Sunday, June 05, 2011

Science is Cool

Being 44 means I was "out", more or less, in the late 80s. AIDS killed a number of people I knew.. including some close friends. The paranoia was incredible. A lot of people died. Then, HIV was transformed into something a person could just live with, albeit with a lot of expensive medications. For decades, it seemed like the only interest in the disease was selling meds for profit. There was never a "cure" - even as claims were made and then later debunked.

Somebody actually has been cured of the HIV infection. It seems everyone agrees, it's a complete curing of the disease.. a ridding the body of the infection.

Amazing stuff.

Granted it's not particularly practical, but I suppose if some were wealthy and had the condition, say.. a Magic Johnson type.. it's possible to be cured.

I would imagine more practical solutions will be available before long, but can you imagine what would happen if people were no longer terrified of contracting HIV?

Sounds like a party.. lol

4 comments:

Kor said...

Lol, even if HIV was no longer an issue... still plenty of stuff out there to worry about.

Tom said...

Ya.. but for everything else, you get a bit embarrassed.. get a shot.. done.

I've never really written much about the AIDS days. Younger guys really have no idea what that was like - scary as fuck.

I was in a relationship with the first guy I slept with when I was 21 until 29. That's probably why I'm alive (and healthy) today.

On of my friends looked exactly like Barry Gibb. It helped that he tried to look like Barry Gibb, but he really was the spitting image. He hardly spoke a word to anyone in a bar, he was so shy.

Another one taught me how to play billiards at a very high level.

I think about those guys every once in a while. It really was like the black plague from the middle ages was stalking us.

Kor said...

Ain't no shot for Hepatitis C, that shit will mess you up.

It's actually pretty fortunate these days that medical science has gotten to the point where a lot of these virus' can at least be well managed if not curable.

Cancer on the other hand is still killing people by the millions, maybe a few of the more wealthy nations should throw a few hundred billion dollars at trying to sort that out rather than blowing it on shooting people.

Tom said...

The risk of getting hep C via sex is pretty low - not zero, but low. Seems the risk is about the same as contracting it while getting a tat, as some reuse needles and such.

It requires an exchange of blood - not just semen. That's rare in sex, but not impossible.

Point is taken though. Unprotected sex has it's risks in any case.