The Beginning of the end for AIDS?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!

[TheTheologin]

Thursday November 8 5:28 PM ET
Tree Bark Compound Drives HIV Out of Hiding
By Merritt McKinney

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - An experimental compound derived from tree bark may flush HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, out of hiding places that are out of reach of current drugs, new research suggests.

Even though combination drug therapy can reduce HIV to undetectable levels in the blood of most patients, a small amount of the virus lies dormant in cellular reservoirs in the body, according to Dr. Roger J. Pomerantz of Jefferson Medical College in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

Read More (http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20011108/hl/hiv_49.html)

[Shadowulfe]

I was wondering when they would find something to help cure HIV..now i wonder if it would do the same thing for AIDS.

thank you for the information

brightest blessings,
Shadowulfe

[UnSolon]

Originally posted by SearchingWolf
This will piss alot of people off probably. I think that aids is here for a reason mainly to control overpopulation which we are doing. People like sex so much that they breed like rabbits. Aids is the cure not the desiease. For the earth anyways in my opinion sorry if any of you have lost anyone due to hiv and aids. Just my opinion not whats really true (or is it?)!

WHOA.... I'm not even going to get into this one :( ....

*alert *alert *warning *warning *incoming morality issue

[Aengus McTeague]

No dammit, the cure to overpopulation is family planning and birth control, accompanied by education and health care. And btw, the earth will be doing just fine whether we all die tomorrow, or continue to breed like rabbits for the next 200 years. WE might not be doing so well in that case, but the earth is a tougher old bitch than we give her credit for. "Save the Earth" bumperstickers are laughably clueless.

[airmist]

Thank you Aengus McTeague; sorry this is off the thread and ought to be somewhere else, but while I'm sure we both respect those who want to "save the earth" and are merely using popular language, I was glad to see someone point out the arrogance behind the language. We need saving, not the earth. Mother will do fine with or without us. As one American wit said a few years ago, we may just be a minor failed experiment by nature and will be shaken off like a bad case of fleas.

While I am a little more respectful of humanity as a part of nature, if the "flea" image engenders some humility, that might be a little more spiritual, don't you think?

[UnSolon]

OT but I really want to say it...

Yes, life will go on well after humans are gone.

But to say that the ideology of 'Save the Earth' is laughable is rather ignorent in my view.

You can come over to my house, chop off my hand, 4 fingers on my other hand, poke out one of my eyes, sever my ears, break my femers, punctur my spleen, break some ribs, cut my achilies tendon, and drive nails through my feet and guess what, I WILL STILL LIVE. However I will NEVER be the same, and it will take me YEARS to recover.

Now to put this in natures perspective. Your probably right, we probably wont extinguish ALL life on this planet, however we ARE irrevocable altering life on this planet. The rate of extinction has not been this great since the end of the dinosours, we are destroying the ozone, cutting down the last of the old growth rainforest, and still, your right, life will go on.

However I for one am unwilling to sit silently and watch, as humans act as that catastrophy which destroys the planet. A meteor can do it and I say go ahead, a whole bunch of volcanoes erupting and causing some sort of nuclear winter, sure why not. However to simply sit back and allow humans to eradicat much of what has raised us, humans, from the plains of africa to the pinical of civilizations which we have reached over the thousands of years we have existed is simple folly.

I care about the planet, I will not allow us, simple creatures, to decide what gets to live and what has to die. I will not allow us to make extinct lines of evolution which have taken billions of years to evolve, never to return. Who knows what we futures we are destroying.

In millenia from now, long after humans have disapeared in whatever mannor, long after the mightiest monument to the greatest kings and emporors of our days of age have withered back to dust, and a new civilization has risen. Whatever form it takes, whether it be mammal, alian, plant, fungus, whatever intelligent form it wishes to take, and it has reached a level of civilization on par with us today, ask yourself, as the archeologists of this mysterious civilization uncover the clues of our presant, as they look at the ice sheets in polar regions, analyzeing the data they collect, would you like them to labal us, humans, as a force whoes single greatest and lasting achievement was the thining and choosing of a once thriving planet.

Its not too late, a difference can still be made.

And I apologize for being off topic, but I felt like I had to respond.

