Love and Doubt
Amy. 25.
Oakland native. Nashville resident. Social worker. Feminist. Straight edge. Addicted to burritos, Limbeck, root beer, avocados and the Nashville Predators.
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- awful nightmares interspersed with waking up repeatedly with a sick dog that needed to go outside to poop his brains out
- a soul-crushing e-mail that a client who can’t see her MD as often as she needs to because of insurance costs is over the federal income guidelines for assistance with co-pays and deductibles
- the phone call minutes later that the math was done wrong and she can get help after all
- a client who has been homeless for years calling to tell me she’s finally been moved off the wait list and will be in her own apartment within a month
- cramps cramps cramps all day long
- e-mails all day long about how to help out a co-worker who was diagnosed with ALS
- facebook told me my best friend from childhood’s dad just died
- now i’m sitting on the couch too tired to make myself food
- let mad men season 2 begin. i hate everyone on that show except Paul Kinsey
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Link reblogged from This is not an exit
In a development that could change the battle against AIDS, researchers have found that taking a daily antiretroviral pill greatly lowers the chances of getting infected with the virus.
In the study, published Tuesday by the New England Journal of Medicine, researchers found that the hundreds of gay men randomly assigned to take the drugs were 44 percent less likely to get infected than the equal number assigned to take a placebo.
But when only the men whose blood tests showed they had taken their pill faithfully every day were considered, the pill was more than 90 percent effective, said Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, head of the division of the National Institutes of Health, which paid for the study along with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
“That’s huge,” Dr. Fauci said. “That says it all for me.”
The large study, nicknamed iPrEx, included nearly 2,500 men in six countries and was coordinated by the Gladstone Institutes of the University of California, San Francisco.
The results are the best news in the AIDS field in years, even better than this summer’s revelation that a vaginal microbicide protected 39 percent of all the women testing it and 54 percent of those who used it faithfully.
Also, the antiretroviral pill — Truvada, a combination of two drugs, tenofovir and emtricitabine — is available by prescription in many countries right now, while the microbicide gel is made only in small amounts for clinical trials.
The protection, known as “pre-exposure prophylaxis” or “PreP,” is also the first new form available to men, especially men who cannot use condoms because they sell sex, are in danger of prison rape, are under pressure from partners or lose their inhibitions when drunk or high.
It is a form of protection “that does not involve getting permission from the other partner, and that’s important,” said Phill Wilson, president of the Black AIDS Institute, which focuses on the epidemic among blacks.
Michel Sidibé, the head of UNAIDS, the United Nations AIDS-fighting agency, called it “a breakthrough that will accelerate the prevention revolution.”
Because Truvada is available now, some clinicians already prescribe it for prophylaxis, Dr. Fauci said, but whether doing so becomes official policy will depend on discussions by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Food and Drug Administration, medical societies and others, which could take months.
Although the C.D.C. would prefer that doctors wait for further studies, more probably will prescribe it now that this study is out, said Dr. Kevin Fenton, chief of the agency’s AIDS division, so the C.D.C. will soon release suggested guidelines.
The agency will encourage that the drug be prescribed only with close medical supervision and used only with other safe-sex practices, treatment for venereal diseases and counseling.
“The results are encouraging, but it’s not time for gay men to throw away their condoms,” Dr. Fenton said. […]
this is big.
I want to feel like this is good news, but I very skeptical about giving people daily medication to prevent HIV. I hope there are not any awful long term effects.
Also, I hope that this drug if effective will not only be suggested/prescribed to gay men. HIV isn’t sexist by any means.
Future research is going to look into the effects of the pill on women, straight men and IV drug users, as well as the effectiveness of taking it before sexual activity compared to every day.
(Source: blaaargh)
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Amy, party of one, your soapbox is ready When I was a sophomore in high school, my biology teacher assigned us our biggest project of the year: a huge essay comparing Ebola and HIV. At the time, I groaned and whined with the rest of my class. But as my 10+ assigned pages turned into 25, I found myself becoming more and more interested in HIV and the effect it had on not only the body, but also families and communities. When it was time to choose what school I wanted to send my NYU application to, the answer was surprisingly easy: the School of Social Work, where I could work with people with HIV and AIDS. And that’s exactly what I did during my 4 years there. I distributed safe sex supplies and provided HIV and STI education at NYC shows. I worked for a year and a half with HIV positive adults with mental illness and drug addictions. And in my graduate internship, I worked with HIV patients at Bellevue Hospital. I met some amazing people there, and for the first time in all of my HIV work, I dealt with death. Not once or twice, but several times, and with patients I had gotten to know well after months of hospitalization. Its easy to forget that HIV is still around. Its still hard to talk about compared to other terminal illnesses, still attached to ideas of morality and consequences. But we need to talk about it, and often. At the risk of sounding like an HPV vaccine commercial, talk to someone you love. Get tested with them. Practice safe sex. Talk about it. And then get tested again. Today I did something I thought I’d never do: I bought a lameass wristband to show my support for cause X (HIV awareness, in this instance). Tomorrow, or this week or next month, I hope you do something out of the norm too: get tested. Please. Now back to your regularly scheduled reblogs.
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Today is World AIDS Day, a day very close to my heart. Here’s to another year of fighting and educating.
