New Hope for AIDS Patients

I thought I would post this story in honor of my training today in AIDS Confidentiality.

According to the San Francisco Chronicle, "French researchers reported Sunday that an AIDS vaccine designed to treat the disease, rather than prevent it, has scored an initial success by suppressing the virus for up to a year among a small group of patients who tried it."

The article goes on to say that this isn't exactly the dawn of a new day in curing AIDS. The treatment in question still has many issues, however, this does provide some hope that a cure could be on the horizon sooner than later.

Now maybe it's the skeptic in me but I'm glad forward progressing AIDS research is happening in country's other than America. Don't get me wrong, we're the best country in the world and all that but competition from other industrialized nations is one of the only things that keeps us relatively honest. More to the point, American scientific institutes and pharmaceutical agencies are more likely to produce a cure instead of costly maintenance drugs if...and only if...there's the legitimate threat of being beaten to the punch by another rival country...like France.

With Black and Latino women as the fastest rising group of new infections in this country, as well as skyrocketing new infections in former Soviet Republics, Russia, South East Asia, China and goodwill Africa, a cure for this dreaded disease can't come soon enough.