I’ve long believed that those who are co infected with the two uninvited, but seriously deadly cousins, HIV and HCV, are underserved. Go to just about any clinical trial of new HCV fighting compounds and you’ll see that if you’re also infected with HIV, you’re not eligible. Take it another step, co infections will be the last treated under any new protocol, and no one knows how dangerous such protocols might be for the co infected. It’s not tough to leap to a conclusion. Lately, though, my thinking has undergone some adjustment.
Let’s run the numbers around quickly. I promise not to bore you with a lot of statistics. HIV/AIDS infections aviate somewhere over the rainbow of ‘more than a million’ in the United States. It’s at about 1.2 to 1.4 million, depending on what arc of the rainbow you’re looking at. Very far beneath it is the approximate 25 to 30% who are co infected. That means some 300,000 or so people. Believe it or not, that really is a very modest number.
We’re not done here. Let’s look at HCV/hepatitis C where U.S. infections hover around the five million level. No, no more numbers, just the fact that the incidences of new infections leveled off a while back, and are now actually in decline. What’s that about? Certainly it’s not due to prevention and education. Tell me where there is an out public push to educate anyone anywhere except maybe some dusty corners, or more likely, a few AIDS Service Organizations (ASO), and more spottily, the Veteran’s Administration. Yeah, sure, the education amongst medical and dental providers has seen some effort. Better care is taken today to ensure invasive equipment is properly sterilized, and that it is strict enough to knock off any HCV germy things that could be present.
Don’t get me started about prevention. It hasn’t worked anywhere near an acceptable level in HIV. Why would we expect it to work in HCV? Remember, these two uninvited guests are first cousins. Prevention efforts for both enjoy similar roadblocks in the human spirit. We like to get high and we like to get it on. They are the two main drags upon which HIV and HCV traverse. Getting high and getting it on have been with us almost all the way, there isn’t a reason to feel they’ll die in the human heart any time soon. In fact, they may be a very vital aspect of our humanity. Ones that we will one day meet in a safe and meaningful way. But not today.
So, what is it? Why is HCV infections declining and what does it mean for co infection? I don’t think anyone really knows what’s driving the decline, but it could be that the virus peaked, just as HIV will one day peak, and is on its way to becoming non lethal to humans. We have a long history of physically assimilating viruses. It might even explain the exceptional difference in our human intellect … that our brains supersized due to a virus. Someday, hopefully sooner than later, HCV will no longer be a significant threat to us. It would then mean the same for co infection.
Other viruses will emerge in the future looking to knock off a few millions of us. When that occurs, the viral assimilation theory could be useful. Keep in mind that no virus has ever been successfully cured by man, not one. Perhaps the primary aim shouldn’t be to ‘cure’ a virus, but rather to encourage and speed up its assimilation. This is what the current cure for hepatitis C is. It doesn’t eradicate the virus antibodies from the body, but reduces the viral load, mutates, and teaches the body to live and thrive with it. It probably doesn’t do those of us living with one or two of the cousins much good right now, but one of our biological directives in living is to add to the knowledge that helps the species to keep on living. In effect, we are the experiment. We always have been, and it's likely that aspect of medicine will never go away.
Our race, the human race, has a date with Destiny. We all sense that. And Destiny? He’s all dressed up and ready to go while we’re still pulling on our lacy little underthings.
 |
| Larry & LuLu |
No comments:
Post a Comment