← Autodidact Archive · Original Dissent · Walter Yannis
Thread ID: 16975 | Posts: 10 | Started: 2005-02-26
2005-02-26 05:29 | User Profile
[URL=http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story2&u=/ap/20050226/ap_on_he_me/hiv_blacks]HIV Infection Rate Among Blacks Doubles [/URL] By JEFF DONN, Associated Press Writer
BOSTON - The HIV (news - web sites) infection rate has doubled among blacks in the United States over a decade while holding steady among whites ââ¬â stark evidence of a widening racial gap in the epidemic, government scientists said Friday. Other troubling statistics indicate that almost half of all infected people in the United States who should be receiving HIV drugs are not getting them.
The findings were released in Boston at the 12th Annual Retrovirus Conference, the world's chief scientific gathering on the disease.
"It's incredibly disappointing," said Terje Anderson, director of the National Association of People With AIDS (news - web sites). "We just have a burgeoning epidemic in the African American community that is not being dealt with effectively."
Researchers and AIDS prevention advocates attributed the high rate among blacks to such factors as drug addiction, poverty and poor access to health care.
The HIV rates were derived from the widely used National Health and Nutrition Examinations Surveys, which analyze a representative sample of U.S. households and contain the most complete HIV data in the country. Researchers at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (news - web sites) compared 1988-1994 data with figures from 1999-2002.
The surveys look only at young and middle-aged adults who live in households, excluding such groups as soldiers, prisoners and homeless. Thus, health officials believe the numbers probably underestimate true HIV rates in this country.
Still, they show a striking rise in the prevalence of the AIDS virus from 1 percent to 2 percent of blacks. White rates held steady at 0.2 percent. Largely because of the increase among blacks, the overall U.S. rate rose slightly from 0.3 percent to 0.4 percent.
Smaller studies had shown rising infection rates among blacks in recent years, but this study takes a longer and more complete look at changes in the general population.
"I think it's very concerning," said Dr. Susan Buchbinder, who leads HIV research for the city of San Francisco. "I think what we need to look at is how we can reduce those rates and get more people into treatment."
She recommended a stronger focus on treating drug addiction.
The lead CDC researcher, Geraldine McQuillan, said she was encouraged to see the HIV rate among younger blacks holding steady at just under 1.5 percent.
"It tells me we're making some headway," she said.
Other national data and published reports studied by the CDC showed that 480,000 HIV-infected people ages 15 to 49 should have been getting antiviral drugs in 2003, yet only 268,000, or 56 percent, were given such medication.
Researcher Eyasu Teshale of the CDC said the gap represents "a substantial unmet health care need."
Treatment is widely viewed as a central component in prevention. Powerful AIDS drugs that came into wide use in the mid-1990s can knock down levels of the virus in the body, reducing the chances that the patient will infect others.
Nearly 1 million people in the United States have contracted the AIDS virus since the outbreak began in the early 1980s. About 40,000 people test positive each year, and more than 18,000 die. However, U.S. infections have remained fairly level in recent years with the use of powerful HIV drugs.
2005-02-26 10:51 | User Profile
I'll believe it when I see the coffins. Nobody dies of this disease any longer; they just maintain on the drugs. So this is not good news for us because - even as Bush guts Social Security (thus screwing everyone under 55 who's been bled by FICA all his/her life), bet your ass he will find $ (mine and yours) to keep duskies in free anti-AIDS medication for the next two decades. Higher taxes to prop up the useless while the rest of us had better figure out an alternative if we don't want to eat dog food on our 70th birthdays.
And let's not even go near how many of these NWAs (nogs wit' AIDS) are convicts who've transmitted the virus to whites via six-on-one gang rapes behind bars. Yeah, I'm losing sleep fretting over Jamaal's sudden weight-loss....
2005-02-26 11:21 | User Profile
[QUOTE=il ragno]NWAs (nogs wit' AIDS) ...[/QUOTE] :thumbsup:
2005-02-26 19:48 | User Profile
Walter Yannis
On related note...
[QUOTE] "Right now, about 2 percent of U.S. blacks are living with HIV/AIDS," Mr. Rushton said at the National Press Club. "That was the level of AIDS infection in Africa just 15 years ago. Now African rates are between 8 percent and 20 percent." If the HIV infection rates for U.S. blacks continue to mirror the spread of the virus among blacks in Africa, Mr. Rushton said, "we are faced with the threat of an African AIDS epidemic within large sections of the black population of the United States, and also in the Caribbean." As early as 1989, Mr. Rushton said, he "predicted the very situation [of HIV infection among U.S. blacks] we've got today."[/QUOTE]
Scholar Says U.S. May Face AIDS Epidemic Like Africa [url]http://www.originaldissent.com/forums/showthread.php?t=16781&highlight=aids[/url]
2005-02-26 21:42 | User Profile
I still doubt the some-whites-are-immune argument. Even if a few percent are, it would hardly make a dent in the number of whites infected. Look at the spread of AIDS among white homosexual men to prove that white immunity is more myth than reality.
Blacks are just more likely to share needles, commit sodomy, and be promiscuous. The immigration rate of blacks from 3rd-world countries is starting to explode, and surely many of these are HIV-infected blacks seeking free medical care.
2005-02-27 00:03 | User Profile
[QUOTE=Happy Hacker]... Blacks are just more likely to share needles, commit sodomy, and be promiscuous. The immigration rate of blacks from 3rd-world countries is starting to explode, and surely many of these are HIV-infected blacks seeking free medical care.[/QUOTE] I would agree... And now that the "new" strain of HIV has an incubation period of only three months... the disease will come to its eventual conclusion much more rapidly.
Looks like nature is taking care of some of our problems for us.
:thumbsup:
2005-02-27 00:23 | User Profile
Speaking as a pragmatist, we should provide AIDS drugs and foreign aid to no one. There are two many humans and it is killing us.
2005-02-27 01:14 | User Profile
Happy Hacker
I agree, anyone who fornicates or lets their children if a total moron. Their many other forms of VD that will destroy your health and and leave you unable to have children. Protect your children, do what ever you have to do...
[QUOTE]I still doubt the some-whites-are-immune argument... Look at the spread of AIDS among white homosexual men to prove that white immunity is more myth than reality. Blacks are just more likely to share needles, commit sodomy, and be promiscuous.[/QUOTE]
2005-02-27 02:46 | User Profile
The cure for AIDS will be found, possibly soon. I've read the news about reasearchers finding the composition of some critical HIV virus component using MRI scan. The orcs will be saved.
2005-02-27 04:34 | User Profile
HIV = The Great White Hope