I am a 25yr old White Male in UK, and I have been diagnosed with HIV :(

reply to post by Chewingonmushrooms

I think SA is the worst, although we once had some competition from our neighbors in Botswana, and our internal independent monarchy of Swaziland.
We have a very porous border with Zimbabwe, where much of the health system had virtually collapsed.
A lot of people come here from across the sub-continent, and the locals sometimes blamed the foreigners for HIV/AIDS.
Perhaps we have become a melting pot of strains and mutations.
All I can say is that it was something totally new to behold this, and it wasn't there in my youth and childhood.

My testing was a screening test at a government clinic.
However, I did go for all the back up tests at a private doctor (Elisas, Western Blot, PCR, CD4 Count), and they all came back positive.

I believe you can get all the other tests at clinics, hospitals or some non-profit groups.
At state institutions one may be required to pay for some of them, according to a means test.
But it's likely to be very little, or in some case even for free.
The service one gets from state clinics can vary widely, and for many years the process wasn't exactly encouraged in some provinces.

Thanks for the clarification. Are you on any of the "new class" of drugs? My brother has been on all different drugs throughout the 80's, 90's, 00's and the newest seem to have the best results. He is virtually undetectable after being full blown 5 years ago.

reply to post by Chewingonmushrooms

No, I'm on a drug yet.

When to start treatment is a vexed issue.

Once the maxim was (and still is for some) hit hard and early, before the virus damages the immune system, or another organ.

Others argue one should only take them when the CD4 count goes below 350-250.
They would say that the longer one stays off them, the less chance one has of treatment resistance, or any possible damage through side-effects.

My CD4 is still in the normal range above 600.
My last date had a CD of 20 and full-blown AIDS, but he's been on ART for a couple of years, and now it was 900.

reply to post by halfoldman


Yeah conventional belief is if you are off any antiviral medications once taking them then the virus would mutate to form an immunity which would render the medication useless. That's why they are strict with dosing times and cycles. Your counter approach is interesting do you have any reading material on that?

reply to post by Chewingonmushrooms

A counter approach?
Well, here it's the normal approach.
According to the WHO ART is for when:
- you're HIV-positive and you have an AIDS-defining condition
- you have a CD4 count lower than 350 (although in SA the guideline of 200 apparently remains unchanged, except for pregnant women).
On average people seek testing and treatment at about a CD4 count of 87 (which means they are already quite ill).

You can start before 200 and follow another practice, but you must probably pay for it yourself.
I think it was largely to cut costs.

See this link for more on HIV/AIDS in SA, and especially the Treatment Guidelines heading...
www.avert.org...

Well I don't know about SA but here in NYC doctors recommend taking medications regardless of CD4 count if an individual is HIV+. Any large break in medication taking is considered bad because of the possibility of viruses developing immunity (similar to how you are supposed to take all antibiotics, as in full bottle, in order to prevent bacterial immunity) to the medications given.

Thanks for the article, I'll read it when I have a moment.

reply to post by Chewingonmushrooms

That's very interesting.

Treatment compliance is also very important in SA.

I've heard of treatment "breaks" or "holidays", for people who have been on them for over a decade, but it's always done with the advice of a doctor.

Only once did I read in an HIV-narrative (my real interest, HIV/AIDS and autobiography) that a person was told by an AIDS specialist to leave the drugs until his CD4 count dropped to our guideline.
He also had some cancer, I think, and it cleared up and his CD4 was still within normal range (2000-600), and his doctor told him he would do more damage by taking it so early.
But I have no idea what cocktail that was, but he does resume ART later in the book without complications.
The book was titled: Clouds Move by Derrick Fine.
www.openlypositive.com...


I mean people also take prophylactic doses, especially nurses after needle-stick injury.
But there are so many cocktails these days.
It seems like yesterday when people had to swallow 20-40 pills per day, especially if they had to treat secondary infections.
Nowadays it's almost two pills a day.
People are lucky these days, I think.
Especially in Western countries they have a lot of options.

reply to post by halfoldman


Yeah tell me about it, I witnessed my brother drinking 20-30 pills for years until the newer class drugs came out. At one point his CD4 count was 3 with a viral load count into the millions. That was approximately 5 years ago give or take and since then under these new drugs (I have to ask what drugs specifically) his CD4 is in the 2000 range and his viral load is undetectable.

Glad ya feelin better all round.
My opinion regarding HIV/aids is that it is THE biggest virul hoax
Man made virus ever perpetrated by TPTB and big pharma!
None of the info is relyable & if you do have HIV the drugs will
certainly turn it into full blown aids then you will die.
It's a bialogical weapon make no mistake.
Funny how the virus actually discriminate's between colour &
Or sexual preference.
And how it just arrived as America was looking at being overrun
By black people, now they can't have that can they?
Population controll & yes there is a cure in the same lab that bore
The virus in the 1st place. I could go on and I'm sorry if this comes
Across as cold it's just my own take on the situation.
It's just oh so convienient ain't it.( max sarcasm ) sad deal very sad.

