Pacific Standard May-June 2013 Cover

Should All Americans, Regardless of Risk, Be Screened for HIV?

May 1, 2013 • By • Leave a Comment
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CHICAGO (Reuters) - An influential U.S. panel is calling for HIV screening for all Americans aged 15 to 65, regardless of whether they are considered to be at high risk, a change that may help lift some of the stigma associated with HIV testing. The new guidelines from the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF), a government-backed panel of doctors and scientists, now align with longstanding recommendations by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for testing of all adults aged 15 to 65, regardless of their risk. Guidelines issued by the USPSTF in 2005 had recommended ... Read More

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The AIDS-Free Generation

May 1, 2013 • By • Leave a Comment
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We now have a cure for HIV. But it's not the magic bullet we had hoped for. In the 30 years since HIV was discovered, governments and philanthropists, hoping to find a cure, have poured billions of dollars into research on the virus and its impact on the body. In the process, scientists and activists knocked this former death sentence down to a chronic disease. The year before the approval of combination antiretroviral therapy (ART), HIV killed more people between 25 and 44 than any other disease; two years later, deaths almost halved. Today, whether in New York or Nigeria, people on ART ... Read More

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Neglected Tropical Diseases Neglected No More?

January 31, 2012 • By • Leave a Comment

Even after centuries, it’s hard getting noticed. While they don’t have the name recognition of an epidemic like AIDS (or the Bono star power), neglected tropical diseases, some of which have been around since at least 600 B.C., are the most common serious maladies for the 2.7 billion people on earth who live on less then $2 per day. On January 30 in London, more than a dozen pharmaceutical companies, the governments of the U.S., United Kingdom, and United Arab Emirates, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the World Bank, and others announced a coordinated push to wipe out or control ... Read More

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Turning Cellphones Into Mobile Microscopes

October 26, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment

You can use your cellphone to take pictures, get driving directions, and free imprisoned angry birds. And perhaps soon, analyze microscopic blood samples. Three separate University of California research teams have each concocted a new technology that converts just about any handset with a decent camera into a mobile microscope. That’s a development that could have a huge impact on medicine in developing countries-allowing health care workers in shantytowns and rural villages far from a hospital to diagnose malaria, HIV, and other diseases on the spot. All three teams of UC researchers ... Read More

More like this: Health, News and Options, November-December 2011
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Male Circumcision Ban Makes Cut for November Ballot

May 19, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment

As suggested by our Beryl Lieff Benderly in the March/April edition of Miller-McCune magazine, "intactivists" — advocates working to make male circumcision illegal — have succeeded in getting a public vote on banning the procedure on San Francisco’s November ballot. The plebiscite was penned by a San Diego-based nonprofit, MGMbill.org, and makes “genital cutting” of male minors a misdemeanor punishable by a fine up to $1,000 or a year in jail. Given that circumcision is required by both Jewish and Islamic traditions, the ordinance does not make an exception for “custom or ... Read More

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Circumcision: The Surgical AIDS Vaccine

February 22, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment

Voters in San Francisco — the city that has probably suffered from AIDS more grievously than any other in America — may soon vote on whether to ban a safe, one-time procedure that protects against the virus that causes AIDS almost as effectively as the annual flu shot protects against the flu. Millions of dollars and years of research have thus far failed to overcome the diabolical obstacles to making an HIV vaccine. No doubt exists, however, that another treatment provides protection so effective that health experts have called it a "surgical vaccine." Unlike a flu shot, this protection ... Read More

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Teaming with Technology to Fight TB and HIV

November 24, 2010 • By • Leave a Comment

Tuberculosis — already infecting the global population about one new case a second — is considered one of the most dangerous opportunistic infections attacking people with HIV. The STOP TB Partnership reports that TB is the leading cause of death among persons infected with HIV in Africa. Worldwide, 1 in 4 TB deaths is HIV-related. While the calculus seems straightforward — get HIV, see your immune system falter, then get TB — the tangled tango between the two deadly diseases is more complex. According to the U.S. National Institutes of Health Division of Acquired ... Read More

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A So-So HIV Vaccine May Be a Hard Sell

October 7, 2010 • By • Leave a Comment

An HIV vaccine — the dream of medical science for a quarter-century — isn't all that far off. Given that 2.7 million new HIV infections in 2008 alone brought the world total to 33.4 million infected, there is a genuine need. But rather than a line out the door the first day of availability, new research by Peter Newman and Carmen Logie of the University of Toronto suggests that an HIV vaccine will mostly cause hypochondriacs to rush to their local clinic and others to, at best, scribble an appointment in the weekly planner. The team gathered 30 original studies, mostly from North ... Read More

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List of Neglected Tropical Diseases

June 21, 2010 • By • Leave a Comment
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According to "The AIDS Funding Dilemma," which is featured in the July-August 2010 issue of Miller-McCune magazine, researchers point to growing evidence that this set of neglected tropical diseases may not only “threaten the health of the poor as much as HIV/ AIDS, tuberculosis, or malaria, but even more importantly, may have effective treatment and prevention strategies that can be delivered for less than US $1 per capita per year.” Here is the list of neglected tropical diseases, which cites causes and symptoms: Ascariasis One of the most common human parasitic infections. Causes ... Read More

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The AIDS Funding Dilemma

June 21, 2010 • By • 1 Comment
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Dr. Jerome Kabakyenga has just walked a pair of visitors through a pair of vividly different Ugandan hospital laboratories — one ultramodern, the other an outdated relic. In the first, highly trained technicians investigate blood samples using a battery of high-throughput computerized systems. The brightly lit, air-conditioned facility is spotless. In the second lab on Kabakyenga's tour, there's little equipment beyond a clutter of microscopes, a pair of old refrigerators and a few centrifuges. The technicians here depend on daylight from a set of dusty windows, one of which is cracked. As ... Read More

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