Several years ago, during a lecture on AIDS, I described what was then the very good news about the disease: that a cocktail of several anti-HIV drugs seemed to be successful in flushing the virus out of the blood stream, and might allow infected persons to live with the virus for many years. But I also predicted that this stage of the epidemic wouldn't last. Sooner or later a mutant form of the virus would probably emerge. This seems especially likely since the behaviors that prepared the way for the original epidemic hadn't really changed.
Now this from the New York Times:
City health officials announced on Friday that they had detected the rare strain of H.I.V. in one man whose case they described as particularly worrisome because it merged two unusual features: resistance to nearly all anti-retroviral drugs used to treat the infection, and stunningly swift progression from infection to full-fledged AIDS. . . .
That combination drug resistance and rapid AIDS onset, the officials said, could signal a new, more menacing kind of infection, and its discovery set in motion an anxious search by city workers to find the man's sexual partners and have them tested.
The infected man, gay and in his 40's, tested negative for H.I.V. in May 2003, then tested positive last December, health officials said. Investigators believe he may have contracted the virus in October when he engaged in unprotected anal sex with multiple partners while using crystal methamphetamine.
A network of sexual partners engaging in unprotected anal sex provides a perfect incubator for new forms of the disease. So what's the solution? Again from the NYT, this piece by Andrew Jacobs::
As news of a potentially virulent strain of H.I.V. settles in, gay activists and AIDS prevention workers say they are dismayed and angry that the 25-year-old battle against the disease might have to begin all over again.
While many are calling for a renewed commitment to prevention efforts and free condoms, some veterans of the war on AIDS are advocating an entirely new approach to the spread of unsafe sex, much of which is fueled by a surge in methamphetamine abuse. They want to track down those who knowingly engage in risky behavior and try to stop them before they can infect others.
This is to say that, 25 years after the epidemic began, some AIDS activist want to begin treating it like any other disease. Good idea.
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