5 Things to Know About the First Drug to Prevent HIV

[CountDeMoney]

It might not be a good idea to abandon the fight for justice in your homeland.

I've got Ed Schultz.  He's my daddy bear.

[garbon]

I think that if you are going to claim there is a problem with letting people have an easy route to find out about their health - it should be incumbent on you to show the risk.

I have.  You guys didn't like it.  And there we are.

You said that people are going to also need counseling/treatment plans/support. Why are those things not there because the test result didn't come from a doctor?  Where is the data on people whose lives have been ruined / ruined other lives because they learned from a not inexpensive in-home test already?

Or do you think that healthcare policy should just be decided on a whim and not on actual facts?

[garbon]

I mean maybe it is just because I'm gay but I can't really think of any out (read: not ashamed) gay guy whose first instinct would be to destroy lives and his own. After all, most of us know people who have HIV and some generic clinician who reads us our results isn't likely to be a big component of our support system.

[CountDeMoney]

I mean maybe it is just because I'm gay but I can't really think of any out (read: not ashamed) gay guy whose first instinct would be to destroy lives and his own. After all, most of us know people who have HIV and some generic clinician who reads us our results isn't likely to be a big component of our support system.

You think I've been talking about only the gay community this whole time?  A community that has, on all accounts and for the most part on its own for almost 30 years, cultivated within its own community a substantial support, education and awareness system to deal with HIV?  You think I mentioned the poor, the illiterate and the emotionally handicapped as if they were some sort of subset of the gay community?

You people are so self-centered sometimes.

All I have been attempting to show in this useless exercise with you Libertard wingnuts is that, unlike so many other health conditions that could be satisfied with home testing, HIV in particular possesses characteristics that makes it a distinct exception that an individual would best be served by not learning about it on its own, and that the current approach of a clinically-based case management approach of dealing with results is better than letting someone deal with it alone. 

But hey, the blanket application of libertytude and freedomism that equates blood sugar level = cholesterol = HIV wins the day.


Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm cruising Paul's website on how I can learn more about the evils of recycling.

[Berkut]

The question is not what is better. The question is whether your opinion about what is better is a good foundation for enacting laws and regulations that restrict peoples right to not agree with you about what is better for them.

If you think it is better to get these results in the context of a clinic, then by all means go get yourself tested at a clinic.

[garbon]

You think I mentioned the poor, the illiterate and the emotionally handicapped as if they were some sort of subset of the gay community?

Who are these poor individuals buying at home tests? Is it reasonable to assume that a poor person with limited knowledge of the existence of HIV will be spending 60+ bucks to buy an at home kit? Do you even think through these thoughts that bumble about in your head?

But you know what - let's say they do. Let's say they save up some money and get an at home kit. Who are you to say that they should only be able to get tested through the impersonal and sometimes terrifying health system. Do these poor individuals have the time to sit around waiting at a clinic?


So what Berk said. Somehow I don't think the foundation of public policy should be what Uncle Seedy feels is best for the unwashed masses.

[Ideologue]

Though I think Seedster only complained about home HIV testing.

My concerns were the lack of a context of a clinical support network surrounding such a home test, as I already wrote earlier--

the attendant clinical alternatives, future treatment plans, the risk assessment and education on how to reduce the public safety risk, the attendant health issues that impact the individual such as sex partners, pregnancy, and the variety of future medical implications of HIV, as well as the overall dealing with the behavioral and psychosocial impact of a having a socially stigmatizing health condition

--as opposed to, say, finding out your cholesterol level.

But hey, Languish wants to deal with its HIV on its own with a brochure.  Fuck it, have fun with your AIDS, fellas.  ITS ALL ABOUT MAH FREEDOM

Why would you want to find out you have HIV in a place where people can potentially stop you?

[garbon]

Why would you want to find out you have HIV in a place where people can potentially stop you?

Stop you from...?

[merithyn]

You know, in reading this thread, I've realized just how out-of-date my knowledge of AIDS is. I think my education stopped somewhere in the mid-90s.

Can someone please point me toward a good source of information that is neither all scare tactics (for teens) nor all goodness and light (for those in the danger zone)?

[Razgovory]

I'm told that eating an albino is the holistic approach.   As for real medicine Fate would know.  But Grumbler drove him off.

[merithyn]

I'm told that eating an albino is the holistic approach.   As for real medicine Fate would know.  But Grumbler drove him off.

[Razgovory]

Well there is always raping a virgin, but that's probably just superstition.  I'd stick with the albino.

[merithyn]

So anybody that isn't being a dick just for the sake of being a dick got a URL for me?

[ulmont]

So anybody that isn't being a dick just for the sake of being a dick got a URL for me?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HIV/AIDS

Check out the "management" and "prognosis" sections.  Main points:

HIV/AIDS has become a chronic rather than an acutely fatal disease in many areas of the world.[130] Prognosis varies between people and both the CD4 count and viral load are useful for predicted outcomes.[13] Without treatment, average survival time after infection with HIV is estimated to be 9 to 11 years, depending on the HIV subtype.[131] After the diagnosis of AIDS, if treatment is not available, survival ranges between 6 and 19 months.[132][133] HAART and appropriate prevention of opportunistic infections reduces the death rate by 80%, and raises the life expectancy for a newly diagnosed young adult to 20–50 years.[130][134][135] This is between two thirds[134] and nearly that of the general population.[14][136] If treatment is started late in the infection prognosis is not as good,[14] for example if treatment is begun following the diagnosis of AIDS life expectancy is ~10–40 years.[14][130] Half of infants born with HIV die before two years of age without treatment.[116]

Truly a godforsaken way to die, though, not that there are a lot of good ones.

[Razgovory]

Oh, you meant the Fate part.  Yeah Grumbles had in for him for years.  Something about a bridge and some goats.