'We can begin to see an end to the epidemic'

[Dick Whitman]

Pill cuts AIDS transmission by up to 70 percent in study. Awesome, awesome news. I am starting to feel like we will talk about AIDS in 20 or 30 years the way people talk about small pox or leprosy today, the frightening relic of a distant past. For any of us who can still remember when the disease first emerged in the early 1980s, that's remarkable.

The big question, of course: Will the Pope approve?

http://www.chicagotribune.com/health/la-he-hiv-prevention-20101123,0,6590365.story

 

[User 11148]

I certainly remember the days when this was the new terror, and I recall how everyone felt as if it was incredibly easy to get via sexual activity. But you look at these numbers -- some 2,500 with very high-risk habits -- and only 100 came down with it after a bit more than a year. If you assume the infect rate of the control group, even without the drugs only 125 or so would have gotten it. It's just amazing, to me, the gap between what we thought back then w.r.t. risk and what we know now about it now.

 

[BYH]

Anyone anywhere closer to curing cancer? No? Didn't think so. So I'll save my medical huzzahs for the day that will never come.

 

[qtlaw]

Amazing news. I recall the 80s vividly and the hysteria over AIDS. It was a death sentence that ravaged the host quickly.

 

[novelist_wannabe]

Still strikes me as odd that I can't remember the last time I read/heard a health update for Magic Johnson. I remember vividly the panic mode over his announcement and retirement. Players throughout the NBA were scared to be on the floor at the same time as him, fearing it might be transmitted through sweat transferrence.

BYH, I get what you're saying, and it's certainly valid. But the thought that our species' means of reproduction can double as a loaded weapon -- albeit a preventable one -- is extremely sobering.

 

[Brad Guire]

Big money isn't in the cure. It's in the long-term treatment costs. This message brought to you by Pfizer.