I did it. I started PrEP

[+ sniper]

PreP costs a significant fraction of the cost of treating an actual HIV infection, so it's actually not cost-effective for every MSM to take it. That was why there has been some resistance to covering it. Particularly when so many people who actually already have HIV are not managing it successfully. IF that is due to a lack of resources for treatment, it's an open question where the healthcare dollars should be targeted.

 

If someone has 300 partners a year, the case is very strong for them being on PreP. If they have, say, 5 per year, it's not that clear - purely statistically speaking - that it's a cost-effective proposition. Do you work on getting 10 million healthy people taking a powerful medication daily for the rest of their sexually active lives, or do you work on getting the 1 million HIV+ people down to undetectable levels of the virus?

[Rudynate]

dunno AZT first was used to treat hiv then the State of California banned the med because was worst than the virus

 

 

Where did you get your information?

[jimboivyo]

dunno AZT first was used to treat hiv then the State of California banned the med because was worst than the virus

 

 

uhh. no

[LookingAround]

dunno AZT first was used to treat hiv then the State of California banned the med because was worst than the virus

That's not true. Ridiculous.

[Rudynate]

It is true

That's not true. Ridiculous.

 

 

Agree. It is true, though, that after clinicians had gained some experience with AZT, they found they could reduce the dose considerably and still achieve the desired therapeutic effect while reducing the incidence of side effects like anemia. But nobody ever banned AZT. I don't think it is exaggerating to say that a lot of long-term survivors wouldn't be alive today if it weren't for AZT. AZT was the mainstay of anti-retroviral therapy until the early 90s. When I met my partner in 1992 he was on a triple combination that included AZT.

[+ sniper]

I think in the early years there was a lot of bad data on AZT largely because of uncertainty around the time people got infected, which led to an impression among some that it didn't help much if at all. I think on average it didn't extend life that much but there were some for whom it was much more effective.

[+ pitman]

I'll never understand why it's not mandatory for kids to get the shots. You could eliminate 73% of the anal and oral cancers.

It was stopped by fundies who believed it would give their kids "permission" to do the nasty.

[+ quoththeraven]

every week there is a new class lawsuit ad on tv because the meds with fucked up side effects.... approved by the FDA

 

That doesn't mean every lawsuit has merit, nor does it mean every FDA approval was wrong or that some drugs with significant side effects aren't nevertheless beneficial enough to be worth having on the market despite the side effects.

 

There's also a difference between a bad approval (once again, a slippery slope) and inadequate warnings or pharma attempts to get around restrictions. The FDA can only impose warnings when it knows they are needed; if a manufacturer games the process so the FDA never learns about the adverse results, that's on the manufacturer.

 

Class action suits perform a helpful function, but there are imperfections everywhere in the process, with the manufacturers having the most incentive to undermine it, not the FDA, unless the FDA is run as an arm of the manufacturers and not as an independent agency.

[LookingAround]

I think in the early years there was a lot of bad data on AZT largely because of uncertainty around the time people got infected, which led to an impression among some that it didn't help much if at all. I think on average it didn't extend life that much but there were some for whom it was much more effective.

I'm sorry but this isn't true either.

[LookingAround]

Read in med journals around 10 years ago when i used to live in SF, trying to find the document but no luck .. i am very skeptic about meds and always try to question the side effects, because organizations like AHF who are MAD shady ..

always go condom and do my test with private labs

 

When you find it let us know. Btw don't waste too much time as it isn't true.

[Rudynate]

keep doing drugs

 

Most long-term survivors are happy to do so.

[+ quoththeraven]

keep doing drugs

 

Haha, joke's on you. I'm one of those people for whom many drugs have side effects worse than or as bad as the symptoms. That has little to do with how well FDA approval processes work.