Young black gay men who hide sexuality may be behind Brooklyn's HIV epidemic, doctors say

'We are seeing more young men,' says AIDS doctor who has treated boys as young as 14.

BY SIMONE WEICHSELBAUM / NEW YORK DAILY NEWS

A new generation of young Brooklyn black males, many hiding their sexual identity, is worrying doctors who say they are fueling the borough’s HIV epidemic.

HIV cases among men under 30 who sleep with men rose from 232 in 2001 to 491 in 2011. 

“We are seeing more young men,” said Dr. Yusef Afacan, director of the AIDS Center Program at Woodull Medical Center in East Williamsburg. Afacan said he has even treated boys as young as 14 who contracted HIV after sleeping with another male.

500% disparity between blacks and whites testing "positive" for HIV 

“We never saw that a decade ago,” Afacan said. “Young gay men are not using protection.”

Men who have sex with men, or MSMs, include males who identify as gay and also those who hide their sexual preferences for other men.

Doctors believe these men are infecting their black female partners, who made up 79% of all new HIV cases among Brooklyn women in 2011 .

Hoping to stem the disturbing trend, advocates are zeroing in on central Brooklyn neighborhoods, Bedford-Stuyvesant, Crown Heights, Williamsburg, Bushwick and East Flatbush, which are home to the city’s largest group of those living with the disease.

More than 15,000 reside in central Brooklyn, where about 3,600 identify as MSMs. Those 15,000 make up 10% of the citywide HIV/AIDS cases.

The Brooklyn AIDS Task Force opened a small store-front office called Brooklyn Men Konnect on Utica Ave. in Crown Heights, which reputedly has some strong anti-gay attitudes.

Workers troll gay dating sites posing as singles who give graphic intimate advice and push the message of practicing safe hookups.

“It’s too much casual sex. People don’t care. They are not wrapping it up,” said Steven Holmes, 23, a Konnect volunteer who was born with HIV after getting it from his drug-addicted mother. “They aren’t using condoms. They are being reckless.”

“Our lifestyle is taboo,” said a 22-year-old Bed-Stuy man who contracted HIV at 17. He had been struggling with his sexuality and didn't ask his partner to use a condom. “The first time I got a STD,  it was HIV.”

Doctors are complaining that Brooklyn's federal aid for young HIV/AIDS patients has dropped from $2 million a year to $350,000.

“Brooklyn is getting screwed,” said Dr. Jeffrey Birnbaum, head of the SUNY Downstate’s Family, Adolescent and Children's Experience program, which had to let go 26 staffers across the county, including three doctors, because of the cuts.

“These issues need to be dealt with.”

simonew@nydailynews.com

Read more: 

Open Letter to FDA Urging PrEP Review of the drug Truvada from AFC and 25 other HIV-AIDS Industry organizations

Is this AZT all over again?

Seem like AIDS Healthcare Foundation is supporting the ideology of this blog?


Please support their efforts:

Send your eletters TODAY. Go to: www.nomagicpills.org

 This is an open letter to the Food and Drug Administration, urging the priority review of the drug Truvada for use in PrEP (pre-exposure prophylaxis). The AIDS Foundation of Chicago and 25 other organizations signed this letter to counter the AIDS Healthcare Foundation's protest of the FDA regarding this review. To read the PDF of the letter, with footnotes, click here.

January 25, 2012

Margaret A. Hamburg, M.D.
Commissioner
Food and Drug Administration
5630 Fishers Lane
Rockville, MD 20852

Re: Request for Priority Review – Supplemental NDA submission by Gilead Sciences, Inc.
requesting approval of a labeling change to include HIV prevention indication use for
emtricitabine; tenofovir disoproxil fumarate fixed dose combination

Is this true? A new film to Celebrate: 

How to kill yourself by forcing the government to give you AIDS drugs faster 

Faced with their own mortality, an improbable group of mostly HIV-positive young men and women broke the mold as radical warriors taking on Washington and the medical establishment. How to Survive a Plague is the story of two coalitions—ACT UP and TAG (Treatment Action Group)—whose activism and innovation turned AIDS from a death sentence into a manageable condition. Despite having no scientific training, these self-made activists infiltrated the pharmaceutical industry and helped identify promising new drugs, moving them from experimental trials to patients in record time. With unfettered access to a treasure trove of never-before-seen archival footage from the 1980s and '90s, filmmaker David France puts the viewer smack in the middle of the controversial actions, the heated meetings, the heartbreaking failures, and the exultant breakthroughs of heroes in the making.

