🚀 go-pugleaf

How beautifully ironic:

   "We come to conference after conference to hear about 
    product-driven studies conducted or heavily influenced 
    by pharmaceutical sponsors . . . Researchers also urge us not
    to worry, promising a plethora of new drugs and new targets 
    . . . Some of us don't have time to wait."
              Mark Harrington, TAG (Treatment Action Group)

Hoist by your own petard, Mark Harrington! Harrington SOLD OUT to the 
pharmaceutical industry and LIED for them ... now poor
Mark's crocodile tears are spilling into his drug-company-paid
Swiss beer during his drug-company-paid vacation to the AIDS
conference in Switzerland.

I find ALL of this rather hilarious. These fools went along
and went along and went along despite ALL the warnings based
on the science that we could administer to them. THEY called
US crazy! Ha! As far as the people from TAG are concerned,
I PRAY that they have managed to delay the discovery of
real treatments to halt disease progression long enough
that during their final hours on this planet they receive
the "good news" ... but just as they slip, slip, slip
away to the Cocktail Happy Hour in the sky

... and I'll LAUGH and LAUGH and LAUGH!!!

During HIV disease progression and death, the virus "comes out of 
hiding" and "replicates like crazy." Certainly, this does not cure these 
individuals nor does it eliminate the virus from the reservoirs 
primarily HIV-infected macrophages.

Why would researchers want to initiate this counterinituitive
process in healthy and stable asymptomatics?

I LOVE these notable quotes from notable researchers from 
another great Laurie Garrett article in Newsday:

   "Even more striking, according to Ho, is analysis of the viruses 
    that are growing and spreading in hidden reservoirs in the bodies of
    "successfully treated" patients. The analysis reveals "evolution of
    viral sequences, more and more with time" - meaning these strains
are
    replicating and mutating."

Ha! ha! ha! ha! ha! .... I TOLD YOU SO!!!

   "After as many as three years of seemingly successful therapy in
   which no viruses could be found in their blood, Fauci said in a
speech,
   close analysis of hidden regions, such as tonsils and lymph nodes,
   reveals HIV "in every one of those individuals, and in each one we
were
   able to isolate replication-competent virus . . . every one of them
had
   virus in a latent pool."

Ha! ha! ha! ha! ha! .... YEP -- AGAIN, I TOLD YOU SO!!!

   "With what we have now [for treatment] I don't even think that
    [reservoir] is ever going to be eradicated," said a disheartened
    Silicano in an interview. "If only you had a way to eliminate these
   latently HIV-infected cells."

Ha! ha! ha! ha! ha! .... AND ONCE AGAIN, I TOLD YOU SO!!!

Maybe these imbeciles should be paying attention to the
scientific realities for a change. I mean, get with it
fellas, we're coming to the end of the SECOND DECADE
of this disease and THEY HAVE DELIBERATELY DERAILED
SINCERE SCIENTIFIC INVESTIGATION INTO IMMUNOTHERAPIES
FOCUSED ON ACTIVATING CELLULAR IMMUNITY!!! I suppose
Fauci might have had a say in that, certainly because
he incorrectly fantasizrd that his patented IL-2 
"treatment" would fill that niche ... but Fauci was
wrong because he too is a junk scientist who seemed
interested in patents, rather than people.

When the Fauci fiasco falls apart, you will once
again be treated with another serving of "I told you so!".

Get a fucking clue people!!!

fred

=================================

Newsday, Wednesday, 07-01-1998, pp A24. 

HIV Vaccine Test an Oasis of Hope

By Laurie Garrett. STAFF CORRESPONDENT

    Geneva - Plans to use a new vaccine approach to try to restimulate
the immune system to attack latent HIV were detailed by Dr. David Ho
yesterday at this week's 12th World Conference of AIDS.

    Ho's decision to conduct the vaccine experiment comes in the wake of
dismal news and real dangers involved with the standard treatment:
Highly Active Anti-Retroviral Therapy, or HAART. This therapy involves a
protease inhibitor and a combination of two older drugs.

    The clinical trial, already approved by the Food and Drug
Administration, will begin next week, said Ho, who is director of the
Aaron Diamond AIDS Research Center in Manhattan. It will involve several
HIV-positive men who have been on HAART for at least two years and have
attained full suppression of HIV in their blood. The men will be
vaccinated with a new French product developed by the Merieux Co. The
vaccine is a canary pox product with components of four parts of HIV in
it.

    The hope is that once vaccinated these men will be able to mount an
effective immune response against the up to 1 million viruses that are
hidden throughout their bodies and are not detected in standard blood
tests.

    "We're ready to go with subjects who have had no detectable plasma
HIV for over two years," Ho said.

    The new intiative was revealed on a day that key AIDS researchers,
including Ho, reported one set of grim statistics after another, all
confirming HIV's ability to keep replicating, even when it appears
indetectable in the blood.

     Ho said yesterday that not only is HIV still present in patients
having apparent success on the HAART treatment, but "we certainly have
evidence of ongoing replication [of HIV], feeding back through the
reservoir pool."

    Even more striking, according to Ho, is analysis of the viruses that
are growing and spreading in hidden reservoirs in the bodies of
"successfully treated" patients. The analysis reveals "evolution of
viral sequences, more and more with time" - meaning these strains are
replicating and mutating.

    Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and
Infectious Diseases, has studied dozens of HIV patients who are on
HAART. After as many as three years of seemingly successful therapy in
which no viruses could be found in their blood, Fauci said in a speech,
close analysis of hidden regions, such as tonsils and lymph nodes,
reveals HIV "in every one of those individuals, and in each one we were
able to isolate replication-competent virus . . . every one of them had
virus in a latent pool."

    Several other researchers - notably Dr. Robert Silicano of the Johns
Hopkins School of Medicine in Baltimore - presented evidence that the
size of this pool of lurking viral death is determined within days after
a person becomes infected. And it stays the same size, no matter what
drugs or cocktails of antivirals an individual takes.

    "With what we have now [for treatment] I don't even think that
[reservoir] is ever going to be eradicated," said a disheartened
Silicano in an interview. "If only you had a way to eliminate these
latently HIV-infected cells."

    Canadian researcher Richard Paul Harrigan announced yesterday that
he has invented a way to measure the presence of viral DNA in blood.
Current tests only count HIV RNA, but when the virus hides, or goes
latent, it converts itself into DNA and inserts into human genes. With
his breakthrough test, Harrigan found that the half-life  of this viral
DNA is so long that it will take years to clear from the body on its
own.

    SUNY-Stony Brook's Dr. Roy Steigbigel said in an interview that he
fears patients are getting an overly depressing picture of the
situation.

    "There's a lot of room for optimism here," Steigbigel insisted.

   But the frustration of the AIDS community could be heard in the words
of Manhattan patient Mark Harrington, who as a plenary speaker addressed
the 13,000 people attending the conference.

    "Let the experts mix and match tiny drug company studies . . . It's
still guesswork," Harrington said. "We come to conference after
conference to hear about product-driven studies conducted or heavily
influenced by pharmaceutical sponsors . . . Researchers also urge us not
to worry, promising a plethora of new drugs and new targets . . . Some
of us don't have time to wait."