Group hug!!! Just dont try and grab my nuts like last time!

 

Common ground, this is good, let’s build on this…

Actually I was the kid sharing everything. I am more liberal about things then most would ever believe however I am very conservative when it comes to personal responsibility. I don’t make a ton of cash, I don’t make a lot of cash, I make a decent and fair amount for what I do and feel I earn every penny of it.

If I were to truly pick everything apart based on my beliefs then neither Kerry nor Bush would be the next President, or anyone else I could think of at this time.

However, knowing in reality nothing is fair, I try to look at the big picture and what I feel is most important not just to myself but my family, my friends, my community and my country at large.

This is why I will vote for Bush rather then Kerry. I try to be an optimist rather then a pessimist so I try to look for the good in everything I see. I don’t think Bush is the best leader we as a country have ever had but I do believe he is a better leader then Kerry.

The biggest issue I have with Kerry is I truly do not know where the man stands on any issue, I really don’t and that has nothing to do with my background, beliefs or party affiliation, I just don’t know what Kerry will do about anything. If I honestly felt I knew where Kerry truly stood on most issues I would give him due consideration and weigh all the options to get the big picture and vote based on the big picture.

 

I think it was O'Reilly.

 

LOL- I remember those two.. They were from PD. II.

One things certain; W and JK have both had dancing lessons. They can "Cabbage-Patch" their way around the questions they don't want to give a straight answer to...

W never answered the question about the slaughter going on in Africa, or the rampant onslaught of AIDS in Africa, (as well as Europe and Russia. )

Chris Rock said somethign years ago that made a lot of sense.... Why don't doctors cure anything anymore? Is it truly because there's no money in the cure, the money is in the treatment? GOd, I hope not.

I'd bet you if HIV were to become an "airborne" virus, passed around by a sneeze or handshake- we'd have a cure by New Years. It's amazing that Cancer, MS, MD, etc. have all been around for so long; but we found cures to Polio, Small Pox and all the other horrendous diseases back when we didn't have nearly the research dollars, and capability that we have today.

 

You underestimate HIV. Compared to a lot of viral epidemics that have been "cured" via vaccination HIV is a lot tougher b/c its capacity to mutate itself is much higher and hence finding a way to neutralize it (specific anti viral agent) and produced a vaccine that is specific to it is much, much harder than a virus with less capacity for spontaneous mutation (such as small pox and polio). Because HIV mutates so rapidly and frequently, it also resists a one-vaccine approach. We can't produce a flu vaccine that will protect you from all the strain of influenza virus for much the same reason. The flu vaccines out there are a different blend each year depending on the prominence of strains, they try and protect you from most of the major strains but can’t protect from them all. That is why the flu shot isn’t a guarantee that you won’t get the flu and why you need to get one every year instead of just once like polio or small pox vaccine. HIV is even harder to narrow down the influenza, and it’s a lot more persistent and harmful once you are infected. AIDS isn't a conspiracy and it isn't for lack of effort or funding that no one has found the "cure" for AIDS, it's just HIV is a nasty, tricky little virus with a lot going for it, including ignorance, superstition and backwardness.

 

Another thing that makes influenza so tough is that it infects and has it's protein changed by:

Pigs
Chickens
Humans

Remember the Swine flu scare of the late 70's early 80's. The bird (Chicken) flu from 3-5 years ago? What's even more scary is that influenza pandemic of the early 1900's? What's concerning is that scientists want to (If they haven't already) dig up the remains of the last few victims of that flu, and examin that strain to see what made it so virulent. It killed millions, and since that time, they've been buried in teh permafrost in Alaska or Canada. I say, leave'em there!

We can infect each other, and in doing so, different strains come out. (In my own layman interpretation of what I have read).

Yeah, the flu is a bad boy, and I can understand it's nuisance. It's ever changing, and easily transmittable. Whereas HIV at least as far as we know, is only transmitted through the exchange of bodily fluid either directly or by shared needles, etc.. So, we know where to find it.

