NewsTrust - HIV/AIDS - Most Recent Stories: Opinion (Mainstream)

The one and only Liz

Thu, 24 Mar 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Los Angeles Times - By Editorial Staff - Mar. 24 (Editorial) - There's no doubt that Elizabeth Taylor defined 'celebrity' for the modern age.

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Don't swallow this pill

Fri, 21 Jan 2011 00:00:00 -0800

Times of India - By Unni Karunakara - Jan. 21 (Opinion) - MSF's International President urges India not to cut off access to crucial low-cost medicines.

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Fixes: How Iran Derailed a Health Crisis

Sat, 04 Dec 2010 00:00:00 -0800

New York Times - By By TINA ROSENBERG - Dec. 04 (Opinion) - How health officials established needle sharing programs in a repressive political atmosphere.

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Editorial - A Real AIDS Problem, in America

Sun, 19 Apr 2009 00:00:00 -0700

New York Times - Apr. 19 (Opinion) - The AIDS epidemic is spreading faster than previously thought, even as the American public’s concern about it declines. That dangerous disconnect underscores the urgency of a new campaign announced by the Obama administration to combat complacency about the disease and its potential to strike the unwary.

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NAACP faces plenty of challenges in year of Obama

Fri, 13 Feb 2009 00:00:00 -0800

Detroit Free Press - Feb. 13 (Editorial) - While celebrating its 100th birthday this year, NAACP leaders are asking whether — and how — a civil rights organization can remain relevant in an America that has just elected its first black president.

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Patient Voices: AIDS and H.I.V.

Wed, 05 Nov 2008 00:00:00 -0800

New York Times - By Perry Baker, Karen Barrow, Ken Cedeno, Peter DaSilva, Brett Flashnick, David Goldman, Josh Ritchie - Nov. 05 (Interview) - I'm very hopeful about the future. I'm hopeful about the fact that people who are living longer with HIV have an opportunity to live a better life, and that its not all doom and gloom and I'm hopeful that we're gonna continue on that path and we can live long as anyone else.

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The Bush legacy

Fri, 01 Aug 2008 00:00:00 -0700

San Diego Union Tribune - Aug. 01 (Editorial) - President Bush cemented his own legacy this week, signing into law a dramatic expansion of his already unprecedented effort against AIDS in Africa and other desperate regions. His program is saving literally millions of lives, and it will stand as his greatest bipartisan foreign policy achievement. Approved with lopsided majorities by the House in April and the Senate last month, Bush signed the bill on Wednesday. It authorizes spending $48 billion over the next five years to fight AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria – the three diseases of poverty – in the areas of the world that most need help. The $48 billion represents a more than threefold expansion of the program that Bush first announced in his State of the Union address in 2003 and was approved by Congress later that year. At the time, the Bush initiative was overshadowed in the headlines by the nation's focus on Iraq and the economy, despite the fact that the original $15 billion initiative was the largest commitment ever by any nation for a global battle against a single disease. Five years later, the new initiative is again overshadowed, and again by the focus on the economy and Iraq. And – for Bush, at least – that is a shame.

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The wrong way to fight AIDS

Thu, 31 Jul 2008 00:00:00 -0700

International Herald Tribune - By Laurie Garrett Published - Jul. 31 (Opinion) - But it is troubling that formerly militant activists, United Nations agency leaders, government health officials, the American foreign policy establishment, religious leaders, scientists and physicians fail to see AIDS treatment for what it is: A stop-gap measure to tide humanity over until we can collectively reach what ought to be our real goal - stopping HIV's spread, entirely. On an individual basis living with AIDS is a proper goal; on a population basis it is catastrophic.

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Make HIV testing normal

Sun, 09 Sep 2007 09:53:45 -0700

Boston Globe - Sep. 09 (Editorial) - This country's halting effort to limit the spread of HIV-AIDS reached a turning point last year, when the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommended that doctors and public health officials make testing for the disease more routine. The CDC specifically called for an end to rules requiring that individuals first give written consent before being tested.Concerned that this could cause some high-risk persons not to seek medical care at all, the state's public health commissioner, John Auerbach, wants to maintain the written-consent rule. His concern is valid, but the downside risk seems greater - that the failure to make HIV testing an ordinary practice will keep too many infected persons in the dark about their condition. In little more than a decade, HIV-AIDS has changed from an incurable affliction to one that can be successfully treated with drugs. It is still a stealth disease, though, in its early stages. One-quarter of all those infected do not know they are carrying the virus - and in many cases are transmitting it to others through unprotected sex or shared drug needles. This is a major factor in a sad statistic about AIDS: Each year in this country there are about 40,000 new infections.

