HIV treatment options

“From 2002 to 2012, expanded access to HIV treatment averted 4.2 million deaths globally and contributed to a 58% reduction in new HIV infections.”

hiv-treatments-2Back in January 2016, I helped organize a workshop at my church, “Ending the Epidemic in NYS: HIV/AIDS Treatment in 2015: What Congregations Need to Know!”

It was designed to, among other things, increase awareness of the Blueprint to Ending the Epidemic in NYS by 2020; and learn how HIV treatment, such as PEP and PrEP, have impacted HIV prevention and treatment efforts.

PEP is post-exposure prophylaxis, “taking antiretroviral medicines (ART) after being potentially exposed to HIV to prevent becoming infected. PEP should be used only in emergency situations and must be started within 72 hours after a recent possible exposure to HIV.”

Pre-exposure prophylaxis (or PrEP) “is when people at very high risk for HIV take HIV medicines daily to lower their chances of getting infected. A combination of two HIV medicines (tenofovir and emtricitabine), sold under the name Truvada® (pronounced tru vá duh), is approved for daily use as PrEP to help prevent an HIV-negative person from getting HIV from a sexual or injection-drug-using partner who’s positive.”

Since then, I’ve been on the email list, seeing the progress of the NYS Department of Health’s effort. There is an Ending the Epidemic website in New York.

At the global AIDS conference in July 2016 in South Africa, it was noted that 15 million people have received “access to life-saving HIV treatment by 2015. Additionally, UNAIDS estimates that from 2002 to 2012, expanded access to HIV treatment averted 4.2 million deaths globally and contributed to a 58% reduction in new HIV infections. However…more than 60% of people living with HIV remain without antiretroviral therapy.”

I was interested to read in Wired recently, To Build A Viable HIV Vaccine, Start from the Molecule Up:

“Someday, vaccines might bat the [HIV] virus out of your system without you ever knowing you’d been exposed. If successful, such a vaccine would effectively cure AIDS. Someday, maybe. So scientists are working on it. Like yesterday: Researchers published results to a promising study on primates infected with SIV, a monkey version of HIV. The study, published in Nature, used a special drug to awaken the virus, which made it easier for their novel vaccine to detect and snuff it out.”

Here’s the 2015 HIV Surveillance Report. HIV/AIDS continues to be one of those issues that weighs on my heart.

Cemetery angel

RuthCokerBurksThe First Presbyterian Church in Albany, NY is celebrating 20 years of being a More Light community, which means “seeking the full participation of gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender people of faith in the life, ministry, and witness of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.)”

For the service on June 5, our guest preacher, and leader in the adult education class, was Tony De La Rosa, the interim executive director of the Presbyterian Mission Agency for the denomination.

Tony admitted that he struggled with the recommended readings, or liturgy, for the date. Both 1 Kings 17:17-24 and Luke 7:11-17 involved women seeming to lose their children, only to have Elijah and Jesus, respectively, bring their sons back to life. How would this fit in with a More Light message?

Then he came across this article about a woman named Ruth Coker Burks, “the cemetery angel.”

For about a decade, between 1984 and the mid-1990s and before better HIV drugs and more enlightened medical care for AIDS patients effectively rendered her obsolete, Burks cared for hundreds of dying people, many of them gay men who had been abandoned by their families. She had no medical training, but she took them to their appointments, picked up their medications, helped them fill out forms for assistance, and talked them through their despair.

Sometimes she paid for their cremations. She buried over three dozen of them with her own two hands, after their families refused to claim their bodies. For many of those people, she is now the only person who knows the location of their graves.

In both of the Biblical tales, the mothers were overjoyed to get their sons back. Yet these young men in Arkansas with AIDS were abandoned by their families.

Tony read much of this next part:

Burks.. was 25 and a young mother when she went to University Hospital in Little Rock to help care for a friend who had cancer. Her friend eventually went through five surgeries, Burks said, so she spent a lot of time that year parked in hospitals. That’s where she was the day she noticed the door, one with “a big, red bag” over it. It was a patient’s room. “I would watch the nurses draw straws to see who would go in and check on him…

Whether because of curiosity or — as she believes today — some higher power moving her, Burks eventually disregarded the warnings on the red door and snuck into the room. In the bed was a skeletal young man, wasted to less than 100 pounds. He told her he wanted to see his mother before he died.

“I walked out and [the nurses] said, ‘You didn’t go in that room, did you?'” Burks recalled. “I said, ‘Well, yeah. He wants his mother.’ They laughed. They said, ‘Honey, his mother’s not coming. He’s been here six weeks. Nobody’s coming. Nobody’s been here, and nobody’s coming.'”

