[flagged]
The global fight against HIV is at risk
21–30 of 106 posts
Re: The global fight against HIV is at risk
#22I’m going to be very mad if there is a resurgence in HIV because of the asinine GOP. If people have to be worried again about their next sexual contact (condoms only offer between 70-90% protection against HIV), we will return to a prudish lifestyle again at a time the west can least afford it with falling birth rates.
Birth rates were higher back when lifestyles were more prudish. Hypergamy seems to have very little positive affect on the production and growth of healthy families and children.
Birthrates have been falling ever since the invention of the pill. Children (often multiple) could no longer be forced upon women. This, along with women becoming their own economic units meant that they no longer have to risk their life and bodies in return for food and shelter from a man.
Re: The global fight against HIV is at risk
#23I’m going to be very mad if there is a resurgence in HIV because of the asinine GOP. If people have to be worried again about their next sexual contact (condoms only offer between 70-90% protection against HIV), we will return to a prudish lifestyle again at a time the west can least afford it with falling birth rates.
> If people have to be worried again about their next sexual contact (condoms only offer between 70-90% protection against HIV), we will return to a prudish lifestyle again at a time the west can least afford it with falling birth rates.
Are you really trying to imply that a "prudish lifestyle" where people actually have long-term relationships and marry is bad for birthrates, and more casual sex is good?
Re: The global fight against HIV is at risk
#24I’m going to be very mad if there is a resurgence in HIV because of the asinine GOP. If people have to be worried again about their next sexual contact (condoms only offer between 70-90% protection against HIV), we will return to a prudish lifestyle again at a time the west can least afford it with falling birth rates.
Not just chastity but also poverty. Imagine how much economic damage a global HIV pandemic would do that can be avoided by keeping it suppressed. What it the opposition to continuing this program thinking? The article mentions wrongly associating it with abortions, .. and maybe some support goes to at risk people which includes mentioning transgender… they would tank the global economy and ruin their own lives on thi…
> Not just chastity but also poverty.
Virtually every cultural subgroup in history had their birthrates plummet once they reached a certain amount of wealth. Evidence indicates that if anything, poverty is good for population growth.
Re: The global fight against HIV is at risk
#25Earlier quoted context omitted.
condoms only offer between 70-90% protection against HIV PrEP offers 100% protection against HIV.
At least in the US, PrEP can be very expensive.
Can be, and certainly is on paper, but in practice most everybody professionally involved with this problem knows that the groups at the most risk also tend to be among the most economically vulnerable. I know a lot of USians on Prep, none of whom pay out of pocket for it.
It’s heavily subsidized through public health channels, manufacturer rebate programs to help with high deductibles for insured people, and grant organizations like the PAN Foundation. Truvada has a generic now. Plus, in 2019 the federal government designated it as a preventative therapy that ~all insurance plans must cover without copay or deductible [0].
Now, it’s true that not everybody is insured (though people who are economically vulnerable tend to qualify for heavily subsidized insurance under the ACA or Medicaid). Still, the costs of Prep specifically in the US, while very high, don’t tend to be borne by the patients directly.
[0] [PDF] https://nastad.org/sites/default/files/2021-12/PDF-PrEP-Cove...
Re: The global fight against HIV is at risk
#26It is also crisis of trust. Western medical companies, Bill Gates foundations etc do not have best reputation in Africa. There were all sorts of experiments done on people, some medications were not as effective as promised... And there is a heavy political and cultural interference, that is just not acceptable in Africa!
>And there is a heavy political and cultural interference, that is just not acceptable in Africa!
Like what?
Re: The global fight against HIV is at risk
#27The main issue is not even mentioned - cheap anti-HIV drugs require escape from patents and promotion of generic manufacturing to reduce costs to the level that poor countries can afford to buy or produce the necessary retrovirals. https://academic.oup.com/cid/article/75/Supplement_4/S557/68... > "Critical to the therapeutics market has been the role of generic drug manufacturers’ ability to supply low- and middle-in…
When a cure for hepatitis c was discovered (solvating iirc), everyone started screaming give it away for free instead of paying the price (~$100k). That price was half the cost of existing treatment and very high chance of success. If capitalism actually worked, they would sell their cheaper and better pill. No shocker there, it didn’t happen (generics in India and so in). If I was CEO of a drug company, I would cert…
Im sorry, but I don’t understand what you’re saying. There’s no identifiable subjects.