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Microchip plan reveals ignorance

Wed, 01 Aug 2007 11:55:32 -0700

The Jakarta Post - By Sudirman Nasir - Aug. 01 (Opinion) - The effort of the Papua legislative council to draft an ordinance that would require microchips be implanted in people living with HIV/AIDS so the authorities could monitor their personal activities is hard proof of the common ignorance among Indonesia politicians of the HIV epidemic. A recent HIV-risk behavioral surveillance survey in Papua found HIV is potentially spreading in the province at a rate 15 times above the national average and tragically nearly half of the population of the province have never heard of HIV/AIDS. Now it is quite clear ignorance is found among ordinary people in remote areas in Papua, but ignorance is also rife among local political elites.

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Why Africa fears Western medicine

Tue, 31 Jul 2007 10:18:26 -0700

International Herald Tribune - By Harriet A. Washington - Jul. 31 (Opinion) - To Westerners, the repatriation of five nurses and a doctor to Bulgaria last week after more than eight years' imprisonment meant the end of an unsettling ordeal. The medical workers, who in May 2004 were sentenced to death on charges of intentionally infecting hundreds of Libyan children with HIV, have been freed, and another international incident is averted. But to many Africans, the accusations, which have been validated by a guilty verdict and a promise to reimburse the families of the infected children with a $426 million payout, seem perfectly plausible. The medical workers' release appears to be the latest episode in a health care nightmare in which white and Western-trained doctors and nurses have harmed Africans - and have gone unpunished.

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UN cries wolf about AIDS

Tue, 31 Jul 2007 00:00:00 -0700

The Economic Times - By James Chin - Jul. 31 (Opinion) - The UN agency coordinating global action against AIDS is wiping egg off its face after reluctantly admitting it had overestimated India's AIDS problem by more than half -- following numerous similar exaggerations world-wide. In 2005 the joint UN Programme on AIDS (UNAIDS) claimed there were 5.7 million infected with HIV in India, giving India the highest number in the world, but the Indian National AIDS Control Organisation (NACO) figures for 2006 released recently lowered the number to 2.5 million -- and UNAIDS has had to admit the new estimate is more accurate. Director Peter Piot, speaking to an AIDS conference in South Africa in June said UNAIDS's work "is further complicated by the mixed messages circulating around the world" and "denialist statements such as that UNAIDS overestimates the size of the epidemic..." The HIV overestimates made or accepted by UNAIDS in recent years total about 10 million -- so who is the real denialist?

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Magic or religion won't solve our problems

Mon, 30 Jul 2007 08:49:57 -0700

The Sunday Vision - By Stephen Mutinyu - Jul. 30 (Opinion) - In a semi-traditional and agrarian society like ours, which has not fully embraced science and technology, people, out of ignorance, look for solutions to their problems from the supernatural. Society has not embraced a secular culture in which the belief is that social problems can be solved by human intervention. People look to magic and religion to solve social problems like poverty, ignorance, unemployment and disease. Society blames such problems on the work of mysterious forces -- a god, a spirit, bad luck or witchcraft. This view is responsible for the escalating number of witchdoctors and pastors in Uganda today. These claim to provide spiritual solutions to the many problems that people have.

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The Invisible Cure: Africa, the West, and the Fight Against AIDS

Sun, 29 Jul 2007 12:32:43 -0700

New York Times - By John Donnelly - Jul. 29 (Review) - Halfway through "The Invisible Cure," Helen Epstein writes about finding a long-forgotten document in a small research library in Canada. Reading through the paper, Epstein says, "I felt as though a small stick of dynamite had gone off in my head." Epstein had unearthed a rare copy of a detailed study on the sexual behavior of Ugandans in the late 1980s and early '90s, a period that coincided with the country's historic drop in H.I.V. rates. In short, Epstein knew, the research done by Maxine Ankrah, an African-American academic, would give invaluable insights into what had halted the epidemic -- insights that could then be applied to other countries with high rates of H.I.V. and AIDS.

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Zimbabwe: 'Economics' Induces Behaviour Change in Men

Sat, 28 Jul 2007 12:35:38 -0700

AllAfrica - Jul. 28 (Opinion) - IS the decline in new HIV infections that this country is experiencing due to the fact that we as a people are now more responsible when it comes to our sexual behaviour or is it just the politics of the stomach? To be very honest, the number of men willing to spend the little extra money they remain with after buying what they need to get by, on women is fast dwindling. While it used to be common for some men to offer to buy ladies a drink in nightclubs, restaurants and other joints, that is now a thing of the past. t is a fact that buying a woman a drink was, for many men, one way of starting a conversation with a lady before going on to ask for their number or other favours in the past. Gone are those days, however!

