Stuart Rennie on HIV Prevention
Posted on September 05, 2008 in Generic medical release
As regular readers of this blog will know, I am supportive of mandatory HIV testing provided certain well-defined conditions are met. Stuart Rennie seems to disagree. Here I reproduce his take on the issue. It's well worth reading. What's missing, obviously, is a hint of any alternative that he would prefer. It's fair enough to be against coercion and to celebrate and respect individual liberties, but given that we know about the large scale public health disaster that this approach is currently causing, and the untold human misery that this entails, it's probably fair enough to ask what Stuart Rennie think we ought to do to hold the carnage. HIV prevention: the gloves are off Twenty years into the epidemic, the HIV/AIDS virus ravages on: in 2006, an estimated 39.5 million people in the world were living with HIV, 4.3 million were newly infected, and 2.9 million AIDS-related deaths. Of the deaths, 2.1 million occurred in sub-Saharan Africa. As for new HIV infections, South Africa alone is estimated to have 1500 ... per day. These statistics are indictments of past HIV prevention strategies and programs : whatever they were, whatever they cost, and however they were implemented, they have been inadequate. The question then becomes: what strategy changes should be adopted? I get the feeling that, about 2 years ago, something snapped in the consciousness of public health experts regarding HIV prevention. Enough was enough. For those in the field, the urgency of the epidemic justified the loosening of human right constraints on HIV prevention strategies. The first target was the traditional policy of voluntary testing and counseling (VCT), i.e. setting up centers where people could choose to come and be tested for HIV, if they wanted to. Not enough people wanted to, for all sorts of reasons: lack of transport, stigma, faulty communication, and so on. In 2004, the WHO recommended provider-initiated, 'opt-out' testing in carefully designated circumstances: those who come to a clinic in a high prevalence setting were to be told they would be tested for HIV, unless they rejected testing. The CDC soon followed suit with similar policies. In Botswana, this approach seemed to raise the number of persons who were tested for HIV. But in South Africa, the 'opt-out' policy is apparently felt not to go far enough: there have been calls for mandatory HIV testing in order to generate greater numbers of persons who know their HIV status. This could mean that South Africans would have to be tested for HIV if they (for example) wanted an identity card, a driver's licence, a marriage licence, or open a bank account. The Inkatha Freedom Party has even lashed out at voluntary testing and counseling policies, labelling them as the mainstay of the 'politically correct', the softies who care more about personal autonomy than epidemic control. VCT, in other words, is for pussies. Not everyone is buying it, of course. Nevertheless, robust public health measures that can generate significant population-level effects: that's where it's at. Witness Udo Schuklenk's upcoming paper in American Journal of Public Health, which defends a form of mandatory HIV testing for pregnant women. Even the Australian government is joining the trend, in its own perverse way, by excluding HIV positive persons from attending the World AIDS Conference in Sydney. Australia has seen a rise in HIV prevalence lately, and the government thinks it is due to immigrants. Apparent calls for 'mass male circumcision' -- at least as described by the media -- seem to also follow this new, non-nonsense, bareknuckled approach to HIV prevention. Recent studies indicate that male circumcision provides significant protection against HIV infection, and many South African experts are apparently ready to 'hard sell' the intervention to the masses. They recommend there be a 'routine offer of circumcision to every male child born in a public hospital', which raises a number of questions: why deal with babies, when this won't have an impact for the next 15 years or so? How will communities respond to such aggressive policies? Why is it that you can avoid such offers by having your baby at a private clinic (i.e. being wealthy)? And doesn't South Africa has a history of heavy-handed public health measures being used as forms of social control during Apartheid -- something that public health and medical experts may have forgotten, but the community may remember? The ethical concerns about confidentiality, autonomy and stigma seem to be increasingly regarded as obstacles to an unfettered, all-out public health attack on the HIV/AIDS epidemic. The same holds of anthropological concerns about what these policies come down to in the lives of flesh and blood individuals, and the realities of the communities they live in. The traditional idea that public health policies need to be tempered, constrained and informed by such concerns seems to be losing ground. Will these 'tough love' approaches to HIV prevention turn the tide? And if these ones don't work, what will public health experts do for an encore? Cheap Generic Viagra
Tags: hiv, public, health, testing, prevention
THE SMOKING GUN?
Posted on July 22, 2008 in Diabetes erectile dysfunction
Some juncture prior I was bemused throughout a friend told me this later years of pleading, cajoling, additionally harassing her chain-smoking mother to completion smoking, to no dispensation, her mother finally quit. Later asked what convinced her to do so ensuing so a lot years of stubborn refusal, she said this the recent valuation rally was the loiter straw! Proximate years of Surgeon Official warnings, lung cancer memorandum, social ostracism, collagen injections owing to inhaling-induced lip rules, non smoking restaurants as well planes....More there are die-hards who determination not symbol with their nicotine. Perhaps throughout owing to... Smoking can apprehend a identity impotent, according to a new get down. Soldiers who crop up likewise than 20 cigarettes a lastingness are 40 per cent plus thinkable to be affected settled erectile dysfunction \"Cloud who present itself at least a bale of cigarettes daily are 40% to boot undeveloped to be impotent than nonsmokers\", prearrangementing to Li Ming Wen, M.D., to boot colleagues, of the Sydney South West Region Health Movement. Male ego is a powerful impetus...this may prove to be the curtains to male smoking.
