The LGBTQIA-community

[Star_Jammer]

Yeah, it makes sense. Because the other person might not know their status after all.

I think you will also find that PrEP makes a lot of guys more confident in dating someone with HIV.

Yeah.

Part of me feels ashamed though. Like I failed my body, my friends, and my family for not taking care of myself. I knew the risks. I knew about PREP (didn’t use it) and condoms and safe sex and HIV/AIDS. I knew about all the precautions, so it wasn’t a lack of me being educated (not speaking for people as a whole btw). But...I just didn’t.

It was very uplifting to tell my sister though. She cried. She was in her teens when HIV/AIDS became a big thing. She grew up thinking that it meant you were going to die. So it was a great weight off my shoulders to see her face change when I explained current (and future) medications to her and how they handle the virus. I’ve had several people agree that there are various other diseases (most quoted one is Diabetes) that are actually harder to control than HIV nowadays.

And it’s true. Right before my tonsillectomy I was in the hospital for a peritonsillar abcess. The guy I shared a room with had diabetes. The nurse came in to give him his insulin. He told her that wasn’t enough. She, being very clinical, said that that’s all he should need. He stated he usually needed more. She said that they would wait and see. She came back later to check, and his sugar was still too high. They struggled more throughout the night to get his sugar down, since it was very high after he ate dinner. Sometime during all this, I popped one pill in my mouth, swallowed, and fell asleep.

[PaulBullion]

We've really come a long way. At 48, I am of that in between generation of gay men who haven't lived through the worst of it, but still lost a couple of friends to it.

You basically have a normal life expectancy now. And maybe they will find a therapy to completely eradicate the virus from the body at some point. Look at the big game changing med they found for Hepatitis C a few years ago.

[Star_Jammer]

Yeah. My doctor said they’re about to release a shot you take once a month. And they’re still trialing a shot you take once a year.

[PaulBullion]

Yeah. My doctor said they’re about to release a shot you take once a month. And they’re still trialing a shot you take once a year.

That would be another great advancement.

Anyway, if you ever need to vent, you can DM me. My first bf was positive and I have been volunteering in HIV causes for years.

[Star_Jammer]

That would be another great advancement.

Anyway, if you ever need to vent, you can DM me. My first bf was positive and I have been volunteering in HIV causes for years.

Cool. Appreciate the gesture.

[Enigma]

There have been a few occasions where we have essentially 'cured' patients of HIV (not always intentionally), but it isn't a clinically applicable situation and our understanding of the basic science behind it is not phenomenal. I am confident that a gene therapy treatment will lead to a HIV cure eventually, but gene therapy is a whole can of worms and that can hinder progress, albeit it for very valid reasons. The biggest danger is probably whether we can keep up with HIV mutating. I guess what I'm saying is, we have made a lot of progress in HIV research over the years but it is as fragile as any other therapy (antibiotics are a great example of how complacency can bite us in the ass), although there is also a lot of reason to be hopeful about the situation improving further or at least dealing with potential pitfalls.

[PaulBullion]

There have been a few occasions where we have essentially 'cured' patients of HIV (not always intentionally), but it isn't a clinically applicable situation and our understanding of the basic science behind it is not phenomenal. I am confident that a gene therapy treatment will lead to a HIV cure eventually, but gene therapy is a whole can of worms and that can hinder progress, albeit it for very valid reasons. The biggest danger is probably whether we can keep up with HIV mutating. I guess what I'm saying is, we have made a lot of progress in HIV research over the years but it is as fragile as any other therapy (antibiotics are a great example of how complacency can bite us in the ass), although there is also a lot of reason to be hopeful about the situation improving further or at least dealing with potential pitfalls.

Combination therapy has been around for 23 years, and resistant mutations of the virus have turned out to be a much smaller problem than thought at the beginning.