Clinton to Urge Using Latest Science in New AIDS Push

More Drugs sooner is always good Prevention? if condoms are prevention also where in this article is the break down of the cost of producing and disturbing them? OR just basic cost of education? 


Modeling done by scientists shows that combining HIV prevention methods—including the use of condoms, male circumcision, medicines to prevent the transmission of HIV from mother to child, and putting more infected people on AIDS drugs—can lead to a sharp drop in the number of new HIV infections.

By BETSY MCKAY - WSJ.com 

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is expected to call Tuesday for a new push by the U.S. and other countries to harness recent science to stem the HIV/AIDS pandemic.

Government researchers believe science has now developed sufficient tools to contain the pandemic, which erupted 30 years ago, has infected more than 60 million people and has been linked to the deaths of about 30 million. HIV infects about 2.6 million people a year.

Enlarge Image

Getty Images

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton

In a speech to be delivered at the National Institutes of Health, Mrs. Clinton is expected to call for those tools to be widely implemented in countries where the pandemic continues to rage, and to ask donors to step up aid to intensify the response, according to people briefed on the speech.

Modeling done by scientists shows that combining HIV prevention methods—including the use of condoms, male circumcision, medicines to prevent the transmission of HIV from mother to child, and putting more infected people on AIDS drugs—can lead to a sharp drop in the number of new HIV infections.

RWANDA: Plan to treat HIV discordant couples -PlusNews Global

IRIN News: “HIV-positive people in discordant relationships will start ART regardless of their CD4 count”, in another bid to boost the number of people taking AIDS drugs because Rwandan authorities believe that, “Antiretroviral therapy has the potential both to reduce mortality and morbidity rates among HIV-infected people, and to improve their quality of life.”, although what they mean by “has the potential”, is unclear. 


KIGALI, 12 September 2011 (PlusNews) - 
HIV-positive Rwandans in discordant relationships will start taking antiretroviral
Infections within stable relationships have been identified as one of the main sources of new cases in Rwanda (file photo)treatment (ART) as soon as they test positive as part of a plan to boost national HIV prevention and treatment efforts.

A New Plan To Mutate HIV Out Of Existence

From Terry Michael: Another forthcoming miracle from The HIV-AIDS Industry....

Excerpt: "What we can say clearly is that there is not a sense of urgency. Collectively [the big pharmaceutical companies] are quite happy to just to let things kind of evolve on their own, and they're not particularly interested in figuring out how to change the overall standard of care."


BY ARIEL SCHWARTZ

Instead of simply blocking HIV from replicating, a new drug in trial stages causes it to mutate. If it works, it could eventually fully eliminate HIV in people who have the disease, freeing them from a lifetime of drugs.

And Terry Notes that even the brain-dead mainstream sees greed writ large:

But as the tests continue, Koronis may run into problems forming partnerships with major pharmaceutical companies that are happy with the current state of the HIV drug market. “The business model is predicated on the chronic application of drugs that have very high margins,” says Koronis CEO Don Elmer. “What we can say clearly is that there is not a sense of urgency. Collectively [the big pharmaceutical companies] are quite happy to just to let things kind of evolve on their own, and they’re not particularly interested in figuring out how to change the overall standard of care.” Despite this, Koronis has had ongoing interactions with six of the seven largest pharmaceutical companies for the better part of the last decade.

