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Mike Luckovich / Truthdig Mar 23, 2009 Dig deeper

Pope: Condoms Don’t Help in Fight Against AIDS

Staff / Truthdig Mar 18, 2009 On his way to his first visit to Africa, Pope Benedict XVI told attendant members of the press that he believes encouraging condom use not only doesn't help in the fight against AIDS, but actually worsens the situation. Dig deeper ( 1 Min. Read )

Africa’s Good Friend

Gbemisola Olujobi / Truthdig Feb 28, 2009 Linda, a 24-year-old sex worker in Kigali, Rwanda, didn’t want to be tested for HIV because she feared she would find she would soon die. Her fear was not unfounded. Being aware of one’s HIV-positive status was a first step toward dying of AIDS in Rwanda, as in most parts of Africa. Anti-retroviral drugs were expensive and hard to come by. But that was before President Bush's PEPFAR. Dig deeper ( 11 Min. Read )

Colorado Lawmaker Shocks With Tirade on Babies and AIDS

Staff / Truthdig Feb 26, 2009 An effort to screen pregnant women for HIV in order to reduce the spread of the virus among babies didn't get Colorado state Sen Dave Schultheis' vote In the Republican's own controversial words, that's because "[t]his stems from sexual promiscuity for the most part, and I just can't go there We do things continually to remove the consequences of poor behavior, unacceptable behavior, quite frankly". Dig deeper ( 1 Min. Read )

Obama Will Rip Away the ‘Global Gag’

Staff / Truthdig Jan 23, 2009 In the next move of a partisan ping-pong game over women's reproductive health, Obama is slated to reverse the despicable "global gag rule" that refuses U.S. aid to foreign health clinics that even mention the word that begins with an A. And sounds like "shma-shmortion." It's abortion. Dig deeper ( 1 Min. Read )

New Hope in the Fight Against AIDS

Staff / Truthdig Dec 1, 2008 World AIDS Day turns 20 today, and while we still don't have a vaccine, researchers continue to make lifesaving breakthroughs. A team at the World Health Organization in Geneva recently came up with a "thought experiment" that, according to a mathematical model, could end the AIDS epidemic in Africa in only a decade. Dig deeper ( 1 Min. Read )

AIDS Theory Runs Amok

Staff / Truthdig Nov 26, 2008 In a glaring example of the importance of theory in practice, U.S. researchers have accused former South African President Thabo Mbeki of being responsible for more than 300,000 AIDS-related "avoidable deaths," pointing to Mbeki's siding with a theoretical camp that argues AIDS is caused by a collapsed immune system, not a viral infection. As a result, offers of free drugs and grant money for AIDS treatment were rejected. Dig deeper ( 1 Min. Read )

Study: U.S. HIV Infection Rates Drastically Underreported

Staff / Truthdig Aug 3, 2008 The United States is in far worse shape when it comes to HIV infection rates than researchers previously thought, according to a new study conducted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that attributes the whopping 40 percent adjustment to more precise research methods. Dig deeper ( 1 Min. Read )

AIDS Still an Uphill Battle

Staff / Truthdig Jun 3, 2008 Every year about a million HIV patients globally are given potentially life-saving treatments, while about 2 1/2 times that number are infected. On top of that, the vast majority of HIV-positive people around the world don't know they're infected. Dig deeper ( 1 Min. Read )

Scientist: HIV Vaccine at Square One

Staff / Truthdig Feb 15, 2008 Nobel Prize-winning biologist David Baltimore has told his peers that researchers are no closer to discovering an HIV vaccine after decades of study. He called for new approaches and said the challenge was difficult because "to control HIV immunologically the scientific community has to beat out nature, do something that nature, with its advantage of four billion years of evolution, has not been able to do." Dig deeper ( 1 Min. Read )

U.N. Downsizes AIDS Estimate

Staff / Truthdig Nov 20, 2007 Finally, some good news in the world (relatively speaking): AIDS scientists at the United Nations are ready to announce that they have been overestimating the scale of the viral epidemic for quite some time now, and that the spread of AIDS has actually been decelerating over the last decade. Dig deeper ( 1 Min. Read )

AIDS Vaccine Disappoints

Staff / Truthdig Sep 22, 2007 A promising AIDS vaccine developed by Merck has proven unsuccessful in a major international trial. It's a huge setback, not just because this particular vaccine was further along than others, but because it used a new strategy shared by a number of alternatives. Dig deeper ( 1 Min. Read )