HIV Declared "No Longer Fatal"
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25 July 2008 | 1 Comment
There’s a new study out that looks at the mortality rates of people who are poz. Curiously they declare that HIV is “no longer fatal”, but then they go on to say how it will shorten your life…
There’s obviously a lot of young bug chasers out there. If you’ve ever wondered how they’ll fair long term – the study answers that…
The study said that “despite” these positive results, an HIV-positive person starting Cart treatment at the age of 20 will on average live another 43 years, to 63. A 20-year-old HIV-negative person in a high-income country can expect to live to around 80, a difference of nearly 20 years.
I assume “Cart” is the same as HAART (the “drug cocktail”).
I’ve said for a while now that the only safe sex message that I can see working is “stay neg – enjoy your retirement”. That’s basically what’s going to happen with the guys who are getting pozzed young. Provided they do what a good doctor tells them to do, they’ll live a decent life, and then start having medical problems when they should be retiring. The part of their life they’re going to miss out on are “the golden years”.
Then again it was just a few years ago that they said the average life expectancy after becoming poz was around 23 years. Now it’s up to 43 years for these guys. Given how well medical science is doing it will probably go higher. And that’s the point… People from my generation and before are telling the young guys how crazy they’re being but they’ve forgotten how radically things have changed. It used to be that someone who was poz for 5 years was a “long term survivor”… It’s not like that anymore.
[Fine Print: These are averages – you may be on the low end of the average. If you don’t get tested and don’t know you’re poz you will be on the low end of the average for sure and will die way before you should. So GET TESTED and know your HIV status!]
Then you think about the guys like the bug chaser who’s in San Francisco this week who are in their 40s and turning poz. Their life expectancy after infection is shorter than 43 years, but still – if you got pozzed in your upper 40s and lasted say 30 years (I’m pulling that number out of my ass), then you’ve still lives a pretty full life. They’re making a choice that will undoubtedly lead to complications, but they’re not completely insane like some people would lead you to believe.
In related news… There’s a study out in The Lancet that says that the Swiss statement (that it’s safe for sero-discordant straight couples to fuck without rubbers) is wrong. They do a mathematical model that shows that there will be HIV infections as a result if the Swiss statement is followed.
Here’s the problem. The Swiss statement is based directly on empirical data. The new study is a mathematical model, and it would appear the empirical data the Swiss have access to does not fit with the Aussie’s mathematical model. If you know anything about statistics you know the closer you are to real-world observations, the better your results will be. The data source is always suspect. So it looks like the mathematical model may be in trouble, though it is getting published in one of the top peer-reviewed journals so you’d think it couldn’t be that bad. Then again, I think there are people who want to see the Swiss discredited.
The point is, the discussion about the Swiss statement is far from over.
The real story here is how dependent HIV-positive people are on governments, public policies toward health, and political squabbles that can mean life or death for folks in the HIV-positive community, gay or straight, “safer” or not. If we think about the long-term projections of government programs we need to consider the kinds of priorities an HIV-positive population will have in a federal budget constrained by ecological catastrophe, soaring military costs, and the major financial turmoil that will inevitably occur as the United States and the world transitions away from fossil fuels. What will happen to our communities if municipal, state, and federal dollars are no longer available for anti-retroviral treatments. I think it might be helpful to look comparatively at the public health situation in sub-Saharan Africa. Even with life-saving anti-retrovirals, the long-term prospects of living with HIV requires major dependence on government resources. If you trust the governments to follow through, then you have more faith than me. I can also tell you that as the child and grandchild of diabetics (the disease with which HIV is most commonly compared today), their relationship with governmental health agencies is fraught, complicated, and they often wait too long to see doctors and receive proper treatments. Whatever the prospect for the future of HIV-positive people, the queer community needs to take more initiative in preventing the spread of HIV (whether through sero-sorting or prophylactics) and in treating people who suffer from the effects of HIV/AIDS. At the end of the day, that hysterical queen Larry Kramer is right about a few things. When the chips are down, PWA will be the first weight to be thrown from the sinking, stinking ship that is the United States government.