Reply ID:
2tec

Anonymous:
Forgive me for pointing out what should be obvious, but this seems more like and advertisement then a reply to a blog entry. However, should I be mistaken, should you truly have been HIV+ and then cured, then by all means, share your story, but in doing so, don't think that perhaps you should provide more information on this alleged "cure"? for instance, what herbs were you taking, in what doses and how are they supposed to work? Give a physical mailing address for this doctor and his license number, so people can check him out, but perhaps most important of all, should these herbs indeed cure HIV, then why isn't anyone else talking about this?

Respectfully, I've done some extensive research on HIV, and so far as I can tell, there have only been two documented HIV Cures. The first was a patient in Berlin, who was given a bone marrow transplant, but sadly they haven't been able to duplicate it, and the second was (Allegedly) a new procedure they're currently testing here in the U.S at one point in time, there was suspected third cure, Baby Jane Doe, an infant who was born HIV+. As I understood it, after a period of time on treatment, test results showed no evidence of any HIV in her system, but sadly, this didn't last long. About 6months later, new testing revealed that she still had HIV in her system after all, so she was removed from the extremely short list of people who'd been proven to be cured for an HIV infection.

Personally, I've always been a bit suspicious of the fact that pharmaceutical companies haven't been able to cure an HIV+ person, and if you take a look at the costs charged for treatment, it's easy to understand why. Take Atripla, For example. Until just recently, it was the HIV "wonder Drug", because it was one of the few "once a day" regimens which included everything an HIV+ person needed to fight his or her infection. This single pill made it infinitely easier for patients to take their medication each and every day, and as any person who's HIV knows, this is the single most dangerous thing about being HIV+, forgetting to take your medication. IF you don't take your meds at least 95% of the time, then you run the very real risk of seeing your virus mutate into something that's immune to your medication regimen.

Anyway, at the time I did my research, and according to the information I had available to me at the time, a year's supply of Atriple sold for a whopping $15K in America. On top of this, the patient had to pay for doctors' visits, lab testing, other medications to combat the side effects, and who knows what else, all of which "Big Pharma" received a share of. Compare that to the prices charged in Africa for the same medication, shipped there by the same American pharmaceutical company. As I understood it, a year's supply in Africa sold for only $982, A savings of more than $14K. Supposedly, this all has to do with "supply and demand" and "Ability to pay", and nothing to do with any actual conspiracy to gouge the American consumer, but if you ask me, the American consumer is being gouged because they know that someone, somewhere, will pay the bill, whereas, in Africa, the money simply isn't there.

In the past, finding out you were HIV+ meant almost certain death, but with modern advancements in treatment, or at least those advancements which have been approved by the F.D.A and released to the general public, patients who take their medication religiously no longer need to fear dying for HIV. Their biggest fear now lies in dying form the accumulated toxicity of the medication over a period of time. I.E, Liver failure, kidney failure, ect. In fact, new medications have all but eliminated the HIV from the bloodstream, reducing the risk of infection for unprotected sex to almost zero (Provided the viral load in the bloodstream is "Undetectable"), so, form a pharmaceutical company's point of view, why provide a cure for HIV? It's a cash cow. If the patient can't pay for his or her medication, the companies can seek money from insurance companies, the government, charities, and if all else fails, the company can provide the medication free of charge in a few select situations and claim it as a tax write-off. At the end of the day, the company is compensated, in one way or another, by someone, so why kill the goose that lays the golden eggs?

Which brings me to a point I've been wanting to make for some time now... When pressed on why their prices are so high, pharmaceutical companies claim that such excessive prices are needed to recoup the amount of money they've invested into research and development, but let's think about this for a moment. Who's really paying for the R&R? Big Pharm? Maybe a little bit, but certainty not as much as they'd like us to believe. No, the ones who are really paying for their R&D is us, the American taxpayer. We do so by donating to their numerous charities always in our faces with their hands out, we do this in the form of grants given to them by the American Government, and then, when a treatment or cure is finally discovered, we're forced to pay an are and a leg to get it. How do we allow these companies to accept donations and government funds to develop something they're making huge profits, to the tune of billions of dollars per year, and trough it all we're the ones paying for it, over and over again.

As far as HIV, cancer, diabetes or any other "incurable" condition is concerned, I truly believe we could have cured all of these, and so much more, decades ago had companies shared their R&R with other companies trying to come up with a cure. Naturally, you can't force a private company in America, or any other country that operates on capitalistic principles, to share their hard work with other companies without being justly compensated, but why can't the people who are asked to donate their money insist on this? Share the information with any other company conducting research on the government's dime, and then, if a cure, or treatment is discovered, allow them all to share in the profits based on the amount of time, resources they've devoted towards a cure, and the results they've show for their work, but make the government the owner of any patent. This way, the government would be able to set the prices charged, thereby keeping costs low, and without threating democracy or making a profit.

It's just a thought....

Going back to your original response, as I said earlier, I have no clue as to weather or not you were truly cured of HIV, let alone whether or not you were actually infected, but, several things about your response and the way you worded it lead me to believe your statement is a fraud, put up for the sole purpose of trying to drum up business for a product you already know is going to work. I say this for several reasons. First, you provided no concrete information that a consumer could look into in an attempt to verify your statements. At a minim, you would have provided some sort of evidence proving you were HIV+ and now you're not, information on what herbs you were taking and why they're suppose to fight the HIV. You also would have shared your name, as opposed to posting anonymously, and why not? You'd gain instant fame and notoriety, not to mention a healthy pay day, as people and organizations around the world seek you out for interview, public speaking appearances and attempts to verify your story. Therefore, it would seem to me that your story is a poorly disguised attempt to con some poor, unwary soul at his or her wit's end out of the last bit of savings they might happen to have, and to that, I say that Hell has a special place for people like you. Until then, If you ever need a Cellmate....

Shawn L. Perrot CDCR# V-42461
MCSP Cell# C-13-229L
P.O Box 409060
Ione, CA. 95640