<br>
<div class="gmail_quote">From: <b class="gmail_sendername">Vern Weitzel</b> <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:vern.weitzel@gmail.com">vern.weitzel@gmail.com</a>></span><br>crossposted from: "[health-vn discussion group]" <a href="mailto:health-vn@anu.edu.au">health-vn@anu.edu.au</a><br>
<br><a href="http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/canadian-aids-researchers-crazy-crusade-gains-support/article1225229/" target="_blank">http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/canadian-aids-researchers-crazy-crusade-gains-support/article1225229/</a><br>
<br>Canadian AIDS researcher's ‘crazy' crusade gains support<br><br>The controversial notion of treatment as prevention has suddenly become one of<br>the hottest issues in the science of the disease<br>Share with friend<br>
<br><br>Geoffrey York<br><br>Cape Town, South Africa — From Tuesday's Globe and Mail<br>Last updated on Tuesday, Jul. 21, 2009 08:33AM EDT<br>A lot of people thought Julio Montaner was a little crazy when he first<br>
suggested that the best way to eliminate the AIDS epidemic would be a massive<br>scheme to give AIDS medicine to every infected person.<br><br>What about the huge financial cost? What about the moral issues, the<br>human-rights issues, the overwhelming number of tests and drugs that would be<br>
required? Wouldn't it undermine years of lecturing on monogamy and abstinence?<br>Wouldn't it promote “condom-free sex,” as some critics said?<br><br>Faced with a host of objections, the Canadian scientist was a lone voice in the<br>
wilderness for the past three years, unable to win support from the global AIDS<br>establishment.<br><br>But this year, Dr. Montaner's solitary crusade – the controversial notion of<br>“treatment as prevention” – has suddenly become one of the hottest issues in<br>
AIDS science.<br><br>Yesterday, at the International AIDS Society conference in Cape Town, his<br>once-ridiculed idea was endorsed by experts from around the world.<br><br>Among the latest support for his proposal is a model by World Health<br>
Organization researchers that predicts a 95-per-cent reduction in new HIV cases<br>within 10 years if his idea is adopted.<br><br>The proposed new strategy – universal voluntary testing for HIV, combined with<br>immediate anti-retroviral drug treatment for those who have the virus, even in<br>
its earliest stages – could save more than seven million lives by 2050, the<br>model says.<br><br>The WHO, which had resisted the treatment-as-prevention concept for years, is<br>now organizing a special conference this November to discuss the “feasibility<br>
and acceptability” of the concept.<br><br></div>