Word: hiv
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...other matters, our society is stuck—unable to do the right thing even with its striking scientific capacities. HIV, a devastating burden for any country because it produces a generation of orphans, is one area where such failure has been persistent. As late as the 1990’s, half of the World Bank’s AIDS-related projects did not finance or promote condom use. President Bush is continuously derided for his decision to invade Iraq, but the caveat in his large-scale plan for AIDS relief in Africa, which demanded that at least a third...
...some communities in Africa, parents still believe their children are dying not from AIDS, but from witchcraft. Meanwhile, many HIV activists encourage medical doctors in these contexts to rely on the assistance of traditional healers (who are known to spread the myth that sleeping with a virgin cures diseases. While one NGO in Zimbabwe has already tried to debunk that myth, it is astonishing that donors spend millions of dollars on expensive HIV testing and (comparably) miniscule resources are spent on providing vital information to containing the spread of AIDS...
Condom use waned in the 1960s after the introduction of the birth control pill and remained stagnant until the arrival of the HIV virus in the 1980s, at which time sales exploded, jumping 33% in the U.S. in 1987. Today some 6 billion condoms are sold worldwide each year, though sales have plateaued in the past decade - policy experts blame "prevention fatigue," while condom makers (the ones targeting men, anyway) have responded by becoming increasingly creative, or perhaps ridiculous. What began as a simple choice between lubricated, ribbed or custom-fit now includes flavored, novelty (Star Wars prophylactic, anyone...
...prevention methods from the U.S. and Europe to the developing world, however. The most common cancers outside our borders are caused by chronic infections with viruses - very different from the ones that afflict us. In Africa, for example, the three most common cancers are Kaposi's sarcoma (related to HIV infection) and liver and cervical cancer. In China, liver cancer is a huge problem. The good news is that while researchers are still working on an effective AIDS vaccine, they can vaccinate against the hepatitis B virus that causes liver cancer and the human papillomavirus responsible for cervical cancer. "Hepatitis...
...over the years, maintenance treatment with methadone and other synthetic opiates like buprenorphine has proved successful - more than any other heroin-addiction therapy - in getting people off illicit drugs and lowering HIV transmission rates, crime and death among users. That success, in part, has got researchers wondering whether addiction to other drugs - namely to the stimulants cocaine and methamphetamine - could be curbed in the same way, by substituting a chemically similar alternative. (See the Year in Health, from...