Reasons For Hope (RFH)
is Search For A Cure's national HIV treatment news series.
RFH covers the latest in developing therapies for treating HIV/AIDS.
RFH is published in over 90 community newspapers and found on many websites for people infected or affected by HIV/AIDS. We encourage your comments and critiques. Email hope@sfac.org Feel free to copy and distribute any and all RFH articles.
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Why We Should All be in a Clinical Trial
It is hard to get people to join a study of new medicines nowadays. This is mostly because people think the therapies we have are good enough. It's not true. HIV medicines fail some people. And they are too expensive for most of the world to use.
The medicines we have are not a cure, are a lifelong financial burden and have lots of side effects. The only way to see if new therapies work is to test them on people with HIV. The only way to see if a vaccine will work is to test it on people without HIV. If we want the day to come that HIV is a thing of the past the most important thing we can all do is find a study that needs us and join it.
AIDS forever
It is time to talk about ending the disease instead of managing it.
Management of HIV means spending the least amount you can get away with.
In poor countries this means treating mothers during birth for a few days so they can't pass on their HIV. It means treating the very ill who represent perhaps 5%-10% of the people in the world who have HIV.
These programs don't stop HIV because the two groups that are least likely to give HIV to anyone else are babies and the sick.
These programs are the cheapest way to feel less guilty about doing the bare minimum while over 20 million people are already dead and 36 million more are infected.
Unless they are the first step in a much more ambitious effort, these programs will not stop the epidemic.
Treatment as Prevention
We do not have a vaccine and prevention programs have not stopped the epidemic.
What we know prevents transmission is treating people.
How do we know this?
Many careful studies show, the less virus someone has the less likely they are to pass it on.
Using antivirals is the only way we KNOW reduces virus.
So the only real 'vaccine' we know will work is to test and treat everyone.
Implications for Public Health
What this means for public health is profound.
Test and treat becomes the newest and best tool to PREVENT the illness from spreading.
An understanding of this leads to a new focus for a treatment program.
Treating people who are most likely to infect others becomes the priority.
Seeing if drugs protect sex workers from getting infected and from giving others infection is important to know.
Treating people right after they get infected makes lots of sense because that is when people are most infectious (having ten to a hundred times more virus during the first three months than at any other time in the disease). This means training people to recognize the symptoms of early infection and teaching people who give out medicine that this early stage is a crisis and needs immediate diagnosis and treatment.
Treating early may actually be cheaper in the long run.
So far, studies at Massachusetts General Hospital suggest people treated right after getting infected may be able to stop taking drugs for long periods of time, keeping HIV levels very low without the help of antivirals.
We have a choice. We can put together a world-wide fund to buy a few drugs to treat pregnant mothers and the very ill or we can decide to stop the epidemic for everyone.
Unfortunately, we will have to speak up because we are the only people who benefit the most from stopping the epidemic.
Drug companies make money managing illnesses not ending them. Governments get re-elected cutting taxes at home not providing funds for comprehensive treatment programs in poor foreign countries.
The AIDS industry has careers only as long as there is an epidemic.
Over the next few months you will reading in newspapers and watching on TV drug company bosses and politicians patting themselves on the back for funding ineffective band-aid programs around the world.
You will hear about million of dollars being spent to save Africa.
Don't be fooled by what you hear.
Dede Ketover is the executive director of Search For A Cure.
David Scondras is the founder and chairman of Search For A Cure. Scondras developed the nationally recognized HIV treatment series, Reasons for Hope.
If you have any questions or would like to receive the Reasons For Hope series contact Search For A Cure at 617-945-5350, or e-mail at hope@sfac.org. Visit our web site at www.searchforacure.org