Unwilling to take no for an answer, Burks wrangled a number for the young man’s mother out of one of the nurses, then called. She was only able to speak for a moment before the woman on the line hung up on her.

“I called her back,” Burks said. “I said, ‘If you hang up on me again, I will put your son’s obituary in your hometown newspaper and I will list his cause of death.’ Then I had her attention.”

Her son was a sinner, the woman told Burks. She didn’t know what was wrong with him and didn’t care. She wouldn’t come, as he was already dead to her as far as she was concerned. She said she wouldn’t even claim his body when he died. It was a hymn Burks would hear again and again over the next decade: sure judgment and yawning hellfire, abandonment on a platter of scripture. Burks estimates she worked with more than a thousand people dying of AIDS over the course of the years. Of those, she said, only a handful of families didn’t turn their backs on their loved ones. Whether that was because of religious conviction or fear of the virus, Burks still doesn’t know.

Burks hung up the phone, trying to decide what she should tell the dying man. “I didn’t know what to tell him other than, ‘Your mom’s not coming. She won’t even answer the phone,’ ” she said. There was nothing to tell him but the truth.

“I went back in his room,” she said, “and when I walked in, he said, ‘Oh, momma. I knew you’d come,’ and then he lifted his hand. And what was I going to do? What was I going to do? So I took his hand. I said, ‘I’m here, honey. I’m here.'”

Burks said it was probably the first time he’d been touched by a person not wearing two pairs of gloves since he arrived at the hospital. She pulled a chair to his bedside, and talked to him, and held his hand. She bathed his face with a cloth, and told him she was there. “I stayed with him for 13 hours while he took his last breath on earth,” she said.

I’m not sure there was a dry eye in the sanctuary.

And though we have a way to go, I’m so thankful that our understanding of AIDS is such that these scenarios play out far less often than they did in first decade or more of the AIDS epidemic.

As President Obama offers his final LGBT Pride Month proclamation, let us hope for increasing understanding amongst us all.

 

March rambling #1: wipe out cancer in a decade

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Louisville doctor says the breakthrough treatment could wipe out cancer in a decade. Even better, one of the subjects in the story is my friend Eddie, the Renaissance Geek!

Keefknight Cartoon: Colon. One of my brothers-in-law died from colorectal cancer in 2002, at the age of 41.

Why I Left the Right: How Studying Religion Made Me a Liberal.

The White House Welcomes Holler If You Hear Me: Black and Gay in the Church. See this powerful documentary in full (60 minutes).

The Disappearing Soldier.

Kintsugi: The Art of Embracing Damage.

K Troop: The story of the eradication of the original Ku Klux Klan.

Agrippa Hull, Thaddeus Kosciusko, and how Thomas Jefferson didn’t hold up his end of the agreement.

Nancy Reagan rejected Rock Hudson’s plea for help with AIDS treatment sent just months before his death.

Seattle Seahawks Kam Chancellor Wanted to Buy a Gym and Gym Employees Called the Cops on Him.

Formerly freewheeling Aubrey McClendon, now deceased.

Disney is screwing American families.

I was a telemarketer for four months back in 1977. If you hate telemarketers, you’ll love this robot designed to waste their time.

Dan Van Riper: Some crappy-looking old junk from my buildings.

Actor George Kennedy, RIP, who I remember from Cool Hand Luke, Earthquake, the Naked Gun movies, and a whole lot of episodic TV.

Making rubber bands and bagels. There’s a point in the processes where the two batters looks very much the same. Seriously.

shaft
TIME Magazine names male author Evelyn Waugh on female most-read list. (HT to Shooting Parrots.)

Why It Hurts So Much to Step On a LEGO. “Resistance, shiny hardness, and mega-strength.”

Study: Chocolate Makes You Smarter. Of course.

The long and tangled history of Alfred E. Neuman, of MAD magazine.

Russ Heath’s Comic About Being Ripped Off By Roy Lichtenstein.

Music

Billboard: George Martin, and Beatles – She’s Leaving Home, Strings Only (1967) and Dustbury’s favorite George Martin production, other than Beatles material.

The five best soul albums of all-time, according to St Paul & The Broken Bones

When I was in college, I played that first Emerson, Lake and Palmer album a lot. I could do a fair representation of the Moog ending of Lucky Man, sans instrument. Also, listen to Karn Evil 9 2nd Impression. Now Keith Emerson, ELP Keyboardist, Dead at 71.

With “A Group Called Smith”, Gayle McCormick was best remembered for her release in AUGUST of 1969 of Baby It’s You. She lost her battle with cancer and passed away in ST. LOUIS, on MARCH 1st, 2016 at age 67.