I know that it's inforwars but take a look at it anyway.

www.infowars.com...

There is no doubt that AIDS erupted in the U.S. shortly after government-sponsored hepatitis B vaccine experiments (1978-1981) using gay men as guinea pigs. The epidemic was caused by the “introduction” of a new retrovirus (the human immunodeficiency virus, or HIV for short); and the introduction of a new herpes-8 virus, the virus that causes Kaposi’s sarcoma, widely known as the “gay cancer” of AIDS. The taboo theory that AIDS is a man-made disease is largely based on research showing an intimate connection between government vaccine experiments and the outbreak of “the gay plague”

thelineinthesand.net...

There is a Patent number for AIDS/HIV and it’s cure:

United States Patent 4,647,773
Gallo , et al. March 3, 1987
Method of continuous production of retroviruses (HTLV-III) from patients with AIDS and pre-AIDS
Inventors: Gallo; Robert C. (Bethesda, MD), Popovic; Mikulas (Bethesda, MD)
Assignee: The United States of America as represented by the Department of Health (Washington, DC)
==
The US government also invented the patented cure for AIDS, called Tetrasil (U.S. Patent Number 5676977)
The first USA man, Dr. Boyd Graves, received the injection in November 2001 in Southern California for about $10, is still symptom free to this day.
The distributor of Tetrasil or Imusil is Marantech Holding LLC .

However, the widely accepted theory is that HIV/AIDS actually originated from a monkey or primate of some sort that somehow “jumped species” in Africa. However, it is on record that the first AIDS cases were recorded in homosexual men in Manhattan in 1979, a few years before it was reported in Africa in 1982. And according to science today, the human herpes-8 virus that was discovered in 1994, also originated from primates also managed to “jump species”. How these two “species jumping” both ended up in Manhattan beginning in the 1970s will probably never be explained.

This is what they are capable of:

news.bbc.co.uk...

Over 23,000 of the city's children are either in foster care or independent homes run mostly by religious organisations on behalf of the local authorities and almost 99% are black or hispanic.

Some of these kids come from "crack" mothers and have been infected with the HIV virus. For over a decade, this became the target group for experimentation involving cocktails of toxic drugs.

Central to this story is the city's child welfare department, the Administration for Children's Services (ACS).

The ACS, as it is known, was granted far-reaching powers in the 1990s by then-Republican Mayor Rudi Giuliani, after a particularly horrific child killing.

Within the shortest of periods, literally thousands of children were being rounded up and placed in foster care.

"They're essentially out of control," said family lawyer David Lansner. "I've had many ACS case workers tell me: 'We're ACS, we can do whatever we want' and they usually get away with it."

Having taken children into care, the ACS was now, effectively, their parent and could do just about anything it wished with them.

reply to post by Chewingonmushrooms


I think the focus now (in US and Europe) is to get them (uh....us) on the drugs regardless of CD4 count, because it makes them less able to transmit the virus. Hopefully after the studies that came out this year about the drugs almost eliminating the risk of transmission, this will also come to SA and you don't have to wait halfold....heh heh I'm almost full-old myself)

Waiting until CD4 = 200 isn't a party. I was pretty damn sick at 232, and felt like a freight train going downhill with no brakes (of course I was freaking out so that didn't help). From testing until I got the counts back, I got so bad, I went from 'maybe I don't need them yet' to 'gimme the damn drugs NOW'. Took another year to get above 500, and that point went up 100 a year until it hit 1400 in 2006 and leveled off.

On the treatment breaks - they did have some studies here in the US on this, but the results were not as expected. I knew a friend that did this, and then developed stomach problems, and therefore waited to get the stomach under control before restarting. A mistake. Counts plummeted to almost 100 and then started the drugs again, came back up. Slowly - they always go up slower.

Sometimes a treatment interruption is done on purpose as a way to purge resistant virus, allows the stronger wild virus to dominate, but this in only selected cases where there is significant resistance.

The danger in interrupting the drugs is actually GREATER if it is a short interruption, because low-level drug is more likely to allow resistance than NO level of drug (of course). Any combos with Sustiva must be stopped carefully, the Sustiva has a 33-hour threshold level (time it takes for the drug level to drop to half), and much of the other drugs have a much shorter threshold. Stop all at once - the Sustiva remains after the others are gone, and resistance begins.

You do NOT want to lose the Sustiva. It is one of the few drugs in the combos that cross the blood-brain barrier. I think dementia scares me more than death.