I'm no virologist or pathologist and I imagine at some-level they are working hard to find a cure for HIV. It just doesn't seem to me that it should've taken this long to nail it down. They won't call Magic Johnson "cured" but, in blood screens, the virus cannot be detected in his blood anymore.

Rubbing Alcohol kills the HIV virus, so does bleach- I think I even read that lysol kills it too. And while it's true that they'll kill humans too, at least that's a starting point. Find something that can kill the virus and spare the person.

 

All right, reality check... not to be rude cia-agent but do you even know how a virus works? Lots of things kill HIV in say a bodily fluid spill, like Lysol, bleach, and yes, even air. Problem is that a virus incorporates its genetic material into the genetic material of human cells. There is no virus to cure, just some DNA mixed in with your own. When the virus decides to break out, it hijacks your own cells to make more virus, they eventually rupture and release massive amounts of virus, killing the cells in the process. If these cells are important to your immune system then you have serious problems. In this case the HIV virus, be destroying the cells has given you AIDS, and its not usually AIDS that kills you, it is something else that your weakened immune system can't handle. The reason Magic Johnson has so low levels of virus in the blood is b/c he is on a ****tail of anti viral drugs that keep the HIV from going active and rupturing the cells. He will always have that potential, but the drugs keep it under control. We are all carrying untold number of viruses dormant in our genetic material right now, most harmless, even when they do become active. You may have heard of a viral count, that is a measure of how much virus is detectable in cell free blood extracts due to rupture of infected cells. Anti viral drugs do take care of HIV and spare the person (to some extent) but again rapid mutation of HIV leads to anti viral drugs being quickly rendered less effective. You are right abut spreading different strains, its dangerous, just b/c two people have HIV dose not mean they can't harm each other, different strain equals different resistance to drugs and different virulence. Using anti viral drugs and safe sex practices the amount of new cases of HIV in even a place like Africa could be curtailed but the people there have to be willing to use the drugs and the condoms and to become educated about how HIV is spread. Ignorance and backwardness coupled with distrust of anti viral drugs has made this approach much less effective than it could be.

Not that it surprises me, but you don't have a clue about the amount of research that goes into even "curing" the simplest viral diseases and no idea how much work is being done on HIV right now. There are a lot of top quality scientists in Europe, when the AIDS epidemic is a lot worse that have not made much more progress either and it seems to me that they would be even more motivated to "cure" AIDS. We can't even cure Herpes virus, herpes is just suppressed to prevent outbreaks (those visible sores), so we have a long way to go on dealing with viruses of all sorts, relatively benign and deadly both. Its not for lack of trying that there is no cure, these things take time, and 20 years, given the complexity of the problem so far isn't that outrageous.

 

What? Not even Nader?
KIDDING!

If one is as concerned as you are about your tax dollar, then what has this administration done with your dollar that has been so spectacular?
How about your kids tax dollar that has yet to be made, but has already been spent?
This is bad, and unfair.
So what if a few pennies of your dollar go to social programs.
Yes there are some that are going to suck off of the welfare tit and aspire to nothing.
But there are many who have used those social programs as an opportunity to make something of themselves that would not have been possible otherwise. I know of more than a few that this is true for.

Look at it this way about the welfare slackers. If they get their dole and lay up on the corner or in the house and get stoned then they aren't out trying to rob or steal, at least for that amount of time till the check runs out. Then it is usually crimes in their own neighborhood on their own people or a convienience store.
The week or 2 that the check provides them off the street equates to saved lives, less crime and possibly them not ruining that someones life that uses the social programs to go to school and become the researcher that finds the cure for (fill in your favorite disease).
There can be unobvious benefits that no one is aware of.
For example.
You misplace your keys, and it takes you 10 minutes to find them. You leave and get to where you were going late and a bit flustered. Ever consider if you had those keys 10 minutes earlier that you had a date for a collision with a semi on the freeway?
It takes faith to believe that some things happen and not happen for an unseen reason.
Cause and effect. A social program could save your life one day, as long as that smart kid doesn't get hurt and goes to school to make that discovery that saves your life.
And you'll be glad that Kerry had implemented an affordable health care plan so you didn't have to sell your truck to pay for the medication.

