The Binary Circumstance

A promising HIV vaccine trial was recently halted when it appeared that those in the vaccinated group were becoming infected with HIV at a higher rate than those receiving the placebo.

The vaccine used a disabled form of a common-cold virus to carry three synthetically produced HIV genes into the body. It was hoped that those genes would spur the body to unleash an HIV-targeted immune response using so-called “killer” T cells.

Neither the cold virus nor the HIV genes could reproduce, so volunteers could not catch a cold or become infected with HIV directly from the vaccine.

Researchers knew in September that men who were receiving the vaccine were catching HIV at a higher rate than the men who received the dummy shots.

In an initial review, they found 24 HIV infections among 741 men who received at least one dose of the vaccine. That compared to 21 HIV cases among 762 men in the placebo group.

A smaller sample, limited to those who had received at least two vaccinations, found 19 infections in the vaccine group and 11 in the placebo group.

That was enough to pull the plug on the trials Sept. 21.

These are puzzling results.

We’ve known for a long time that HIV thrives when the immune system is stimulated. These results raise the question whether immune system stimulation of any kind from things like vaccines, allergies, or diseases make it more likely for individuals to become infected with HIV.

It also raises ethical questions about testing HIV vaccines if in fact it turns out that they could increase the likelihood of becoming infected.

The Seattle Gay News published an interview with Dr. Anthony Fauci which contains some statistics that remind us just how much work is left to be done:

SGN: Dr. Fauci. You serve as an advisor to both the White House and the Department of Health and Human Services on global AIDS issues. I wondered if you felt that enough was being done to combat the issue world-wide?

Fauci: I think, over the last few years, there has been a quantum leap over what has been done. With the President [Bush]‘s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), an original $15 billion five year program now up to $30 billion, now extended another five years; the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria; private foundations, such ad the Gates Foundation, the Clinton Foundation… I know a lot is being done. Is it enough, quite frankly, no, it isn’t enough. That in part because, I know, there are some partners, particularly in developed nations that have not really put in their share, number one. Number two; there’s been, in some nations, a serious lack of leadership at the level of the host country of what needs to be done.

I think the problems that we have seen in South Africa are a very good example of that lack of leadership. In taking a long time and, even now, not yet approaching HIV with the seriousness it needs to be taken. There was an initial denial; the same kind of denial we have been talking about but with a different twist. In China, a long time went by before they admitted the problem of the blood contamination as well as the problem sexual, hetero and homosexual, transmissibility and injection drug use. So, there’s a lot of things that are being done, but there is still a lot more that needs to be done.

SGN: Dr. Fauci. Are there other areas of the world, in addition to African and China that you mentioned, which concern you?

Fauci: The whole world concerns me. The developing world concerns me because if you look at the curves, they are still out of control. There are 4.3 million new infections each year, 2.9 million deaths. A statistic that is quite troubling is that for every one person you put on therapy, six people get newly infected. Every day that goes by we are getting worse and worse with the numbers game. So, treatment, although is necessary, is not the final solution. The final solution is prevention. So, I worry not only about the developing world, in which you have this acceleration of infection. I worry about the developed world. In the United States, we have a very embarrassing number.

We have 40,000 new infections each year. It’s been 40,000 for the last 15 years. That is absolutely unacceptable. It went way up in the 80′s to 150,000 new infections yet it went down to 40,000 and has stayed at 40,000. So, we are not cracking that 40,000 number. Even in a country like the United States, we are not seeing it go down linearly. So, I see a problem in the developing world and the developed world.

All the millions of infected people in the world are not being used as the tremendous resource that they are. If they all had the freedom to experiment on themselves, order their own tests and or work directly with their doctors and/or local scientists we would have many different minds working on the problem of finding a cure for AIDS rather than the small number now approved by government.

Billions of dollars are being spent but most of that money is spent following the same paths that have been followed for more than a decade, drugs cocktails and an HIV vaccine. That leaves many other alternative approaches that never get tested. Limiting the number of people who can work toward a cure is certainly one of the factors that is delaying the cure for AIDS as well as many other diseases.

Limiting the number of people working on the problem is more about protecting the power and profits of special interests like doctors and drug companies more than about protecting patients. Patients can be protecting in other ways, without limiting their options or their ability to take charge of their own bodies and their health care.

I’ve said before that evolution is happening all around us and it’s ridiculous that the majority of people refuse to see it and acknowledge the role that it has played in creating life on our planet.

You can see it with AIDS in both the evolution of the HIV virus which develops resistance to new drug therapies (just like bacteria which also become antibiotic resistant) and also in the fact that some individuals are genetically resistant to HIV and either don’t get infected or once infected do not get sick.

There are gazillions more examples but I point those out because they are so obvious and often in the news.

Scientists have discovered a very rapid evolutionary change in tropical blue moon butterflies.

Scientists say they have seen one of the fastest evolutionary changes ever observed in a species of butterfly.

