The claim by "scientists" of an "HIV cure" in a baby, which broke Sunday afternoon at the...
Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections in Atlanta.
...is VERY BIG.
The "study" is to be released tomorrow at the conference. The entire HIV-AIDS Industry public relations apparatus is hyping the hell out of this. You can bet it will be front page and TV network news Monday. I have checked the stories that started appearing early Sunday evening at major media web sites, like the New York Times and CNN
They are not just reprinting Associated press or Reuters stories. These are being written by the health reporters for each paper and network and magazine.
You can be assured that this "cure" will be used to hype universal testing and "test and treat," not just for infants but for all age groups. If you check the stock prices for the ARV pharmaceutical companies Monday, I expect you may find heavy spikes for chemo purveyors like Gilead Sciences.
Read the stories carefully. The baby's doctor started giving the child the poison 30 hours after birth, in high doses, after the mother tested "positive" at the time of birth and BEFORE the baby had even been tested! The drugs were continued for months, and then the mother stopped bringing the baby to the clinic. Children and family services apparently tracked her down to force the drugs on her child, at which time more tests were done and the apparent miracle was realized--that the baby no longer "had the virus" even months after
"treatment" had stopped. (That's my quick take on what is being claimed; read the stories carefully for your selves.)
This is taking the madness to an all new level. The "cure" of the "Berlin patient" was claimed to be the result of a radical and ultra expensive bone marrow transplant--not ARV's--and thus could not be claimed as a procedure that could be widely used. This "cure" is all about the drugs!
--Terry Michael
In Forbes, at least, the headline was a question, and the article included this very brief disclaimer: "As Pollack and McNeil note, one big question is whether infection actually happened," and then brushed it aside with assertion from researchers that "there is clear proof" of infection.
ReplyDeleteFew people are going to be willing or able to look behind the curtain on this one, I'm afraid.
I do find it curious that this particular piece of research non-news is going to get leap-frogged to the top of the news page, so close on the heels of Lindsey Nagel's own horrific story about poorly informed doctors and social workers going unnoticed.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/matthewherper/2013/03/03/was-an-infant-cured-of-hiv/
Ok, maybe I am behind on the times or something, but testing a baby at birth doesn't mean anything since the baby still has the mother's antibodies, and the test could actually just be finding that. Babies born with HIV have up to 18 months to test negative at any time as the mother's antibodies are no longer present in the body of the baby. There is a fifty percent chance that this could happen.
ReplyDeleteI used to volunteer at an orphanage in Thailand for babies with HIV. One of the first orphanages for only babies with HIV, in fact. I saw this happen time and time again. Babies test positive, they get dumped at the orphanage, then as the mother's antibodies wear off, they get adopted out. I also saw some babies die. So, how do they know that the baby actually had HIV...I don't mean that they tested the baby, but that the test indicated the presence of HIV in the mother's antibodies still present in the baby. THAT is the question.