 

Fatman, for someone that isn't trying to be rude- let me tell you; you failed miserably. Not to worry, my skin is pretty thick.

I watched "Outbreak" too, and I understand what you've stated. If you'll recall- I said, I am not a scientist, virologist or pathologist and no- I don't know how viruses work. If I did, I'd be a billionaire right now, considering the system.

I do know that many viruses have been beaten into submission even in a time when we didn't have what we have today to identify them.

Yes, I know viral infections are much more difficult to deal with than some bacterial infections- but, for all the years spent, we should have something by now. We got to the moon within 10 years of Kennedy saying we were going? Why is this more complex, especially when you have thousands of the (supposedly) best & brightest looking for a cure? Are they not working together? Seems silly not to considering that we have a global epidemic on our hands.

Yes, I'm on the outside looking in, when it comes to the details of the characteristics of viruses, immunization and prevention; but come-on, a lifetime is too long to wait for a cure. I never heard of HIV/AIDS before 1983; 21 years later all we have is; "We're working on it". That's not to say it wasn't there already- it just hadn't become widely discussed.

Is it wrong to question what's the hold up?
Are you a doctor/scientist etc..? You rallied to the defense so quickly, I must wonder why?

Did my asking a question-strike a nerve? I'm sure anyone who's lost a loved one to HIV/AIDS (0) or Cancer (3), is asking the same thing... Why is it taking so long to find cures to these diseases?

Inquiring minds want to know....

 

Up until the part I quoted above your post was good. I can understand your reasoning with the social programs, and admit I stopped and thought about some of that in a positive way. I do still believe there are many more on the “payroll” who do not deserve and/or belong there. That irritates me not so much because its MY money they are out spending, which is does, but more so because it takes away from others who could “really” use that money to possible live a “little bit” better life.

There are many people who, in my opinion, deserve to have some of MY money and not just deserve, but in my opinion is my obligation to provide. Those with mental issues, medical issues, physical issues and I am sure I am leaving some out.

Now when I say I feel an obligation I don’t mean that to intend I feel others should be obligated because it is not for me to tell others what they should be doing. I feel obligated because, at the moment, am very lucky and have no mental, physical, or medical conditions that keep me from earning a wage.

Now, on to why I disagree about Kerry implementing an affordable health care plan. It’s not possible for the government to implement anything that is affordable. Everything, including Bush’s prescription drug program is always over budget and will do nothing but GROW every single year further putting our kids in debt.

I don’t know all the answers in solving the medial cost we face today but I do know some kind of universal coverage is not the answer. I would use as an example cable television. Today there is still not much competition for cable. Sure there is satellite but not really much competition because I haven’t seen cable prices go down much.

We see in Canada that their social medical program does not work so well. Long waits, poor service and those with money crossing the border to America to get the great care we have, for those who can afford it.

I think today our medical is too social, we have HMO’S and everybody’s brother in between involved with health care and the cost have continued to rise. Yes big business has a part in the cost but so do other things. I believe lawyers and bad doctors play a big part as well. We have doctors who can completely screw up and it is basically kept secret. This affords lawyers a great opportunity to sue for big money, many times more then someone may really deserve. The awards are way out of whack at times.

I think we need some reform with how medical lawsuits are conducted as well as major reform for some of the quack doctors we have. I think the doctors records should be public, just like anyone else that screws up. I think after the second major screw up the doctor is no longer allowed to ever practice medicine again, maybe after the first.

This will, at least in my opinion, help to resolve some lawsuits that have very good merits. If you weed those out you can look closer at the other lawsuits. Today doctors are practicing defensive medicine which cost us more money, and they are paying large sums of money for insurance to protect themselves due to some quacks allowed to practice.

