6 ms·
A 10% risk of death of a massive gamble compared to the alternatives. I can only hope this leads to a more useful solution than immune system replacement. I exp
by init2null 2y ago
A 10% risk of death of a massive gamble compared to the alternatives. I can only hope this leads to a more useful solution than immune system replacement. I expect many would prefer a life of daily medication, or even shots every few months, which looks to be a promising form of treatment.
- jfengel 2y agoIn this case there are no alternatives, because the patients have leukemia as well as HIV. For most people the current regimens for treating HIV are excellent. They can get the viral load down to undetectable levels, which makes it impossible to transmit. And the side effects are minimal.
- rvba 2y agoAre undetectable levels really impossible to transmit?
- somnic 2y agoAs I understand it, large studies of couples where one partner has HIV with an undetectable viral load and the other does not have HIV have not recorded any cases of transmission through sexual activity. The question of whether it's "impossible" or "extremely unlikely" comes down more to philosophy than anything pragmatic at this point. Transmission through sharing needles we have less confidence around, because illegal drug use is harder to study. IIRC not everyone reaches an undetectable viral load through antiretroviral medication, so you do need to make sure that's the case. Pre-exposure prophylaxis and general safe sex practices like condoms can mitigate the risk for people with low-but-detectable viral load and their partners.
- pavlov 2y agoI grew up in the 1990s with an overwhelming fear of HIV as a teenager. It still feels incredible that the virus is now undetectable and non-transmissible with medication that’s not much of a burden in one’s daily life. A cure for AIDS was much closer than anyone imagined in 1993. When everything seems dark and hopeless, this is one of the examples that always lifts my spirits. Humankind can achieve incredible things together.
- Gibbon1 2y agoWhile looking for something else on San Francisco's heath departments website I found the following two things. In San Francisco Deaths from AIDs dropped 70% from 1996 to 1997. That's in one year it went from a relentless death sentence to manageable chronic. While almost everyone that got HIV in the mid 80's are dead most people that got HIV in the mid 90's are still here. If that's not winning it's close.
- KennyBlanken 2y ago10,000 people a year die of AIDS in the US. Not even remotely close to "winning." I suspect a large portion of those deaths are due to poor sexual education thanks to christofascists, and people who don't get tested regularly because of poor access to family planning and reproductive health, again thanks to christofascists. All because Magical Sky God Said Abortion Bad. That and people who lose their healthcare and can't afford the meds because this country is the only developed nation in the world which does not treat healthcare like a universal human right, because corporations want to keep using health coverage to keep workers from switching jobs more freely, because they don't want a free labor market.
- mensetmanusman 2y agoIt’s mostly through drug use, poverty, etc.
- rjzzleep 2y agoIsn’t that like a third of gun deaths in the USA? Personally for me this idea of trust that it’s undetectable and therefore non jtransmissible is not a risk I would recommend anyone to take, but at the same time we have to put things into relation no?
- pbj1968 2y ago“Got it through sharing needles” was the 90s version of “got herpes from a toilet seat.”
- watwut 2y agoEven these days, when cops accidently pike themselves with needles when dealing with addicts, they go to HIV center for preventative drugs. So that they, a cop who got piked exactly once, do not get HIV.
- pbj1968 2y agoYes, obviously.
- onetokeoverthe 2y ago[dead]
- alexey-salmin 2y agoUm, no? Unlike with toilet seats, tons of people got it this way. There were even cases of hospital outbreaks due to insufficient sterilization of reusable syringes.
- pbj1968 2y agoCitation needed.
- alexey-salmin 2y agoIs it really that hard to find? About 270 patients, mostly children, were nosocomially infected with HIV subtype G in seventeen hospitals in 1988–1989. The infection was mainly transmitted between children through contaminated catheters and needles, and from children to mothers through breast-feeding. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5905505/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5905505/
- blue_dragon 2y agoMy "pragmatic" analysis: I once spoke to a primary-care doctor about the risks of getting HIV through sex. The doctor told me that the risk of getting HIV the "typical way" (receiving anal sex) is about 1/72. Thus, for every 72 exposures, the recipient would contract HIV one time. This assumes that condoms are not used, and that the transmitter has an untreated HIV infection, which presumably has a high viral load. Transmission risk goes down by orders of magnitude for other forms of sex, until we get to receiving blowjobs, where the risk is literally nil. There are zero recorded cases of HIV caused by receiving a blowjob. In other words, HIV is actually kind of hard to get. You have to be very active, and not using protection, in order to get it. Or just be very, very unlucky. And that's with respect to untreated cases, which likely have high viral loads. This suggests to me that, for practical purposes, undetectable levels are impossible to transmit. Or as the Prep marketing executives would say, "U means U" - undetectable means untransmittable. Whether or not you're comfortable having sex with someone who is HIV+ but claims to have an undetectable viral load is a separate question entirely.
- spencerchubb 2y ago> Whether or not you're comfortable having sex with someone who is HIV+ but claims to have an undetectable viral load is a separate question entirely. If someone has HIV, they would have to be extremely suicidal to forego taking the medication that would make them undetectable.
- tidenly 2y agoSorry to rant a little, but as someone who grew up with HIV in the family, this odd pressure against people who might be hesitant to sleep with someone U=U always feels uncomfortable and manipulative to me. I see it a lot around the internet. The way I was raised, I'm the only person I trust with my sexual health. I would never trust someones word they're tested recently and have unprotected sex with them. I wouldn't trust someone saying they're on PrEP and have unprotected sex with them either. I can only trust myself. U=U is exactly the same situation. In a zero trust mindset like that, someone telling me they're U=U only tells me they have HIV. I have HIV+ friends who struggle to take their meds at the right time every day, or forget. And I also know people who have lied about when they last took their STI screening to hookups. I'm also sure a bunch of people would get angry if you asked a U=U person to show you their latest CD4 count or viral load proof too - so what am I to do, just trust that, unlike everyone else, U=U people are perfectly honest, and never screw up taking their meds? The response to this is often "anyone COULD have HIV, U=U people are actually safer because they have it locked down", but again to me this is about as trustworthy as "anyone COULD have HIV, but people on PrEP have it locked down". It all relies on the trust the other person is on top of their shit.
- jsperx 2y agoThis article from the NIH reviewing three large studies across heterosexual, bisexual and homosexual couples says the science is clear: https://www.nih.gov/news-events/news-releases/science-clear-hiv-undetectable-equals-untransmittable https://www.nih.gov/news-events/news-releases/science-clear-...
- KennyBlanken 2y agohttps://www.google.com/search?q=aids+tranmission+undetectable+level https://www.google.com/search?q=aids+tranmission+undetectabl...