HIV Becoming Less Deadly
In the news is that an Australian researcher has come out and discussed the fact that HIV is becoming less deadly and eventually most likely won’t even be lethal or debilitating. This is something I’ve been saying on here for a while now – HIV, on average, is a lot less lethal than it used to be and the trend will continue. It’s a pretty simple fact that a virus that kills its host quickly will not spread as well as a virus that takes a long time to kill its host (or one doesn’t kill the host at all). The researcher is taking a very long term view with that trend and saying that eventually (if humans survive that long) the virus will be so weak or we’ll have adapted to the virus that it won’t bother us at all…
At the end of 2007, 31,000 people died of AIDs in North America And Europe alone. You have a higher chance of dying from AIDs then you do being shot.
@BK – Being shot??? Sure there are plenty of ways to die that are less likely than AIDS – big deal. Gay men are 5 times more likely to die of smoking than HIV. Where’s the outrage about smoking? OK, there’s a little, but it’s tempered…
Smoking isn’t a biohazard epidemic that spreads through bodily fluid contact.
@BK – How exactly does that make a difference? Mortality and morbidity don’t care how you got there…
Well, if a guy lies to his partner about smoking, no big deal. If he lies to his partner about his status, that could change his partner’s quality of life.
If this is the case why didn’t any of those other communicable diseases (polio, rubella, mumps, smallpox, whooping cough, bubonic plague, measles, german measles, syphillis, cholera, meningitis, tuberculosis, HPV, etc.) become “less fatal?” Generations lived in fear of these diseases but it took either anti-biotics or innoculations to wipe them out. This “researcher” is merely speculating but I doubt he’s out there risking his ass to prove how “less fatal” HIV is.
@Kevin – The answer is simple – those diseases are either bacterial or caused by simple viruses that don’t morph the way HIV or influenza does. Realize with HIV we’re talking about many different strains. That’s not true of the ones you mention – they’re fundamentally different.
Also, in saying “less fatal” it’s all about averages. There will be outliers/exceptions.
Exactly how rapidly do you think this virus will mutate to a “less fatal” strain and coalesce so that all HIV infections consist of that “less fatal” strain? Has this happened with any other disease?
We can document Smallpox to 10,000BC and yet Smallpox is still fatal, 80% of the time, 12,000 years later. I think any rapid mutation by the HIV virus (and it’s polyglot nature is precisely the reason there has always been speculation about “superaids” but none I’ve heard about “superweak aids”) probably isn’t rapid enough to result in all strains becoming “less fatal” in our, or anybody’s lifespan. Claiming HIV is becoming less fatal seems like willfull and extreme wishful thinking. Note this researcher cannot point to any studies that indicate any known viral disease ever became “less fatal.”
Actually this is not the first report along these lines. There was an article from Reuters or AP or one of the services on aidsmeds.com about a year and a half ago that researchers at the King Leopold Institute for Tropical/Infectious Diseases in Brussels that the current strains of the virus were less virulent than the strains first introduced into the human population back in the 60’s and 70’s. The basic reason being that a constant assualt by the human immune system as well as the drugs was making the virus less virulent. Now whetehr this will happen in our lifetime remains to be seen. My Dr. thought it plausible but continuing my treatment nonetheless. I could not find the link to the article otherwise I would have attached it.
That is comprehensively NOT what that article is talking about — you clearly read it with a particular agenda in mind, and didn’t read what it actually says.
There’s no question that since the introduction of TREATMENTS, HIV is no longer a short-term death sentence – for people who can access them.
But that article is about the personal opinion of an HONORARY professor in ZOOLOGY who is comparing HIV (no question: untreated, it’s deadly) with SIV (which doesn’t kill its hosts, because it has been active in chimps for thousands of years). Not relevant to your argument.
@danmeek – No, actually what I’m saying and what they’re saying is the same. One relevant quote is “it was not in the virus’s interest to kill its host.” Another quote being “it seems likely that over time the virus, which mutates incredibly rapidly, will eventually adapt so it doesn’t kill us” (the implication being that it’s already starting to mutate toward that end…
Treatment didn’t factor into the article.
A friend of mine was diagnosed HIV two years ago and has been getting sicker and sicker. He has started having seizures from one of the drugs, his T-cells are dropping and he has been very debilitated. So, I am not sure where that fits in with your theory.
@JAS – I’m always talking averages. Your friend is an outlier – they happen. Outliers can happen in both directions – people who get sick quickly and people who never get sick. They all factor into what’s “average”.
What you didn’t mention was how long your friend waited before he was diagnosed. He may have waited until it was sorta too late, or he may have other complicating factors like Hep-C or TB. Or it could just be that he’s on a bad drug cocktail…
It’s not that there aren’t particularly deadly strains of HIV out there. It’s just that they become less common in the grand scheme of things because they don’t have as much chance to spread because they debilitate and kill their hosts more quickly than the milder strains. So the normal/average strain as time goes on becomes weaker and weaker. It’s why knowing exactly what strain you have is very important…
I have to tell you – reading your blog is fun, but I always wrap up when fucking. For a while, I started to listen to your “studies” on HIV and even started thinking about BB’ing. The truth is, your doing a disservice to the many young guys who read your blog and think its no big deal to be HIV+ you have two links on your site to other blogs of guys who started out neg and are now positve. They both, now, wish they never took those risks, as their lives are very bad being positive. You can publish all the research, but the truth is if you become positive, your life with change dramtically and your lifespan will be cut drastically. Its a choice, but your in a position, as a popular blogger to save people lives, not ruin them.