San Diego man could have aggressive HIV strain

An unidentified San Diego resident may be infected with the same rare, aggressive and highly drug-resistant strain of HIV found last week in a New York City man who has rapidly become ill with AIDS, health officials said yesterday.

"(The local person's) HIV has a similar molecular makeup as the patient in New York City," said Dr. Nancy Bowen, the San Diego County public health officer who held a press conference about the finding yesterday afternoon in San Diego.

It's important to notify the public about a new and possibly supervigorous strain of HIV so people can take extra precautions, Bowen said. But "I don't think it will do anybody any good to get panicked about this," she said, emphasizing that many details are still being sorted out.

Several AIDS specialists said it was odd to see public-health officials sound such widespread alarm after only one person became sick. They questioned whether the virus is truly a lethal variety, or whether the New York patient's immune system, extensive use of methamphetamines and genetic makeup might be contributing factors to his rapidly deteriorating condition."

www.signonsandiego.com...

This is a very rapid outbreak of a possibly pandemic disease. The next few weeks will tell.

Wow, from coast to coast, that's amazing. I heard that they were about to test an AIDS vaccine, I suppose it'll come in handy for some strains if everything is successful, but now that this new strain has appeared I suppose they'll start focusing on how to combat it. I wonder when the public will start hearing more news about this new strain and how fast it's spreading.

This might be a good thing. If the disease rapidly progressses from infection to disease symptom onset, then the epidemic can 'burn out'. The carriers get terribely sick, unable to spread it, and die out.

This sounds 'mean' or something I suppose, but this is how infectious diseases do burn out and contain themselves.

Infact, it might be a good 'evolutionary' way to combat an infection. Make modified version of a disease, one that has rapid onset, and make it more 'fit' than non modififed versions, at least over the short term. It spreads, people rapdidly get sick, it continues to spread, and soon all new infections are from it, everyone with it dies shortly, and then thats the end. Now every is scarred, cautious, and 'safe'. I guess the conspiracists can have some fun with that scenario!

Considering that the infection rate has recently risen amoung groups that formerly were showing a holding and decline, and that there are sensational reports of youth engaged in dangerous sexual activity, and that there are absolutely absurd reports of these 'bug chasers' who want the disease, this 'new, horribly, obviously revolting' version of aids should scare a lot of people into their senses.

It would actually be good because carriers wouldn't be going months and years spreading the virus without knowing. If everyone with AIDS died within 2 or 3 months it would be really great for the rest of us. So much easier to isolate and what not..

I agree while not entirely humane it will eventually reduce the carrier population to hopefully close to zero as possible. Same thing would go for any genetic mutation though like say cancer if it was so hyper accelerated that once it developed it killed the host within a few weeks the risk or spread of the mutation would be effectively halted rather quickly.

ie carrier say that were adolecents and had no children would unfortuantly die off before spawning children therefore eliminating that genetic defective blood line. If lets say due to the genetic makeup that an enviromental factor caused the onset of a specific ailment (HIV, cancer, rouge Prions etc) then even if they did have children if it was a social enviromental factor (like food supply) then not only would the parent get ill but any children that shared the same genetic makeup would become ill and in such a case all the blood line releated family members would quickly expire and therefore again remove that genetic defect from the general population.

Scary stuff that the human race could possible be manipulated in this manner and a real threat of human genetic research.