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Location: Blogs Dr. John's Personal Blog |
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| Posted by: host |
1/16/2006 |
A lot of folks confuse the myriad of drug therapies currently available for people living with AIDS (PLWHAs) with there being a cure. No cure exists after 25 years of research. I am amazed at the number of people who tell me they thought a cure was available - it just wasn't in poor countries like in Africa.
There also is no vaccine to stop HIV. If there was, my work wouldn't be needed. Our only tool to stop HIV among teens is honest prevention education and peer counseling.
An AP story on Christmas Sunday carried a story that reported:
"In an unusually candid admission, the federal chief of AIDS research says he believes drug companies don't have an incentive to create a vaccine for the HIV and are likely to wait to profit from it after the government develops one."
Dr. Edmund Tramont, head of the AIDS research division of the National Institutes of Health was quoted as saying, 'It's not going to be made by a company. They're dropping out like flies because there's no real incentive for them to do it. We have to do it.' " The wire story added, "Of course, the pharmaceutical researchers deny that they're dragging their feet." I wonder what are their priorities?
The AP story finished with, 'The International AIDS Vaccines Initiative estimates that the annual spent on AIDS vaccine development is $682 million per year, or about half-again as much as was spent to promote Viagra, Levitra, and Cialis in 2004. ' "
HmmmŠ in what age population can be found some of the fastest growing incidences of HIV transmission? Besides teens and young adults, it's sexually active seniors who are being greatly affected and infected by these erection enhancers. But if you ask a senior if their peers were at risk for AIDS, they would laugh it off.
Okay. They're old enough to know better. Yet teens are innocent and often unsuspecting of this danger around them. I am disturbed when I find a teen who laughs off the threat. That's why I believe so passionately in the TeenAIDS-PeerCorps mission. |
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