AIDS still out of controlDATE
OF PUBLICATION: JUNE 2002 (see earlier article below) Here
is a brief overview of the massive problem found in one disease that
sexual promiscuity has brought to mankind. The following excerpts are
from Search for a Cure, in the February 2002 edition of National
Geographic. Subheads are ours: THE NUMBER WHO HAVE IT In
high-risk groups, a predictable percentage from 1.5 to 6 a year,
depending on sexual or drug habits would be expected to become
infected with HIV over the course of a trial [with experimental
protection drugs] . . In
two decades AIDS has killed more than 20 million people worldwide. As
infection rates have soared, so has the annual death toll. The disease
claimed three million, most in their prime, in the year 2000 alone.
Children left as orphans and jobs left vacant are now crippling burdens
in the countries with the largest losses. A FRAIL VIRUS WITH POWERFUL EFFECTS HIV
seems full of contradictions. It can overwhelm the human immune system,
yet the virus itself is fragile. Cold viruses linger on hands, and
sometimes for days on doorknobs; but fresh air dries and destabilizes
HIV in hours or even minutes. Contact with rubbing alcohol or
chlorinated water quickly renders it inactive. Simple bar soap
neutralizes HIV by breaking the chemical bonds of its lipids, or fats .
. Doctors conclude that the same antiviral compounds in saliva and
stomach acids that protect us from a host of germs prove very effective
against HIV in low concentrations. Once
a person is infected with HIV, however, the virus attacks the very
immune cells, called T cells, meant to fight it. TYPICAL DEVELOPMENT During
a period of typically eight to ten years HIV lurks in the body, mutating
rapidly and thus avoiding recognition. It reproduces massively, and
waits. Finally, at the introduction of a disease that an unimpaired
immune system would normally control tuberculosis or pneumonia, for
example the immune system is overcome by HIV so that it cannot fight,
and the disease kills. RAPID SPREAD THROUGHOUT THE WORLD [A
chart showed the known number of people with AIDS throughout the world,
as of the year 2000. (Notice the astounding increase since 1990
figures, which are in italics!): North America: 920,000 (840,000)
people / Caribbean: 390,000 (130,000) / South America: 1,400,000
(700,000) / Western Europe: 540,000 (415,000) / Middle East
and North Africa: 400,000 (57,000) / Sub-Saharan Africa:
25,300,000 (7,000,000) / South and Southeast Asia: 5,800,000 (590,000)
/ Eastern Europe and Central Asia: 700,000 (5,000) / East Asia
and the Pacific: 640,000 (4,000) / Australia and New Zealand:
15,000 (less than 500). Nineteen
ninety-six was the year the thunder came, Igor Ivanov said . . Ivanov,
a doctor at the Kaliningrad Regional Infectional Hospital, was referring
to the year HIV cut loose in Russia amid the chaos of a collapsing
economy. Unemployment shot up, and with it alcoholism and crime. Drug
deals began to create a heroin market in Russia. Through shared needles,
HIV reached . . AIDS INHIBITORS If
1996 brought AIDS to Russia, the same year saw the advent in the West of
protease inhibitors, drugs that suppress the ability of HIV to
replicate. But
protease inhibitors, often combined with other HIV drugs such as AZT,
are far from prevention or cure. Their effects lift the death sentence
of an HIV infection only for a time. Furthermore, they cost as much as
$15,000 a year, with huge drug-company profit margins, making them
affordable in the U.S. and Europe but generally out of reach in
developing nations. EFFECTS OF INHIBITORS While drug therapy results are promising, the use of protease inhibitors and other antivirals, such as AZT, can produce grave side effects that include nausea, bone loss, diabetes, liver damage, raised cholesterol levels, and depression. And doctors do not yet understand why HIV drugs rearrange fat in the body. The face becomes sunken and the limbs wizened while fat piles up elsewhere. To see the bulging belly and the humped back of a patient who has taken antivirals for several years only underscores the need to find another way to inhibit HIV . . [There are] 36 million incubators walking around with this virus, spreading it to other people. National Geographic, February 2002. AIDS
UPDATE FALL 1998
AIDS
continues to be a terrible killer and it appears the medical
establishment and
the governments of the world cannot find a way to stop it. We
continually hear news about new attempts to combat AIDS. New
drugs have been produced, and better treatments have been developed. But,
in reality, medical science is getting nowhere in its attempts to stamp
out AIDS. At
best, all they have done is slow down a little how fast some people die
from the disease. The
world is not winning the war against AIDS. According to a new report from the United Nations AIDS Office (UNAIDS), on a global basis a staggering 30 million people are now living with HIV. Nearly 6 million contracted the virus last year alone. That equals 16,000 people a day! Of
course, these statistics are based on reported cases. Throughout
the world, aside from the few who are either wealthy (or are able to
drain government
funds) to pay for special drugs, most of those who have HIV will die
within a decade.
By that time, they will have infected still more people. Add
to this the fact that most of those in third world nations do not know
they are infected, and
so continue to pass the virus on.
Add
to this the fact that many of those in Western nations do not
careand continue
to share HIV with others anyway. But are not protease inhibitors a great new breakthrough? Not at all, for two reasons: (1)
They cost massive amounts of money per year, and one must keep taking
15-20 pills a day
in order to prolong life awhile. (2) Those whose lives are prolonged
still have AIDSand
it is now known that they continue to transmit HIV to others, even when
they themselves
may not for a time show symptoms! So all the protease inhibitors
accomplish, at
great expense (over $30,000 a year per person!), is to lengthen
peoples livesso
they have more time to infect more people. There
is no good news about AIDS; and, in the providence of God, there never
will be.
