Posted by Editor on June 08, 2003 at 10:05:08:
[(Here's a story from the Sacramento Bee. Maybe people just don't want to take experimental AIDS therapies anymore - Editor]
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Saturday, June 7, 2003
Volunteers for new HIV drugs get harder to find
Improvement in the treatment for the virus that causes AIDS makes patients less likely to join trials.
By DORSEY GRIFFITH
SACRAMENTO BEE
Fortified with new drugs that can make HIV more of a chronic disease, Americans with the virus that causes AIDS are much less likely to try unapproved therapies that could one day benefit patients worldwide.
Treatment improvements and shifts in the populations affected by the disease are hindering efforts to recruit patients into clinical trials, say AIDS experts. The new reluctance marks a sharp contrast to the early 1980s, when the virus was first identified and AIDS victims might try anything to stay alive.
"There is not the incentive people once had," said Marty Keale, executive director of the Center for AIDS Research, Education and Services in Sacramento.
The amount of private and public money available for HIV research is as high as it has ever been, as scientists try to improve, simplify and expand medication options. Congress appropriated $27 billion this year.
"When you are speaking of HIV, more than any other disease, clinical trials and research are a key way for people to get cutting-edge drugs," said Dr. Donna DeFreitas, an infectious-disease specialist at the University of California, Davis.
But in many cases, complacency and inconvenience discourage volunteers said Terry Wilson of Sacramento. He runs an AIDS volunteer program.
Many Caucasian gay males, whom he called the "backbone" of the AIDS research population, "are tired and suffering from AIDS fatigue," he said. "They say, 'I have been living with HIV for 12 years. I want the easiest (drug) regimen available.' "
Also needed are African-Americans, Latinos and women as their percentage of all HIV cases surges.
Sacramento Bee
(Editor's note: if everyone on the planet were tested for HIV tomorrow, this whole scam would be over as people who aren't African-American or Latino or in any risk group would test "positive" using these useless HIV tests, even nice white church-going people who have never had sex. Children might test positive, or old people who have only had one sex partner. Maybe even the Pope might react positively to this faulty test... More testing in predominately Black and Latino neighborhoods simply means more false positive results and funding can be justified by these so-called "surges" in HIV rates. HIV tests are ANTIBODY based tests that read proteins, and do not detect a virus. HIV has still never been properly isolated and the tests are not approved by the FDA for diagnosic purposes!)