Tag Archives: HIV/AIDS

Some excellent early news on the Obama administration comes via Wonk Room: Advisers to President-elect Barack Obama are indicating that “Obama will reverse U.S. family planning and AIDS prevention strategies that have long linked global funding to anti-abortion and abstinence education.” The Obama reversal is a return to an approach that is based on solid evidence and public health rather …

An accidental discovery in Germany may provide a breakthrough in curing AIDS. The startling case of an AIDS patient who underwent a bone marrow transplant to treat leukemia is stirring new hope that gene-therapy strategies on the far edges of AIDS research might someday cure the disease. The patient, a 42-year-old American living in Berlin, is still recovering from his …

“Gay sex produces AIDS, which the state doesn’t have — or should have an interest in. They should charge homosexuals more for their — for their health insurance than they charge the rest of us. I mean, just like they charge — look, if I’m a tobacco smoker, I pay more, right? Why? Because I’m risking my life, and the …

Insanity. Three men have gone on trial in the Netherlands accused of deliberately infecting at least 14 other men with HIV – the virus that causes Aids. The prosecution says the three promoted gay sex parties on the internet, then drugged and raped their guests and injected them with HIV-infected blood. Twelve of the alleged victims have tested positive for …

Andrew Sullivan notes that the government has not complied with recent changes to travel rules for the HIV+ and that he will be “required to leave the US for good next March.” The Bush administration has not yet lifted the regulation barring people with HIV from entering the United States, despite the law lifting the ban overwhelmingly passed by the …

I don’t know how I missed last week’s news that director Steven Soderbergh is casting Michael Douglas to play Liberace in a biopic about the famously flamboyant Las Vegas showman. Matt Damon is set to play Liberace’s lover who sued him for palimony. Right up until his 1987 death from AIDS, Liberace denied his gayness. (The magazines were always depicting …

Last night Aaron and I attended the book launch party for Sandy “Pepa” Denton’s memoir of her life in Salt-N-Pepa, the five-time Grammy winning rap trio that rocked the airwaves and dancefloors of the world beginning in 1985, selling over 13 million albums along the way. As you can see, both Sandy (Pepa ) and Cheryl James (Salt) look fantastic …

According to a new play from a North Carolina minister, you can pray the gay AND the AIDS away! A play featuring anti-gay and “ex-gay” religious themes will be showcased at Winston-Salem State University by a traveling, Atlanta, Ga.-based Christian production company headed by an African-American minister and his wife. The duo claims a person can be healed of HIV/AIDS …

David France has a fascinating and lengthy piece in the upcoming issue of GQ titled We All Forgot The Condom that touches on condom fatigue, pre-exposure prophylaxis, and serosorting. An excerpt: Gay men are no longer abiding by the one commandment that dominated gay life for decades: “Use a condom every time.” In survey after survey, gay men say they …

As longtime readers know, there are a handful of short stories from my archives that I repost annually. Today is Madonna’s 50th birthday and this story makes its third appearance in memory of a departed friend. Ricky Loved MadonnaToday is August 16th. It’s Madonna’s 48th birthday. That’s not something of which I’d ordinarily make note……… Twenty years ago today, August …

It’s a complicated turn of events for Gilead, the maker of HIV drug Viread. The 9th Circuit Court has reinstated a securities class action suit against the drug maker which claims that Gilead had misled investors about the demand for Viread. The suit charges that Gilead fostered demand for Viread by using improper marketing such as “aggressively promoting off-label uses.” …

Via Queerty comes this image from a new ad campaign by an Argentine condom company. What say you, readers? Over-the-top scare tactics or brutal truth? If I recall correctly, San Francisco tried a safer-sex campaign featuring photos of facially wasted men, much to a local outcry from pozzers who complained that such images unfairly presented them as ghoulish-looking. Is this …

In what AIDS activists are hailing as one of the true positive legacies of his administration, yesterday George Bush signed the most extensive global AIDS relief bill in history. AIDS Healthcare Foundation (AHF), hailed President Bush for signing legislation to re-authorize PEPFAR (the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief). The measure, which was signed in a formal signing ceremony earlier …

The Black AIDS Institute has issued a stunning comparison: If black America were a country, it would rank 16th in the world in the number of people living with the AIDS virus, the Black AIDS Institute, an advocacy group, reported Tuesday. The report, financed in part by the Ford Foundation and the Elton John AIDS Foundation, provides a startling new …

A new study published in The Lancet says that advances in treatment since the late 90’s have added 13 years to the average life expectancies of people with HIV. In high-income countries with the appropriate health care available, a 20-year-old infected with HIV in 2008 can expect to live another 49 years with the disease. The team, involving Bristol University …

Less than a year after Merck gave up on its initially promising HIV vaccine trial, the U.S. government announced yesterday that it too was giving up on a massive HIV vaccine trial. Plans for a large human trial of a promising government-developed H.I.V. vaccine in the United States were canceled Thursday because a top federal official said scientists realized that …

And the United States inches closer to the civilized world…. AIDS Action applauds the Senate for overwhelming, bipartisan passage of the Lantos/Hyde U.S. Global Leadership Against HIV/AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria Reauthorization Act (S 2731), which reauthorizes the President’s Emergency Plan For AIDS Relief (PEPFAR). The organization particularly commends the lifting of the statutory requirement that bars travel and immigration to …

This is unbelievable. Sen. Elizabeth Dole (R-NC) wants to rename the the current AIDS relief bill after Jesse Helms. SA 5074. Mrs. DOLE submitted an amendment intended to be proposed by her to the bill S. 2731, to authorize appropriations for fiscal years 2009 through 2013 to provide assistance to foreign countries to combat HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, malaria, and for other …

Former Sen. Jesse Helms (R-NC), the most notoriously racist and homophobic politician in the history of the United States, has died at the age of 86. Happy Independence Day!!! And now for some choice quotes from DEAD Jesse Helms, the greatest embarrassment to my home state of North Carolina and the nation: – On threatening the life of a sitting …

Fascinating story from Science Magazine: The human immunodeficiency virus (HIV-1) responsible for most of the AIDS cases in the world infected people approximately 100 years ago, more than 20 years earlier than previously believed, according to findings presented here this week at the Evolution 2008 meeting. Its lesser known cousin, HIV-2, jumped into humans decades later, from a monkey species …