
within 10 years of developing the virus, it said.
The benefit has been most spectacular among older people with human
immunodeficiency virus (HIV), it added.
Amongst people who were aged 45-64 when they caught the virus, 67 percent of
people were still alive a decade later, compared with only 34 percent in the
pre-HAART era.
In the 35-44 age group, the survival rate was 83 percent, compared with 43
percent previously.
Survival amongst people who had been aged 25-34 at the time of infection was
82 percent, compared with 57 percent before, and the rate amongst those aged
15-24 years was 84 percent, from 66 percent previously.
HAART is a complex course of drugs called protease inhibitors and reverse
transcriptase inhibitors that has been found to be highly effective in
combating the spread of HIV in the body, but not curing it.
It is also highly costly, which makes it out of reach for many HIV patients
in poor countries, and it can sometimes have toxic side-effects.
The EU-funded study was conducted by an organisation called CASCADE
Collaboration. CASCADE stands for Concerted Action on Seroconversion to AIDS
and Death in Europe.
The group, a pooled effort among European AIDS researchers, assessed data on
5,646 people with HIV from 17 populations in 10 European countries. The
virus strain followed in the study was the commonest HIV-1.
"Our findings show a large improvement in survival expectations in all age
groups for those at risk during the period in which HAART became available,"
said CASCADE Collaboration's coordinator, Kholoud Porter.
She sounded a cautionary note, however, noting that the long-term
implications of HAART remained unclear as the treatment was only introduced in
In separate research also published in the British medical weekly,
specialists gave statistical backing to the theory that the age at which HIV
is contracted has an enormous impact on the chances of survival.
The death rate, and also the speed with which HIV develops into AIDS,
increased greatly with age, according to the study, which is based on data
before 1996, when HAART became available.
It found that average survival for people who were aged 15-24 at the time
when they caught the virus was 12.5 years.
But that fell to just 7.9 years for people aged 45-54.
The work was conducted by the Collaborative Group on AIDS Incubation and HIV
Survival, grouping researchers in Europe, North America and Australia.
It was based on data from 13,030 HIV-1 infected individuals.
--------
Peace is not the absence of conflict--it is the presence of justice.
--Martin Luther King, Jr.
Please visit my website:
http://www.telepath.com/susanb
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