The tropical blue moon butterfly has developed a way of fighting back against parasitic bacteria.

Six years ago, males accounted for just 1% of the blue moon population on two islands in the South Pacific.

But by last year, the butterflies had evolved a gene to keep the bacteria in check and male numbers were up to about 40% of the population.

Scientists believe the comeback is due to “suppressor” genes that control the Wolbachia bacteria that is passed down from the mother and kills the male embryos before they hatch.

“To my knowledge, this is the fastest evolutionary change that has ever been observed,” said Sylvain Charlat, of University College London, UK, whose study appears in the journal Science.

Today was a beautiful, unseasonably warm day in Seattle. The temperature hit 83. This little taste of nice weather is long overdue and people were out and about enjoying themselves. It seemed like so many had a smiles on their faces.

It was in the afternoon that I heard the news that Jerry Falwell died today at 73. My immediate reaction was one of joy, but I refrained from running up and down the sunny streets of Seattle, shaking hands, hugging total strangers, singing out loud or going into gay bars and proposing a toast. My joy was followed by some sadness, mostly for all the people that Jerry Falwell had harmed in his life, and for Falwell himself, that he had lived a fantasy for his entire adult life, never understanding the real beauty and majesty of existence.

I was sad for the millions who have died of AIDS, never having the chance to live the 73 years that Falwell lives because Falwell and other religious leaders did everything they could to frustrate scientific research into HIV/AIDS in the crucial early years of the epidemic. Had our understanding of the disease grown faster, many more lives would have been saved and many more people would not have become infected. But to Falwell and other religious fanatics, AIDS was God’s punishment for homosexuality, and therefore it should be allowed to continue its rampage across the planet.

I totally agree with this quote:

Matt Foreman, executive director of National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, extended condolences to those close to Falwell, but added: “Unfortunately, we will always remember him as a founder and leader of America’s anti-gay industry, someone who exacerbated the nation’s appalling response to the onslaught of the AIDS epidemic, someone who demonized and vilified us for political gain and someone who used religion to divide rather than unite our nation.”

That would be appallingly slow response. We can’t know for sure, but he probably helped to kill more people that Hitler killed in concentration camps when you get right down to it. Had discovery of HIV and the drugs that have proven so effective against it taken place even a couple of years sooner it would certainly have saved millions of lives and kept millions of others from getting infected.

I’m sure that many people who were close to Falwell are saddened by his passing. I cannot even begin to put into words the sadness and grief that many of us experienced in San Francisco during the first 10-15 years of the AIDS epidemic as we not only had to watch so many young friends die but also had to endure the relentless insults and hatred of people like Jerry Falwell.

As for homosexuality, Falwell remarked, “AIDS is the wrath of a just God against homosexuals.”

We had to fight for the science and do the hard work of caring for the sick and dying while at the same time fighting the ignorance and bigotry of Christians and delusional religious fanatics like Jerry Falwell. At times it just seemed overwhelming.

If AIDS is the wrath of God against homosexuals, why have 90% of its victims been heterosexuals, women and children?

The fact is that Jerry Falwell and his “moral majority” ultimately lost the battle to keep us in the dark about HIV/AIDS. If Falwell and his comrades had won, how many more millions, even billions of people would now be dead?

We would still know absolutely nothing about HIV, the virus that causes AIDS. We would not know how to prevent its spread or treat it, and we would be decades behind in the quest to put an end to it altogether.

For all his rhetoric about being “pro-life,” he did his part to assure the deaths of millions of babies and children born with HIV.

In the end, Falwell died–just like all the people and the children that he gleefully helped push into their graves. Such is life. We all die. What differentiates us is what we do with our lives. Jerry Falwell chose a self-serving, narcissistic fantasy view of reality that put a supenatural value on his own life in relation to the lives of others. He chose hatred over compassion and the desire to understand the many bright lives he worked so hard to snuff out.

For that, I am sad.

I am sad that a man who did so much evil can delude himself into thinking he is good. I am sad and angry that there are millions of people who share his ignorant view of reality, and gave him millions of dollars to assist him in his war against science, knowledge and the lives of so many, including innocent children.

After 9/11, Falwell blamed the attack on his political opponents rather than the real killers–militant religious fanatics–who like Falwell use religion to justify their crimes against others.

After the September 11, 2001 attacks, Falwell said on the 700 Club, “I really believe that the pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays and the lesbians who are actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle, the ACLU, People For the American Way, all of them who have tried to secularize America. I point the finger in their face and say ‘you helped this happen.’” Fellow evangelist Pat Robertson concurred with his sentiment.

I am sad that such evil can be viewed by so many as good.

It’s ironic that Tammy Faye Messner is also dying, given that Falwell took over the PTL Club after it imploded in a sex and money scandal. Messner was never as self-righteous in her hatred as people like Falwell, however. See related post: Tammy Faye Bakker Messner Stops Cancer Treatments