Community HIV Update

This morning, I want to do a generic posting on the Community HIV Update forum I attended last last night. This forum was truly something I needed to continue my educating on the net. The person heading the forum placed in prospective, layman's terms the replication of the HIV/AIDS virus. He also informed us how the antivirals work inhibiting replication of the virus, new medical guidelines for starting treatment with antivirals.

Other information he passed on to us were such things as:

• Long time survivors having rabid aging

• Structured interruptions also known as drug vacations don't work

• There are at least four new antivirals being developed soon to be released by the FDA.

I found some other statistics very interesting. According to him, the CDC will soon be releasing that 30 to 60 percent of people living with HIV/AIDS don't know they have HIV/AIDS. This is up from 25 percent not knowing when I was diagnosed. I was one of those people not knowing they had the HIV/AIDS virus.

This statistic blew my socks off. Taking a three drug regiment today, most people have an undetectable viral load in 6 years. With as sick I was when I was diagnosed, (and taking more then three drugs) I have become undetectable in less then 3 years from a viral load of 555,221 and a collapsed immune system (my t-cells were at 65.)

Yes, I did ask this gentleman a few questions I wanted answered. The first questions was:

Me- " With doctors overdosing people with AZT when first released, do you feel it is now causing the other health issues in long time survivors?"

His answer - "We had millions of people dying at the time, the health issues also could be from the drug Zerit."

That skirted around my question not answering yes or no, but this ones skirt was much better.

My question "In February of 2005, the "Super Virus (which was drug resistant) hit New York City. Does the CDC fear that we will again be hit by the "Super Virus?"

He talked about the importance of taking your meds so the virus wouldn't mutate. He never did answer that question or talked about safe sex and condoms.

My last question was "Last month there was an article about a German scientist finding a protein in semen that enhances the HIV/AIDS virus 100, 000 fold, what are we doing here in the states about this find?"

He said stating "State researchers are looking into this finding and drug companies are looking into ways to combat this finding."

Little did I know sitting in this forum was one of the co founders of the Santa Cruz AIDS Project. He made it a appoint to introduce himself to me acknowledging how up to date and knowledgeable I was about HIV/AIDS. I informed him, I try to educate on myspace and my blog to the best of my ability about the HIV/AIDS virus living with it daily. I nearly fainted from his acknowledgment of my work educating about the HIV/AIDS virus after he left. I'm going to have a shitty ass grin on my face all day from meeting him.

Footnote: I'm still decompressing from last night and I took a lot of notes. I'll be posting more information in later postings.