Tag Archives: medicine

Last night for World AIDS Day, HBO debuted Vice’s Countdown To Zero, which tracks the search for an HIV cure. Today HBO made the unusual move of making the entire show available on YouTube. Watch below.

Last night President Obama issued his annual World AIDS Day proclamation which celebrates continuing advances and vows to pursue a cure for HIV. This afternoon the president follows up that message with a personal video. Watch below.

Big news today from amfAR. Via press release: amfAR, The Foundation for AIDS Research, today announced the establishment of the amfAR Institute for HIV Cure Research, an innovative collaborative enterprise based at UC San Francisco (UCSF). As the cornerstone of amfAR’s $100 million cure research investment strategy, the aim of the Institute will be to develop the scientific basis of …

Airing two weeks from tonight on HBO. Clip recap: Twenty years ago, HIV/AIDS was a death sentence. Now, through advances in medication, it has become a largely manageable chronic disease – and there may finally be a cure on the horizon. VICE investigates recent breakthroughs in medical science to see how close we are to life without AIDS. Hosts Shane …

Reuters reports: Scientists seeking a cure for the AIDS virus have made an unexpected discovery with a drug designed to combat alcoholism which they say could be a critical part of a strategy to “wake up” and then kill dormant HIV hiding in the body. The drug, branded as Antabuse but also sold as a generic called disulfiram, was given …

Seeking to make HIV treatment less dependent on adhering to a daily dosing regimen, researchers have found that an injection of anti-viral medications every two months is just as effective. Pink News reports: The trial backed by Johnson & Johnson as well as GlaxoSmithKlein, tested whether an injected drug taken once every eight weeks could effectively suppress HIV. The head …

The widow of Robin Williams today disclosed that an autopsy revealed that the late comedian had suffered from a frequently misdiagnosed and rapidly advancing form of dementia. The New York Times reports: “It was not depression that killed Robin,” she told People. “Depression was one of let’s call it 50 symptoms, and it was a small one.” Mrs. Williams gave …

The most hated man in pharma is having a bad day. The Associated Press has the story: Stepping into the furor over eye-popping price spikes for old generic medicines, a maker of compounded drugs will begin selling $1 doses of Daraprim, whose price recently was jacked up to $750 per pill by Turing Pharmaceuticals. San Diego-based Imprimis Pharmaceuticals Inc., which …

Pioneering researcher Françoise Barré-Sinoussi, who shared the Nobel prize for identifying the virus that causes AIDS, is retiring. She says she regrets not having found a cure, but believes a complete remission from HIV infection is within reach. Via Reuters: “I am personally convinced that remission…is achievable. When? I don’t know. But it is feasible,” she told Reuters at her …

Researchers at the UCLA School of Medicine today issued a press release in which they claim to be able to predict sexual orientation about 70% of the time using an “algorithm using epigenetic information from just nine regions of the human genome.” From the press release: “To our knowledge, this is the first example of a predictive model for sexual …

The New York Times reports: Everyone who has H.I.V. should immediately be put on antiretroviral triple therapy and everyone at risk of becoming infected should be offered protective doses of similar drugs, the World Health Organization said on Wednesday as it issued new H.I.V. treatment and prevention guidelines. The guidelines increase by nine million the number of people who should …

The Gates Foundation has donated nearly $6M to a promising HIV vaccine study underway at Florida Atlantic University. Via University Press: The vaccine, created by Scripps Research Institute professor Michael Farzan, has showed consistently effective results after being tested on lab animals. The grant from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation will help fund his research for the next four …

Today the Human Rights Campaign sent a letter to New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman [photo] in which they call for an investigation of price-gouging by pharma CEO Martin Shkreli.  HRC head Chad Griffin writes: Daraprim is a lifesaving treatment for toxoplasmosis, a parasitic infection impacting patients with compromised immune systems including those who are pregnant or living with HIV. …

But he won’t say by how much. NBC News reports: The pharmaceutical company boss under fire for increasing the price of the drug Daraprim by more than 5,000 percent said Tuesday he will lower the cost of the life-saving medication. Martin Shkreli did not say what the new price would be, but expected a determination to be made over the …

Yesterday we learned that pharma CEO Martin Shkreli has raised the price of a vital AIDS drug by 5500%. Folks have gone digging into Shkreli’s past and there’s quite a story there. US Uncut reports that Shkreli was recently accused of hacking the email account of a rival pharma executive and threatening his family. They write: The report, taken by …

Raw Story reports: Appearing on Bloomberg TV, the CEO of a pharmaceutical company that recently hiked the price of a drug used for critically ill infants and AIDS patients by 5,500 percent, defended the price increase by promising better things to come for future patients. Martin Shkreli, 32, the founder and chief executive of Turing Pharmaceuticals, recently purchased the rights …

Every year my pal Mark King attends the AIDS Conference and sends us informative and entertaining recaps of the goings-on. In today’s report, King interviews the “Berlin Patient” – the first man considered have been cured of HIV. King also visits with some of the noted activists in attendance and reports on the #TransLivesMatter activists that took over the stage …

Noted author and neurologist Oliver Sacks, who came out earlier this year, has died of cancer at the age of 82. USA Today reports: Sacks, 82, wrote in a Times essay in February that he was in the late stages of a melanoma that had spread to his liver. He died at his home in New York City, longtime personal …

TIME Magazine reports: The first drug to treat a lack of female sexual desire has been approved by federal authorities. The drug flibanserin, which has been coined “female Viagra,” was approved Tuesday by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA). The drug is intended to treat hypoactive sexual desire disorder (HSDD)—a persistent lack of libido—in premenopausal women. The agency had …

Poz.com reports: A group of 15 researchers and clinical investigators at Northwestern University received a $17.5 million grant to develop an implant capable of delivering meds that protect against HIV, according to a press release from the McCormick School of Engineering. The hope is that the implants would last for up to a year. The five-year project is underwritten by …