Taking one pill a day could prevent HIV/AIDS

[apples and oranges]

(AP) CHICAGO -- A pill to prevent HIV infection is already being given to some healthy people, but without government approval, it remains out of reach and too costly for many who need it.

Doctors, patients and advocates say that would change if the Food and Drug Administration takes a landmark step and allows the pill, Truvada, to be marketed for prevention. The drug has been used for some time as a treatment for those already infected with the AIDS virus.

"This is a pretty radical step, but I think it's a necessary step," said Dr. Lisa Sterman of San Francisco, who prescribes the drug for already infected patients and those who are healthy but at risk of getting the virus from their partners or through risky sex.

"We've come as far as we can with condom use and safe sex strategies," Sterman said.

This pill costs around $1,000/month. Seems kind of strange to think that someone would be responsible enough to take one pill a day, risking liver and kidney damage, but not responsible enough to just have safe sex?

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-204_162-57432797/hiv-advocates-say-truvada-could-save-lives/

[cindyperry2010]

1. what are the side

effects?

[Brother Buzz]

2. Truvada Side Effects

http://aids.emedtv.com/truvada/truvada-side-effects-p2.html

Usual stuff:

Dizziness -- in up to 8 percent of people
Nausea -- up to 8 percent
Diarrhea -- up to 7 percent
Fatigue -- up to 7 percent
Headaches -- up to 5 percent.
Vomiting
Sinus infection
Upper respiratory tract infection (such as the common cold)
Sore throat and runny nose
Drowsiness
Abnormal dreams.

Then there is some of the more serious stuff:

Depression
High cholesterol or high triglycerides
Decreased bone density (which can increase your risk of broken bones or osteoporosis)
Worsening of hepatitis B
Kidney problems
An enlarged or tender liver

[kestrel91316]

7. POTENTIAL side effects. Not assured of happening at all.

But the nannies and prudes like people to think that side effects are things that will happen, not that merely might happen.

[Brother Buzz]

8. True, and note the percentage occurrence for the more common side effects listed in my post

[the peoples summit]

3. And why are the pills so expensive?

It is truly mind-boggling that a government-created dis-ease is now "miraculously" being "healed" with yet another med.

[and-justice-for-all]

4. Your one wave short of a shipwreck...

You have no idea where HIV comes from or who is truly at fault for bringing this other wise isolated diseases to the world.

[banana convention.]

9. LOL @ your little symbol there...

And you don't think some of the luminaries are shooting up people in Africa under the guise of vaxxing them? Where did all that HIV in Africa come from, hmmm?

[tblue37]

5. HIV is almost certainly a mutation of the simian HIV virus.

Because of the constant human encroachment on natural habitat and the fact that we travel so widely and import so much from so many places, once isolated diseases are now able to spread easily among large human populations.

Many African tribesmen eat "bushmeat"--i.e., they kill animals like monkeys, chimpanzees, and gorillas for meat. The virus could jump from monkey to man pretty easily while the hunter is skinning and cutting up the meat of an infected monkey or chimpanzee. But human infections of this sort remained isolated and thus unknown until the areas where they occurred were linked up with the modern world. Then, modern global transportation made it easy for the infection to spread to urban centers in Africa and from urban centers in Africa to urban centers all over the world, while the sexual revolution made its sexual transmission more rapid than it would have been in a more sexually repressed era.

I have read that in the distant past up to 90% of the species susceptible to the virus died of it, so that those who are descended from the survivors have at least some degree of immunity against its more lethal effects and live with it as a chronic though not necessarily fatal condition. In fact, in many simian species, infection doesn't cause any symptoms at all, while others suffer from varying degrees of illness, and some do develop full-blown simian AIDS and die of it the way humans do of the human variation of AIDS.

Here is a bit of information, but there is plenty more all over the web:

http://www.springerlink.com/content/6771m57034n06162/
HIV type 1 (HIV-1) and type 2 (HIV-2) are the result of several cross-species transmissions from primates to humans. Recently, the ancestral strains of HIV-1 groups M and N were shown to still persist in today’s wild chimpanzee populations (Pan troglodytes troglodytes) in south Cameroon. Lately, HIV-1 group O-related viruses have been identified in western gorillas (Gorilla gorilla), called SIVgor, but chimpanzees are most likely the original reservoir of this simian immunodeficiency virus (SIV) infection. HIV-2 is the result of at least eight distinct cross-species transmissions of SIV from sooty mangabeys (Cercocebus atys) in West Africa. Although the origin of HIV-1 and HIV-2 became clearer, some important questions concerning pathogenicity and epidemic spread of certain HIV/SIV variants need to be further elucidated. Because humans are still exposed to a plethora of primate lentiviruses through hunting and handling of primate bushmeat, the possibility of additional zoonotic transfers of primate lentiviruses from other primates must be considered.

I found a really good, detailed article for you:
http://perspectivesinmedicine.org/content/2/1/a007153.full

The government is often involved in dark and evil deeds, but we cannot blame the govrnment for creating HIV/AIDS!

[and-justice-for-all]

11. exactly...

I am fully aware of the origins of Hiv and what is to blame for its escape from southern camaroon in the mid to late
1800s. Your post is close to correct, if I was not on a kindle I would elaborate.

[tblue37]

12. I am a nonscientist working from memory of several articles I have read over the past

few years, so I don't doubt that I got some details wrong. I do know that different species are susceptible to different strains of the virus, and that while the strain specific to a given species might not produce any disease symptoms in that species, a different strain, to which a different species has become comfortably adapted, can produce the simian version of AIDS, which is just as debilitating and deadly as full-blown human AIDS.

[kestrel91316]

6. Condoms are not 100% effective at preventing STD transmission. But your

prudish judgmentalism is duly noted.

[La Lioness Priyanka]

10. safer sex is good but not 100% effective. you know they do empirical studies

before they release this sort of information, right? so while something may seem strange to you, the facts don't support your rather judgmental statement.