In Brief... World News Review
Rapid-Onset AIDS
Public health officials in New York City recently encountered what appears to be a rapid-onset AIDS strain. Whereas the typical cycle has been about a decade between infection with the virus and the onset of full-blown AIDS, this patient went from infection to presenting the symptoms of the full-blown disease in a matter of a few months. As well, the strain is resistant so far to most of the medications that have been helpful in some measure to AIDS patients.
The New York City patient is potentially a one-man trigger of a major outbreak, for he claims to have had unprotected sex with 100 men in the past few months. The possibilities for an immediate epidemic are staggering, if this truly is a new rapid-onset strain.
However, many doctors and scientists working with AIDS, including researcher Richard Gallo (who was one of the first to identify HIV), say that the NYC Health Department went public much too quickly with their suspicions. Not enough is known about the patient, the critics claim, to say with certainty that he indeed has a rapid-onset strain of HIV-AIDS. And, the figure of a decade between HIV infection and full-blown AIDS is only an average. There have always been a few people on the high end of the curve, whose cycle is rapid in comparison to the average.
Regardless of what else happens, there is a sweeping cry for routine HIV testing, something some health experts have been recommending already. Two large federally funded studies concluded recently that the cost of routine testing of virtually every adult for HIV/AIDS would be offset by a reduction in new infections. Also, it would mean that people infected with HIV could be started on a treatment program early, when drugs work best.
Adding this testing to basic wellness checkups would be costly to an already struggling health-care industry. Treatment is also expensive—running about $15,000 a year.
As it is, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) requires routine HIV screening in areas where the rate of infection is greater than 1 percent of the population. The UN now recommends routine HIV/AIDS testing in the developing world, where 90 percent of the people with AIDS do not know that they have it.
Russian AIDS Much More Serious Than Previously Thought
In a related story, U.S. and Russian experts announced in January that AIDS infections in Russia are at 1 million, which is three times the number officially reported. In addition, 8 in 10 of those infected are under 30 years of age. Murray Feshbach of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, which conducted the research, offered a grave assessment of the impact of AIDS on Russia, should the country fail to act immediately:
"The consequences will be devastating to the society, family formation, to the military, labor productivity" within two to three years (Maria Danilova, "Study: AIDS Problem Growing in Russia," Associated Press, Jan. 12, 2005).
The seriousness of the situation isn't getting through to the government, however, for the study estimates that HIV/AIDS programs are underfunded by nearly 4,000 percent!
Part of the recommended programs for the United States, Russia and the developing world is to warn people of the consequences of what is called in politically correct language "risky behavior."
Put more plainly, several types of sin spread HIV/AIDS, including homosexual behavior, sex with prostitutes, sex with multiple partners and illegal drug use (involving "dirty needles"). Honoring our Creator by keeping the rules of behavior He gave us in the form of the Ten Commandments would turn this unbelievably costly burden around. The consequences of failing to do so are impossible to overstate. The cost is more than humanity can bear.
Avian Influenza—A Worldwide Plague?
The February issue of The New Yorker magazine ran an article on the potential of avian influenza, the so-called "bird flu" of Asia. It's a killer, leaving hundreds of millions of dead animals in its wake across a dozen Asian countries.
Last December, the outgoing secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS), Tommy Thompson, called the avian flu one of the greatest dangers facing the United States.
The director of the CDC's Thailand office tells of watching thousands of seemingly healthy birds suddenly begin to shake, and then, simply fall over dead. It is shocking to see.
Even more disturbing is the fact that the avian flu has jumped species to human beings and that it is just as deadly for the people who become infected. So far, the death toll numbers only in the dozens in Vietnam, Thailand and other Asian countries. But the potential is much, much more serious.
The World Health Organization (WHO) puts the current ratio of fatalities to cases at 72.5 percent. It also issued a report early this year on "influenza pandemic preparedness and response" in bleak terms: "The present situation may resemble that leading to the 1918 pandemic."
The WHO's conservative estimate of the deaths from a worldwide epidemic is 7 million. "Michael Osterholm, the director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota, calculates that a pandemic on the scale of the devastating global influenza epidemic of 1918 would kill at least a hundred and eighty million people today" ("Avian Flu, on the Verge of an Epidemic," The New Yorker, cited on http://drudgereport.com, Feb. 20, 2005, emphasis added). Over 40 million people died in the 1918 flu pandemic.
The same article quotes Robert Webster, a virologist who has been studying this strain of influenza for decades as calling it "... the worst flu virus I have ever seen or worked with or read about."
Health officials are working hard to try to contain the flu in Asia. Last September the HHS announced a contract to manufacture and store 2 million vaccinations for the United States.
Webster advises that we have to prepare for this flu in the same way that we would prepare for going to war, calling the disease "a natural bioterrorist."
—Contributor: Cecil Maranville
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