A poignant and well written piece. The author didn't touch on medical advances as a positive outcome of the effort to cure HIV. Since 1981, and in no small part because of the AIDS research effort, we have a far better understanding of retroviruses, cell surface structures, immunity, the evolutionary role of viruses in forming our DNA, and many other areas.
It's small consolation to someone suffering from this disease, even someone supposedly in remission from using the latest treatments, because there are still so many complications as outlined in the article such as brain infections and dementia, premature aging and fragility, and of course the PTSD of watching your entire community die around you.
But nonetheless, their suffering has given rise to new cancer treatments and other medicines that are saving thousands of lives. Over 500,000 people die of cancer every year; a friend of mine just died yesterday after a 15 year battle with breast cancer.
I look forward to the day when these viral infections and cancerous mutations will be handled with a routine shot that restores full immunity and function. Perhaps this day can be hastened if we invested more resources into research -- $100 billion instead of $36 billion, for example. What more important work can we do, than to save millions of current and future lives?
It's small consolation to someone suffering from this disease, even someone supposedly in remission from using the latest treatments, because there are still so many complications as outlined in the article such as brain infections and dementia, premature aging and fragility, and of course the PTSD of watching your entire community die around you.
But nonetheless, their suffering has given rise to new cancer treatments and other medicines that are saving thousands of lives. Over 500,000 people die of cancer every year; a friend of mine just died yesterday after a 15 year battle with breast cancer.
I look forward to the day when these viral infections and cancerous mutations will be handled with a routine shot that restores full immunity and function. Perhaps this day can be hastened if we invested more resources into research -- $100 billion instead of $36 billion, for example. What more important work can we do, than to save millions of current and future lives?