HIV/AIDS dominated my high school years; it was just starting to become known; the first reported US case was in 1981, and in 1983, the disease (AIDS) was traced to the virus (HIV). My biology class had a poster of all the things AIDS could present as (kaposi's sarcoma, etc). At the time HIV was effectively a death sentence and it really affected places like SF heavily.
One of my main motivations in college and grad school was to work in drug discovery, specifically for HIV. At the time (~1995-2000) we were just starting to see positive results from protease inhibitors and reverse transcriptase inhibtors came somewhat later leading to the current "managment of HIV through HART" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Management_of_HIV/AIDS
All of this came slowly - decades between significant new technologies/improvements in treatment. many sources of infection such as blood transfusions are now much less risky (people in the 70s and 80s were getting hep C and HIV from blood taken from HIV-positive donors). And the disease presents very differently in the US vs. other areas such as Sub-Saharan africa. But with extensive effort, prevention has gotten better and treatments have gotten much better. If there are truly usable preventatives for at-risk populations, and those medications are affordable, it will be a huge boon to the recipients.
Some interesting things to note:
- there was a lot of controversy about the source of infection and a lot of people used this to criticize gay people and injected drug users.
- one of the world's most famous virologists, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Duesberg actively denied that HIV caused AIDS and instead thought it was transmitted by drug use. Note "Duesberg entered a long dispute with John Maddox, then-editor of the scientific journal Nature, demanding the right to rebut articles that HIV caused AIDS." which I think presages the current arguments about what scientists can say regarding the origins of COVID. The impact of his statements in South Africa was significant. From what I can tell he was completely off base and never made any truly convincing arguments for his position.
- Fauci, of COVID fame, played a big role in getting NIH and the various AIDS community organzations working together and making large improvements to HIV/AIDS treatment. Before that, Fauci was heavily criticized by various LBGTQ orgs (see https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/31/opinion/anthony-fauci-hiv...) "Larry Kramer, one of the group’s founders, wrote an open letter to Dr. Fauci in The Village Voice calling him a murderer and comparing him to the Holocaust organizer Adolf Eichmann." Again, all this presages the later treatment of Fauci by various political groups during COVID. I often think back to Fauci during HIV/AIDS while reflecting on the current situation around COVID and I think we got lucky to find somebody like him, even if he said a few dumb things, and we'll be lucky if any public servants are willing to take up his role in the future.
- modern gene therapy often uses variants on HIV as the vector. That's right: it's so good at getting into cells and modifying the genome, that we use it as the preferred method. it took quite some time before the vectors were made safe enough (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5152689/)
One of my main motivations in college and grad school was to work in drug discovery, specifically for HIV. At the time (~1995-2000) we were just starting to see positive results from protease inhibitors and reverse transcriptase inhibtors came somewhat later leading to the current "managment of HIV through HART" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Management_of_HIV/AIDS
All of this came slowly - decades between significant new technologies/improvements in treatment. many sources of infection such as blood transfusions are now much less risky (people in the 70s and 80s were getting hep C and HIV from blood taken from HIV-positive donors). And the disease presents very differently in the US vs. other areas such as Sub-Saharan africa. But with extensive effort, prevention has gotten better and treatments have gotten much better. If there are truly usable preventatives for at-risk populations, and those medications are affordable, it will be a huge boon to the recipients.
Some interesting things to note:
- there was a lot of controversy about the source of infection and a lot of people used this to criticize gay people and injected drug users.
- one of the world's most famous virologists, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Duesberg actively denied that HIV caused AIDS and instead thought it was transmitted by drug use. Note "Duesberg entered a long dispute with John Maddox, then-editor of the scientific journal Nature, demanding the right to rebut articles that HIV caused AIDS." which I think presages the current arguments about what scientists can say regarding the origins of COVID. The impact of his statements in South Africa was significant. From what I can tell he was completely off base and never made any truly convincing arguments for his position.
- Fauci, of COVID fame, played a big role in getting NIH and the various AIDS community organzations working together and making large improvements to HIV/AIDS treatment. Before that, Fauci was heavily criticized by various LBGTQ orgs (see https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/31/opinion/anthony-fauci-hiv...) "Larry Kramer, one of the group’s founders, wrote an open letter to Dr. Fauci in The Village Voice calling him a murderer and comparing him to the Holocaust organizer Adolf Eichmann." Again, all this presages the later treatment of Fauci by various political groups during COVID. I often think back to Fauci during HIV/AIDS while reflecting on the current situation around COVID and I think we got lucky to find somebody like him, even if he said a few dumb things, and we'll be lucky if any public servants are willing to take up his role in the future.
- modern gene therapy often uses variants on HIV as the vector. That's right: it's so good at getting into cells and modifying the genome, that we use it as the preferred method. it took quite some time before the vectors were made safe enough (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5152689/)