HIV Woman Jailed...

[Swiss Miss]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/london/5094708.stm

Sarah Jane Porter, 43, of Seaton Close, Kennington, south-east London, was sentenced to 32 months after admitting recklessly inflicting GBH.

The court heard that, knowing she had the virus, she had unprotected sex with her 31-year-old lover of two years.

At the Inner London Crown Court Porter was told she will serve half her sentence in prison and half on licence.

Three more of her partners were traced in the inquiry, one of the first in the UK involving reckless infection.
...

That's pretty crazy. It's about time though that people start having to take responsibility for their actions. Because she knew about having HIV, her lovers are now called "victims". What an irresponsible hussy! I think this qualifies as a hate crime.

[Martin]

Are you visiting DrudgeReport daily aswell?

But yeah, she was a nutcase.

[RadioactiveMan]

I've heard about plenty of people being jailed for this. It comes on the news every once in a while but haven't seen any reports about it on the internet.

[Swiss Miss]

Originally Posted by Martin

Are you visiting DrudgeReport daily aswell?

But yeah, she was a nutcase.

No? What's DrudgeReport?

Time for GOOGLE!! :D

I once heard of a guy who raped women and was charged with a little extra somethin' somethin' because he had aids... but never about a woman.

[waltky]

China still in denial...

China bans AIDS rights meeting, group says
Sun Jul 29, 2007 - China has banned AIDS activists from holding a meeting on the rights of people with the disease, one of the organisers said on Sunday, citing official fears over foreign involvement in the sensitive subject.

The conference would have brought together 50 Chinese and foreign experts and activists to discuss how to press the legal rights of people with HIV/AIDS. But government authorities told the New York-based Asia Catalyst group to cancel the meeting planned for early August in Guangzhou near Hong Kong in the south, said Sara Davis, one of the organisers.

"Authorities informed us that the combination of AIDS, law and foreigners was too sensitive," Davis told Reuters. There were no plans to reschedule the meeting, she said. Phone calls to government spokesmen in Guangzhou and Beijing were not answered on Sunday.

China has become increasingly open about AIDS in recent years, facing up to an epidemic once stigmatized as a disease of the West. The nation had 203,527 officially registered cases of HIV/AIDS by the end of April, up from 183,733 at the end of October 2006. Of the latest figure, 52,480 had progressed to full-blown AIDS.

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[waltky]

HIV vaccine may backfire...

AIDS vaccine may have raised risk of infection
Thursday, October 25, 2007 — South African AIDS researchers have begun warning hundreds of volunteers that a highly touted experimental vaccine they received in recent months might make them more, not less, likely to contract HIV in the midst of one of the world's most rampant epidemics.

The move stems from the discovery last month that an AIDS vaccine developed by Merck & Co. might have led to more infections than it averted among study subjects in the United States and other countries. Among those who received at least two doses of the vaccine, 19 contracted HIV, compared with 11 of those given placebos. Researchers shut down the trial on the grounds that the vaccine was proving ineffective, but the surge in infection among vaccinated volunteers prompted intense scientific debate and anxiety among researchers. The failure of the Merck vaccine is the latest in a series of disappointing results for research projects aimed at curbing AIDS. "This is my worst nightmare," said Glenda Gray, the lead South Africa investigator for the vaccine study. "I haven't slept for days. I have a headache. I'm ready to resign from trials for the rest of my life."

Researchers in Soweto, Cape Town, Durban and two other sites began contacting South Africa's 801 trial participants on Tuesday, mainly by cellphone text message. The goal is to tell each one individually whether he or she had received a placebo or the vaccine, a process called "unblinding" the trial. Researchers are telling the roughly half who received the vaccine that it might have increased their risk of contracting HIV. "It's quite shocking," said Nelly Nonoise, 26, who had received three injections of the vaccine in her left shoulder. She added, "I probably wouldn't have joined the study knowing there's a risk."

Merck developed the vaccine in conjunction with the U.S. National Institutes of Health, and until September's announcement, researchers worldwide considered it the most promising candidate yet in a multibillion-dollar quest for an AIDS vaccine dating to the 1980s. Scientists crafted the vaccine by genetically altering a common virus to include elements of HIV. They hoped that it would trigger an immune response that would make recipients less likely to contract HIV, or at least delay the onset of full-blown AIDS. The vaccine could not have caused infection, researchers say, but it could have caused immunological changes that made it easier for the virus to take hold during a later exposure.

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[waltky]

How AIDS was brought to America...


Study: Immigrant Brought AIDS to U.S.
WASHINGTON, Oct 29, 2007 - The deadly virus may have made its human debut long before the early 1980s; AIDS Virus Invaded U.S. from Haiti in 1969: Study; New Evidence Suggests HIV Spread Decades Before 'Case Zero'

The AIDS virus invaded the United States in about 1969 from Haiti, carried most likely by a single infected immigrant who set the stage for it to sweep the world in a tragic epidemic, scientists said on Monday. Michael Worobey, a University of Arizona evolutionary biologist, said the 1969 U.S. entry date is earlier than some experts had believed.