Who screamed to give it away when who invented it? Who wanted to pay / set a $100k price?
Who made the existing treatment?
If capitalism worked who would sell the new pill for less? If it’s better, couldn’t you charge more?
Re: The global fight against HIV is at risk
#28The main issue is not even mentioned - cheap anti-HIV drugs require escape from patents and promotion of generic manufacturing to reduce costs to the level that poor countries can afford to buy or produce the necessary retrovirals. https://academic.oup.com/cid/article/75/Supplement_4/S557/68... > "Critical to the therapeutics market has been the role of generic drug manufacturers’ ability to supply low- and middle-in…
Technology happens when the environment is right for it, not randomly.
A breakthrough happens because the research community, available technology and it's economics are pointing in that direction anyway, even if the exact moment can't be known: i.e. Newton and Leibniz both inventing calculus around the same time.
If you're a pharma company and you find the cure for AIDS, then the race is on: someone else is very likely to find it within the same time frame (you know, if none of your thousands of employees decides to just leak it in its entirety).
There will be no market for for product if you don't get to market first: because anyone else will conclude the same.
"Suppressing the cure" doesn't happen. There are too many people involved, and no one goes into bioscience to not help people - the actual scientists don't get paid enough for that.
Re: The global fight against HIV is at risk
#29I’m going to be very mad if there is a resurgence in HIV because of the asinine GOP. If people have to be worried again about their next sexual contact (condoms only offer between 70-90% protection against HIV), we will return to a prudish lifestyle again at a time the west can least afford it with falling birth rates.
Not just chastity but also poverty. Imagine how much economic damage a global HIV pandemic would do that can be avoided by keeping it suppressed. What it the opposition to continuing this program thinking? The article mentions wrongly associating it with abortions, .. and maybe some support goes to at risk people which includes mentioning transgender… they would tank the global economy and ruin their own lives on thi…
It's a combination of desperation, fear, and willful ignorance (one might even say self-induced stupidity). You've had forty years of propaganda at this point, and the old management who designed that propaganda for their followers are retiring or dying and being replaced by younger generations who were or are the followers of that propaganda. In essence these newer generations don't know the lies aren't real, and have been in so deep for most of their lives that they refuse to shatter their worldviews. And so when those worldviews keep being shut down or outright disproven they become more reactive, doing anything they can to keep their understanding of the world intact. They believe that their opposition are creating lies and using systems of information and governance to support those lies, and so to destroy their opposition they are willing to destroy the very systems they themselves work in and rely on to dispel the supposed lies.
They believe they are the only sane men and women in a world of shadows and madness because that's the only way they can continue to function. There is no reasoning with someone who's gone that far. The veneer of egalitarianism that politics in the U.S. has prevents anyone from actually doing anything to stop this increasingly volatile group lest the intervening mediators be seen by their peers both within the volatile group and without as aggressive savages who would subvert well established conventions. The potential mediators must let themselves be stabbed and reply with "That is quite impolite" or else they lose all trust from said peers.
Re: The global fight against HIV is at risk
#30Earlier quoted context omitted.
When a cure for hepatitis c was discovered (solvating iirc), everyone started screaming give it away for free instead of paying the price (~$100k). That price was half the cost of existing treatment and very high chance of success. If capitalism actually worked, they would sell their cheaper and better pill. No shocker there, it didn’t happen (generics in India and so in). If I was CEO of a drug company, I would cert…
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 requirements for free market is a freedom not to buy. That is a potential choice, but few billion of years of evolution says a very bad choice. Thus rather special status of healthcare in pretty much every country.
Back to the issue of capitalist drug research: maybe it’s just me, but most of the new drugs seem to come from USA. Other countries with less insane healthcare (not even sure if care is the correct word in USA context) system (e.g. NHS in UK) don’t seem to produce new drugs.
Ergo, this bad system seems less bad than others, at least as producing new stuff goes.