China and AIDS

I post this, not to pick on China, though they deserve it, but that women, and men everywhere, exposed to AIDS, still have sex with countless people each day or week, without any concern.  It is wrong on so many levels.





Girl has AIDS exposing 279 Sex Contacts


October 17th, 2009


[Netease] Recently, a woman named Yan Deli (闫德利) claiming to be from Rongcheng Country, Hebei Province, in her blog exposed 279 phone numbers which belonged to the guys she had had sex with in the past. She also claimed that she has gotten AIDS. This news caused a great stir on the Internet, so called “sexual contact numbers” spread throughout the Chinese forums. In order to confirm the claims made by Yan Deli were true, reporter contacted these numbers, many people said this was an “intentional revenge”.

“My hometown is in Rongcheng county, Hebei Provice… my family lived in poverty every since I was little, parents were suffering from serious diseases.” Yan Deli wrote in her blog, she did not attend school and started roaming the streets at the age of less than 10. Reporter searched her ID card number and indeed it was registered at Rongcheng County, Hebei Province.

According to Yan Deli, in order to survive, she was forced to work as a sex worker (小姐) in a “barber shop” in Beijing. Facing dozens of stranger men every day, she did things that she did not want to do. “When I had some savings and wanted to quit, I already got AIDS.”

“Now my life has been ruined, I want fame out of this ruined life!”Yan Deli published this “declaration” in her blog. One day later she compiled a “sexual contact list”, total of 279 phone numbers. The day before yesterday she also posted number of naked photos. Before early September, she was diagnosed with AIDS, in order to prove the authenticity of the blog, Yan Deli also posted her family portrait.

Reporter learned that most of these numbers were located in Beijing, Baoding, Shijiazhuang, as well as Guangdong and other southern provinces. Yan Deli said that this was only a portion of the men she serviced, most of them probably were already infected.

“13770301xxx” is the only number in Nanjing. Last night reporter tried to contact the owner, but was told the number was already terminated.

Reporter randomly dialed couple numbers, “I had already left Beijing for quite some time now.” Mr. Chen from Shijiazhuang was surprised, “I was a worker installing heaters. I don’t remember leaving my cell phone number in Beijing.” “Not going to press charges for publishing my phone number” Pressed by the reporter, Mr. Chen said that he would respond only after he has better understanding of the situation.

There was another businessman in Beijing, Netizens “human fleshed” out his company office based on the phone number. Another man whose number was on the list from Baoding was very angry “Bull shit, I never contacted these people.”

After calling hundreds of these numbers, reporter found that 80 percent of them were already terminated or had no answer. The people who answered the calls were all unaware of this, some of these phone numbers were owned by women.

Since 10 pm last night, Yan’s blog has been blocked. Reporter saw nearly 400 sexy photos and sex videos on her QQ space.

“I do not regret it. These pious men are my playthings.” Yan Deli said she indeed is seeking revenge. “Cannot let them live so carefree, I am very proud of my choices.”

As for the intention of releasing the phone numbers, Yan Deli said frankly “I still give my AIDS to different men every day.”

“This is simply a internet revenge, we inadvertently became the victims.” A netizen who was on the list of contact cried out. Other netizens also indicated that after virus invades the human body, does not mean “you days are numbered now”, must goes through the window period and the asymptomatic period, until the syndromes appears, then can be called AIDS.

“AIDS girl” exposing hundreds of sexual contact numbers received death threats

“Everyday hundreds and thousands of people ask me about the truth, I don’t have time to respond one by one.” After knowing the identity of the reporter, Yan Deli voluntarily wanted to have a talk. “Every day I publicize myself on hundreds of websites and forums. This is a huge amount of work.”

The report of “AIDS girl exposing hundreds of sexual contacts”, triggered netizens heated discussion. Yesterday, reporter contacted Yan Deli, she said that she received many death threats.

Yan Deli revealed to reporter, she wanted to use this to find her fiancé who left her 3 month ago.