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Teen sexual behaviors are balanced by community

Sat, 28 Jul 2007 13:13:11 -0700

West Central Tribune - By Michael Gerson - Jul. 28 (Opinion) - Recent books and studies seem to indicate disturbing sexual trends among evangelical Christians. And this time we're not talking about their pastors or political leaders. The new attention is on evangelical teenagers, who reportedly start sex earlier than their mainline Protestant peers. One gleeful headline on an Internet site recently read: "Evangelical Girls Are Easy." That is not the way I remember it. Now, in the cruel march of years, I have a child on the verge of joining the tribe of the teenager, and its rituals hold a sudden interest. In this circumstance, a parent has a choice between turning to sociology or turning to drink. So I called a bright young sociologist at the University of Virginia named W. Bradford Wilcox in search of consolation.

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Avoiding Slippery Slope of Drug-Rationing Debate

Fri, 27 Jul 2007 21:00:22 -0700

AllAfrica - By Anthony Butler - Jul. 27 (Opinion) - International medical and public health journals contain a growing body of writing on the practical and ethical implications of the rationing of antiretroviral (ARV) treatment around the world. The brief title of one important article neatly encapsulates the dilemma facing health profes- sionals: "Which patients first?" Medics in most developing countries talk about "targeting priority patients" in order to emphasise that universal access to ARVs is their ultimate ambition. Campaign groups also avoid the language of rationing because they believe it undercuts their campaigns for ARVs and allows governments to retreat from universal treatment commitments.

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How, and How Not, to Stop AIDS in Africa

Wed, 25 Jul 2007 10:10:27 -0700

The New York Review of Books - By William Easterly - Jul. 25 (Review) - The stigma attached to the HIV-positive, and the implied general stigma for Africa, were tragically misguided. According to survey evidence Epstein provides, Africans are no more promiscuous than most other people, as measured by numbers of sexual partners in a lifetime, casual sexual encounters, and visits to prostitutes. As she says, sexual behavior in Africa is governed by strict rules; they are just different rules from those prevailing elsewhere. She argues that in many African countries the large numbers of people willing to follow those rules have a great deal to fear from AIDS; and they must know they cannot dismiss the problem of infection as one of a whoring minority. The international aid agencies and Western governments are only now belatedly coming around to Epstein's perspective (which is based on the findings of a number of independent researchers), over two decades after the start of the epidemic, and they still don't know quite how to handle it.

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Exposing AIDS

Wed, 13 Jun 2007 08:09:58 -0700

New York Sun - By Sirrid Fry-Revere - Jun. 13 (Opinion) - Could the lure of federal dollars be the motive behind a law being proposed that would weaken the informed consent requirements for HIV testing in New York? Assemblyman Dick Gottfried and Senator Dunane, both Manhattan Democrats, plan to introduce a bill some time this month requiring health professionals to test most, if not all, patients for HIV "as a standard part of diagnostic services." Mr. Gottfried, the chairman of the New York state assembly health committee, is gathering support before finalizing the language and introducing the measure. It could very well be that when you go in for your next routine physical exam, you'll get an HIV test, too. No one admits as much, but this bill, like similar proposals elsewhere, is probably driven by new Ryan White Grant Program requirements, under which states must provide the names of actual HIV patients -- not just anonymous numbers -- to receive federal funding for HIV/AIDS related programs. States will receive funding based not only on actual reported AIDS cases, as was the standard last year, but also on the number of HIV positive residents.

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Drug-resistant AIDS: The next tsunami

Mon, 04 Jun 2007 06:41:55 -0700

Turkish Daily News - By Jeremiah Norris, Philip Stevens - Jun. 04 (Opinion) - At the forthcoming G8 summit in Germany, leaders are keen to play up their global citizenship by pledging millions more dollars to meet the UN's target of putting 10 million people on HIV/AIDS antiretroviral treatment by 2010. No doubt the money will prolong many lives but, behind the headlines coming from Heiligendamm, the neglected issue of drug resistance is starting to simmer -- and it will soon make current financial commitments seem puny, while damaging the economies of countries already ravaged by HIV/AIDS.For some hint of what is brewing, look at Thailand. In 2005, the US Centers for Disease Control reported that Thai scientists had found accelerating resistance to GPO-Vir, an untested fixed-dose combination AIDS drug manufactured by the Thai government. This was pushing increasing numbers of patients onto "second-line" treatment. According to humanitarian NGO Médicins Sans Frontières, "treating 58 patients on second-line drugs is equivalent to the price of treating over 550 patients on first-line [drugs]"--nearly ten times more.