Peace
UnSolon

[Laiste]

Originally posted by SearchingWolf
This will piss alot of people off probably. I think that aids is here for a reason mainly to control overpopulation which we are doing. People like sex so much that they breed like rabbits. Aids is the cure not the desiease. For the earth anyways in my opinion sorry if any of you have lost anyone due to hiv and aids. Just my opinion not whats really true (or is it?)!

I know you have a right to your opinion, but, I think you need a major wake up call!! HIV and AIDS does not just affect people who are "breeding like rabbits". It has affected people from all walks of life with all sorts of habits and preferences! This disease is not here to teach us a lesson...it is not here to decrease the population...although the population has decreased it and will continue to do so due to these related deaths...but, the rise in live births overseeds the death rate from AIDS. People die of many different diseases and none of them are "punishments" for liking sex...sex is not a sin...sex between two consenting adults can and is meant to be a beautiful and enjoyable experience.

That said...I think this is wonderful news...hopefully it works for many people who have to suffer terribly with this disease, especially in the end stages. I have lost a few people to AIDS and I wish that these discoveries were made before it was too late for them...ah well, at least I know that possibly others will not have to suffer as all the other who's lives were destroyed by this virus!!

[MistOfTheSea86]

As with Underestimating the earth, people seem to also underestimate us humans. I mean personally, I am sick of people calling us Simple creatures, mammals only to live, breed, then die. The earth is our mother and we are her children I dont think she finds us simple or as "fleas" Or as some failed experiment, THAT in my views is folly. I think people who would live like that, and I know someone who does, they would be miserable. We dont have to CONSTANTLY prove our worth. I feel that is a VERY PESSIMISTIC WAY to look at things. But then again it is YOUR WAY of doing things, and I can't preach whats right.

[airmist]

A clarification for MistoftheSea86 and Unsolon

Mist--the "flea" reference was to a humorist's very pointed routine suggesting the intellectual arrogance of thinking we can "save" the earth or even know what it needs. I did add that I have more respect than that for humanity as part nature. You put that well as our being children of the mother who loves us.

Unsolon--I think of how we treat nature and earth as a moral issue; and there are few things I place in that category. And you are right in that we can do or prevent great harm to nature in general, as we know it, and to other living things. And, as you point out, how do we want to be viewed as a species? But I believe nature, for me the source of everything spiritual, will outlast us and anything we do. It is still, ultimately, only a choice of how moral or participating a part of nature we want to be.

[mol]

Woah.

Actually...in my not so humble opinion. The cure for over-population is technology and getting some of us off this planet and starting to move outward.

I cant believe I actually read that here. Aids is the cure? I will tell you what...have a few of your friends die from it. See what kind of cure it is then.

[SearchingWolf]

Well since I dont have any friends and dont care for humanity in general........

[Laiste]

Originally posted by SearchingWolf
Well since I dont have any friends and dont care for humanity in general........

Well, that is truly the most pathetic and sad statement I have ever read!:( You are a part of humanity...you don't care about yourself??!!

[SearchingWolf]

Correct

[Laiste]

sorry to hear that!:(

[mol]

Originally posted by SearchingWolf
Well since I dont have any friends and dont care for humanity in general........

:rolleyes:

[flar7]

but do you care for and respect the earth?
well, the earth made humanity. Earth forced us to evolve as
thinkers. And as people, we cannot be wiped out by a disease
that merely kills us, even AIDS. We reproduce to fast.
To end mankind without our own help, would require a
disaster to rival all disasters, comet or such. A diseas which
sterilizes the human race in a sudden passing could also do the
trick with the right timing.

If we leave this planet to settle elswhere mol, I will wait for
version 5.0 or better. Anyone want to be the beta testers!

[Dellit Tandannon]

i think aids was created as a sort of biological weapon

[Myst]

Silly me. We're supposed to live forever because that's God's will and we're superior!

[Dellit Tandannon]

if the pharmaceutical (can't spell and no spell check on computer) companies have anything to do with it, they're not gonna cure anything. they'll make those with hiv dependent on them by manufacturing medication that helps them live with it.

[amberlaine]

Well, while I think Searchingwolf's statements were a bit on the dismissive side, I'd like to play devil's advocate here.

This isn't the first time I"ve heard this argument, and I"m sure its not the first time y'all have heard it either. Yet, there does seem to be soemthing to the argument that nature takes care of itself, and perhaps disease is part of that plan.

Smallpox...plague...AIDs, etc...all of these have proven deadly diseases that, perhaps do have a place within th enatural order of things. Perhaps this is nature's way of saying, "Stop ****ing with me".