“I have already planned to leave Beijing.” Yan Deli told reporter that at the day when she exposed the phone numbers, many people called her and threatened to “put her away”.

According to Yan, the night before last night there were several strange men in her residence in Beijing blocked outside the whole night. Currently, Yan Deli has moved to her friend’s house temporarily.

“As I said in my blog, 279 is only a part.” As to the list she exposed, Yan Deli said they were mostly northerners, in the next few weeks she will expose more phone numbers.

Yan Deli said she planned to leave Beijing and maybe choose to live in Hebei province.

“In my blog I said I am very proud, and do not regret, in fact they were all lies.” After some conversation, Yan Deli once again talked about her personal life, “I am just lying to myself, suffering from AIDS, I already lost all hopes.”

Yan Deli said that her stepfather was a person only cared about his personal gains. Because he valued her beauty, he only wanted her to be a sex worker (小姐). Yan’s family was not starving, it’s only that stepfather would not give her a dime, couple of times she was sent to the “barber shop” in Beijing streets.

“I have to give him money every month”. Yan Deli’s work outside was always kept from her mother, “She was the only a few people who I want to say sorry to, I don’t want to hurt her.”

Yan Deli’s series of crazy actions on the internet, “I wanted revenge on all the people, among them, my stepfather is the one I hate the most.” Yan Deli said one of the phone numbers she released was her stepfathers but it was already terminated.

In order to prove what she said was true, Yan Deli sent a photo of her stepfather’s family. Reporter indentified the two women in the picture were Yan Deli had her birth mother.

Conversation lasted nearly an hour. Yan Deli sent a 5 minutes long video to the reporter. The video recorded the entire process of Yan and a young man being intimate in a shabby hotel. This man had a Beijing accent, Yan Deli said “he is my fiancé.”

“To be honest, I did everything so that hoping he would come to me.” When talking about the man in the video, Yan Deli said they were lovers, met in a KTV (karaoke) in Beijing. After knowing each other for a period of time, the two have already talked about getting married.

“My fiancé knew I was a sex worker, but he never minded, took care of me in every possible way in life. So I was constantly deciding to leave my profession.” Yan Deli recalled.

“But in order for me to keep giving him money, my stepfather obstructed our love in every possible way. 3 month ago, stepfather invited my fiancé to his home and beat him up.” Yan Deli said, since then her fiancé and she never saw each other again.

Now Yan Deli waits on QQ every night for her fiancé to appear. “I hope he will come to find me after he sees my things online. I am already a person who is half dead, before I die, I just I want to see him once.”








aids

Teach children A-B-C's and H-I-V ... scare them to death at 5

Let a 5 year old watch SPIDERWICK and they will end up terrified of goblins, rats that talk, and other dark creatures in the film.  Nightmares and daymares will follow.  Sensible parents will not allow their children to see such films at 5.

That does not count if you are the public school system ...




KINDERGARTNERS TO LEARN NEW LETTERS: H-I-V


BY KATHLEEN LUCADAMO DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER
Friday, March 17th 2006, 6:54AM



ALONG WITH THE ABC's, kindergartners will now learn about HIV.

Beginning Monday, kindergartners in public schools will be told that HIV is a "germ" and "not easy to get."

The kids also will learn that HIV could lead to AIDS, which is hard to "get well" from, according to the city's new HIV/AIDS curriculum.

The changes are required by state law - but some parents and teachers fear kindergartners are too young to talk about the deadly disease.

"I don't think it is appropriate. It's scary for kids in kindergarten," said a Manhattan mom whose daughter attends kindergarten at Public School 166 on the upper West Side.

"How do you talk about AIDS without talking about sex and drugs?" she asked.

Elementary school teachers in all grades have been instructed to teach beginning next week from the updated lessons, which include a project that tells kindergartners to play "doctors" and discuss HIV.

Teachers won't mention that HIV is transmitted through sexual contact until students reach the fourth grade. At that time, teachers will provide little specifics, telling kids, "When you are older you will learn more."

