Two Essay’s Written by V. Matt Pearson on AIDS/HIV

I have a friend who is in pre-med college and he had to write some papers. I thought they were good enough to publish on my blog. I hope you will find them as interesting and as informative as I did. The topic is AIDS and it is two essays. Please take the time to read through the whole paper and any comments please leave them for Matt not me. Again, these were written by Matt Pearson and he is allowing me to post them on my blog. Thank you Matt!

Outline

1. Introduction

1. What Is AIDS?

2. History

II. Problems

1. World ProblemsA. Economic Aspects
2. U. S. ProblemsA. Economic aspects

   B. Social Aspects

3. Stigmas

A. Problems Caused By The Stigmas

III. Hope

1. How Can We Stop AIDS?

IV. Conclusion

1. AIDS is not a “gay disease”.

Matt Pearson

English 102-27

Melanie Rowland-White

February 24, 2008Matt Pearson

The End of AIDS

The age of AIDS is fast coming to an end. With the ever-changing advancements in the medical sciences and the larger amount of interest that is being paid to this disease, it won’t be long before AIDS is a thing of the past. According to the National Institute of Health, there are over 40 million cases world wide of full blown AIDS. That doesn’t include the HIV cases.

In writing this paper I’m basically looking for news on new medications that will kill the AIDS virus off. As of right now, there are medications that can halt the physiological effects of HIV on the body. There are also medications that have the ability to keep the HIV virus from ever becoming AIDS. So and HIV positive person can live their entire life in full and never actually contract the AIDS virus.

I feel that AIDS research is extremely important to both the homosexual and heterosexual communities. Right now, because of the enormous spread of the HIV virus in countries such as India and Africa, the HIV virus is actually more prominent world wide in the heterosexual community than it is within the gay community. Only in America does the number of gays with HIV outweigh the number of heterosexuals. Still, in 2003 alone, it was sexual contact between heterosexual partners that accounted for the second highest mode of HIV transmission in the United States. (thebody.com) So it’s apparent why the research is important or at least should be important to both communities.

Some of the things that I would really like to research for this paper are the advancements in therapeutic drugs for HIV positive people and preventative drugs for HIV negative people. I’d also like to take a look at the research being done with drugs and therapies for patients with full blown AIDS.

According to an article in The Wallstreet Journal, a new drug released from the phamacuetical company Merck called MC-518 has made a tremendous change in patients virus levels. According to a case study from the clinical trial, the MC-518 drug reduced the patients virus levels to a completely undetectable level. That is very exciting news. However the patients CD-4 cells (infection fighting white cells) were still rising at a dangerous level.

This new drug shows a lot of promise for HIV infected people. Still the fact that the CD-4 cells will still rise as thought the virus weren’t buffered is not a good sign, but hopefully a slight setback only.

The MC-518 drug is a new class of HIV treatment drugs called integrase inhibitors. Because of the ever-mutative abilities of the HIV and AIDS viruses, patients that have been battling the viruses for years have grown immune to the past classes of drugs. Still the past drug classes can still be effective when mixed together and made into what is called a “drug cocktail”. This way the viruses are attacked from multiple points before they have a chance to mutate and achieve a resistant property. Still, according to the same article, out of the 1 million HIV positive people in America alone, almost 40,000 of them have the multi-drug resistant HIV. (Chase and Goldstein, Emerging Drugs Show Promise Against HIV, The Wallstreet Journal, 2, 2007)

An excerpt from the journal, Science, explains the advancements in blocking the AIDS virus. A new study shows that the AIDS virus only contains 15 proteins. This does not give the virus the ability to multiply, copy, or regenerate itself. So a new weakness is found in the fact that the virus relies on the proteins in the human cells in order to copy itself.

A new type of therapy, called RNA interface, blocks the proteins in the human cells. Scientists have taken 21,000 genes within a mammalian cell and turned them off one at a time. In doing this they have found 273 genes that could possibly be the ones that allow the AIDS virus to multiply. (Elledge, Science. 7/ 2007, 389-393) This isolation has allowed for another class of drugs, called neucleoside reverse transuptase inhibitors, or NRTI’s to better help an AIDS patient. These drugs are used to block specific proteins in the patient’s cells that the AIDS virus needs to copy itself. So without the ability to reproduce the AIDS virus just stays dormant in the body. The patient is still a carrier of the virus and because of the fact that the virus has not been destroyed, the patient is still perfectly capable of transmitting the virus.

