The threat that an entirely new AIDS epidemic might ravage the country sent shock waves through the medical community yesterday.

The discovery of a virulent new strain of HIV that is resistant to three of the four types of drugs used to fight the virus means that all the recent advances in treatment may go from cutting edge to obsolete overnight, experts feared.

"This is just scary. This just throws out the medicine chest," said Dr. Charles Gonzalez, an AIDS specialist at NYU Medical Center and Bellevue Hospital.


"In the beginning of the AIDS crisis, we had no treatment. Again, we have absolutely no treatment," said Gonzalez, a member of a network that monitors new AIDS cases in New York. "Everything we're using now to treat this guy is jury-rigged."

Drug-resistant HIV isn't new. But what makes this new bug unique is that it is resistant to 19 of the 20 drugs now on the market.

"This may be the tip of the iceberg. It's going to get ugly," Gonzalez said. "If this one starts getting around, we're back to the early '80s."

Massachusetts doctors have reported several HIV patients with a resistance to some of the most commonly prescribed treatments, raising further concerns about a possible new, drug-resistant strain of the virus.
The patients' resistance to drug treatment is similar to a New York City case that has sparked widespread concern among public-health experts, the Boston Herald reported.

"There is global concern that there may be an increasing amount of patients who have a resistant virus," said Dr. Gregory Robbins of Massachusetts General Hospital.

USAID refuses to release report that shows abstinence works in HIV prevention

Washington DC, Feb. 15, 2005 (CNA) - The U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) has shelved a study that highlights the effectiveness of abstinence education in reducing HIV infection and has commissioned a second study to a researcher known to advocate condom distribution instead.

Focus on the Family has urged key members of Congress to look into why a government health agency, charged with dispersing funds to HIV-prevention efforts in Africa, is contradicting Bush administration policy that supports abstinence education.

The issue is examined in depth in the March issue of Focus on the Family’s Citizen Magazine, which has been mailed to hundreds of senators and congressmen. The cover story, titled "Burying the Truth," examines the research being suppressed, which was conducted by Harvard scientist Edward C. Green, a self-described "secular liberal."

News that a gay meth user in New York who had hundreds of unsafe sexual encounters may carry a virulent, drug-resistant strain of HIV has forced health officials and gay community leaders to take a sobering look at the growing role crystal methamphetamine is playing in the spread of AIDS. Doctors are unsure whether the new strain is an isolated case or the precursor of a deadly new wave of HIV. But it's clear that a dangerous nexus has formed between the nation's two big epidemics: AIDS and methamphetamine abuse.

Winnie Madikizela-Mandela has come out firmly and vehemently in favour of sexual abstinence as the only efficient way to fight the spread of Aids.

Speaking at the International Conference on Aids and Sexually Transmitted Infections in Africa (ICASA) in Abuja, Nigeria, on Thursday, Madikizela-Mandela said: "We just have to tell our children to abstain. That's the only way we will prevent Aids as mothers on the continent.

"And we tell our daughters it's a very simple remedy, it's called abstinence."

What is a price?

Unless you're an economist, you probably think of a price as simply the amount you pay for a given thing.

But to an economist, price is a much broader concept. The 20 minutes you spend waiting for a table is part of the price (of a meal in a restaurant for example). There are moral and social costs to tally as well - for instance, the look of scorn delivered by your vegan dining partner as you order the burger. While the restaurant's menu may list the price of the cheeseburger at $7.95, that is clearly just the beginning.

The most fundamental rule of economics is that a rise in price leads to less quantity demanded. This holds true for a restaurant meal, a real-estate deal, a college education or just about anything else you can think of. When the price of an item rises, you buy less of it (which is not to say, of course, that you want less of it).

But what about sex? Sex, that most irrational of human pursuits, couldn't possibly respond to rational price theory, could it?

Outside of a few obvious situations, we generally don't think about sex in terms of prices. Prostitution is one such situation; courtship is another: certain men seem to consider an expensive dinner a prudent investment in pursuit of a sexual dividend.

But how might price changes affect sexual behavior? And might those changes have something to tell us about the nature of sex itself?

Here is a stark example: A man who is sent to prison finds that the price of sex with a woman has spiked - talk about a supply shortage - and he becomes much more likely to start having sex with men. The reported prevalence of oral sex among affluent American teenagers would also seem to illustrate price theory: because of the possibility of disease or pregnancy, intercourse is expensive - and it has come to be seen by some teenagers as an unwanted and costly pledge of commitment. In this light, oral sex may be viewed as a cheaper alternative.

