Earlier quoted context omitted.
It is entirely possible to believe multiple things at once: 1. The drop is fertility is bad for society 2. The drop in teen pregnancy is good, despite it's contributions to 1 3. We should try to fix 1. without undoing 2.
I agree, but I don't think #3 is possible. For a variety of reasons, both biological and societal, the older people get the less likely they are to have kids, and fewer of them.
New HIV vaccine shows unprecedented success in preclinical study
131–140 of 325 posts
Re: New HIV vaccine shows unprecedented success in preclinical study
#132Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's still killing people like crazy (and spreading) in undeveloped nations. The new drugs are un-cheap. Also, I believe that we just DOGEd our only vehicle for distributing these to underdeveloped nations.
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Why haven't other countries stepped up to address this pressing need? I'm sure every other western nation could easily chip in collectively to cover the roughly $34B budget USAID had. Or do they just not care about these millions of people apparently sentenced to death?
Re: New HIV vaccine shows unprecedented success in preclinical study
#133Earlier quoted context omitted.
> If you are not doing risky sex it isn't for you. That blanket statement I very much disagree with. Sure there are side effects but that is part of why you also get tested every 3 months for liver issues (not that it is the only side effect, but still). Instead of it being a blanket statement it should be a conversation with your doctor about the pros and cons. You can still get HIV even if not engaging in risky beh…
You are extremely unlikely to get HIV from anything other than risky sex. That's what "risk" means: it's another word for "probability," just a probability of negative outcomes. These probabilities are known: https://www.aidsmap.com/about-hiv/estimated-hiv-risk-exposur... Some of that table is already mitigated: we test blood for HIV, so transmission by blood transfusion is unlikely. Transmission by pregnancy is less…
Anecdotally, very much so - at least among the gay/MSM community.
The thing is, people generally quite like having sex. That comes with some level of risk, which can be mitigated in various different ways - and PrEP is one of those tools.
All humans engage in some level of risky behaviour; evidence suggests that moralising about “responsible behaviour” or “self control” is rarely effective at mitigating that risk.
Re: New HIV vaccine shows unprecedented success in preclinical study
#134Earlier quoted context omitted.
Ok... so you have to 1. Know you were exposed (many many many people don't know they're HIV+) 2. Have the means to go to a clinic within 72 hours 3. Have the social capacity to go to the clinic safely (in many parts of Sub Saharan Africa doing so would insult your partner) PEP is an emergency drug, not a prevention at all.
My understanding is PrEP is also free, but I'm less certain about that post-cuts.
Re: New HIV vaccine shows unprecedented success in preclinical study
#135The most interesting point of the article for me is that this vaccine appears to be a series of shots which act as a curriculum for the immune system. Each one slightly different and targeting a different stage of B-cell development. I've never thought of vaccine series working like that, so it was a new and impressive idea.
So each turn, B-cells are presented with the latest version of the virus, they generate various antibodies to the various parts, and are graded at the end by how well the generated antibodies bind to the virus. The problem is that you have 1 million cells which bind strongly to the fake decoy targets and 1 cell which will bind not as strong to the real effective target. So this 1 cell never gets "promoted".
What this "germline targeting" multi-shot vaccine tries to do is to introduce a series of targets that stimulate that 1 in a million cell which will attack the right part of the HIV virus, so it gets "promoted", so if the real virus appears, the body will still go for the decoy targets, but will also generate a lot of these really effective 1 in a million cells, which got "promoted" previously by the vaccine.
To be more precise, you need to "guide" a lets call it B1 cell that all of us have in our repertoire to mutate into B2 then B3 than B4, because this B4 version will be capable of creating the right antibodies for HIV, the issue being that the intermediary states, B2, B3 are not naturally promoted so you very rarely get to the B4 state without this intervention.
Re: New HIV vaccine shows unprecedented success in preclinical study
#136Earlier quoted context omitted.
All the tools we have against teen pregnancy need teens making right decisions, or taking corrective actions. If there were a pill that'd block pregnancy for X years, given at the age of Y, then parents could enforce it and teen pregnancy would be solved (also it'd be very cruel but I'm just trying to make a point so bear with me). Going back to our topic: People could also forget PrEP, be drunk and forget to wear a…
I'm not following the points in the above thread. - people need to make the right decisions to take oral or injectable reverse transcriptase inhibitors - people need to make the right decisions to take HIV vaccines We are comparing two tools, not tools versus discipline. In some ways these reverse transcriptase inhibitors are like a vaccine, in that they can be taken by people who don't have HIV, for protection. They…
Re: New HIV vaccine shows unprecedented success in preclinical study
#137Earlier quoted context omitted.
Cost and compliance are still 2 major factors that have not been solved. We also have education and stigma. While within the LGBT community it is far more common to be open about status and taking prep and doxy (far from perfect though), it still feels like outside of that the conversations are not happening as much as they should. Throw in doctors that are not being proactive about the conversation. Right now it see…
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And doxycycline is a PEP treatment, not a PrEP treatment; respectfully you should probably take a step back from conversations where you obviously aren’t informed about the basics.
Re: New HIV vaccine shows unprecedented success in preclinical study
#138Peer review files: https://media.springernature.com/original/springer-static/es...
Independent article covering it: https://cen.acs.org/pharmaceuticals/vaccines/hiv-vaccine-can...
Re: New HIV vaccine shows unprecedented success in preclinical study
#139Earlier quoted context omitted.
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> Musk has sentenced hundreds of thousands, if not millions, to death by dismantling USAID. Why haven't other countries stepped up to address this pressing need? I'm sure every other western nation could easily chip in collectively to cover the roughly $34B budget USAID had. Or do they just not care about these millions of people apparently sentenced to death?
The problem is money doesn't build supply lines overnight. Nor does it hire experts both locally and globally and get them there. Much of the data collected on patients by USAID can't just be handed over to another government for a myriad of privacy issues. Patients then have to know that their old clinic no longer exists and they have to go to a new one (is it in the same village anymore?). In the meantime viral counts go up, people get sick, infect their partners or newborn children. You can't just "pick it up later" without causing real harm.
> or do they not care
Do we not? Why can't we care, why is it now someone else's problem because Musk is still mad Mandela was let off of Robin Island?
Re: New HIV vaccine shows unprecedented success in preclinical study
#140Earlier quoted context omitted.
prep is great but i would really rather take a one-time vaccine than be expected to take an expensive pill forever that could mess up my liver
Which one do you suppose the pharmaceutical companies would prefer?