HIV is big business. The market for HIV drugs is currently $14 billion, and in the U.S., there is an average lifetime cost of $600,000 per patient for antiretroviral drugs. But while antiretrovirals generally succeed at suppressing HIV and preventing the virus from replicating, they have some major downsides: cost, toxic side effects, and the fact that patients have to remain on them for a lifetime. And with 25 million out of the 33 million people currently infected going without any treatment at all (mostly because of lack of access), there clearly need to be better options.

Governments will meet at the United Nations in New York for an HIV/AIDS Summit from 8th to 10th June, to discuss the global response to the epidemic over the next five to 10 years.

 In the lead-up to the UN High-level meeting, MSF is releasing a series of five videos that illustrate innovative tools and models that could help make improved HIV treatment accessible to many more.

• 27 May - Empowering HIV-patients to manage their care
• 30 May - Bringing HIV treatment closer to patients
• 31 May - Reducing pressure on health services by task-shifting
• 1 June - Enabling healthy lives with antiretroviral drugs
• 6 June - Benefits of starting HIV treatment earlier

*Why do site like this seem to not allow comments? "Sorry, comments have been disabled by the owner of this video."

Breakthrough in AIDS fight: Drugs radically reduce transmission of virus

A new study shows a 96% reduction in transmission of the AIDS virus to spouses and partners when HIV-positive people take anti-AIDS drugs. The drugs were unexpectedly effective.

More Media Rhetoric / choice of wording. 

READ the text.

There is NO Break though. 

The 11 Drugs do not reduce Transmission. 

READ People. 

Deal in FACTS:

-read the LA Times article and then New York Times (below) the choice of words:

"...can reduce the transmission of the virus to spouses and partners by 96%"

"...were 96 percent less likely to pass on the infection"

-everything is based on CD4 level. 

Can you name which country define AIDS with a low CD4 level?

-Try to think of this the other way around. 

What if these people in the test would have never gotten the HIV virus in the 1st place. Was that taking into consideration? NOPE.

-Why are more people NOT taking about Dr. Nancy Padian 10 years study?

The Study “We followed up 175 HIV-discordant couples [one partner tests positive, one negative] over time, for a total of approximately 282 couple-years of follow up… No transmission [of HIV] occurred among the 25% of couples who did not use their condoms consistently, nor among the 47 couples who intermittently practiced unsafe sex during the entire duration of follow-up…”

“We observed no seroconversions after entry into the study [nobody became HIV positive]…This evidence argues for low infectivity in the absence of either needle sharing and/or other cofactors.”

How about this fact it's cost 73 million dollars to study 1763 couples. That's 41,406.70 per couples. To give them Free Drugs. Just think about that? long distance calls? Shipping? Salaries? 

Stop accepting "FACTS" for a drug pusher like Dr. Anthony Fauci

By Thomas H. Maugh II, Los Angeles Times 

May 12, 2011

In what is being hailed as a landmark breakthrough in HIV prevention, a new study has shown that giving anti-AIDS drugs to HIV-positive people can reduce the transmission of the virus to spouses and partners by 96%, U.S. researchers said Thursday.

Promising HIV and AIDS Vaccine Candidate Nets $23.4 Million Funding

"We are proud to support Dr. Gallo's continued, pioneering work in HIV and AIDS."
Who's scared? Rise your hand.