So far, OK, I seem still smarter than some of the fool debunkers that posted here. I can still recognize bull when I see it and thats a good thing

(speaking of bull, add stealthaurora to the bull list, I didn't see the need to reply specific to that post as it was just rehashed from what we have already squashed in this thread - ignorance. I would assume that stealthaurora will now actually read the thread and learn from those that know what they speak of- or not. Whatever).

Originally posted by minor007
reply to post by benjamin2012

 

Ever heard of safe sex or a condom? You get no symphathy here.

So you have no Symphathy for people who catch HIV, so you must show not symphathy for people who die of lung cancer of a result of smoking and any drink related illinesses? infact anything which could be avoided?

I hope you shown more Symphathy for your Real Life Friends than you do strangers, because people like you are lucky to have friends. Have some compassion, regardless how people contract HIV they deserve some.

If you go around blaming people for there own misfortures, I hope one day you feel the full wrath of life.

reply to post by benjamin2012


I fail to understand why you had to mention your sexual orientation unless you believe that was the cause for your condition....

I am curious as to why you just didn't say you were not promiscious..

Stating you were gay added nothing to your story... NADA .. why did you feel that you had to add that you were gay???

I am sorry you are having a bad time, and i hope your condition improves

reply to post by yaluk

He also mentioned his race, country and age, so why shouldn't he mention being gay?
The current context is where HIV/AIDS is used to paint people with stereotypes and stigma.
Gay people are stereotyped as HIV-positive, and the stigma of HIV-positive people as belonging to a "morally guilty" group such as gays or black Africans persists.
He feels misrepresented by people's assumptions that if you're gay or HIV-positive you led a promiscuous lifestyle.
He's saying you can catch HIV and not be a stereotypical slut.
He learnt this from his experience.

This also has relevance to his main question: is HIV/AIDS man-made?
He seems to have discovered that many of the stereotypes were not true in his case, so now he is considering alternative explanations.

For myself it's important that he admits to being gay, but he didn't follow the promiscuous "lifestyle" that prejudiced people assume HIV-positive people lead.
I feel the same way.

Since when is it wrong to admit you're gay, and not promiscuous?
What is the reason for this argument that you can talk about race and geography, but not your innate sexual identity?

The HIV/AIDS debate in Western countries still focuses around homosexuality, both for the denialists and the homophobes, and both use the stereotype of the gay who lives a ruinous lifestyle as the cause of AIDS.
You can't write the agency of people out of a debate that exploits them as a central focus from all sides.

I'm proud to be gay, and mention it often on a number of posts, mainly because I don't want to be misinterpreted as anything else, and it's my truth and experience of the world.
We can surely not speak for other groups.
Besides, in a post on HIV/AIDS, how long do you think before somebody would have asked or mentioned it?

reply to post by halfoldman


Amen halfold. The man wanted to tell his story, and offer some background for perspective. What is wrong with that?

Why shouldn't he mention his sexual orientation? It is topical for the subject. The subject requires discussion about sex and sexual orientation to fully understand it. The perspective also matters, especially in regards to the conspiracy of the virus being of a man-made origin (as a side opinion, if it was created by groups trying to kill minorities or gays, they did a very poor design, as from my experience, it seems pretty indiscriminate to who it attacks, so I don't exactly agree with that possibility of conspiracy).

In my case, I just don't bother saying my orientation, either it doesn't matter, or I won't be believed. I don't really care anyway anymore. I probably do it for the same reason however - I believe it should not matter in the least what the orientation is, he is a human. So am I. But being in one of the other groups, it is like that 'guilty dog barking' if I announce my orientation to begin the conversation, since some have already labeled me per my condition, I am already labeled, so why bother for me. He is not ashamed to be what he is...and I have learned and known so many people with this, gay and hetero, that now I kinda have that attitude that I won't protest what people think I am, if they are my friends they know me....if they don't know me I don't care a rat's ass what they think and make no attempt to change it. Waste of time (actually it does matter - but only when I think I have met someone that is at risk, like a teenager, or a mother trying to decide whether to circumcise their son, or a friend that still thinks like the 80's - no needles, no anal sex, they are not at risk if they are just out picking up women...then I might speak).

Also, I've seen enough trolls on here and everywhere attacking in the threads about this subject, so I can wait until it comes up. Someone will bring it up. They always do.

What amazes me, is that the stereotype still exists, and I find it the strongest in the general practice of medicine (example - emergency room, specialists in other conditions, etc). Sometimes it is simple (the attendant before some routine surgery tells me that I should have my partner take me home....I advise it is my friend, he has his own partner, I'm just some breeder they are helping out...). Sometimes it is more sinister (example - got bit by a spider and got swelling in the groin....the specialist wanted to test for syphillis and a bunch of other STD and didn't even ask about the spider that bit me - that one infuriated me).

