AIDS Deaths Double in Adolescents; Mandatory Testing Recommended

Something nasty is going on here. The facts, figures and recommendation don't make sense. AIDS-related deaths just doubled in adolescents between 10 and 19 years of age, showing kids have a much lower life expectancy after HIV infection. But experts focus on the higher mortality rate without acknowledging the shorter life expectancy. The sole recommendation is mandatory HIV testing for children. What?

Background
* Between 2005 and 2012, HIV-related deaths among adolescents (aged 10-19 years) increased by 50%, while the global number of HIV-related deaths fell by 30%.

* Supposedly, these kids are NOT infected in the womb, but acquire HIV later. Officially, "Adolescent girls, young men who have sex with men, those who inject drugs or are subject to sexual coercion and abuse are at highest risk."

* Life expectancy with untreated HIV is 3 to 18 years. AIDS takes from 2 to 15 years to develop if the infection is untreated. Without treatment, people diagnosed with AIDS typically survive about 3 years. If someone gets another dangerous infection, life-expectancy falls to about 1 year. (2+1=3) to (3+15=18).

* So if a kid dies at 19 from AIDS, they were infected somewhere between 1 and 16 years of age. If a child dies at 10? …Infected 8 years before birth? By 7 years of age?

We're seeing a shorter life expectancy in kids with HIV, not just a higher mortality rate.
Either most of these kids were infected as babies and toddlers - OR - we're facing a new, incredibly virulent form of HIV. Maybe both possibilities are true.

Maybe a group of treated but HIV-positive pedophile sex tourists are infecting their little victims and creating (a) new virulent strain(s).

Maybe treatments given to HIV-positive pregnant mothers do not really work; maybe the virus just goes into deep-latency and resurfaces as a virulent form in adolescence.

Maybe we're seeing evidence of antiviral resistance, and viral evolution. Focusing exclusively on mandatory testing really begs the issue.






Also see:
Adolescents falling through gaps in HIV services
Number of teens with HIV jumps

…the failure to support effective and acceptable HIV services for adolescents has resulted in a 50 per cent increase in reported AIDS-related deaths in this group, compared with the 30 per cent decline seen in the general population from 2005 to 2012.

reply to post by soficrow


After watching Email-Gate for the global warming topic and more recently, the idea that they actually screwed with the mind numbing range of numbers needed to dramatically manipulate the unemployment figure for short term political gain? I'm not sure what to believe anymore when something defies logic or fails the smell test.

This, as you note, is not logical. On any level. In fact, it directly defies logic on the face of it. I hesitate to call B.S....but only because doing so, given who is saying it, would be far worse to have to accept happening than the results from any single study on any disease we may ever face.

reply to post by Wrabbit2000


As always, it's gotta be partially true. lol As seeker1963 pointed out on the news thread, New aggressive strain of HIV discovered.

Maybe mandatory testing of children will help determine if they're infected with this aggressive new strain or if it evolves in their bodies. Maybe.

reply to post by soficrow


Looks like the government is throwing paint on a pile of # instead of cleaning up the pile of #.

Mandatory HIV testing for adolescents won't do much to combat new HIV infections in that age group. The kids who have stable homes where the parents will actually get them tested are not the ones at risk.

The ones at risk are the homeless youth, gay or straight(more gay than straight) who turn to prostitution and drugs.

The ones at risk are the teen boys and girls being molested by known family members and friends(Highest estimate for women is 40% having been molested by someone during her childhood/teens).

The ones at risk are the ones exposed to dangerous risky situations. Fix those situations and you will lower the risk of teens contracting HIV.

reply to post by soficrow


This sounds to me like a cover-up, using lots of fancy language, to avoid saying that the social standards for those under 18 are decaying - because one way you can increase AIDS deaths is by increasing AIDS exposure (by sex and drugs).

Look, I'm all about being a progressive, but it's time for liberals to stop using excuses to avoid talking about the real issues at hand.

Take these test results, for example. They were done specifically to show empirically that the AIDS infections were happening prior to the age of 18 and after womb exposure. This puts the infections squarely on the shoulders of the parents responsible.

And they apparently aren't doing a good job of parenting. That much you can get from the data, unless you want to pretend like letting your kids get AIDS and die is good parenting, which it is pointedly not. And even if it was good parenting, the data empirically points to the cause being drug use (presumably needles) and underage girls having sex with older (possibly above 18) men.

So the question that has not been empirically tested for is this - what, pray tell, has caused a lapse in parenting?

If you look at the black community, for example, the women are getting irate about how there are no fathers for the kids and how it is destroying their communities. And I don't know the data on this, but it certainly isn't a rise in successful marriages that is causing the lapse in parenting, I'm sure of that much.

I have personally seen the results of (and studied the empirical testing involved with) divorces and their effects on children, for one, and I'm not even sure what the data would look like for single mothers, who have to support their kid while simultaneously working, with no father figure in the home.

And if the answer to keeping people from getting AIDS is testing - then test away - but testing won't keep people from getting infected.

Meanwhile, testing might be important, in addition to non-existent measures being put into place to keep CHILDREN from getting AIDS in the first place. I see you mentioned the life expectancy must be dropping. That could be related to how AIDS interacts with youth, possibly? Or there could be something else going on?