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Botswana: No HIV/Aids Vaccine Yet

Tue, 29 May 2007 22:26:21 -0700

AllAfrica - By Anthony S. Fauci - May. 29 (Statement) - [Anthony Fauci is the Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, a part of the U.S. National Institutes of Health. He advises the White House and the Department of Health and Human Services on global Aids issues, and on initiatives to bolster medical and public health preparedness against emerging infectious disease threats such as pandemic influenza. He was the world's 10th most-cited HIV/Aids researcher from 1996-2006.] It is now a quarter-century since the acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS) was recognised. The knowledge that has been gained since then has been breathtaking, and the pace at which basic research has been translated into lifesaving treatments is unprecedented. The discovery of the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) as the cause of Aids was followed by elucidation of its pathogenesis, natural history and epidemiology, the creation of a diagnostic blood test and the development of antiretroviral drugs.

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Botswana: No HIV/Aids Vaccine Yet

Tue, 29 May 2007 22:26:21 -0700

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What can we expect from the first AIDS vaccine?

Fri, 18 May 2007 10:09:02 -0700

San Francisco Chronicle - By Margaret I. Johnston, Anthony S. Fauci - May. 18 (Opinion) - Significant progress has been made toward the goal of developing a safe and effective HIV vaccine, although many challenges remain. We now know more about HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, and have more promising vaccines in development than at any other time in the history of the HIV/AIDS pandemic. While a vaccine that prevents HIV infection has always been and still remains the aim of HIV vaccine research efforts, years of research have led us to expand our thinking about how an HIV vaccine might work. Specifically, development of a vaccine that does not prevent infection completely but that slows the progression of disease in people who get infected despite vaccination could still serve as a positive intermediate step in the search for a safe and effective AIDS vaccine that completely prevents infection. Most "classical" vaccines against viral diseases -- seasonal influenza, polio, and rabies -- stimulate antibodies (protective proteins) that control the virus, prevent disease and ultimately rid the virus from the body. However, inducing such effective antibodies against HIV is an extraordinary challenge because the virus has multiple ways of evading the body's immune defenses.

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POSITHIV+: AIDS in Sub-Saharan Africa

Thu, 17 May 2007 11:54:48 -0700

Frontline - By Pep Bonet, Mimi Chakarova - May. 17 (Advocacy) - FRONTLINE/World FlashPoint editor Mimi Chakarova spoke to Pep Bonet by phone at his home in Mallorca about what this project meant to him personally and the surprising number of uplifting memories he took away from Africa and its struggle to combat HIV/AIDS. Mimi Chakarova: Your photos display a lot of dignity and a certain sense of quietness. Can you tell me more about the thinking process behind the images, how you chose the subjects and why? Pep Bonet: The reality of AIDS is very, very hard. I've seen more people suffering from AIDS than people living with AIDS, and that has been my experience in Sub-Saharan Africa. But you cannot only show that. There is a hope, and this is one of the main things that I really like in Africa. People have hope, and they are very strong. Just photographing the chaos and the sick people would not show all that was happening. There were people going back to their lives because of ARV [anti-retroviral] therapy and because they had learned to accept their HIV status. I wanted to also show the other side, not to stigmatize people more than they already are, because this is the reality in Africa. People are stigmatized by their neighbors and their communities because most people don't really know about HIV.

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McCain Stumbles on H.I.V. Prevention

Wed, 16 May 2007 09:29:10 -0700

New York Times - By Adam Nagourney - May. 16 (Opinion) - SOMEWHERE in NORTHERN IOWA -- The unthinkable has happened. Senator John McCain met a question, while sitting with reporters on his bus as it rumbled through Iowa today, that he couldn't - or perhaps wouldn't - answer. Did he support the distribution of taxpayer-subsidized condoms in Africa to fight the transmission of H.I.V.? What followed was a long series of awkward pauses, glances up to the ceiling and the image of one of Mr. McCain's aides, standing off to the back, urgently motioning his press secretary to come to Mr. McCain's side. The upshot was that Mr. McCain said he did not know this subject well, did not know his position on it, and relied on the advice of Senator Tom Coburn, a physician and Republican from Oklahoma. His press secretary, Brian Jones, later reported that Mr. McCain had a record of voting against using government money to finance the distribution of condoms. All this took place on the second day of the reprise of the "Straight Talk Express" bus trips that Mr. McCain made a central part of his campaign in 2000. It also comes as Mr. McCain has eagerly been trying to ease strains with social conservatives in the party who, for the most part, do not support using government money to pay for condoms.

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