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Re: Brief Summary

Written by Ivan at 03 Jun 2003 18:38:42:

As an answer to: Brief Summary written by chImp at 03 Jun 2003 18:07:10:

>Here's what I understood from the articles:
>* AIDS was discovered 19 years ago. To this day we don't have a clue exactly HOW HIV kills T-cells.

I doubt this. As 28/F points out, the article is a decade old, and this is the sort of objection often tossed off irresponsibly when there are in fact good descriptions but no articles on the precise topic because it is such a trite question to the researchers

>* All veneorogical deseases are evenly distributed amongst males and females. Not AIDS, in Europe/USA it's 90% males.

No longer true as other modea, such as IV drug abuse, became more prevalent modes of transmission, although it remains in the US/Europe a majority male disease. But that's in the nature of the transmission of the disease - it has to get under the skin, to the lymph or blood. The others do not. So the anal sex more commonly practiced by gays and which tends to cause fissures had been the predominant mode of transmission. Of course, lesbains had a notably low level of infection. Thus HIV In areas where STDs are more common, thus creating routes for infection, particularly where use of prostitutes is very common (sub Saharan Africa for both conditions - the latter causing the former condition) have much more balanced rates. But so what - this does not mean that HIV does not cause AIDS, but only that whatever does cause it cannot survive outside the blood or lymph - it's not relevant to the identity of the infection or whether it is an infection.

>* It takes 1000 (unprotected) intercourses with an HIV person to get it

This is absolute unadulterated BS. Transmission on as little as a single exposure is well-enough documented.

>* The most natural way of tranmitting HIV is from mother to children. All other such viruses are harmless (the baby dies ----> the virus dies)

Huh - why is this the 'most natural way' and besides, the death of the child would only kill the viruses within the child, not what continues to replicate within the mother.

>* In HIV/AIDS patients, at most 1/1000 of T-cells are infected with HIV.
So what! If we had a flu (influenza) outbreak where at any given time 1/1000 of the population was infected, it would be a worse epidemic than the early 1900s outbreaks. If HIV shortens the lifespan of the T-cells by a considerable extent (in actual AIDS cases, not during the latency period), only a few at any given time would be infected, but the population would be rapidly dwindling. If all the T-cells were infected at once, the victim would die within weeks if not days. It is a relatively slow-acting virus (actually retrovirus, but for these purposes that's a quibble).


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