This is depressing news. It tends to make me think that the procedures and meds they are using don't work well, in fact they may weaken them in the long run. Many Europeans have a natural immunity to Aids from what I have read. Trouble is noone can tell for sure why or who has the immunity. It may be because of some past infection of our ancestors that gave some of us some antigens to catching it. Or A positive mutation of some sort.

It sounds so cruel that kids should get this disease. I am sure there is a natural cure for this disease, if it wouldn't be so financially beneficial to just find treatment instead of a cure it might not be a problem. I can't stand the way medicine is going in this country and around the world. Everyone wants to treat disease instead of cure it or look into strengthening the body so we do not get it in the first place. Vaccines aren't as good as eating the necessary diet to control diseases. Raising levels of natural biological chemicals in the body to fight disease is better than treating it with meds. I haven't figured how to exactly do this YET but I am working on it. We have to get back to eating foods in the seasons they were eaten in before. Timing is a necessary factor.

In the case of Aids, it is harder, we need to get the people with Aids to stop spreading it. Seems that some of the people who have it don't always care if they spread it, they're dead shortly anyway. This is a moral issue.

There is no such THING as AIDS.

show me an "AID"...

MALBOSIA
There is no such THING as AIDS.

show me an "AID"...

Show me a SARS.

boncho

MALBOSIA
There is no such THING as AIDS.

show me an "AID"...

Show me a SARS.

I thought i just coughed one up, but after making a slide of
my loogie and checking it under a microscope, I was unable
to see anything. Ill keep my eyes peeled

OrphanApology
reply to post by soficrow

 

...Mandatory HIV testing for adolescents won't do much to combat new HIV infections in that age group.

HIV infections take 3-18 years to turn into AIDS, so kids getting infected as teens isn't really the problem. The report specifies that infant HIV infection has decreased - so it looks like most of these kids really were infected as babies and toddlers.

Child sex tourism (CST) is tourism for the purpose of engaging in the prostitution of children, that is commercially facilitated child sexual abuse.[1] Child sex tourism results in both mental and physical consequences for the exploited children, that may include "disease (including HIV/AIDS), drug addiction, pregnancy, malnutrition, social ostracism, and possibly death", according to the State Department of the United States.[1] Child sex tourism, part of the multi-billion-dollar global sex tourism industry, is a form of child prostitution within the wider issue of commercial sexual exploitation of children. Child sex tourism victimizes approximately 2 million children around the world.[1][2][3][4] The children who perform as prostitutes in the child sex tourism trade often have been lured or abducted into sexual slavery.[5][6][7]

U.S. Pedophiles Nabbed in Cambodia Sex-Tourist Sting

Thailand fights to stem tide of child sex tourists

Canadian pedophiles travel abroad for child sex

trafficking in children has plagued countries such as Cambodia, Thailand, and Costa Rica for decades, ...part of the multibillion-dollar sex-tourism industry that targets children.

...The ones at risk are the ones exposed to dangerous risky situations.

Yep.

Fix those situations and you will lower the risk of teens contracting HIV.

Yep. But teens contracting AIDS isn't the real problem here. The worst situation is babies, toddlers and children being infected by HIV positive pedophiles, then getting AIDS in adolescence. (AIDS being the final deadly stage of HIV infection.)

reply to post by soficrow


Thanks for the links. But I would bet money that if it is indeed child sexual abuse one need not look at Cambodia for examples. Even though I know that places like that probably have a larger HIV infection rate. The rest of this is just me making some points.

It is widespread in America and all over the world.

Here's a paper from 1991(yeah I know, dated) but it's a great examination. This same author and website has newer articles dealing with overall child abuse but I still find it interesting. I wish he would do an updated article.

www.psychohistory.com...

Either way, using anecdotal evidence I have met so many women(gay and straight) that have experiences of unwanted sexual experiences as youth. Women tend to open up to me and for most of the ones I've known the rate for either unwanted touching or full penetration has sat at around 30%. Like I said, the later sexual identity is irrelevant. There's that idea that gay women were raped so that's why they date women. Perhaps some of those women's identities is a result of trauma but at least from my experience they are on par with the straight colleagues.

There seems to be this mindset of many men that if a girl is having her period even though the men may be breaking the law, they aren't breaking "natural law". I think that is the mindset of child abusers many times to absolve them of their responsibility for being a rapist. Not to mention many of the children are groomed first so then there's the mindset that the child "wanted it".

What's crazy is that the families do nothing many times. Sometimes they even protect the perp. It's outrageous the underground social system that exists for sexual abuse.

Don't get me started on the women who date men and put their children at risk. Women are just as guilty of being sexual predators as men, the only difference is that most relive their childhood trauma through the men they date instead directly acting as predators. Then of course there are the direct female perps, it's hard to know how many because people are less likely to speak out against mother figure sexual abuse.

To think that now it could be translating into new HIV/AIDS cases is just very sad. Who knows though, perhaps this is the nail in the coffin to start a realistic social discussion on sexual abuse. It has been widespread throughout all of history and we're just now scratching the surface on the long-term psychological effects.

reply to post by darkbake

Look, I'm all about being a progressive, but it's time for liberals to stop using excuses to avoid talking about the real issues at hand.

Good idea. Most of these kids obviously were infected between the ages of 1 and 9 years of age so also obviously, the real problem here is pedophilia and the international sex tourist trade. I think it's way past time to stop protecting those animals. As I'm sure you agree.