I don’t for a minute believe all that will drastically reduce medical cost but it’s a step in the right direction. A free market will make things more affordable for all. As we talked about jobs going overseas for business to stay competitive medical needs to be a truly free market without all these HMO’S and other middlemen taking nice slices of the pie while we are barely able to insure our children stay somewhat healthy…

In any regards its an issue that truly needs to be debated before any drastic moves are made including a government run medical program…

 

Something I forgot to add about some possible solutions to medical cost. I believe I had read somewhere before but do not know it to be true, but believe it most likely is, is the connection between doctors giving prescriptions for particular medication and possible “kick-backs” from giving those prescriptions.

If that is happening, and I really believe it is, it should be stopped and made illegal. Just another possible solution to help reduce the cost of medical…

 

All right, First, I rally to the defense so quick b/c I work in the field of microbiology as a scientist. I'm not a top level scientist and I don't work on HIV (we study the bacteria that cause cavities in your teeth) but I'm working on a master's degree part time in microbiology and I'm a competent molecular biologist and reasonably well versed in basic virology. My Bachelor's of Science is in biology and if I have a pet peeve it is that the general American public is not well educated enough when it comes to the life sciences. Its a flaw of our educational system (not the fault of anyone not to understand that which isn't stressed enough IMHO) and people would be better equipped to deal with and prevent these diseases if they were better educated in the biological sciences. Thats why I asked if you understood how a virus works b/c its a bif part of understanding why HIV is so difficult to "cure". If there is one thing I can speak intelligently on, it is something like this. If it seems like I'm talking down to people I apologise but I really feel that more awareness of biology could be very beneficial to everyone.

Anyway, for the 20 years that has been spent working on HIV (after the world decieded that it wasn't just a gay problem), there has been a lot to show, that’s why magic johnson can have a viral load that low and why people who have the HIV virus are living much better and longer lives these days (with the caveat that they have access to proper and currently expensive medical treatment). The reason it was easy (and I use the term loosely) to lick polio and small pox is b/c they don't change mush, so you use dead or non-virulent virus to introduce to your immune system to fool it into producing cells and antibodies that will kill the live or virulent virus if it ever infects you. Viruses that mutate a lot are very difficult for that reason; they are always changing so vaccination difficulty goes up exponentially. There is worry in the medical community that small pox can still mutate now and then the vaccinations that we have all received might not do us any good. This is where viruses are a good target for bio weapons. If you can't vaccinate against a virus, you have to suppress it, as most of the current AIDS treatments do. Once you are infected, the virus DNA is part of your body and until it ruptures a cell by hijacking it to reproduce you can't kill it without killing your cells. Again, not to be rude but if you have not had a lot of exposure to biological sciences like virology, molecular biology and cell biology you simply cannot understand the level of complexity need for the miracle drug to give some one infected to "cure" them. Even as we work on HIV, it evolves and works against us, so for every two steps forward, HIV can set you back one. As for not hearing anything about it, if you really want to keep up on the research, read the scientific journals, but they are long and boring ,unless you are into science, and highly technical. I have attended seminars in the last few months given by people whose are working on ways to keep HIV dormant and to make it less able to incorporate its genetic material into your cells. Progress is very slow b/c the amount of work that has to be done; both physical and mental to get there is enormous. Curing HIV is more akin to feretting out terrorist cells in deep cover than a straight forward invasion and conventional warfare.

I'm sorry I failed miserably at not being rude, but in general I'm sort of an opinionated a$$hole (think a slightly better looking Michael Moore with a right lean), its well known and has been known to get me into trouble and cause me to rant as you may have noticed... I usually respect your opinion as informed and well thought out, but your ideas here are the opposite. Outbreak is Hollywood science; it’s about as real as military actions movies are to the real thing I would expect. You are not wrong to ask what's being done, but trust me, there is a lot of effort being put into HIV research.

