Eugene David<br>...The One-Minute Pundit

Posted 10:28 AM by Gene

From a rag we associate with airheaded frivolity: a story on the hunt for a cure for AIDS:

[A]dvances in treatment have further shifted attention from the hunt for a cure. A study released in May found that early anti-retroviral therapy decreases patients’ infectiousness by a striking 96 percent. Today, most people on anti-retroviral drugs achieve an undetectable viral load—there is virtually no HIV circulating in their blood. An idea has taken hold: We can live with this.

But we cannot. Doctors will tell you that many patients still fail treatment and die. As people age with the disease, we are seeing that even those successfully treated can lose years of life. A massive multicountry study published in The Lancet in 2008 reported that someone starting therapy at age 20 could expect to live to only 63. The following year, another study found that a group of HIV-positive patients with a median age of 56 had immune systems comparable to those of healthy 88-year-olds. The latent reservoir of HIV seems to be most to blame, producing inflammation that degrades the immune system, increasing susceptibility to age-related diseases. What’s more, research has shown that the drugs themselves can lead to increased risk of heart disease, diabetes, and osteoporosis.

The cost of treatment is also unsustainable. In the United States, second-line drugs—for people who don’t improve on standard medications—can total $30,000 a year. Cash-strapped states are trimming programs that pay for these medicines; there are now more than 8,300 people in America on waiting lists for anti-retroviral drugs. In developing countries, drugs are much cheaper—some generic regimens cost only $67 annually—but wealthy nations are wearying of picking up the bill. According to UNAIDS, 10 million people in the Third World who need treatment are not getting it at all. The math of the epidemic is unrelenting: For every three people who start treatment, five new people are infected.

A vaccine for AIDS is “probably decades away,” says Daria Hazuda, a vice-president at Merck. “There’s still an enormous amount of hope, but people now realize it’s going to be extremely complicated.” We know now that we will neither treat nor vaccinate our way out of this epidemic. But there could be another way for it to end.

And that way apparently involves stem-cell research, and you know what that means. And even this man who has been "cured" of AIDS has suffered lingering side effects. We should always hope to eradicate this scourge, but most likely it will not even be in our great-grandchildren's lifetimes.