Many parents got letters this week from their children's schools alerting them to the changes. Parents can opt their children out of the mandatory HIV discussion by writing a letter to the principal.

School officials said they have been required to teach students about HIV and AIDS for the past decade, but the specific language in the new lessons was created in December.

"The curriculum is absolutely developmentally appropriate and contains positive messages about staying healthy," said Education Department spokeswoman Kelly Devers.

Still, some elementary school teachers said they don't think students younger than 8 will understand what they are being told about the fatal virus.

"You can tell a second-grader there are different illnesses, colds and viruses, and they'll understand. But they don't understand the difference between cancer and HIV," said a fourth-grade teacher in Queens.

A third-grade teacher in Manhattan plans to ignore the new curriculum.

"They might understand to some extent," the teacher said. "But in kindergarten and first grade, it's impossible."




 
 
 
 
 
 
 
sex

AIDS: a vaccine may be imminent

Excellent news, for the world - if it works out. Well, except for Osama bin Laden - i think we should keep him from getting it, or we could posion his injection (and no, I have no idea if he has aids, but given where he lives and who he keeps company ...)


Study finds potential way to make an AIDS vaccine
Thu Sep 3, 2009



(Reuters) - The discovery of immune system particles that attack the AIDS virus may finally open a way to make a vaccine that could protect people against the deadly and incurable infection, U.S. researchers said on Thursday.

They used new technology to troll through the blood of 1,800 people infected with the AIDS virus and identified two immune system compounds called antibodies that could neutralize the virus.

And they found a new part of the virus that the antibodies attack, offering a new way to design a vaccine, they reported in the journal Science.

"So now we may have a better chance of designing a vaccine that will elicit such broadly neutralizing antibodies, which we think are key to successful vaccine development," said Dennis Burton of The Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, California, who led the study.

"The findings themselves are an exciting advance toward the goal of an effective AIDS vaccine because now we've got a new, potentially better target on HIV to focus our efforts for vaccine design," added Wayne Koff of the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative, or IAVI, which sponsored the study.

Since the AIDS pandemic started in the early 1980s, more than 25 million people globally have died from the virus. The World Health Organization estimates that 33 million are currently infected.

There is no cure, although a cocktail of drugs can help keep the virus under control. Efforts to make a vaccine have failed almost completely.

MUTABLE VIRUS

Part of this is because the virus mutates so much that any one person is infected with millions of different versions, each one appearing different to the immune system.

In addition, the virus infects the very immune cells that are supposed to help protect the body.

And if even one virus gets past the immune defense, it appears to set up a lifelong infection. No drug has been able to eradicate it.IAVI director Dr. Seth Berkley said the findings will not lead directly to a vaccine, but show that there are new and better ways to design one.

He said 10 percent of the patients whose blood was screened had a strong antibody response to the virus. "We have people with even more potent serum out there. We will probably see more," he said in a telephone interview.

It may also be possible to use such antibodies as therapy themselves -- such as the gamma globulin used for hepatitis virus. But the eventual goal, Berkley said, is a vaccine that produces antibodies that could stop the virus from ever infecting a person in the first place.

"We haven't been able to do that because we haven't been able to find the right kind of response," Berkley said.

Most vaccines elicit an antibody response, priming the body to make antibodies that will recognize and attack an invader such as a bacteria or virus.

The two antibodies, called PG9 and PG16, are the first new HIV antibodies to have been identified in more than 10 years. They target a region of the spike the virus uses to infect cells, the researchers wrote.

A team at South San Francisco-based Monogram Biosciences Inc screened the blood for the ability to neutralize HIV. Theraclone Sciences used its technology to identify the antibodies involved.North Carolina-based Laboratory Corp of America Holdings (LH.N) acquired Monogram in July.







aids

Bush: Millions Saved in Africa

President’s Emergency AIDS Plan Saved 1.2 Million in Africa


By Marilyn Chase


April 6 (Bloomberg) -- The largest U.S. foreign aid program fighting the AIDS epidemic has cut the disease’s death toll by 1.2 million from 2004 to 2007 in a dozen hard-hit African countries, researchers said.