[babyblob]

I dated a man with HIV. He was very open about it when we first met. I admit I was nervous about it and was uncomfortable at first. But the more he explained his treatment to me and the closer we got it became less of an issue. I think if you are up front with people about it from the get go you will find a lot of people are understanding. There will be some who freak out and leave but closed minded people are not people you want in your life.

[Silvermoth]

I know what you mean. We had a massive AIDS and HIV conference here once and at first I was scared and I didn’t want to know about it because I thought it would be depressing. But so much has changed since then and still more needs to change. It’s a shame there wasn’t better information out there because if people knew the facts so many people could be helped and so much stress can be avoided.

Thank you for being so honest Star-jammer and thank you for being so helpful paulbullion

[Star_Jammer]

The cases I read about where someone was “cured” (they seemed to always use the term loosely) of HIV were bone marrow transplant cases, which aren’t easy things to accomplish anyway. Definitely not something viable for everyone, much less a “mass production” kind of scenario.

Have there been other situations (non-bone marrow transplant)?

[PaulBullion]

The cases I read about where someone was “cured” (they seemed to always use the term loosely) of HIV were bone marrow transplant cases, which aren’t easy things to accomplish anyway. Definitely not something viable for everyone, much less a “mass production” kind of scenario.

Have there been other situations (non-bone marrow transplant)?

Nope, the only cures were bone marrow transplants for cancer patients who also happened to bei HIV positive.

And it can't just be any bone marrow that matches yours (which often is already very hard to find), it basically needs to be mutant bone barrow by donors of the very small part humanity that has a natural immunity to HIV.

Even considering that the risk of dying from the cure is bigger than dying from the virus, it would be like winning the lottery twice in a row.

[Enigma]

Combination therapy has been around for 23 years, and resistant mutations of the virus have turned out to be a much smaller problem than thought at the beginning.

It doesn't matter, viral mutation is always a risk regardless of combination therapy.

[PaulBullion]

It doesn't matter, viral mutation is always a risk regardless of combination therapy.

If it is such a big risk, why hasn't it happened more over the past 30 years?

I know you don't intend to fear monger, but please keep in mind that there are people with HIV reading your posts, and you could be causing fear and panic based on no data.

[numberthirty]

- http://chicago.gopride.com/news/arti...ses-away-at-70

Richard Pfeiffer, Chicago Pride Parade coordinator, passes away at 70

[Enigma]

If it is such a big risk, why hasn't it happened more over the past 30 years?

I know you don't intend to fear monger, but please keep in mind that there are people with HIV reading your posts, and you could be causing fear and panic based on no data.

Apologies, I absolutely didn't intend to worry anybody. Although I would stress that it works the other way too, making people think that it's all good now is dangerous. However, yes, I can understand why some people with HIV may have felt unease.

However, it is not based on no data. HIV has a very high mutation rate which exacerbates its potential for resistance inducing mutations, which is why we make drugs to target diseases in multiple ways, or at least one of the reasons. So often you can switch to a class of different drugs and often that is fine, unless you develop further resistance and in some cases you can end up running out of options. So for most people, that is manageable, assuming that people can access all drugs, that they can tolerate side effects of different drugs and that those drugs don't interact with other treatments. We are lucky because drugs being developed now seem to be more robust to resistance. The point of 30 years is irrelevant because, and this is important to stress, every time we see mutation in a virus we have the potential for a problem. It could happen in three weeks or three decades. We have no idea what happens when the next mutation occurs, which is why viral mutation is always a risk, regardless of which drugs we have. This is why my point was that the danger is whether we keep up with HIV, because complacency is dangerous. My point isn't that we are all still screwed (again, apologies if this was the impression) because thankfully we live in a time where our access to and quality of treatment is vastly improved (speaking as somebody in the UK), my point is that that situation can change pretty damn quickly and that sometimes people fall into the idea that we don't need to worry about HIV so much now, which may (I stress may) lead people to not take it quite as seriously. HIV is not finished.