Maryland Governor Martin O'Malley announced today that the Institute of Human Virology (IHV) at the University of Maryland School of Medicine will receive $23.4 million from a consortium of funding sources to support the next phase of research into a promising HIV/AIDS preventive vaccine candidate. The IHV vaccine program grants include $16.8 million from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, $2.2 million from the U.S. Army's Military HIV Research Program (MHRP), and other research funding from a variety of sources including the National Institutes of Health (NIH). At a celebration in IHV's light-filled multi-level atrium on Lombard Street, O'Malley thanked those supporting the research. "Through your generosity and vision you are making this place not only a beacon of hope, but a real powerful force of healing. It makes us understand we are a part of something much bigger than ourselves by being here today. "There's a beautiful Talmudic saying that if you save just one life it's as if you've saved the world. Imagine the lives that we have the ability, the potential, the blessing, to be able to touch through the great work that Dr.[Robert] Redfield, Dr. [William] Blattner, Dr. [Robert] Gallo and all of you here at this institute are doing." The funding is to support further preclinical development and Phase I/II clinical trials of a novel HIV vaccine candidate developed by the research team at IHV. The candidate immunogen, denoted as FLSC (Full-Length Single Chain), is designed to elicit strongly protective antibody responses across the spectrum of HIV-1 strains. Research will be conducted by IHV, led by Gallo, MD, director of IHV, and joined by investigators from Sanofi Pasteur and the Military HIV Research Program. University of Maryland President Jay A. Perman, MD, said the cutting-edge research at IHV is a source of pride but isn't surprising."I can't think of any other place in the world where they could assemble as much knowledge about HIV in a single room as a staff meeting here at this institute," he told the crowd. "What Dr. Gallo and his team are doing really represents unbridled hope. Not just for the millions of people currently living with HIV AIDS, but hope for future generations who might never have to know the scourge of this disease." Grants provided by the consortium will allow for clinical testing of FLSC evaluating immune response and safety in humans, and optimization of the prime-boost vaccination strategy. The research is specifically designed to determine if the immune responses elicited by the vaccine candidate are sufficiently powerful and long-lasting in humans. The research will also assess prime-boost combinations of the HIV vaccine developed by Sanofi Pasteur (ALVAC), which recently demonstrated modest protection in an efficacy trial conducted by the MHRP in Thailand, coupled with the FLSC developed by the institute. Both vaccine candidates involve use of a modified form of the outer protein envelope, allowing each to potentially complement the use of the other. "The Gates Foundation worked closely with Dr. Gallo's team in the design and review of this innovative approach to an HIV vaccine," said Jose Esparza, MD, PhD, senior advisor on HIV Vaccines for the foundation's Collaboration for AIDS Vaccine Discovery project. "We are proud to support Dr. Gallo's continued, pioneering work in HIV and AIDS."

HIV, AIDS patients in Delhi to get free treatment

YAY!! more free drugs!!!

New Delhi: In an unique initiative, Delhi Government on Thursday decided to extend monthly financial assistance and free medical treatment to HIV and AIDS patients in the city.

Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, chairing a State AIDS Council meeting, directed Health department to come out with a comprehensive plan to provide financial assistance to the HIV and AIDS affected patients in the city.

The meeting also decided to provide nutritional support to the patients, besides offering them free treatment, including diagnostic tests like CT scan, MRI (magnetic resonance imaging), ultra-sound test, at government-run hospitals across the metropolis.

Officials said a total of 30,738 HIV affected people have registered at nine Anti Retro Therapy (ART) centres in Delhi, which is considered as a low HIV prevalence city.

Delhi is currently implementing the third phase of the National AIDS Control Programme with an aim to reduce the number of infected people by 40 per cent in the next five years
According to officials, HIV/AIDS prevalence rate in Delhi is is 0.21% per cent of the total population. 

HIV, AIDS patients in Delhi to get free treatment

Promising Aids vaccine trials start in Kenya ???

"Volunteers have to be HIV-negative, over 18 years, and at very low risk of HIV infection, meaning at this stage high risk groups are excluded as volunteers."


How many times does this "Vaccine" have to fail till "they" give up and said Opps this one isn't working? Repacking in Kenya? Google aids vaccine failure and read for yourself.


"When the vaccine trials begun in the country in 2003, it took the scientists more than nine months to recruit the number of volunteers they needed due to the fear people had about such studies."