In
some nations, such as Zimbabwe and Botswana, one in four adults is
already HIV-positive. We
have already passed the point of no return on this rampant infection. More
than 30 million people are now infected with HIV. Here are some of the
breakdowns:
At
the present time, the highest percentage of the population having it are
nations in central and
southern Africa.
Nations
which have it moderately are the United States, Central America, South
America, Spain,
Portugal, India, and southern Asia. All other nations have it in lesser
ratios. Now
let us consider those nations where HIV is spreading the most rapidly:
The worst are Venezuela,
Peru, Nicaragua, Russia, Belarus, Ukraine, Turkey, India, southern Asia
nations, China,
southern Africa. Where HIV is
spreading at a somewhat slower pace (but still a lot): Columbia,
Chile, Argentina, Guyana, Guatemala, Costa Rica, Haiti, Dominican
Republic, Portugal,
France, Poland, Japan, central Africa.
In
all other nations, not listed above, HIV is spreading more slowly. Here
is the latest data on the primary methods by which HIV is being
transmitted in five nations: United
States: Homosexual sex 52% / IV drug use 33% / Heterosexual sex 13% /
Blood transfusion 2%. Brazil:
Homosexual 34% / Heterosexual 34% / IV drug use 25% / Blood transfusion
4% / Mother to child 4%. Russia:
Homosexual 64% / Heterosexual 32% / Blood transfusion 2% / Mother to
child 2% / IV drug use 1%. South
Africa: Heterosexual 79% / Mother to child 13% / Homosexual 7% / Blood
transfusion 1%. China:
IV drug use 59% / Blood transfusion 20% / Heterosexual 17% / Homosexual
5%. The
12th International AIDS Conference was held in Geneva this summer
(1998)and
confirmed the most terrible news.
The
scientific community had been pinning its hopes on the development of
vaccines and
drugs which could withstand the HIV virus. First,
they were told that the successful development of vaccines is years
away. A
key problem is that the mutation rate of certain factors in the virus
are so rapid that
scientists have not come across anything like it before. It
was also disclosed that, if a usable vaccine is ever found, it will
either be safe enough
that it will not protect many people or it will have be strong enough
that it will cause
infection in some! Governments
may have to decide whether flawed vaccines are better than no
vaccines, and
manufacturers will face ethical dilemmas about testing and marketing the
products.
Second,
the scientists at the AIDS Conference were told that there is an ominous
new, drug-resistant
HIV strain spreading among the population. This
strain of HIV virus is resistant to protease inhibitors. San Francisco
physicians reported
that they had seen infections with this highly resistant virus. Another
team, working in
Switzerland, said they had seen several more. No one knows how these
strains are
spreading. Viruses
impervious to AZT and other, old AIDS medicines have long
circulated. But
now people are beginning to catch viruses which are resistant to
protease inhibitors as
well.
As
you may know, protease inhibitors have been the pivotal ingredients in
combination drugs, given
to enable AIDS patients to live longer.
One
researcher complained that this development put AIDS research back into
the early 1980s, when
they had no therapy at all. As
so often happens with the antibiotics, the patients who developed
special resistance were those
who were not taking the medications regularly, but only sporadically.
They, in turn, transmitted
the fully resistant virus to yet others.
This
special virus is resistant to four different protease inhibitors as well
as the drugs AZT and
3TC. The
Swiss researchers reported that following the regimen means taking 15 to
20 pills a day
on a precise schedule, and missing even a few doses allows mutant
viruses resistant to
protease inhibitors to emerge. Here are more facts about the AIDS
epidemic: Physicians
in the United States are seeing more women with HIV than ever before. In
many AIDS clinics in San Francisco and New York City, women comprise 30%
to 50% of
all new patients! Approximately one-half were infected through
heterosexual contacts. Some
are highly educated; some are illiterate or nearly so. AIDS
is now in every state in America. It is spreading unchecked among young
people, regardless
of where they live or their economic status.
States
with the most AIDS patients and HIV-positive persons are California, New
York, Texas,
New Jersey, Florida, and Puerto Rico. Over half of teenagers who are tested for HIV never return to find out whether they have it. Either they do not care or are afraid to know. The polio virus was treated with vaccines because it had no sugar in its outer coat. The same was true for flu. But HIV has sugar molecules on its surface. For
this reason, both the body's defenses and the vaccines of the
scientists cannot locate
and eradicate it. The HIV virus is remarkably well-protected! Both the
sugar and
protein on its coat keeps changing. Even natural immune factors within
the body do
not bother with HIV; for, when they find the sugar coating, they pass
on assuming
it is safe and belongs in the body. Delegates
were told that health-care costs will soon exceed the ability of mankind
to deal
with them. More and more people are contracting the disease, and the
cost of
treating just one person till his death is over $150,000! Few governments or agencies really want to stop the spread of AIDS. If they did, they would trumpet the only effective way to do so. But this is not what the people want. They want to continue on in their sins. Retribution follows. Determining to remain in rebellion against the laws of Heaven, the world flouts obedience to the ten commandments. Great misery follows, as it always will. AIDS will soon become the greatest epidemic in the history of mankind, a powerful evidence that Christ's coming is near. |