Philosophy Now Forum

At the time of writing, many scientists, clinicians, activists, and others were gathered in Vancouver, BC, Canada for the International AIDS Society meeting July 19–22, the community was buoyed by recent good news. At the end of June, Cuba announced that it had halted mother-to-child transmission of HIV, the first country to do so, and on July 14 UNAIDS revealed in their report How AIDS Changed Everything that the target of 15 million people receiving antiretroviral treatment for HIV had been achieved by March 2015, 9 months ahead of schedule.

To what what degree is it in the continual interests of BigPharma to continue to promote treatment to AIDS without directly addressing a cure for HIV?

It is a co-incidence that a state run Cuba seems one of the few countries that have had success against the transmission of HIV, whilst the Capitalistic West seems only keen on treating AIDS and in doing so ignoring the cause of the disease HIV, so they can keep making money out of it.

Should we really have to rely on places like tiny Cuba with an economy suffering under 50 years of sanctions to be first in the field against pathogenic transmission whilst the rest of the world seem happy to accept the existence of HIV as a foregone conclusion? Whilst money is made from AIDS.

Then what happens when HIV mutates and the AIDS treatments are all redundant? What about those doomed to be HIV+ yet never have the money for AIDS treatment.

This does seem to be another example of palliative care, and symptom treatment, being pursued, at the expense of curative remedies.

Does anyone even care?


http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanhi ... 3/fulltext

bobevenson wrote:The anti-capitalist is saying that drug companies are corrupt in making products that only treat diseases instead of curing them, and that the solution is Communism, a system of social organization in which all economic and social activity is controlled by a totalitarian state dominated by a single and self-perpetuating political party.

NO.

bobevenson wrote: drug companies are corrupt in making products that only treat diseases instead of curing them,

They'd pretty soon be out of business if they did otherwise. Only a moron kills the goose that's laying the golden egg.

Its rather like the privatised prisons which are so popular in the US. A quarter of all the prisoners in the world are in US jails and the entire US criminal justice system is specifically designed to keep them circulating through these prisons via the revolving door. The owners of these prisons would be utterly insane to try and rehabilitate their prisoners and therefore they don't. In fact they treat them with such barbarity that it's a virtual certainty that they'll be back. It's just good business, Bob, and much to be admired, no?

bobevenson wrote:Profit-making companies spend billions of dollars to prevent, cure and treat diseases. They would love to have patents on prevention and cures, you bunch of damn idiots!

Does not tie up with the facts.
Cuba is the world leader in HIV prevention. Explain!

Hobbes' Choice wrote:

bobevenson wrote:Profit-making companies spend billions of dollars to prevent, cure and treat diseases. They would love to have patents on prevention and cures, you bunch of damn idiots!

Does not tie up with the facts.
Cuba is the world leader in HIV prevention. Explain!

If you are seriously comparing Cuba to the rest of the world, it is pointless to comment further. Fidel Castro is God.

bobevenson wrote:

Hobbes' Choice wrote:

bobevenson wrote:Profit-making companies spend billions of dollars to prevent, cure and treat diseases. They would love to have patents on prevention and cures, you bunch of damn idiots!

Does not tie up with the facts.
Cuba is the world leader in HIV prevention. Explain!

If you are seriously comparing Cuba to the rest of the world, it is pointless to comment further. Fidel Castro is God.

Does not tie up with the facts.
Cuba is the world leader in HIV prevention, as it had halted mother-to-child transmission of HIV, the first country to do so.

Hobbes' Choice wrote:

bobevenson wrote:Fidel Castro is God.

Does not tie up with the facts.
Cuba isn't the world leader in HIV prevention.

I agree:
WHO health statistics for Cuba
Rank of Countries
125th of 167 Countries
HIV/AIDS adult prevalence rate

bobevenson wrote:

Hobbes' Choice wrote:

bobevenson wrote:Fidel Castro is God.

Does not tie up with the facts.
Cuba isn't the world leader in HIV prevention.

I agree:
WHO health statistics for Cuba
Rank of Countries
125th of 167 Countries
HIV/AIDS adult prevalence rate

Please cite.

I hate to be the one to allow the facts to fuck up a good story but in the eighties the world leader in HIV protection was Australia by a long way. It was the first country in the world to launch a vast public education campaign which was specifically directed at condom use and this effectively stopped the spread of the disease in its tracks. Most other countries quickly followed suit but some were very slow to do so, the US in particular. The self-righteous yanks have always had a prurient need to pontificate about what people should or shouldn't be doing in the privacy of their own bedrooms.

Obvious Leo wrote:I hate to be the one to allow the facts to fuck up a good story but in the eighties the world leader in HIV protection was Australia by a long way. It was the first country in the world to launch a vast public education campaign which was specifically directed at condom use and this effectively stopped the spread of the disease in its tracks. Most other countries quickly followed suit but some were very slow to do so, the US in particular. The self-righteous yanks have always had a prurient need to pontificate about what people should or shouldn't be doing in the privacy of their own bedrooms.

WHO might actually cite Cuba at the leve, Bob claims, but oddly the USA does not even seem to gather the data (too embarrassed?), Because where I looked it up, WHO has "no data" for the USA.
But the question of "prevalence" is not the point of the thread.

Hobbes' Choice wrote:But the question of "prevalence" is not the point of the thread.

I got that bit, Hobbes, and was merely setting the public record straight on a historical point. Once the big pharmaceutical companies became aware of the gold mine which had landed in their laps my country was just as guilty as others of toning down the prevention rhetoric and talking up the multi-drug treatment strategies. I actually have no knowledge of how this story played out in Cuba but I do know that Cuba is widely regarded as having one of the most sophisticated healthcare systems in the world. Its education system is also one of the best in the world but the same cannot be said of either its cars or roads.

Obvious Leo wrote:

Hobbes' Choice wrote:But the question of "prevalence" is not the point of the thread.

I got that bit, Hobbes, and was merely setting the public record straight on a historical point. Once the big pharmaceutical companies became aware of the gold mine which had landed in their laps my country was just as guilty as others of toning down the prevention rhetoric and talking up the multi-drug treatment strategies. I actually have no knowledge of how this story played out in Cuba but I do know that Cuba is widely regarded as having one of the most sophisticated healthcare systems in the world. Its education system is also one of the best in the world but the same cannot be said of either its cars or roads.

Yes, despite being a poor country most people have good access to health care. They have done remarkably well considering the sanctions that the US have put them under for the last half a century.
In the first decade of HIV they had the lid down pretty tight, but time passes. But even as the article shows, the main concern is not to allow the spread of HIV to make money on AIDS, but to minimise the transmission.

Are you trying to say there's suffering in the world, Hobbes? Shocking!

As most life-affirming optimists as yourself tell me, the good in life outweighs the bad. So, there's no real issue here. I mean, what's a little suffering amongst friends?