The President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, started by President George W. Bush in 2003, lowered the AIDS death rate on average by 10.5 percent a year in those countries, said study author Eran Bendavid of Stanford University in a study published online today in the Annals of Internal Medicine. The program’s benefits didn’t extend to preventing new infections or lowering overall prevalence of the AIDS virus.


The largest single U.S. foreign aid program for health in history, the PEPFAR program has invested most of its $18.8 billion to date in treatment for people already infected by the AIDS virus. The relief plan devoted a smaller share to prevention programs that often focused on sexual abstinence.


“Treatment has worked,” said Bendavid, a fellow in infectious diseases and health policy, in an interview. The challenge now is to make prevention “a serious component of the program in the next five years,” he added.


The epidemic has left 33 million people sickened by AIDS or infected with the virus, HIV or human immunodeficiency virus. Congress reauthorized the AIDS relief program in July 2008, boosting funding to $48 billion through 2013, broadening its disease targets to include tuberculosis and malaria and removing the focus on sexual abstinence. Plans are under way to expand recipients from the original list of 15 countries.











Bush

Bush and Africa

Unpopular at home, Bush basks in African praise

Sun Feb 17, 2008

By Barry Moody

DAR ES SALAAM (Reuters) - Unpopular at home and in much of the world during the last year of his presidency, George W. Bush is basking in rare adulation on his African tour.

Tanzanian President Jakaya Kikwete poured praise on Bush in Dar es Salaam on Sunday, the second day of his five-nation African tour, each compliment applauded warmly by members of the east African country's cabinet.

Although around 2,000 Muslim demonstrators protested against Bush on the eve of his visit, many thousands more cheering, waving people lined his road from the airport on Saturday.

Banners across the route, decorated with Bush's image against a backdrop of Tanzania's Mt. Kilimanjaro, read: "We cherish democracy. Karibu (welcome) to President and Mrs Bush."
Others read: "Thank you for helping fight malaria and HIV." Dancers at the airport and at Kikwete's state house to greet Bush on Sunday, wore skirts and shirts decorated with his face.

Back home, Bush is suffering some of the lowest approval ratings in his seven-year tenure and has been buffeted by criticism of his handling of wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the ailing economy.

Not surprisingly he is enjoying the different reception in Africa.

Beaming repeatedly during a press conference with Kikwete, he made a point of referring to his welcome on the streets, which he described as "very moving".

Bush opened his remarks by saying "Vipi Mambo!" before turning to U.S. journalists and adding: "For the uneducated, that's Swahili for 'Howdy Y'all'" --a typical Texas greeting.

Kikwete told Bush: "The outpouring of warmth and affection from the people of Tanzania that you have witnessed since your arrival is a genuine reflection of what we feel towards you and towards the American people."

A FRIEND OF AFRICA

In a reference to Bush's domestic problems, Kikwete added: "Different people may have different views about you and your administration and your legacy.

"But we in Tanzania, if we are to speak for ourselves and for Africa, we know for sure that you, Mr. President, and your administration have been good friends of our country and have been good friends of Africa."

Although many Africans, especially Muslims, share negative perceptions of Bush's foreign policy with other parts of the world, there is widespread recognition of his successful humanitarian and health initiatives on the continent.

Bush has spent more money on aid to Africa than his predecessor, Bill Clinton, and is popular for his personal programs to fight AIDS and malaria and to help hospitals and schools.

Bush has stressed new-style partnerships with Africa based on trade and investment and not purely on aid handouts.

His Millennium Challenge Corp. rewards countries that continue to satisfy criteria for democratic governance, anti-corruption and free-market economic policies.

Bush signed the largest such deal, for $698 million, with Kikwete on Sunday.

Because of the U.S. anti-malaria program, 5 percent of patients tested positive for the disease on the offshore islands of Zanzibar in 2007 compared to 40 percent three years earlier, the Tanzanian leader said.