Joe Cuba – Bang Bang. #63 in 1966.

I think Rossini’s overture to William Tell is underrated because it’s so familiar.

NYS: end HIV/AIDS in the state by 2020

The Centers for Disease Control is planning a National HIV Prevention Conference in December 2015 in Atlanta to “continue refining, improving, and strengthening our nation’s response to HIV.”

AIDS.homepage-graphicIn the summer of 2015, I went to a dinner and discovered that there is a plan by the New York State Department of Health to end the epidemic in the state by 2020.

The three-point plan:
Identifies persons with HIV who remain undiagnosed and link them to health care.
Links and retains persons diagnosed with HIV in health care to maximize virus suppression so they remain healthy and prevent further transmission.
*Facilitates access to Pre-Exposure Prophylaxis (PrEP) for high-risk persons to keep them HIV negative.
Implicit in the framework was making sure people were not being shamed into hiding their HIV status, which merely makes it harder to treat.

There was a headline from a couple of months ago that surprised me:

Everyone who has H.I.V. should immediately be put on antiretroviral triple therapy and everyone at risk of becoming infected should be offered protective doses of similar drugs, the World Health Organization said on Wednesday as it issued new H.I.V. treatment and prevention guidelines.

The guidelines increase by nine million the number of people who should get treatment and by untold millions the number who should get protective doses. Previous guidelines recommended them for gay men, prostitutes, people with infected partners and others; the new guidelines effectively bring in millions of women and girls in Africa.

How much that will cost and how it will be paid for are not yet determined.

Advocates around the world welcomed the new guidelines — usually without addressing the cost.

Dr. Mark Dybul, executive director of the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, said the two recommendations were “critically important to moving us toward fast-track treatment and prevention goals.”

This was exciting, though: Truvada Protected 100 Percent Of Study Participants From HIV.

The Centers for Disease Control is planning a National HIV Prevention Conference in December 2015 in Atlanta to “continue refining, improving, and strengthening our nation’s response to HIV.” Because it’s not over yet.

Blog Action Day: HIV/AIDS (#HumanRights #BAD13)

Alicia Keys is teaming up with Greater Than AIDS to reach women about HIV/AIDS.

I’m not much into coincidence. All of these took place in a 10-day period:

*CBS Sunday Morning recently noted a milepost: it was 21 years ago when Magic Johnson told Los Angeles basketball fans: ‘I’m coming back to the Lakers and I’m playing again.’

“It was a dramatic reversal from the announcement he had made the previous November, one that had stunned people in the sports world and beyond: ”Because of the HIV virus that I have obtained, I will have to retire from the Lakers.'”

*I got this e-mail: Healthline recently partnered with the Timothy Ray Brown Foundation (TRBF) to launch “You’ve Got This” – a video campaign that encourages HIV patients to give hope and advice to the recently diagnosed. For every video created, Healthline will donate $10 to the TRBF towards finding a cure. Initial participants include Jack Mackenroth, Olympian Ji Wallace, Paul Lekakis, Josh Robbins, and Kevin Maloney.

We would love it if you could help us spread the word about the campaign by sharing with your friends, followers, and/or posting to your website or blog. For more information, please visit www.healthline.com/health/hiv-aids/youve-got-this or https://www.facebook.com/TheNewFaceofHIV.

I asked how long the videos would be accepted: “Currently, it is an open project – there isn’t a specific deadline. We plan to run it for at least a year.”

Admittedly, I was unfamiliar with Timothy Ray Brown. He is the Berlin Patient, who, some claim, has been cured of HIV. It may only be that he has a genetic mutation specific to him, but gene therapy may be a pathway to a real cure. The foundation does not claim that this is the sole path, so I am providing the links above.

*I happened across a television ad with singer Alicia Keys, teaming up with Greater Than AIDS, on the Empowered project, to reach women about HIV/AIDS awareness, since 1 in 4 people with AIDS are women.

*I had signed up for Blog Action Day, without really knowing what I wanted to write about in the area of Human Rights. Suddenly, addressing the still prevalent HIV/AIDS epidemic spoke to me. I think it’s a human rights issue.

If you should decide to participate in Blog Action Day, sign up at the website. Then go on your favorite social media sites and write, “I’ve just posted my #BlogActionDay post on #HumanRights on [yourwebsitelink] – take a look & leave a comment #BAD13. Tweet to them at @blogactionday. “Follow the live coverage on October 16, on blogactionday.org and our social media profiles to find out about other participant posts. If you like someone’s Blog Action Day post why not leave a comment and share it via social networks.”

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