These NRTI’s are being used in Africa to fight mother to child transmission, otherwise known as HIV2. A research study done by the Harvard School of Public Health has shown a decrease of more than 30% over a period of two years using the NRTI called Neveprine. This drug only works in blocking the mother to child transmitted HIV2 and not the sexually transmitted HIV1. The results are still promising though. However, the drug does not offer any added immunity to a protected child after birth. The child is still perfectly capable of contracting the virus through sexual interaction or body fluids just like anyone else. (http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/cbar/)

Another study shows that the introduction of the drug SF 162, another class of drugs called envelope protein vaccines, can actually prevent the AIDS virus from being contracted, even when purposefully administered.

The project was to vaginally insert the AIDS virus into several female Rhesus macaques then administer the SF 162 vaccine. Of course the control of the experiment was to not administer the drug an equal amount of the monkeys who also received the virus. Excitingly enough, the monkeys that received the vaccine did not show any traces of the virus at all. However, because this vaccine is still in the early stages, it still has to be administered almost directly after the introduction of the virus. It is not a one-time vaccination like the ones developed for smallpox and polio. (Barnett SW, Srivastava IK, Kan E, Zhou F, Goodsell A, Cristillo AD, Ferrai MG, Weiss DE, Letvin NL, Montefiori D, Pal R, Vajdy M. Protection of macaques against vaginal SHIV challenge by systemic or mucosal and systemic vaccinations with HIV-envelope. AIDS. 2008 Jan 30;22(3):339-48)

I feel that AIDS research is important to all people. I have heard arguments that the AIDS epidemic is purely a homosexual problem. This is completely unfounded. I stated earlier in the paper that heterosexuals make up for most of the AIDS cases on a global scale. Funneling money out of AIDS research and slowing the speed of the scientific advancements regarding the virus is not a feasible idea.

The United States government gives almost 7 million dollars to AIDS research every year. (www.nih.gov) This is a pathetic amount compared to the fact that the government spends so much money in useless areas such as the war and unnecessary programs.

I think for the larger part of this paper, I’ll need to research ways that the research can be advanced. Whether it be more money for drug research or more staffing on the research projects. I feel that these types of researches are advancing faster than they ever have. The introductions of not only new drugs, but new classes of drugs, are keeping people from dying of the virus.

Still, for the larger paper I expect to find more information on these researches and new drugs. I think that the most important of these so far may be the integrase ihibitors, the ones discussed earlier that block the AIDS from multiplying such as MC 518. I feel that more money should be funneled into research programs and studies for those types of drugs. However the vaccine SF 162 looks promising as a temporary buffer for the virus. It would wonderful to have that on the market as an OTC, but I could see the drug companies and insurance companies trying to make as much money off of something like that as they could. Instead of making it easy for the public to have access to, they would more than likely require multiple doctor visits and exhorbitant amounts of money to receive the antigen, making it unreachable for those without health insurance and people in foreign countries like Africa, India and China. These countries, along with the United States, hold the largest amounts of AIDS and HIV infected people.

I honestly don’t see an opposite side to this topic. I have heard it argued that destroying the AIDS virus would allow people a never before experienced sexual freedom. The argument proposes higher birth rates of unwanted babies. I don’t feel that this is true though. AIDS is just one of many sexually transmitted diseases. People would still have the need for safe sexual practices. I can’t really see a downside to the end of the AIDS threat.

Works Cited

-www.nih.gov

-Barnett SW, Srivastava IK, Kan E, Zhou F, Goodsell A, Cristillo AD, Ferrai MG, Weiss DE, Letvin NL, Montefiori D, Pal R, Vajdy M. Protection of Macaques Against Vaginal SHIV Challenge By Systemic Or Mucosal and Systemic Vaccinations With HIV-envelope. AIDS. 2008 Jan 30;22(3):339-48

-http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/cbar/

-Chase and Goldstein, Emerging Drugs Show Promise Against HIV, The Wallstreet Journal, 2, 2007

-Elledge, Science. 7/ 2007, 389-393

The Battle Isn’t Over By A Long Shot

What is AIDS? Why is taking a look at it important? Who cares? Who is at risk? What happens to them? When people hear or see the word AIDS, many of them shrug it off as something that only happens to gay men and could never happen to them. What is the truth though? If AIDS is as important as I’m making it out to be, then what is being done about it? How did AIDS get started?