That's not to say 1) that we should sit idly by and let these diseases kill our families and friends (of course we shouldn't) or 2) that people who contract these diseases "Asked for it" and that they are the target of nature's backlash. THat's pure prejudice and ignorance. I fear that statements such as "this is nature's way" wrongly target the poor and homosexuals as "the enemy" (nevermind the fact that I think it's white heterosexual females that are now the largets growing group of AIDS victims in the US. I might be wrong abotu that. Not sure)

But...there is soemthing interesting to consider in this argument. If many of us believe that the Divine can be cruel, can be destructive .. . . is it not even *possible* that these devestating diseases are part of "the plan"? (if you believe in such a thing) or if not part of the "plan", at least part of the natural cycles of nature?

Again, more than anything, this is a gedankexperiement....I"m not actually advocating or lending my support to such an idea, but it is something to consider.

[Dellit Tandannon]

good point.

[Haedis]

I think that AIDS is SUPPOSED to wipe out a big section of our population. Then there would be less people left to muck up the earth. I think that the Earth is going to get sick of us really quick and give us a whole slew of new problems to deal with that will end up killing us all. I'm not merely being morbid for the sake of being morbid, I dont view this as a bad thing at all...and after all, IMO we WILL be back again (only maybe next time we'll reincarnate into a more sensible creature). I know people who have AIDS and its not pleasant by any means...but it doesn't change my opinion. I think this is for a purpose and that we really arent meant to find a cure for a while...if at all.

[Myst]

Playing devil's advocate here


but do you care for and respect the earth?
well, the earth made humanity. Earth forced us to evolve as
thinkers. And as people, we cannot be wiped out by a disease
that merely kills us, even AIDS.

How do you know "the earth" (ie.mother nature, Goddess, etc.) didn't make AIDS and other diseases? How do you know Goddess didn't intend for those diseases to kill us? Us sitting here talking about what Goddess/the earth/mother nature wants is kind of silly, being as none of us got a memo on it from her.

The truth is none of us knows "the meaning of life" or what "intentions Goddess has" for our race. Like the dinosaurs and every other creature on earth all we can do is live every day and take what comes.

Personally I think too many people are convinced (egotistically) that we're *supposed* to be around because "God(dess) wills it". I believe sooner or later we're going to get wiped out; I actually think the world will be blown up in the end, and a new big bang will occur, and it'll start all over, as I believe everything is in cycles.

However, that doesn't mean I'm gonna stop taking vitamins or ask my dad to stop going to the hospital. It does mean that I'm going to let my family know I don't want to be put on life support machines in event of accidents, etc.

I don't think this is a subject we're all ever going to agree on.

[Twilight Garden]

Originally posted by Haedis
I know people who have AIDS and its not pleasant by any means...but it doesn't change my opinion. I think this is for a purpose and that we really arent meant to find a cure for a while...if at all. Personally, I believe that if we aren't "meant" to find a cure, we won't. The same could be said for cancer. Whatever... :rolleyes: I think we'll have, if not a cure, at least an effective treatment in the not too distant future.

[flar7]

[QUOTE]Originally posted by Myst
[B]Playing devil's advocate here



How do you know "the earth" (ie.mother nature, Goddess, etc.) didn't make AIDS and other diseases? How do you know Goddess didn't intend for those diseases to kill us? Us sitting here talking about what Goddess/the earth/mother nature wants is kind of silly, being as none of us got a memo on it from her.

Huh? was that in relation to my post? If so, could you explain?
I didnt even begin to guess at what god or goddess wanted,
I just said we come from the earth, and that it would be very
hard for a disease to wipe us out or stop our population growth
unless the disease was horribly quick, and other stuff.

[Myst]

It was an extension of what you said but it wasn't in argument to what you said :)

Meaning what you said made me think of something else but I wasn't arguing with you, I was just commenting on that something it made me think of. :D

[flar7]

okies, just wonderin. would never accuse you of arguin'. heheh

[mol]

Originally posted by Dellit Tandannon
i think aids was created as a sort of biological weapon

OMG, Dellit. Are you freakin' serious? You dont buy into all that black-helicopter-men-in-black BS do you?

[mol]

This thread has made my head hurt.

