Conant Foundation

Source:  Bay Area Reporter

Researcher Lawrence Corey speaks at the HIV vaccine conference in Atlanta.

Doctor Conant’s comments:  Even if the trial, beginning in 2013, is amazingly successful, we will not see an AIDS vaccine on the market before 2020. All HIV-positive patients should be on highly active antiretroviral therapy, should have an undetectable viral load, and should use condoms.

“AIDS vaccine researchers meeting in Atlanta last week expressed renewed optimism that they might finally be on the path to creating a product that can prevent the deadly HIV infection.

“A few years ago I wasn’t even sure that it was possible,” said Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. But last year the RV144 trial in Thailand, a trial that many researchers thought was doomed to fail and they tried to stop, showed a surprising 31 percent protection.

Fauci called that an important “proof of concept” of the principle that such a vaccine is possible. “But we still don’t know what the correlates of protection are,” he said. Correlates are those specific components of the innate and adaptive immune systems that provide that protection.”

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Source:  AIDSmap

Doctor Conant’s comments:  Everyone should be routinely tested for HIV and go on treatment as soon as possible to reduce the chance of transmission.

“In stable gay couples, where one partner is taking HIV treatment and the other is HIV-negative, the risk of HIV transmission is relatively low if condoms are not used following a recent undetectable viral load test result. However, using condoms on a few more occasions but without reference to viral load substantially increases the risk of HIV transmission.  These are the findings of a mathematical modelling study, drawing on detailed data on viral loads in Dutch gay men, published online ahead of print in Sexually Transmitted Infections.

The model suggests that during the entire period that a first-line treatment regimen is taken, the risk of HIV transmission would be 1% if condoms are used all the time, 3% if condoms are not used after an undetectable viral load test in the past six months, 17% if condoms are used 30% of the time, and 22% if condoms are never used.”

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Source:  Huffington Post

Doctor Conant’s comment:  It would appear that Christian missionaries forgot to mention Jesus’ admonition to “do unto others as you would have others do unto you .”

“Over 1,300 people gathered at Makerere University in Kampala, Uganda on Sunday to hear American Evangelical Lou Engle preach at a rally and prayer service against “homosexuality, witchcraft, and corruption.”

Engle’s involvement in organizing TheCall Uganda was mired in controversy from the very beginning given his long history of violent anti-gay and anti-abortion rhetoric and preaching. At past TheCall rallies, like the one in support of Proposition 8 in California, Engle called homosexuality a “spirit of lawlessness” and called for “martyrs” to become “God’s Avengers of Blood” to stop the “homosexual agenda” at all cost.

Engle’s newly founded chapter of TheCall Uganda comes at a time of unparalleled violence and animus towards LGBT people in the country, including the odious Anti-Homosexuality Bill, which calls for life imprisonment for gays and their supporters, as well as the death penalty in some cases.

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