Comments on: A Daily Pill Can Prevent HIV Transmission, Two Studies Show

By: L

Thu, 01 Sep 2011 12:59:25 +0000

…there’s a pill that can prevent HIV transmission and you’re hung up on *grammar*?!

By: Matt B.

Matt B. — Sun, 28 Aug 2011 00:58:32 +0000

“Preventive”, not “preventative”. A useful rule (based on how the words were invented) is to take the “-ion” word, and just change the “-on” to “-ve”. It works with everything except “adaptation”.

By: L

Wed, 27 Jul 2011 19:52:30 +0000

Oops, in above comment, meant “1. Sexual transmission could be prevented simply by using protection during sex”

By: L

Wed, 27 Jul 2011 19:21:31 +0000

Note also, this was done in Kenya and Uganda, where getting people to use condoms is already incredibly difficult (honoring a wife’s request to wear a condom could be considered a gift to her, not a responsibility). People are still being told condoms don’t stop HIV spread. I had a teacher who told me this – “a condom is just that – it’s a con and it’s dumb.” If a husband and wife are having sex, there is no need for a condom, she told us. This was in the mid-nineties, too, when HIV was really big. Thankfully I was able to see that teacher as an idiot, but not everyone is as fortunate.

By: L

Wed, 27 Jul 2011 19:15:02 +0000

“they actually, willingly incentivated uninfected people to have unprotected sex with hiv positive people. THAT is the ethical dilemma here.”

Where in the world do you see that?

HIV would not be the pandemic it is if
1. Sexual transmission could be spread simply by using protection during sex
AND
2. People always used protection during sex.

Number one? Is true. Unfortunately number 2 is not. I highly doubt ANYone told people to have unprotected sex and, again, as I said to lyllyth, one of the reasons for the placebo is to make sure people WOULDN’T increase the likelihood of having unprotected sex. I am 99% positive that the researchers simply said, “Here is a pill. It might be the placebo, so don’t change your sexual habits” and the people simply carried about as they had been, sometimes forgetting/neglecting to use condoms, sometimes experiencing condom failure, etc.

By: AtomR

AtomR — Wed, 27 Jul 2011 09:09:36 +0000

It’s not the placebo part that shocks me to be honest. I know placebos are given in clinical trials to establish the effectiveness of taking the drug versus not taking the drug but am I the only one shocked that they actually, willingly incentivated uninfected people to have unprotected sex with hiv positive people. THAT is the ethical dilemma here.
It’s one thing to give a cancer patient a placebo (they already have the disease) , its another to tell people they are being given an untested drug (placebo or not) that reduces chances of hiv-infection thus giving them a false sense of protection.
I know these were couples and not stranges off the street but I still can’t see someone risking the health of their loved ones unless they were somehow missinformed about exactly how effective the drug was.

By: L

Sun, 24 Jul 2011 04:07:12 +0000

ps – I didn’t mean to insult you with the “you’re not a scientist” reamark, lyllyth, I just wanted to make sure anyone who’s reading this knows that this would be not only acceptable but necessary under ethical guidelines testings for potential treatments. Cancer trial patients get placebos all the time when new drugs come out. It *has* to be done this way for there to be any actual, logical conclusion drawn from the subsequent data.

By: L

Sun, 24 Jul 2011 00:49:46 +0000

lyllyth, you’re not actually a scientist, are you?

Experimental drugs can cause more problems than the original disease – by the time it gets to human testing it’s unlikely but it is possible. Furthermore not using a placebo would not allow scientists to make an accurate correlation. If they all received the drug and HIV transmission was 90% less than those not taking the drug… well…who? Are you just picking up random people for the “non-drug” control? Why aren’t they getting the drug?

Furthermore, if you tell people they are taking a drug that might reduce HIV transmission, and that’s it, some may engage in riskier behavior. “Oh, we don’t need to use a condom, honey, I’m taking that pill!” Not all people will do this, but some people do consider test drugs actual proven cures. If people on that pill engage in riskier behavior it may skew the results. If you tell people, however, “you might be on this drug, but you might be on this placebo that does nothing” the chances of them increasing their risky behavior is decreased.

Finally, it is not as though these scientists injected HIV into test subjects. These subjects engaged in their normal activity. There are a number of ways to prevent HIV transmission from partner to partner. It’s not like the Tuskegee experiment.

By: lyllyth

lyllyth — Tue, 19 Jul 2011 21:03:32 +0000

How the hell did giving out a placebo pass the ethics committee for this study???

By: debra cole

debra cole — Tue, 19 Jul 2011 03:12:42 +0000

i’m not young enough to be promiscuous and I’ve never been gay but just in case I need to help in a bloody mess of the highway sign me up
Seriously, having watched people dying with aids a number of years ago i say if we can prevent one such horror lets meet in the streets and turn cartwheels
thanks science