I know a lot of people who work 60-70 hour weeks for $30K or less a year to do the research on HIV. The amount of federal grant money that is given to people studying HIV is staggering, many complain that if you don't work on HIV its much harder to get funded.

In closing I'm sure I'm boring people so if you would like any relevant info or to discuss this further, e-mail me, I can at least point you towards places to look to keep up on what is actually being done against AIDS.

 

CIA-AGENT--AIDS/HIV is essentially a voluntary illness. Like you stated you get it by having contact with someone's fluids. You can protect yourself form infection. The incidence of transmission through a blood transfusion is so low today as to be irrelevant. It is tough to get the virus. First you have to have fluid to fluid contact with an infected person. That person must have enough of the virus in their system to transmit it. It's not like a cold where you can catch it by walking through a cloud of snot just sneezed out by someone going the other way. Most people can take steps to protect themselves. If it were easy to catch howmany doctors or EMT's or Police officer's would have caught it. I've pulled a bonehead and grabbed some guys extremely bloody arm without any protection (forgot to put on the gloves). I didn't catch waht the guy had HIV. The piont is you almost have to try to get HIV.

Universal Health Care is a fallacy. Those of you who have been subjected to the military health care system know what I'm talking about. It is really bad. The government will attempt to do everything on the cheap. Attempting to provide insurance to everyone won't work, can you say car insurance. Most of the insurance companies calimed they would lower their rates if the state would only implement mandatory insurance coverage for all driver's. Somehow the rates were never lowered. It basically become a stated required monopoly. If everyone is provided health coverage by the government the costs will go up. I recently read a report that claimed one of the reasons health insurance is so high is because so many employers provide it. If the boss pays nobody cares how expensive it is so there isn't an incentive for the companies to lower the costs. Unfortunately this leads to overall higher insurance primeiums.

As far as the ascertion that the people abusing the welfare programs sit at home all fat dumb and happy getting high until thier benefits runout for the month, it doesn't happen like that. When they get their benefits they start drinking. The I got money additude. They get drunk then they start fighting. It is something they see all of the time so it seems to be a natural part of life. Welfare is like a bonus to many of the people abusing the system. It is in addition to their other methods of making money.

The fact that they victimize their neighbors is irrelavent. Crime is a cancer. They discover their neighbors don't have anything so they go a few blocks over. Eventually thier neighborhood borders a better neighborhood. Then the next thing you know that neighborhood starts to decline. I don't know all of the answers to welfare reform, but I think a good place to start is random drug testing to recipients. If you test positive 1 time you lose benefits for 3 months. If you test positive 2 times you lose them for 6 months. If you test positive 3 times your done. Get off the nipple go suck someone else's money from them. Many governemnt employees are required to subject themselves to random drug tests. If the welfare recipient is giving a valid attempt at improving their lives then the least the people can ask is for them to stay off drugs, anything less is abusing the system.

 

Nice fantasy.

Drive through a poor neighborhood and count the security doors barred windows.
Now look at your neighborhood.
This is an example of reality.
Do a few migrate to better neighborhoods for ripoffs? yes they do.
Is it epidemic? no it isn't.
Are you depicting a small percentage as representative, yes you are.

 

we need a loser leaves town match.

Kerry wins - 01 xlt sport leaves for 6 months.

Bush wins - loudist leaves for 6 months.

how does a dvd rental turn into a discussion of Aids?

if you were in the Army would you rather take your chances in Iraq or go help Aids Victims in Africa?

cia-agent I dont now the figures but i have to think the average life span has increased over the last 50 years. heart attackes kill alot of people yet how many people do you know that have day surgery to repair them, progress in health care is being made.

the baby boomer are the reason health care has gone up. look at all the cost of diabetes, strokes, heart attackes, knee replacement and so on. not to mention prozac and all the :mental drugs that are being taken. also people are just flat out living longer and it is putting a hugh load on the system. simple answer, makes sense to me. Anyone in college in the last 20 years that took marketing knows the baby boomer will and are running the spending trends.