By ARTHUR OKWEMBA aokwemba@yahoo.com
Posted  Wednesday, May 4 2011 at 20:56

Trials on an Aids vaccine that is generating a lot of excitement in the scientific world have finally started in Kenya with several volunteering for 

bit.ly/kZoIoz

'Superdrug' Could Fight Both HIV and Malaria

"They have completely changed the face of HIV treatment in recent years. People who take these drugs don't die of AIDS anymore."
YOU DON"T die from AIDS....AIDS is a definition

Natalie Wolchover, Life's Little Mysteries Staff Writer  03 May 2011

HIV, the pandemic virus that causes AIDS, kills 2 million people each year worldwide. Malaria, a pervasive parasite spread by mosquitoes, infects 225 million people and kills 781,000 annually. The former disease has ravaged our species since spreading to us from monkeys a mere 40 years ago; the latter has been our enemy for so long, our bodies have evolved ways to fight it.

Photini Sinnis

The two killers, new and old, actually have a few molecular similarities. Because of this — and some brand-new research — a single "superdrug" could soon fight both.That drug is HIV protease inhibitor, a medicine that scientists designed specifically to treat HIV by preventing the deadly virus from constructing its proteins correctly. "HIV protease inhibitors are in clinical use now and are a leading HIV drug," said Photini Sinnis, head of the Medical Parasitology Laboratory at the NYU Langone Medical Center. "They have completely changed the face of HIV treatment in recent years. People who take these drugs don't die of AIDS anymore."

New Website Can Help HIV Patients Improve Heart Health, Overall Wellness

or maybe the Article should be title what the sub text is really about:
"Cardiovascular disease is a major cause of death in HIV patients."


DALLAS, May 2, 2011 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- The American Heart Association and American Academy of HIV Medicine (AAHIVM) have created hivandyourheart.org to help people living with HIV make changes to improve their heart health and overall wellness.  

The website features informative videos from healthcare providers, a wellness checklist, an HIV quiz and personal stories from patients and behavioral change coach Michael Patterson. HIV and Your Heart also has an application for the iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch. The interactive tracking tool helps patients define their goals and begin the steps needed to make changes. It's also confidential. The desktop icon is labeled "Your Heart" and the information you enter may be password-protected.

Cardiovascular disease is a major cause of death in HIV patients.  As people live longer with HIV, infection and immunodeficiency disorders such as heart disease are important health concerns and causes of late morbidity and mortality.

Whether due to long-term exposure to the HIV virus, antiretroviral agents or other factors, people living with HIV often share common issues that affect cardiovascular health, including:

To save lives, Johnson & Johnson should jump into the patent pool of suppling HIV Drugs in poor countries

The high cost of HIV drugs puts patients in poor countries — where the virus is most widespread — at a huge disadvantage.

Many must still take older, more toxic medicines no longer used in the United States. And when patients build up a resistance to the drugs they’re already using, they don’t have the option of switching to a new medication.

That’s why world health advocates came up with the idea of a “patent pool.” It’s meant to drive down costs to improve access to newer HIV drugs, including medicines for children. Participating drug makers can make their patents more widely available to generic manufacturers in developing countries, in exchange for royalty fees. The increased competition would greatly reduce drug costs.

Rapping Grannies speak out on lost HIV/AIDS bill that make it easier to send cheap, generic HIV/AIDS drugs to Africa.

LETS GIVE THEM MORE DRUGS. 
Instead of eductions?

Rapping Grannies speak out on lost HIV/AIDS bill

Juno Award-winning artist K'naan speaks with supporters of Bill C-393 after attending a news conference on Parliament Hill in Ottawa, Wednesday March 9, 2011. (Adrian Wyld / THE CANADIAN PRESS)

Sat Apr. 23 2011

ctvottawa.ca

A local group of concerned grandmothers took hip-hop music back to its roots as protest music Saturday morning.

The One World Grannies re-wrote and performed K'Naan's hit "Wavin' Flag" to raise their concerns about losing a bill that would have made it easier to send cheap, generic HIV/AIDS drugs to Africa.

Bill C-393, sponsored by Ottawa Centre MP Paul Dewar, was passed 172-111 in the House of Commons in March.