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The global fight against HIV is at risk

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Re: The global fight against HIV is at risk

#101

Post by valianteffort »

sargun wrote: post #79
valianteffort wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would have to assume most sexually active women in the US are on some form of birth control or just avoid hooking up near ovulation windows. I've had exactly one woman ever ask me to use a condom, but she was french. Not sure if they're more expected there. I'd happily raise any kid that came of it so I've never been worried.

My data point is that every woman under about 30 wants to use condoms. Above 30, there is a lot less of a concern.

I would think it's the opposite. Older women come from a time before widespread birth control usage and are used to condoms vs younger women who rely mostly on pills. Unless you were referring to fertility in which case yeah probably got better odds of not having unexpected kids in your 30's.

Re: The global fight against HIV is at risk

#102

Post by DanBC »

mnau wrote: post #30
mistrial9 wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

drug research overall falls into a "natural oligopoly" .. the research is lengthy and expensive, yet the occasional "winner" can be generations of income. IIR a book on the industry is called "The Billion Dollar Molecule" meanwhile, some of the obnoxiously, obscenely wealthy individuals in the USA are running small pharm brands, either supplements or critical medicines. This wealth-crowbar was exposed to the public b…

> Pyrimethamine has been available since 1953.[20] In 2010, GlaxoSmithKline sold the marketing rights for Daraprim to CorePharma. If Wikipedia is correct, that drug was long ago out of patent doghouse. I don’t know why USA (government, nonprofit, bill gates I don’t care who) doesn’t just make generics. Ditto insulin, that is another glaring example of that insanity. You could argue (very reasonably) that one of key r…

> maybe it’s just me, but most of the new drugs seem to come from USA.

It's just you.

What we see from the US is re-patenting. Citalopram gets a minor change and becomes escitalopram, it gets a new patent and some bullshit sales pitch to make doctors switch from a cheap generic to a more expensive branded med. Or ketamine infusion becomes eskatamine nasal spray - moved from a generic and tricky to administer med to a branded and easy to administer med (and, it turns out, much less effective).

The other thing the US does is "Me too" drugs - someone develops an SSRI and the US is then able to spin up 8 different versions of SSRIs that are different enough to get their own names and patents.

Most of the funding in the US doesn't come from big pharmaceutical companies, but is government funding.

For the new meds that are developed in the US the funding normally comes from Government (NIHR) funding, and not direct from pharmaceutical companies.

It's also difficult to work out what to measure: do we look at GERD (gross expenditure on research and development) or do we look at GDP too? DO we look at the quantity of new meds, or the impact on quality of life or years of life lost to disability? Do we focus on meds aimed at diseases that affect wealthy countries (diabetes, breast cancer, etc) or on disease that mostly affects poorer countries? Because three meds that have moderate impact for a small population are "less" than one med that has a good strong impact on a large population.

Re: The global fight against HIV is at risk

#103

Post by loeg »

valianteffort wrote: post #101
sargun wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My data point is that every woman under about 30 wants to use condoms. Above 30, there is a lot less of a concern.

I would think it's the opposite. Older women come from a time before widespread birth control usage and are used to condoms vs younger women who rely mostly on pills. Unless you were referring to fertility in which case yeah probably got better odds of not having unexpected kids in your 30's.

> Older women [in this context, 30s] come from a time before widespread birth control usage and are used to condoms vs younger women who rely mostly on pills.

Lol? Hormonal birth control has been around since the 1960s. Women old enough to remember a time before the pill are postmenopausal and probably not worried about conceiving. Women in their 30s today grew up in a time of omnipresent birth control.

Re: The global fight against HIV is at risk

#104

Post by loeg »

graphe wrote: post #56

The title should be "consideration for the reallocation of funds to more beneficial uses". HIV infections in the US are easily preventable even with current treatments.

> HIV infections in the US are easily preventable even with current treatments.

Yes, but that's sort of irrelevant for PEPFAR, which is a foreign aid program.

Re: The global fight against HIV is at risk

#105

Post by avazhi »

asveikau wrote: post #72
mnau wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don’t share needles and don’t engage in casual sex don’t seem like a too high bar. There is a lot rape, but Botswana has 25% of population infected and per UNICEF > While there is increased awareness of HIV in general, comprehensive knowledge of HIV remains low, condom use among sexually active young people is declining , and rates of forced sex and teenage pregnancy are ominously high.

> Don’t share needles and don’t engage in casual sex don’t seem like a too high bar. Very close to what Americans said about AIDS in the 80s. This is now regarded to have been stupid at best, discriminatory and bigoted at worst.

Telling people not to engage in risky behaviour isn't discriminatory or bigoted, bud. Do stupid things, win stupid prizes.

Re: The global fight against HIV is at risk

#106

Post by asveikau »

avazhi wrote: post #105
asveikau wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Don’t share needles and don’t engage in casual sex don’t seem like a too high bar. Very close to what Americans said about AIDS in the 80s. This is now regarded to have been stupid at best, discriminatory and bigoted at worst.

Telling people not to engage in risky behaviour isn't discriminatory or bigoted, bud. Do stupid things, win stupid prizes.

The Reagan administration didn't approve of gay people or heroin addicts. So they said they didn't have to worry about AIDS.

Guess what though? Drug addicts are people. And obviously, the entire world understands now that a disease disproportionally affecting gay people is still very fucking important.

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