In recent decades, we have witnessed the most exorbitant new price associated with sex: the H.I.V. virus. Because AIDS is potentially deadly and because it can be spread relatively easily by sex between two men, the onset of AIDS in the early 1980's caused a significant increase in the price of gay sex.

While the use of a condom greatly reduces the risk of contracting AIDS, a condom is, of course, yet another cost associated with sex. In a study of Mexican prostitution, the Berkeley economist Paul Gertler and two co-authors showed that when a client requested sex without a condom, a prostitute was typically paid a 24 percent premium over her standard fee.

Andrew Francis, a graduate student in economics at the University of Chicago, has tried to affix a dollar figure to this change. Francis, in a draft paper titled "The Economics of Sexuality," tries to go well beyond dollar figures. He puts forth an empirical argument that may fundamentally challenge how people think about sex.

As with any number of behaviors that social scientists try to measure, sex is a tricky subject. But Francis discovered a data set that offered some intriguing possibilities. The National Health and Social Life Survey, sponsored by the U.S. government and a handful of foundations, asked almost 3,500 people a rather astonishing variety of questions about sex: the different sexual acts received and performed and with whom and when; questions about sexual preference and identity; whether they knew anyone with AIDS. As with any self-reported data, there was the chance that the survey wasn't reliable, but it had been designed to ensure anonymity and generate honest replies.

The survey was conducted in 1992, when the disease was much less treatable than it is today. Francis first looked to see if there was a positive correlation between having a friend with AIDS and expressing a preference for homosexual sex. As he expected, there was. "After all, people pick their friends," he says, "and homosexuals are more likely to have other homosexuals as friends."

But you don't get to pick your family. So Francis next looked for a correlation between having a relative with AIDS and expressing a homosexual preference. This time, for men, the correlation was negative. This didn't seem to make sense. Many scientists believe that a person's sexual orientation is determined before birth, a function of genetic fate. If anything, people in the same family should be more likely to share the same orientation. "Then I realized, Oh, my God, they were scared of AIDS," Francis says.

Francis zeroed in on this subset of about 150 survey respondents who had a relative with AIDS. Because the survey compiled these respondents' sexual histories as well as their current answers about sex, it allowed Francis to measure, albeit crudely, how their lives may have changed as a result of having seen up close the costly horrors of AIDS.

Here's what he found: Not a single man in the survey who had a relative with AIDS said he had had sex with a man in the previous five years; not a single man in that group declared himself to be attracted to men or to consider himself homosexual. Women in that group also shunned sex with men. For them, rates of recent sex with women and of declaring homosexual identity and attraction were more than twice as high as those who did not have a relative with AIDS.

Because the sample size was so small - simple chance suggests that no more than a handful of men in a group that size would be attracted to men - it is hard to reach definitive conclusions from the survey data. (Obviously, not every single man changes his sexual behavior or identity when a relative contracts AIDS.) But taken as a whole, the numbers in Francis's study suggest that there may be a causal effect here - that having a relative with AIDS may change not just sexual behavior but also self-reported identity and desire.

In other words, sexual preference, while perhaps largely predetermined, may also be subject to the forces more typically associated with economics than biology. If this turns out to be true, it would change the way that everyone - scientists, politicians, theologians - thinks about sexuality. But it probably won't much change the way economists think. To them, it has always been clear: whether we like it or not, everything has its price.

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magicjay38 said [emphasis added]:

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Captain Sammitch said:
When I see an inadequacy in my capacity for intimacy, I'll be willing to look into ways of changing that. Personally, I'm not adequately dissatisfied with my personal life to take chances that are just as likely to ruin it as to improve it.

I'd like to point out that I'm not the one instructing you on how to conduct your personal life.

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I hate it when those that are sexually disabled act sanctimonius about their "purity". We have a lot in common Cap'n. Neither of us cares about sex. You care so little you don't do it with anyone. I care so little I'll do it with everyone. Excepting G-man and Pariah of course.

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What in the flying FUCK are you talking about? Sexually disabled? You don't know me! I choose what I do - I have the options. One might wonder if it's not some sort of psychological or emotional dysfunction to show absolutely no restraint.

Maybe you should stop being so intolerant of others' sexual choices.

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magicjay38 said:

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Killconey said:
Geeze, when did this turn into the bitch about each other's sex lives thread?

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It's my fault! Sometimes I can't resist teasing Sammitch! You'd never guess I'm a subbie, would you?

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You can breathe underwater?