News roundup—South African vaccine trials “halted”, update on Kennedy v. Braidwood & more

I have three short articles for you today; the upshot is that the new administration is bound and determined to “halt” any “progress” we’ve made in HIV AIDS. Never mind that progress prior to the current administration consisted of throwing “anti-HIV” drugs at anyone that wants them, regardless of “HIV” status, and even some that don’t want them—some pregnant women, for example, are understandably leery of taking toxic medications that may in fact be teratogenic.

Let’s dive in, shall we?

NIH halts more collaborations with South Africa on HIV/AIDS trials

The U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH) has now restricted South Africa from participating in clinical trial networks that study new medicines to prevent and treat HIV—compounding the damage to the country’s HIV efforts from President Donald Trump’s administration’s earlier foreign research funding cuts and its dismantling of the U.S. Agency for International Development.

Does anyone else find it fascinating that in 1996, with the advent of “hit hard, hit early” antiretroviral therapy starring the miracle protease inhibitors, “HIV” positivity was deemed even then to no longer be a death sentence but rather a “chronic manageable condition,” yet the number and types of “anti-HIV” treatment—many of which have been developed in silico (meaning they’re computer models)—has exploded? I’m sure that the mainstream would argue that it’s because the drugs keep getting better and better; however, the fact is that the backbone of “anti HIV” treatment remains a NRTI (nucleoside reverse transcriptase inhibitor), which has been the case since the approval of AZT.

NIH funds four international networks that study HIV/AIDS prevention and treatment strategies. These networks, run by U.S. academic institutions, often test medicines in efficacy trials that their developers use to seek regulatory approval. South Africa, which has more people living with HIV than any country and a strong research infrastructure, has enrolled a disproportionate number of participants in the trials run by the networks, and its laboratories have played leading roles in analyzing samples.

What is with using South Africans as guinea pigs? Or people with African heritage in general—they’re all singled out for “retention in care.” The rest of this piece says about what you’d expect it to, so let’s move on.

This Supreme Court Decision Could Make It Harder For Millions To Access Preventive Health Care

“Preventive health care” sounds so innocent, doesn’t it? It’s now normal for women to be irradiated annually via mammography, for everyone over 45 (even those with no family history) to be screened with invasive colonoscopy, for potentially 1.2 million Americans to be put on PrEP for a virus they don’t have and that may not even exist. The whole premise behind “retention in care” depends upon assuming that humans don’t know their own bodies at all. It’s super creepy when you imagine the logical conclusion of being so medicalized. (And we haven’t even started the article yet!)

The Supreme Court on Monday will hear arguments in Kennedy v. Braidwood, the first significant challenge to the Affordable Care Act under the current Trump administration and a case that could strip away insurance coverage for preventive services like cancer screenings, HIV prevention and diabetes medication for millions of Americans.

The case has its origins in a 2020 legal challenge by Braidwood Management, Inc., a Texas-based Christian company that sued the federal government and claimed providing coverage for PrEP — an HIV preventive medication also known as pre-exposure prophylaxis — violated its rights under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act.

We’ve discussed Braidwood vs. Becerra before; it seems that RFKJ has inherited that particular issue.

The central question before the Supreme Court now is not about religious beliefs. Instead, the justices have been asked to weigh in on whether an independent task force has the authority to recommend preventive services like PrEP be covered by health insurers under the U.S. Constitution.

An “independent task force?” I wonder how truly independent it is.

The United States Preventive Services Task Force is an independent group of volunteer medical experts who work outside of the federal government, although they are appointed by the secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services and their work is supported by an agency within HHS.

Okay, this could actually be very interesting. If the secretary of HHS—now RFKJ, as we all know—is the person with the authority to appoint the task force, will he be brave enough to appoint anyone that doesn’t follow the HIV AIDS story and the prescription of PrEP to said task force? Time will tell.

This article is long, and much of it is not related to “HIV” or PrEP. One final quote that’s relevant:

Almost two-thirds of the 1.2 million people who could benefit from PrEP are not taking it, even though the medication is widely available, CDC data shows. Black and Latino communities, gay and bisexual men, trans women, and people living in the South and rural areas experience some of the highest rates of new HIV infections, while facing significant barriers in accessing heath care, including PrEP, due to financial barriers, lack of insurance or discrimination in medical settings.

“PrEP was explicitly named from the Braidwood group because [they believe] it promotes homosexuality and unmarried sex … but the goal was always to undermine the Affordable Care Act,” Mandisa Moore-O’Neal, the executive director of the Center for HIV Law and Policy, told HuffPost. “Braidwood really drives home how certain groups — trans folks, queer folks, people vulnerable to HIV — are the lowest hanging fruit and are often used as a placeholder for something that’s going to impact a much larger group.”

Referring to marginalized communities as “low hanging fruit” seems a bit insensitive, but they are correct—just not in the way they’re thinking. Attempting to rein in these risk groups and throw toxic drugs into their systems is seen by the mainstream as helpful to said communities; never mind the massive toxicities of these drugs that are meant to be taken for a lifetime. Perhaps the reason PrEP uptake is so low is because members of said “risk groups” are smart enough to say no to ingesting poison.

Lastly, we have the following:

Aids devastation highlights America’s deterioration under Trump

I have to admit I laughed out loud at that title. Trump has only been in office three months; I’m not sure how in that short amount of time AIDS became “devastating.” I thought it was a “chronic, manageable condition.” Also, the last president to be blamed for AIDS was Reagan. Do with that information what you will.

More than four decades on from the identification of the human immunodeficiency viruses that cause Aids, the illness still has no cure. However, it is now an eminently treatable and preventable condition, based on advances in medicine and through public health and education programmes. Indeed, so optimistic was the United Nations aids agency (UNAIDS) last year that it set a realistic goal to end the Aids pandemic by 2030, implying a 90 per cent reduction in new infections and deaths.

The whole “end the ‘HIV’ epidemic by 2030” agenda seems to have been given up on, probably because of those pesky Americans “at risk” that don’t want to take daily chemotherapy for a condition they don’t even show signs of having. Also, note the language in all these mainstream articles. It’s always a “chronic, manageable condition” being treated with “lifesaving drugs.” If a drug is truly lifesaving, why does that adjective need to be used every time? (In case we forget the propaganda?)

This entire article is basically a defense of the now-defunct USAID, so I won’t go into detail on that. There’s not a whole lot about AIDS, despite the headline, but they do say the following:

There was never much sense to what they were doing, as the most notorious of their mistakes proved. Mr Musk bragged that he had prevented $50m being spent on sending condoms to Gaza, an improbably large sum in any case. But it was soon discovered that there were no condoms going anywhere, and the funding was actually for prevention, care, support and treatment interventions for HIV and TB facilities in Gaza Province, Mozambique. All Mr Musk could say, when corrected, was that he couldn’t see why the American taxpayer was paying for such things anyway, “You know, why are we doing that?” Which is why it came as no surprise when, without Congressional authority, he and the president abolished the agency.

Okay, the Gaza condoms thing is kind of funny. But this quote, and these articles in general, reflect what I can only call a different set of axioms being held by our public health overlords. They begin by assuming that government intervention is not only helpful but necessary, up to and including our intervention in other countries. I understand that it seems in some ways that the current administration is acting like a giant wrecking ball—and in some ways it is—but there are certain institutions and ideas that are long overdue for demolition, and the HIV AIDS story is at the top of that list.

That’s all the news I have for this Easter Sunday. I’ll be back next week with more ridiculousness, I’m sure. Have a wonderful holiday if you celebrate.