Assumptions are made when the three letters are placed on your medical record, and you have to grow some thick skin to deal with some of it. I have been amazed at how my friends and co-workers treated me...quite less amazed at the general public perception. People are still in the 80's in the U.S.

Would you think it was wrong to read a post on any subject and see included that the person has a wife, maybe kids, lives some certain place, has some certain religion, believes some certain things? Or only wrong if they share things you don't like to hear?

He introduced himself, he provided details that explained his position and perspective that were relevant to the subject being discussed, then he proposed his questions and suspicions about a conspiracy around that subject. That's how it's done.

Thanks for that great post!

In the gay scene it was often very difficult, because HIV-negative gay men can be very judgmental, and they also don't want to be associated with the virus.

That was a very hurtful issue to deal with.

So nobody represents all gay men.

But, I think it should concern everybody that many would have gleefully left us to die because we were gay.

There's a lesson in that.

I always see the imagery going back to bath-houses, and parties and sniffing poppers in the films.
That's the image of gay people left with many.

There's nothing on the writers and artists, and a whole generation of role-models that was lost.

And the so-called moralists stood and applauded.

It's actually so unbelievable to describe.

Where was their love, and compassion and humanity?

So I'll stop calling myself gay and HIV-positive, when everybody else removes sexual orientation from their material on HIV.
Fat chance.

Originally posted by halfoldman
And the so-called moralists stood and applauded.

It's actually so unbelievable to describe.

Where was their love, and compassion and humanity?

That is true, and it was true here too.

Makes me reconsider my comments above about the 'conspiracy'. The heteros, the women and children, the non-minorities...just collateral damage to their 'greater good'. A little extra depopulation doesn't hurt their goal.

In this scenario of conspiracy, 'big pharma' didn't create it, but they may have saw it and they subverted it to profit. We weren't supposed to live.

Originally posted by halfoldman
Thanks for that great post!

In the gay scene it was often very difficult, because HIV-negative gay men can be very judgmental, and they also don't want to be associated with the virus.

That was a very hurtful issue to deal with.

So nobody represents all gay men.

But, I think it should concern everybody that many would have gleefully left us to die because we were gay.

There's a lesson in that.

I always see the imagery going back to bath-houses, and parties and sniffing poppers in the films.
That's the image of gay people left with many.

There's nothing on the writers and artists, and a whole generation of role-models that was lost.

And the so-called moralists stood and applauded.

It's actually so unbelievable to describe.

Where was their love, and compassion and humanity?

So I'll stop calling myself gay and HIV-positive, when everybody else removes sexual orientation from their material on HIV.
Fat chance.

edit on 10-1-2012 by halfoldman because: (no reason given)

I think it also why it is considered nolonger a problem, there's a treatment, so the 'problem' is nicely tucked away and under 'management'...but who is working on a cure? As long as it is seen as a gay or African problem. Nobody of any real resources. They just keep on managing it, while It does It's job.

reply to post by benjamin2012


So sorry to hear about what you've gone through!

There is actually a 'cure' for HIV and they are called Transfer Factors. Have you heard of it?

Watch the videos on this link, and you'll see just how brilliant, and simple, Transferceutical Science is all about transferfactor.com...

Transfer Factors are not drugs, herbal, medicine, hormones, synthetic but are memory molecules borrowed from the heroic immune system of cows and chicken egg yolk. They are to RETEACH the immune system so it can boost and balance itself.

Our Thymus gland (university of our immune soldiers) begins to deplete itself when we've all reached puberty, hence lesser and lesser soldiers in our bodies know how to recognize these pathogens that enter our bodies. Surprisingly a lot of lifestyle diseases today are rooted in having an imbalanced immune system.

It is the ONLY product listed under the Physicians Desk Reference to have no overdose, side-effect and contraindication.

Two of my family members are actually cancer survivors, with the help of TF. I was a skeptic at first but did my due diligence in researching not only about the product but the science that backs it up as well.

I hope you find it useful!!

reply to post by halfoldman


Your full of it halfoldman. The big pharma industry spends more money on advertising than research. That is a fact jack...

Vitamin/herb sales are a growing industry but they do not have the same advertising revenue as big pharma. Sadly the natural healing industry is full of half truths and lack of regulation. However it's better to make an informed decision based on fact than fiction.

The AIDS virus is not a true scientific virus. If you test positive to for an antibody you are likely not going to die. Virtually all vaccines contain antibodies of the live virus itself. Are you willing to take an AIDS vaccine? Heck sir...you'd be criminal not to.

I agree STD's and prevention are important. But to sideswipe natural medicine as being more profitable and greedy than conventional drugs is pure ignorance.

Most people who register false positives for HIV are actually infected with advanced sphypillus.