The timeline laid out in the study led by Worobey indicates that HIV infections were occurring in the United States for roughly 12 years before AIDS was first recognized by scientists as a disease in 1981. Many people had died by that point. "It is somehow chilling to know it was probably circulating for so long under our noses," Worobey said in a telephone interview.

The researchers conducted a genetic analysis of stored blood samples from early AIDS patients to determine when the human immunodeficiency virus first entered the United States. They found that HIV was brought to Haiti by an infected person from central Africa in about 1966, which matches earlier estimates, and then came to the United States in about 1969.

The researchers think an unknown single infected Haitian immigrant arrived in a large city like Miami or New York, and the virus circulated for years -- first in the U.S. population and then to other nations. It can take several years after infection for a person to develop AIDS, a disease that ravages the immune system.

Disease Multiplies

[waltky]

AIDS and TB...

Africa: HIV And TB - An Ever Deadlier Combination
3 November 2007: The prevalence of tuberculosis (TB) amongst people living with HIV in sub-Saharan Africa has reached crisis levels and will escalate further if decisive steps are not taken, says a new report by the Forum for Collaborative HIV Research -- 'HIV-TB Co-Infection: Meeting the Challenge'.

The forum is a public-private initiative based in Washington. With more than 60 percent of HIV positive people living in sub-Saharan Africa, the region has proved fertile ground for TB: the compromised immune systems of AIDS patients are often unable to combat the disease.

In addition, failing health systems and insufficient knowledge, research, data collection and funding are encouraging the spread of HIV-TB across sub-Saharan Africa and the rest of the world, notes the study -- released Friday. Half of new TB cases now occur amongst people in sub-Saharan Africa who have contracted the AIDS virus, while a third of the world's 40 million HIV positive people are infected with TB.

"The global threat of the HIV-TB co-epidemic is not hypothetical. It is here now; yet the science and co-ordination that are needed to stop this are utterly insufficient," said Veronica Miller, co-author of the report and director of the Forum for Collaborative HIV Research.

"HIV and TB programmes and research funding have run through completely different funding and administrative streams. Because of this, opportunities for taking both diseases into account, instead of tackling either one of them, have been missed."

More allAfrica.com: Africa: HIV And TB - An Ever Deadlier Combination (Page 1 of 2)

[waltky]

Maybe something we should consider for both MRSA and drug-resistant TB to protect public health...

S. Africa Puts TB Patients Behind Fences
Nov. 11, 2007 - Faced With Drug-Resistant Tuberculosis, S. Africa Quarantines Patients Using Fences And Guards

Behind high fences patrolled by guards to prevent escape, a drab building once used for smallpox victims houses patients with a new, virtually uncurable strain of tuberculosis. Patients sleep or sit listlessly in the 12-bed women's ward, which is equipped with a TV, a fridge and a table with a couple of loaves of bread. It's a similar scenario in the men's ward, home to a minibus taxi driver who reluctantly agreed to be admitted after exposing hundreds of people every day to his potentially lethal germs.

Critics say enforced quarantine is a violation of medical ethics and individual human rights. Health authorities _ who earlier this year resorted to the courts to compel four patients to stay at the hospital _ say they have no choice. "We are dealing with very depressed people. They feel like they are in prison, but it's the only way," said senior nurse Joan Blackburn.

Andrew Speaker, an Atlanta attorney with drug-resistant tuberculosis, was held under a federal isolation order in May after he went on a European wedding trip and refused health officials' directives that he not take any commercial jets back to the U.S.

"At least our patients won't be able to get on a plane and fly around the world," said Simon Moeti, medical superintendent of the Brooklyn Chest Hospital. South Africa's AIDS epidemic has brought a related upsurge in TB cases, including multi-drug-resistant and extremely drug-resistant strains.

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[waltky]

TB coming back with a vengence...

'More needed' to combat TB
November 13, 2007 - FIFTY years after it was thought to have been contained, tuberculosis (TB) has re-emerged as a ruthless killer claiming a life every 20 seconds, a global lung health conference has heard.

Though treatable, the disease kills about 1.5 million people out of about nine million new cases diagnosed annually, the gathering of 3000 experts from 100 countries heard in Cape Town over the past five days. But as TB gains momentum, drugs to treat it with are more than 40 years old, the test method used in poor countries was developed over 100 years ago and the only available vaccine is approaching the century mark.

As drug resistance spreads and the threat of an untreatable TB strain grows, the introduction of new diagnostic and treatment tools remain years off. "It is a scandal that this disease has not been given the proper attention," Nils Billo, executive director of the International Union Against Tuberculosis and Lung Disease said as the conference drew to a close overnight.

"And why has it not been given the proper attention? Because it is a disease that affects the poor. The pharmaceutical industry does not see necessarily a big profit ... in developing tuberculosis drugs." Jerald Sadoff, president of the Aeras Global TB Vaccine Foundation, told delegates that TB was thought to have been brought under control 50 years ago.

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