Is “HIV” almost over?
They’re really putting all their eggs into the lenacapavir basket—how will this end?
Following last week’s FDA approval of the long acting “HIV” preventative, lenacapavir—that was never developed as a preventative but rather as an end-of-the-line last ditch drug regimen for patients that have “failed” multiple drug regimes—has been ALL OVER the news as the latest great hope in the decades long attempt to find an “HIV” drug that both works and doesn’t kill or maim the patient. Regardless, based upon two studies that showed promising results (when have we seen this before?), this drug has been fast-tracked as a twice yearly injectable for PrEP.
Here is a sampling of such articles—they’re everywhere—which I won’t bother to quote too much from because there is little new, although there are a few that made me snicker, and I will share with you now.
Always ‘one atom away’: The long, rocky journey to an HIV prevention breakthrough
Gilead had developed several other successful HIV drugs when lenacapavir’s development began. In 2001 it introduced the drug tenofovir, which cripples an HIV enzyme that “reverse transcribes” viral RNA into DNA, a vital step in infection. (The DNA then splices itself into the chromosomes of its human hosts, where it remains for life.) In 2003, Gilead also won approval for emtricitabine, which targets the same enzyme. Truvada, a combination of both drugs, became an international blockbuster.
LOL at their statement about Truvada being an “international blockbuster.” They conveniently left out the fact that the company may need to shell out $10 billion to compensate victims of said Truvada, who experienced osteoporosis, kidney failure, and even death.
Accessibility Important After FDA Approves Lenacapavir for PrEP: Q&A With Colleen Kelley, MD, MPH
This one is just a long interview with a doctor who wants desperately to get drugs into bodies.
Will long-lasting HIV preventive be a game changer—or a missed opportunity?
This is interesting:
The goal has to be reaching people who have never used PrEP before, Grinsztejn says. “The fear I have is that this becomes mostly available for those who are already doing well on oral PrEP,” she says. Changing that will take innovative thinking and a lot of studies on how best to implement a half-a-year shot, says Salim Abdool Karim, who runs the Centre for the AIDS Programme of Research in South Africa. “This is a completely new approach that has to be developed,” he says. “If we simply take lenacapavir and put it into the clinics and put it into the pharmacies, it will sit on the shelves.”
And this is exactly what is likely to happen—they’re not going to get any “new” PrEP customers, because the people that already opt into PrEP are going to want the convenience. Those that are not taking PrEP are not all doing it because of inconvenience—they’re doing it because they don’t want to take toxic drugs forever. I doubt lenacapavir is going to expand the market significantly.
And now we find the following, which I will be reporting on in detail in the next few days. Are we already experiencing lenacapavir resistance, or are we simply preparing for it because it happens with all these drugs? Remember it’s been being used as an ARV as Sunlenca.
They’re talking about “scaling up” an ARV to turn it into PrEP. Interestingly, lenacapavir has been around only a few years and is not frequently prescribed, so they haven’t observed much resistance, but the whole article is written like they’re fully expecting resistance to develop.
This lenacapavir story is unfolding and I will continue to discuss it, but I’m curious your opinion. Is this going to end the “HIV” epidemic? What toxicities will we see? Are a lot of patients going to say “thanks, but no thanks?” Or—most chillingly—will they try to spin their early clinical trial successes (drugs that are being developed as we know always perform better than in the wild) as a way to heavily coerce or even mandate these injections in some way?
I think you mentioned this before, that Lenacapavir is essentially the 'HIV' vaccine. Everyone has been trained to get boosters anyway, so why not just a 6 month injection for this? Of course we all know the way to prevent 'HIV' is to stay away from doctors and not get tested, lol. Problem solved. But yeah, how is this drug going to affect people long term, because all these ARVs are interfering with normal biological processes, even if subtly and not immediately noticeably.
But ultimately I think this serves to further erode the 'HIV is death' mantra. 'HIV' is sort of falling off the map of guys' radars honestly. The subtle thing here is that this Lenacapavir has been released in a time when 'HIV' is already not killing people, and it'll be hailed as a breakthrough.
The same kind of breakthrough would happen if they simply stopped testing people...