I’ll answer all of these questions in this paper. I’m writing this because I really don’t feel that enough people know the answers to these questions. I see this ignorance and lack of awareness as the most dangerous things in modern times. With people contracting the virus and dying from it by the hundreds of thousands, I can’t imagine why people aren’t more concerned about this issue. We’re going to take a look at the issue though: a deep, hard look.

There are as many ways to catch HIV as there are to catch influenza. Blood transfusions, needle sharing, organ transplants, sexual contact, or even an accidental finger prick. So why do people automatically assume that anyone with HIV is gay? According to the research, worldwide, only one out of every 20 HIV positive people is a homosexual. That’s the worldwide figure. In America homosexuals are the majority of HIV positive people. Perhaps our own experience with the virus has changed our view. I’m sure that in Africa, India or China, HIV is not seen as a gay disease

There are over seven hundred million people in the world that have aids and the majority of those people are heterosexual. The United States is the only place where the majority of those people are gay. In India, China, and Africa people are dying rampantly from the aids virus. Hiv type 2 is the most commonly contracted virus in the world, more so than that small pox and the bubonic plague put together. This pandemic has become the most globally important issue in the history in the world. The amount of research in the United States and the amount of money funneled into HIV/ AIDS research makes it seem as thought government doesn’t care.

AIDS began as a strictly simian viral infection. There were several different types within the primate species such as Rhesus Macaque, chimpanzee and P. T. trogladytes. The simian form of the virus was calls SIV, for simian immunodeficiency virus.

During the 1970’s and 1980’s, gay men poured into hospitals and clinics complaining of illnesses that couldn’t be traced or cured. Rampant cancers and untreatable infections were plaguing the gay community. Shortly after, a connection between all of the inflicted people was made and HIV was discovered. Following that, the real problem reared its head. HIV was discovered to develop into a deadly form; AIDS.

In February of 1999, scientists from the University of Alabama discovered the connection between the chimpanzee’s SIVcpz and the human’s HIV. They discovered that the virus had crossed species and infected humans. Somehow, a virus that had been infecting monkeys for years had crossed the line between the species and been able to infect humans. Such a process is called zoonosis.

It wasn’t until 1983 before it was discovered that HIV was being transmitted through heterosexual contact. More rampantly worldwide than homosexual contact. In 1985 it was discovered that mothers could pass the virus to their children.

In the year 2002, the number of cumulative AIDS-related deaths in the United States was over half a million. Half a million people that could have done something with their lives had there been a cure. The time has come for this to stop

AIDS is quickly becoming the worst epidemic that humanity has ever faced. It can kill those that are unfortunate enough to come into contact with it, and also their children. Mother to child contraction is the leading cause of AIDS in Africa today. Although it is completely possible for an HIV positive woman to give birth to an uninfected child, the chances are slim. Because during fetal gestation, the mother and the child share a bloodstream. Scientists aren’t quit sure how an HIV positive mother manages to avoid passing the virus to the child, though it is quite common.

The amount of research being put into the AIDS epidemic is pathetic. No one that can research the virus has the ability to call themselves a philanthropist. The amount of money being funneled into the project is pitiful. Seven million dollars per year. How is that supposed to get us any further to an achievement. The cost for the healthcare of one AIDS patient is half that much. Yet there are almost 500,000 new cases of the virus each year. The rest of the money raised is through fundraisers and charity.

Aside from the obvious medical problems that AIDS and HIV positive people face in their day to day lives, there is also a social stigma attached to those infected with the virus and an economic impact that the treatment, or lack there of, is having on the countries most affected. Countries such as the U.S., India, Africa and China, with the largest numbers of infected persons, have problems that have escalated from “health issues to developmental crises” according to the Secretary General of UNAIDS, the joint United States and United Nations program for HIV and AIDS.

Some examples of these impacts, according to UNAIDS, are absenteeism, replacement workers for those absent, medical cost, governmental programs to treat those with no health insurance, pensions for those with deceased family members, decreased productivity at work, and the market impacts on insurance premiums.

According to the UNAIDS research on the demographics of AIDS infected people, the majority of this group is aged 18-45. That is the age group of the majority of the world’s work force. The economic impacts of having an estimated 40 million people worldwide either unable to work, or soon to be unable to work, is unimaginable.

In the African countries of Namibia, Zimbabwe, Tanzania and South Africa, the damage done to the agricultural industry is millions of dollars each year per country. The industrial impacts are nowhere near as great, but still in the hundreds of thousands of dollars range. Other countries, such as those in Latin America, The Caribbean Islands, Kenya, India and China feel similar effects. Estimates put the dollar amount on the worldwide scale up into the trillions.