Bush's legacy in Africa would be saving the lives of hundreds of thousands of mothers and children who would otherwise have died from malaria or AIDS and enabling millions of people to get an education, he said.

"I know you leave office in about 12 months' time. Rest assured that you will be remembered for many generations to come for the good things you've done for Tanzania and the good things you have done for Africa," Kikwete said.

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Amazing how facts get in the way of politics.









haters



liberals

HIV / AIDS - New meter of measurement

CDC understated number of new HIV infections in US


By MIKE STOBBE – 52 minutes ago

ATLANTA (AP) — The number of Americans infected by the AIDS virus each year is much higher than the government has been estimating, U.S. health officials reported, acknowledging that their numbers have understated the level of the epidemic.

The country had roughly 56,300 new HIV infections in 2006 — a dramatic increase from the 40,000 annual estimate used for the past dozen years. The new figure is due to a better blood test and new statistical methods, and not a worsening of the epidemic, officials said.

But it likely will refocus U.S. attention from the effect of AIDS overseas to what the disease is doing to this country, said public health researchers and officials.

"This is the biggest news for public health and HIV/AIDS that we've had in a while," said Julie Scofield, executive director of the National Alliance of State and Territorial AIDS Directors.

Experts in the field, advocates and a former surgeon general called for more aggressive testing and other prevention efforts, noting that spending on preventing HIV has been flat for seven years.

The revised estimate by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the methodology behind it were to be presented Sunday, the opening day of the international AIDS conference in Mexico City.

Since AIDS surfaced in 1981, health officials have struggled to estimate how many people are infected each year. It can take a decade or more for an infection to cause symptoms and illness.
One expert likened the new estimate to adding a good speedometer to a car. Scientists had a good general idea of where the epidemic was going; this provides a better understanding of how fast it's moving right now.

"This puts a key part of the dashboard in place," said the expert, David Holtgrave of Johns Hopkins University.

Judging by the new calculations, officials believe annual HIV infections have been hovering around 55,000 for several years.

"This is the most reliable estimate we've had since the beginning of the epidemic," said Dr. Julie Gerberding, the CDC's director. She said other countries may adopt the agency's methodology.

According to current estimates, around 1.1 million Americans are living with the AIDS virus. Officials plan to update that number with the new calculations but don't think it will change dramatically, a CDC spokeswoman said.

The new infection estimate is based on a blood test that for the first time can tell how recently an HIV infection occurred.

Past tests could detect only the presence of HIV, so determining which year an infection took place was guesswork — guesswork upon which the old 40,000 estimate was based.

The new estimate relies on blood tests from 22 states where health officials have been using a new HIV testing method that can distinguish infections that occurred within the past five months from those that were older.

The improved science will allow more real-time monitoring of HIV infections. Now, CDC officials say, the estimate will likely be updated every year.

Yearly estimates allow better recognition of trends in the U.S. epidemic. For example, the new report found that infections are falling among heterosexuals and injection drug users.

Some experts celebrated that finding, saying it's a tribute to prevention efforts, including nearly 200 syringe exchange programs now operating in 36 states despite a federal ban on funding for such projects.
But they also lamented the CDC's finding that infections continue to increase in gay and bisexual men, who accounted for more than half of HIV infections in 2006. Also, more than a third of those with HIV are younger than 30.

Some advocates say that suggests a need for more prevention efforts, particularly targeting younger gay and bisexual men.

For years, AIDS was considered a terrifying death sentence, and since 1981, more than half a million Americans have died. But medicines that became available in the 1990s turned it into a manageable chronic condition for many Americans, and attention shifted to Africa and other parts of the world.

Last week, President Bush signed a $48 billion global AIDS bill to continue a program that he called "the largest commitment by any nation to combat a single disease in human history."

But some advocates complain that CDC's annual spending on HIV prevention in the United States has been held to roughly $700 million since 2001, while costs have risen. (That's about 3 percent of what the federal government spends on AIDS; much of the rest is on medicines, health care and research.)

