Tomorrow, February 7th, is National Black HIV/AIDS Awareness Day

--taken from www.blackaidsday.org

The house is on fire and we need all hands on board to help put it out. According to the CDC, of all racial and ethnic groups in the United States, HIV and AIDS have hit Black Americans the hardest. The reasons are not directly related to race or ethnicity, but rather to some of the barriers faced by many Black Americans. These barriers can include poverty (being poor), higher rate of other sexually transmitted diseases, drug use, and stigma (negative attitudes, beliefs, and actions directed at people living with HIV/AIDS or directed at people who do things that might put them at risk for HIV).

When we look at HIV/AIDS by race and ethnicity, we see that Black Americans have

• More illness. Even though blacks (including African Americans) account for about 13% of the United States population, we account for about half (49%) of the people who contract HIV and are diagnosed with AIDS.
• Shorter survival times. Blacks with AIDS often don’t live as long as people of other races and ethnic groups with AIDS. This is due to the barriers mentioned above.
• More deaths. For Black Americans, HIV/AIDS is a leading cause of death.

Blacks— In 2006, according to the CDC, the rate of new infections among non-Hispanic blacks was 7 times the rate among whites (83.7 versus 11.5 new infections per 100,000 population). Blacks also accounted for the largest share of new infections (45%, or 24,900). Historical trend data show that the number of new infections among blacks peaked in the late 1980s and has exceeded the number of infections in whites since that time.

CDC is working to fight HIV among African Americans through the Heightened National Response, a partnership of CDC, public health partners, and African American community leaders to intensify prevention efforts nationwide. The partnership is designed to build upon progress in four key areas: expanding prevention services, increasing testing, developing new interventions, and mobilizing broader community action.

Podcast of Dr. Robert Fullilove, the Associate Dean for Community and Minority Affairs and Professor of Clinical Sociomedical Sciences at the Mailman School of Public Health of Columbia University, in an interview with the San Francisco AIDS Foundation. Dr. Fullilove talks about the progress being made in HIV prevention for African Americans and where programs are still falling short:
http://sfaf.typepad.com/

Trial Begins for HIV Gene Therapy

Taken from http://blog.wired.com/wiredscience/2009/02/hivtreatment.html

By Aaron Rowe February 03, 2009 | 7:00:00 AMCategories: Biotech, Medicine & Medical Procedures

Gene therapy that could immunize people against the most common type of HIV is ready to be tested on humans.

Recruiting for the trial began Tuesday, and the first people to receive the experimental treatment will be HIV patients with drug-resistance problems.

"We do have good treatments for HIV. That has been one of the most successful stories of the last 20 years in medicine," said Pablo Tebas, an infectious disease expert at the University of Pennsylvania.

"However, over time, if the medications are not taken properly, individuals develop resistance to the HIV treatments, so they tend to have more limited therapeutic options."

Since the discovery that a small portion of people who are exposed to HIV do not get infected, scientists have been working to discover the secret to those people's resistance and how to make others resistant as well.

It turns out that most people have a gene called CCR5, which makes them vulnerable to HIV infections. The naturally resistant people have mutant CCR5 genes that inhibit HIV.

Previously, scientists found that by cutting the CCR5 gene out of white blood cells involved in the immune response known as T-cells, they could protect a tube full of human cells from the virus. The gene editing technique relies on proteins called zinc finger nucleases that can delete any gene from a living cell.

In theory, zinc finger nucleases could give that immunity to anyone.

The procedure is simple: Take some healthy T-cells out of an HIV patient, clip out their CCR5 genes, grow more of these clipped T-cells in a dish, and then put them back in the patient.

"In this first study we will re-infuse approximately 10 billion of these cells back into the participants, and we will see if it is safe and if those cells inhibit HIV replication in vivo," said Tebas. "We know they do in the test tube."

New Leader for PEPFAR

In the past few years, I've been following PEPFAR closely. There are plenty of people who have lauded the President's Emergence Plan For AIDS Relief as the best thing the Bush administration has done. While I agree that some money ("some" = $50 billion pledged over the next 5 years) is better than no money, the fact that there's this conscience clause preventing funding of organizations that promote contraceptive use takes us straight back to the Victorian Age. It's ridiculous to believe that everyone will remain chaste until marriage... and then there's the problem of marriage being a risk factor for women getting HIV in parts of Africa and India. Since they have little say over their sex lives with their husbands, and have even less say over who their husbands are sleeping with, these women have no power to suggest contraception use if they even know the option exists.

But I digress.

The man in charge of running PEPFAR under the Bush administration, Dr. Dybul, was asked to summarily resign by Obama and Change. I didn't (and still don't) know enough about who Dr. Dybul was to respond to this strongly. On one hand, he apparently was a an openly gay physician who has played a huge role in HIV treatment, and obviously has done some good in enrolling over 2 million people on life-prolongly ARVs around the world. On the other hand, many women's rights groups have accused him of being a proponent of hte abstinence-only clause that has almost been detrimental the purpose of PEPFAR. Regardless, Dr. Dybul's gone, and a San Franciscan may take his place--a certain Dr. Eric Goosby-- who sounds like a decent chap.

Read more about it yourself from this NYTimes article.

Jim Kim for Obama Administration-GlobalHealth Coordinator

I got the following through the grapevine, and I'd highly encourage everyone with an interest in addressing international health issues from a rights-based perspective and from the primary care level to sign the petition!


Dear all,

Around the globe, treatable illnesses like malaria, tuberculosis, and pneumonia each claim millions of lives every year. In deciding who will coordinate global health policy in the White House, President Obama has the opportunity to drastically change this reality. Click HERE to sign a letter a group of Obama campaign staff and global health advocates recently drafted.

We are trying to encourage President Obama and Secretary Clinton to consider appointing Harvard professor and Partners in Health co-founder Jim Kim to
coordinate White House global health policy. The letter outlines some of his qualifications, and for more you can check out his profile from TIME Magazine's 100 Most Influential People of 2006 here.

Obama has many people to choose from, but among the leading candidates only Dr. Kim really knows how to reform foreign assistance so that, for instance, we spend more foreign assistance buying medicine for poor people rather than luxury accommodations for expatriate consultants. As in health care and energy, this is a policy area full of special interests and competing claims on limited resources. We need someone who will constantly fight alongside Obama to save lives and promote real development in the poorest parts of the planet. It's one more case of change versus more of the same, and we want to ensure that the pick is in line with Obama's vision for global health (see The Audacity of Hope, pages 317-320).

Our goal is to gather as many signatures as possible in the next day or two. We already have 740 names, but we should be able to clear 1,000 easily. We will send this out to members of Obama's foreign policy team, as well as some media sources to demonstrate the breadth of support for Dr. Kim.

If you agree with the letter, please add your name and any relevant organizational affiliations. Then, please invite anyone you know to add their names as well by forwarding this e-mail. If you have any questions, please shoot me an e-mail. Thank you so much for your help in this.

Sincerely,

Luke Messac
Campaign for Change Field Organizer, Georgia & Ohio;
Student Global AIDS Campaign
lukemessac (at) gmail (dot) com