The information on the economic damage being done is unlimited. There is no end to the amount of money and manpower being exhausted on AIDS research and the care of AIDS patients. The need for a cure is becoming more and more pressing as both time and the virus progress.

The damages being done by AIDS and HIV are not limited to economic standpoints, but social as well. Social impacts such as the mistreatment of infected people, and misconceptions about the virus and its transmission affect the patients making their lives harder.

According to an AIDS awareness group named AIDS Action, 58% of African Americans and 42% of Caucasian Americans believe that there is a strong chance of contracting HIV during sex between two uninfected gay men. The CDC, The Center for Disease Control, has also found that 19% of all Americans believe that anyone who has contracted the AIDS virus has gotten what they deserve. The CDC also reports that since AIDS was initially believed to have been restricted to the gay community, there is a much lower level of sympathy for gays affected with the virus as opposed to heterosexuals. These types of biases have done nothing more than inflate homophobia within the United States. Studies also show that heterosexual non-Caucasians comprise 60% of the AIDS cases in America. AIDS is the leading cause of death for African Americans aged 25 to 44.

AIDS related stigmas are also a major reason that people at risk aren’t being tested, the largest number of these being heterosexual men. The majority of gay men make annual HIV testing a priority. This was catalyzed when health insurance companies started offering coverage for HIV and STD screenings. However, heterosexual men are not as apt to be tested because they don’t want to be identified as gay. For a lot of people at risk, that’s the only thing keeping them from advanced screening, necessary medical treatment and also preventing them from unknowingly spreading the virus to others. All of that over the unfounded bias that having AIDS will make other people think that they are gay.

In another study done by doctors Hereck and Capitano from the University of California at Davis, telephone interviews were done with non-HIV or AIDS infected peoples. Most of the interviewees responded with some stigma. However, African Americans responded with less negative feelings towards the virus and people infected with it than Caucasians.

As a gay man living in the United States, I find these stereotypes to be a little more worrisome than I assume that most do. With a large amount of people still believing that all gay men have AIDS automatically, I, myself, have been avoided by others. I have even had women pull their children back and tell them that they could catch AIDS from me. Ignorance breeds ignorance though, and those children will grow up believing the same ideals and teaching them to their children.

I think that one of the hardest aspects of dealing with an AIDS-ignorant population, especially here in the “Bible Belt” of America, is the fact that people honestly do believe that gays deserve to catch AIDS. I’ve heard countless discussions about AIDS amid the blue-collar Kentuckians, and most of them have ended the same way. People believe that AIDS is a curse sent by God to punish gay men and women. In actuality, AIDS is a human created virus meant to be used for germ warfare. Instead the virus is killing off humanity more quickly than smallpox and the bubonic plague did combined.

A dear friend of mine is living with HIV. He’s probably the bravest man that I’ll ever know. He has to work at a job that he hates because of the insurance. His medications would cost him around $3,000 per month with no insurance, but even with the insurance it’s still hundreds of dollars out of pocket. He tells me constantly that he’s not afraid of dying. AIDS kills people, not HIV. HIV is the virus that spawnes AIDS. People can live their entire lives HIV positive and never contract AIDS. He never minds talking about his situation with me. He has his ups and downs emotionally, but he always stays hopeful. He’s one of the bravest people that I know, but to some people he just doesn’t matter. Just another gay guy that got what he deserved. I’ve actually had people say to me when I tell them about him.

We now know that calling AIDS a gay disease is complete ignorance. The first cases of AIDS have been traced back to heterosexuals in Africa. Also, it was discovered that AIDS had been brought into America by a heterosexual man from Canada. So AIDS didn’t even start in America within the gay community. It is true, however, that it spread more rampantly through the gay community, because gays are more sexually frivolous than heterosexuals are. Today though, through proper awareness education, the majority of the gay community is more apt to practice safe and protected sexual contact, and receive scheduled HIV screenings.

According to the National Research for AIDS Institute, the United States government donates approximately seven million dollars per year to AIDS research.

That’s less than one sixteenth of what the government spends on cancer research and less than one one hundreth of what is being spent weekly on the war. The rest of the money that is raised yearly is done through fundraisers and charity work. I can’t help but feel that the government really doesn’t care that much about this crisis or that they really don’t see it as a problem.