The new estimate is "evidence of a failure by government and society to do what it takes to control the epidemic," said Julie Davids, executive director of the Community HIV/AIDS Mobilization Project.

Whether more funding comes or not, the revised estimate clearly is a "wake-up call to scale things up," said Dr. Kevin Fenton, who oversees CDC's prevention efforts for HIV/AIDS.
Some said more attention needs to focus on prevention among blacks, who account for nearly half of annual HIV infections, according to the new CDC report.

A recent report by the Black AIDS Institute concluded that if black Americans were their own nation, they would rank 16th in the world in the number of people living with HIV.

"We have been inadequately funding this epidemic all along. We need to step it up," said former U.S. Surgeon General Dr. David Satcher, who is now an administrator at Atlanta's Morehouse School of Medicine.

The new estimate has been anticipated for a long time. The CDC began working on the new methods nearly seven years ago.

Late last year, advocates said they had heard the figure was about 55,000 and pressed the CDC to release it. Agency officials declined, saying they were submitting their research for medical journal review.

"These are extremely complicated statistical methods," and CDC officials wanted the work to be thoroughly reviewed by outside experts, Gerberding said. The CDC's findings are being published in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

Until 1992, the number of diagnosed AIDS cases was used to predict how many people were newly infected each year. That method produced an estimate of 40,000 to 80,000. More recently, the CDC focused on infections among men who have sex with men, who account for about half of new HIV diagnoses.









aids

AIDS - The Previous Hysteria

In 1982, the greatest fear was AIDS - it would spread to everyone from every corner, no one was safe, even those who didn't have sex would catch it. AIDS was coming.

That was the message and the fear was very real. It was drummed into us by the gay community, its supporters, the medical community, and nearly everyone else.

Now the story has changed a bit. Notice headlines and then notice what the article/statements say vis a vis the headline!



Threat of world Aids pandemic among heterosexuals is over, report admits
A 25-year health campaign was misplaced outside the continent of Africa. But the disease still kills more than all wars and conflicts

By Jeremy Laurance
Sunday, 8 June 2008
The Independent

A quarter of a century after the outbreak of Aids, the World Health Organisation (WHO) has accepted that the threat of a global heterosexual pandemic has disappeared.

In the first official admission that the universal prevention strategy promoted by the major Aids organisations may have been misdirected, Kevin de Cock, the head of the WHO's department of HIV/Aids said there will be no generalised epidemic of Aids in the heterosexual population outside Africa.

Dr De Cock, an epidemiologist who has spent much of his career leading the battle against the disease, said understanding of the threat posed by the virus had changed. Whereas once it was seen as a risk to populations everywhere, it was now recognised that, outside sub-Saharan Africa, it was confined to high-risk groups including men who have sex with men, injecting drug users, and sex workers and their clients.

Dr De Cock said: "It is very unlikely there will be a heterosexual epidemic in other countries. Ten years ago a lot of people were saying there would be a generalised epidemic in Asia – China was the big worry with its huge population. That doesn't look likely. But we have to be careful. As an epidemiologist it is better to describe what we can measure. There could be small outbreaks in some areas."


*****************

But that is the thing - he cannot measure what is not measureable - an aids pandemic. You can't measure that until it occurs, yet they tried. That is not measuring - that was fear mongering.

I recall a show, way back when I was very young, and I only remember it because, as I said, in the early 1980s, it was the greatest fear since man realized that he couldn't live forever. At a time when my mind went wandering to issues of sex, I remember my parents or someone watching a show with Geraldo Rivera and he gave a staggering number, I do not have it any more, but it was significant - if I stated he reported at least 20% would have AIDS, I would be understanding his number. This was very scary for a kid who had just started thinking about sex or knew that it was an eventuality. For the longest time I kept a small piece of paper with that number on it. Years later, it is gone and so is the fear - and now the science and medical communities have acknowledged that it was a gross misdirection of fear.







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