IUBio

"AIDS Treatment News" online * New Issue #302 (searchable/indexed)

Marnix L. Bosch marnix at u.washington.edu
Fri Oct 30 13:47:41 EST 1998


In article <363a015d.328914173 at netnews.worldnet.att.net>,
johnburgin at worldnet.att.net wrote:


> >I would not recommend antivirals for anyone 
> Thank you
> who has only an antibody test
> >to demonstrate HIV status.
> Not everyone agrees with you.  I repeat, pregnant HIV + women are
> being "treated",  as are their children in the womb and for a while
> thereafter, with AZT.  They are not necessarily AIDS patients.  Care
> to dispute this?  You'll lose, I'll definitely cite the reference on
> that, if you'll apologize immediately thereafter.  Also, since my
> credibility as a medical health person has been questioned(repeatedly
> ad nauseum) you might ask the CDC to confirm the recommended protocol
> of AZT for individuals "possibly" exposed through accidental needle
> stick or exposure to HIV contaminated blood or sputum.  No HIV +
> status even required there.

For pregnant women that are HIV-1 infected I would still like to see a
viral load test, but I understand that the risk of the baby to get
infected is greater than the risk to the mother from short term AZT
treatment. And people exposed through needlesticks are of course a
different category altogether. If you're going to hung for citations maybe
you could provide a few that show that the advocated (short term)
treatment in both of these situations is adversarial to the health of the
individuals under treatment. 

>  As for your question: such a person would have
> >antibodies to the viral proteins contained in the vaccine prep. This could
> >label him/her seropositive. 
> Thank you
> Various proposals are under discussion as to
> >how to distinguish this status from true seropositivity resulting from
> >infection.
> Yes, I'm sure we at Reappraising AIDS and HEAL would love to know how
> that is going to be done.

Some proposals would include a unique antigen irrelevant to HIV-1, others
would exclude certain HIV antigens. Both have their drawbacks. What would
you advocate ?

>  All vaccines in clinical trials to date (that I'm aware off)
> >use only selected HIV-1 antigens
> But, er, don't they "keep on mutating".  What's a fella to do?

Vaccines don't mutate

> , mostly envelope.
> Just the envelope or is that your way of saying that this is just like
> every other garden variety retrovirus, or virus for that matter?

I'm talking about recombinant proteins. Ask your educated pathology
buddies about them.

>  Thus immunized
> >individuals would not be seropositive for HIV-1 but only show reactivity
> >to a limited subset of HIV-1 antigens.
> 
> I'm sure THAT will make the poor schmucks being immunized feel a lot
> better!  I can see it now.  We're going to immunize you but we don't
> know if we are immunizing you against the strain of HIV that you may
> be exposed to, so BE CAREFUL. Also, since you will now be HIV +, you
> don't have to worry about getting a job in a hospital, at a blood bank
> or procuring life or health insurance because we know how open minded
> these institutions are to speculation.
> But, I do appreciate the "kinder" tone of your chastisement this time.
> Thank you for being somewhat civil. jb

Your inclusion of terms like 'asshole', and 'genocidal' makes civility
somewhat one-sided sometimes. Indeed the risk of forgery of vaccination
documents and the like could jeopardize career prospects or mortgage
applications of goodwilling vaccinated individuals. However it is also in
the best interest of eg mortgage companies to reduce the chance of someone
they're ponying up the money for to become infected with HIV-1. Thus, they
would love to have their whole 'population' vaccinated against HIV-1.
What's your solution ? Stop all vaccination efforts, or trying to deal
with the issues you bring up ?

Marnix Bosch

> >Marnix Bosch



More information about the Immuno mailing list

Send comments to us at biosci-help [At] net.bio.net