But how could they not see it as a problem? According to an Internet newspaper called The Earth Times, there are currently five million HIV positive people in Asia. By the year 2020 another eight million Asians are projected to contract the virus. Currenly, 440,000 people die each year from AIDS in Asia, and by the year 2020 AIDS is projected to kill 500,000 people per year in Asia alone!

According to the Baltimore Sun, Ged Kinslea, the spokesman for the AIDS Healthcare Foundation says that we’re no closer to a vaccine for AIDS than we were 20 years ago. He’s right. Nothing that we’ve managed to do so far has done anymore than the medications were doing when the epidemic first started being worked on. The drugs they had then were only keeping the HIV virus from developing into AIDS. All that we’ve managed to do so far is the exact same thing. We’ve been going around in circles trying to keep up with the virus’ mutagenic properties, but we’ve done no more than just deterr the virus. We’ve not cured it or even been able to do much to sway the effects of the virus.

However, a new problem is arising. Third generation HIV contraction. There have already been cases in Africa of mothers passing HIV to there daughters and there daughters passing it to their children. What happens if HIV can be passed through several generations? What happens if an entire continent of people are born with HIV? Or worse, full blown AIDS. Would humanity adapt to the virus, or will it always be lethal?

Something has to be done about this problem right now. More funding, more research, more money, more fundraisers. People have got to get involved in this battle. The stereotypes and disdain have got to be put to rest. People need to understand that they can’t let the world wither away from AIDS and HIV just because they wrongly believe that the contraction is well deserveed.

The fight against AIDS and HIV is nowhere near over. The biggest problem that researchers are facing now is that the medications that are currently being used to fight the virus, are slowly starting to fail. Scientists are desperately searching for new medications to combat the ever-mutating virus.

There is no such thing as a “gay disease” or a “straight disease”. However there is such a thing as a “human disease”. The lines between the gay and straight communities have to be erased. Just as the lines between whites and blacks have been erased for the most part. There will always be some tension between races and cultures and orientations. Racism and homophobia will never be erased, but the ways that people deal with each other must be revamped. This is a central part of dealing with AIDS. It has to be dealt with by humanity. It can’t just be dealt with by gays. It can’t just be dealt with by people who are tolerant of gays. It can’t just be dealt with by people living with the virus. It has to be dealt with by people. People as a whole. Not people separated into groups by color or sexuality.

A plan of action has to be put into place. I personally say stop this stupid war and funnel the billlion dollars per week into research that for the disease that is killing hundreds of thousands of people per year. I say stop the madness of fighting with each other over trivialities and start listening to the heartbeat of humanity. There is no such thing as race or orientation. There is such a thing as mankind though, and the heart of mankind is bleeding through the hole of loss. Family, friends, co-workers, employees, bosses, sisters, brothers, mothers, fathers, nieces, nephews, grandmothers, grandfathers. It all has to stop.

Although the AIDS virus itself is taking the most morbid toll on the human race, the lack of empathy and socail stigmas that come with it play most of the roles of ingnorance and hinderance. What can we do to stop the pandemic? What actions could we take now to speed along the process of a cure? More charity drives? Less social stigma? How can we make lives easier on people that are infected? Wouldn’t that type of mindset ultimately make life easier on us all? If we could all just realize that AIDS isn’t a gay problem or a black problem or a foreign problem, and understand that it is a human problem, then maybe the battle wouldn’t be so far from over.

Works Cited

Web Sites ( No author or publish date given)

-abcnews.com

-aidsaction.com

-aidsinfo.nih..gov

-ari.ucsf.edu

-earthtimes.org

-hsph.harvard.edu

-niaaa.nih.gov

-niaid.nih.gov

-nlm.nih.gov

-policyproject.com

-sciencentral.com

-sfgate.com

-thebody.com

Journal Articals

AIDS Research and Therepy. Smith, Kimberly. 5:5 ( 28, March. 2003)

American Journal Of Public Health. Herek, Gregory, M. 1993,83 574-577

The New England Journal Of Medicine. Aids and It’s Defeat. Heine, Mark. 7:8 (3 February, 2007)

Newspapers

The Baltimore Sun. U.S. Agency Vows To Back AIDS Study. Emery, Chris. 26 March, 2008

The Los Angeles Times. Setback In AIDS Cure. Jai Rui-Chong, 11, February 2008

The Wallstreet Journal. Emerging Drugs Show Promise Against HIV. Chase and Goldstein. 28 Feb, 2007