Its AIDS people. Its a disease. If we find a cure for it, then we will have the cure. If not, then people will continue to die just like they do from cancer (another one we haven't solved yet). No one is hiding the answers or the formulas. The drugmakers can make there money just as easily with something else. They are in NO danger of going out of business if AIDS was cured.

*sigh*

[Myst]

I have a friend who's convinced the government took the AIDS virus from monkeys, mutated it, and introduced it in humans.

Yeah he's a bit unique :rolleyes:

[Haedis]

Hey...thats not as bad as my mothers conspiricy theory that our government was behind the 9-11 attacks to give George Bush higher approval ratings. Yeah she has some issues. But thats another thread.

[Myst]

Actually if you look through some of the older threads in Political Pagan you'll see a few people here brought that up too.

[Dellit Tandannon]

Originally posted by mol


OMG, Dellit. Are you freakin' serious? You dont buy into all that black-helicopter-men-in-black BS do you?

lol, first off, i fail to see what AIDS has to do with black helicopters and men in black. second, it is a possibility, right? diseases are created and modified by some organizations on a daily basis. we really have no idea how AIDS came about, so is it not at least slightly possible that this could be the case?

[Myst]

we do? why? because it was in the movies?

[WynnJera]

"The Unwanted"

Why do they have to die alone
I can feel cold chills
going through my bones
Does'nt anyone care what happens to them?
Please reach out your hand, just don't stare
They are alone and scared can't you see
Everyone thinks it will go away
it will never happen to me
I am safe and protected is what they say
No one is fool proof, not anymore
AIDS is a virus that kills,
it can no longer be ignored
AIDS is everywhere and no one is to blame
Those who are unfortunate
should be loved you see
They should not be left to die alone in shame

Written in Honor of my uncle who died of AIDS

A = AWARNESS
I = IS A
D = DOMINANT
S = SHIELD

AGAINST

A = AUTO
I = IMMUNE
D = DEFFICIENCY
S = SYNDROM

WynnJera © Copyright protected

[mato]

OnT for once in this thread!

Saddly there has been much talk about a cure for aids in the 20 years that it has been known. Why just after it was discovered the buz was that it was going to be cured in 5 years! Every 5 years or so there is word of a drug that will solve the problem and cure the disease, but the fact is even if there were to be a treatment the people most effected by it, poor Africans, would have no way of getting the treatment other than through government controlled distrubution facilities/clinics. Genocide is sure to follow and of course there will always be those who dont finish out the treatment plan and grow a resistant strain. Worse yet that resistant strain would reinfect those already 'cured' within another 20 years!

It is interesting to note that there are several strains already around including a european strain and a few African strains that are named after the region first discovered. Amoungst the european variety there are many resistant strains that while this drug might force the virus out of hiding it would only work to hesten the infection rate and cut a few years off the petients life.


OffT
AIDS for population control?! That is insane! It kills, yes but a resistance is imminant. Nothing to wait around for but still, natural selection will do her thing. I have heard that before, it still makes me sick, if you want people to die inmass than build a rocket to colonize the sun. Dont sit on your hands while a disease ravages the population because of personal bias towards the infected. That is what is the root of that thought pattern though, seeing that the people who are most infected are not apparently like you and then distancing yourself from them by calling it a natural population control. Using that excuse to express your bigotry and hatered for a people... (oh crap this is one of those topics, I will stop now before I have blood on my hands, or maybe I should just by some bleech...)

[Dellit Tandannon]

Originally posted by Myst
we do? why? because it was in the movies?

what is this in reference to?

[||Lake||]

To those who feel aides is population control and people deserve it due to their behavoirs, you are heartless, shallow, and have no compassion for the suffering. Would you feel this way if your mother died from it, or you yourself had it?

My father died of aides because he was in a hospital in the 70' and 80's where he got medication given to him through shots .
Let me tell you unless you have seen someone die of aides keep your mouth quiet about population control. Its the cruelest most painful way to die and as far as im concerned your comments come from ignorance, and lack of compassion.

One day you will learn, compassion and it wont be an easy lesson.
kim

[Ball-Bhreac Ròn]

Originally posted by UnSolon

*alert *alert *warning *warning *incoming morality issue

Heh, you had that one right :rolleyes:

I personally am glad that there is a chance to cure AIDs, and I hope and pray that it comes to pass. However, I'm saddened by the responses of some people - people being killed because they're doing what they were put on this Earth for doing? Nope, I don't think so.