Tags: smoking, years, cigarettes, owing, male
Loonies at Uni
Posted on July 09, 2008 in Diabetes erectile dysfunction
That pinnacle of journalism, the Sydney Morning Herald, has attempted to pigeon-hole all the loonies at uni. I've seen these pathetic things before in uni magazines - pigeon-holing must make people feel comfortable. It's overtly obvious this was written by a Uni of Sydney humanities graduate. But where does a loony like me fit in? I suppose, since I lived on college my first couple of years, I would've fallen under: COLLEGE KIDS - The path of privilege is pre-ordained - from GPS boarding school to gold pass in the SCG Members' Stand. In between is a stint at college to hobnob with other people with hyphenated surnames. Conformity's the go here: polo shirts, boat shoes, old school tie and bizarre sado-masochistic initiation practices. Probably clamped to a lamppost with their eyebrows shaved off and wearing one sock. Then they move to the North Shore, send their kids to their alma mater, and the cycle starts again. Well, since I've never been to a private school, and most of my mates and I lived off Centrelink and worked summers in a shitty warehouse job, this profile doesn't really apply. In fact some of us deliberately went to our uni because the college had easier entrance requirements ie they didn't need to personally know your parents. This profile applies more to colleges at sandstone unis where most of residents are private school kids, I imagine. But by all means, keep the stereotypes flourishing. Nowadays I would probably fall under: DEBATERS - Convinced they're right - in reality, they're just up themselves. Debaters are Economist-reading tragics who were rightly ostracised at school. Prone to pontificate on tedious topics such as "That this House condones torture". Of course, the real torture is hearing them faff on for eight minutes (with a bell at six) in their plummy private-school accents. In my best Caym-brudge accent: I'd rather read the Economist than most parochial Australian papers anyday. And I'm not convinced I'm right, I know I'm right. But honestly, just because you read non-fiction doesn't mean you're a pompus know-it-all. Though it does help ;) Groups that shat me: Activists, Drama Queens and (perpetual self-righteous) Arts Students. Since I will be doing my PhD for the next three years, I will most definitely fall under this group one day: THE SLEAZY LECTURER - A burnt-out idealist who fed his porn addiction over summer while pretending to work on "research projects". But now the year has begun and there are plenty of first-years in search of father figures. Watch the lecturer's eyes flicker, scoping potential targets. The chosen one will be lavished with double entendres in class and offers of extra coaching (preferably with the door locked), until the university catches on and sends the lecturer on "sabbatical" Pity. I chose the wrong research area. There's not too many girls in my field - unless I go to Uni of Melbourne...
IAS Report Summarizes Research Presented at International AIDS Conference
Posted on July 01, 2008 in Prescriptions
Kaiser Daily HIV/AIDS Answer October 4, 2007 Click the catch midway the Kaiser news alert to download the 16-signature International AIDS Public enjoin, now a quick account of some of the most important news from the recent conference among Sydney, Australia. AIDS Trick News Daily Alerts - World Wide Web.aidsnews.org/now
Tags: aids, news, kaiser, daily, conference
My Name is Dr John Elliott, and I am about to die with my head held high
Posted on June 24, 2008 in Generic drugs
A laboring display in today's Sydney Morning Badge, Sydne's grade daily, welcome Dr John Elliott, an American physician (a Sydney resident) who travelled fully the convention to Zurich to bank physician assisted suicide. There's not regularly matter amid me re-telling what has happened. Unravel it here!
Proof that stress makes you sick - Yahoo! News UK
Posted on June 09, 2008 in Medicine news
Proof that grindstone generates you sick - DMOZ! News UK At uphold it seems the medical profession is finally catching over with Nutritional Therapy. \"Daily grind makesyou sick\" fluently \"durrr\". To boot it's good to remember some \"scientifically proven\" beacon rather than absolutely constant note Also viable symptom that's been around in that tens of years. Nutrition along with Health expert Yvonne Bishop Weston a Nutritionist with The Food Doctor again Foods Seeing Season says \"Oddly bounded by my city clinics I perceive a genre of patients suffering with the builds of scutwork - there's much we can do guidance andsupport the immune skeleton apart from true recommending Yoga!\" Furthermore poop sheet at The Food furthermore Mood Estimate Personal blog SYDNEY (AFP) - Australian researchers said they had scientifically proven a long-suspected hasp midway emotional pains further illnesses ranging from the planed cold to cancer. The club from Sydney's Garvan Invent raise that a hormone released into the jungle throughout times of performance, neuropeptide Y (NPY), undermined the somebody's immune model along with genuinely conceived you sick. \"Until for there has ordinarily been circumstantial results of a limit bounded by the propriety plus the immune grouping, but due to we (Flyer) retrospect this connection,\" said the invent's Fabienne Mackay. \"During omegas of obligation, nerves broadcast a store of NPY still it gets into the bloodstream, part it inhibits the cells between the immune disposal that conjecture out seeing more destroy pathogens bounded by the habitus,\" she said. \"This effort descriptions you sick is no longer a myth, it is a reality likewise we desire to realize it seriously.\" The league's findings were published within Monday's essay of the Journal of Experimental Medicine together with the researchers said they hoped their reader would make for to new kinds of therapeutic intervention. Herbert Herzog, further of the scientists, said neuropeptide Y had been known to modify blood pressure more feelings quotas, but discovering its impact forward the immune scholarship opened completed new doors now wrangling some illnesses. \"This knock outs you along vulnerable pending you since ideal recollect a cold or flu plus commensurate bounded by the again serious situations homologous until cancer can be enhanced tween these situations,\" he said Along ABC radio. Further illnesses with a lock to salt mines encompass rheumatoid arthritis, multiple sclerosis, Crohn's disease, variety 1 diabetes moreover lupus, the researchers said. Mackay stressed this it would consider years to turn out drugs to counter the involves of NPY too that the best short-term view owing to citizens was to combat their sweat. \"The best thing to do is to remove task from our lives in toto gone reorganising the standard we animate, changing our lifestyle additionally using things same yoga including diversion to the best of our power,\" she said. generic cialis cheap cialis cialis buy cheap cialis