and to me it is clear that this whole HIV/AIDS phenomenon is more complex than what anyone previously thought, that there is much more than meets the eye, than what is printed on pamphlets and in brochures, and the emerging story i think will have many more surprises in store for all. many things about this whole thing, what we are told and information from other sources, still doesn't quite make sense for me, and i will continue to learn and research in my off time.
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I applaud you for going into the complexities around this; all of these complexities have however been extant since the early days of the discovery of the virus; the dialogues have been around, maybe it's just that you're discovering them for the first time, which is good.
I was a early member of the activist group ACT-UP in the UK, after going to New York and San Francisco and attending meetings there - this was 1987. I've also worked in rural Africa and seen the devastation it has reeked there. It was very hard watching your friends die when you were 17, though I wasn't hit as hard as San Fran. The papers there were one big obituary. It was horrible.
At that point in ACT-UP, the discussion and anger surrounding HIV/AIDS was that people had the right to experiment on their own bodies; that there were preventative medicines available that weren't being tested or released and people involved in ACT-UP were saying 'give them to us, we will test them'. This was in order to circumnavigate an eventual market dominance of AZT - an early prototype of what we get now - which was a Glaxo/Wellcome product. ACT-UP was a radical group protesting alot of issues, but that was one of them. It felt very futuristic protesting against drug companies.
During that time I saw a guy diagnosed with HIV/AIDS who literally died within three days of his diagnosis; I also knew a guy who had tested positive in the early eighties - who lived for 20 years without medication. Everything being discussed in this thread was argued and argued and argued about at these meetings. This really isn't anything new, perhaps the information is more available now.
In alot of ways what you saw on pamphlets etc was essentially watered down information that came from discussions like these, which were goin on daily in the 80s and still are going on daily - how to get over the message that there is something very dangerous out there that was probably going to kill you if you came into contact with it, and how to get over that message fast to as many people as possible. We are dealing with a virus that kills. How would you effectively get that message across? We are also dealing with something that may not kill you immediately (AIDS is not a death sentence), how would you get that message across?
I think the most important thing to remember is that we were dealing - and still are dealing - with a relatively new virus. It is something that attacks the immune system, which means you are then more likely and vulnerable to succumb to what are termed 'opportunistic infections' - these can be TB, cancers of various forms, etc. These are what will kill you in the end, because your body has been weakened.
Even then, certainly in the UK, it was obvious to everyone that a life free-er from stress, with a good diet, would sustain your ability to be able to fight off infections. We knew people then who had reverted their HIV status. No-one knows why this happens. Sometimes people revert their status and then revert back again. It's very complex. It would be dangerous to suggest to anyone that it is possible, willfully. It may be genetic, it may be that there are several forms of the virus, as it is mutating as we speak. We still don't know. There isn't a cure. There is a vaccine which is still yet to be tested effectively. There are drugs which people in the West can take which lessen their chances of opportunistic infection. There are preventative measures you can take in lifestyle which may lessen your chances of contraction. They may not.
All I know is that everyone dies sometime, some people just die quicker than others, and horribly.