AIDS: Still a Gay Disease in America
Even as we make progress toward legal equality in the United States, gay and bisexual men continue to be marginalized and persecuted around the world. It’s not surprising to know we also continue to get short shrift in global AIDS conferences and programmatic priorities. The Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) estimates that, worldwide, fewer than one in 20 gay and bisexual men have access to HIV care, prevention, and treatment. outside the United States, sex between men accounts for as much as 25 percent of all HIV infections in parts of Latin America, with rates nearly as high in Asia, and not as high in Africa where HIV much more strongly affects heterosexuals.
The International Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans, and Intersex Association (ILGA) in 2010 reported that 77 countries continue to outlaw same-sex relations, including five that impose the death penalty on citizens for being gay (Iran, Mauritania, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, and Yemen, plus some parts of Nigeria and Somalia). according to George Ayala, executive officer for the Global Forum on MSM and HIV (MSMGF), presentations addressing the HIV pandemic disproportionate affect on gay and bisexual men around the world accounted for a minuscule two percent of the entire program at the Eighteenth International AIDS Conference (called AIDS 2010) in Vienna. “That’s pitiful for an epidemic that is largely concentrated around men who have sex with men,” said Jim Pickett, advocacy director for the AIDS Foundation of Chicago. “We have to do better.”
We also have to do better in addressing HIV/AIDS in gay and bisexual men here in the United States. In August 2010, Duncan Osborne reported in Gay City News that New York City health department data indicate MSM in the city continue to have a very high rate of new HIV infection and efforts to get more HIV-positive men onto treatment may be failing. “Gay and bisexual men in New York City are continuing to get infected as the predominant transmission risk,” said M. Monica Sweeney, assistant commissioner of the health department’s HIV/AIDS bureau. the bureau reported that in 2008, 1,751 of the 4,022 new HIV-positive diagnoses in the city were gay/bi men, further swelling the ranks of the 106,590 New Yorkers (more than 34,000 of them gay and bi men) living with HIV. as for preventing new infections, Sweeney said, “When it comes to the number of partners and how much sex gay men have, that’s not something that can be controlled by government. those are things that community norms should do.”
New York physician and Gay Men’s Health Crisis co-founder Larry Mass offered his own take on what GMHC is calling “an urgent priority,” the worsening HIV epidemic among gay and bisexual men in New York City. “There is no strong leadership voice out there,” said Mass in an interview not far from GMHC’s now-former home in Chelsea. “We don’t have a Larry Kramer out there.”
Not long after our interview, Mass published a commentary in Gay City News offering his assessment of the current state of the HIV epidemic in gay America. “Taking a tougher stand on HIV transmission could blunt the re-escalating rates of infection in our community,” he wrote. While subway ads should continue showing happy bicyclists living well with HIV after getting tested and treated, Mass said we also need franker ones showing the potentially serious side effects and failures of treatment. He recommended a stronger ‘HIV prevention consciousness’ and believes regulation, ideally self-regulation, is needed in gay sex venues.
Mass also suggested that educational posters about post-exposure prophylaxis, or PEP, would let gay men know that a thirty-day course of Highly Active Antiretroviral Therapy (HAART) has been shown to block HIV infection if begun within 72 hours of exposure. Mass said we need more public discussion and educational materials that raise the ethical issues about spreading HIV. “We need our current gay men’s health crisis to be out in the open,” he wrote, “warts and all, the way it was in the heyday of Larry Kramer’s activism, however inconvenient that might seem given our current high-profile battles for equality.” He added, “No, we are not dying in the thousands the way we were then, but we are still in real trouble with all this. Trying to stuff it back into the closet will eventually backfire.”
For his own part, Larry Kramer, at 75, makes it known he still has a clear mind and “tons of energy.” these days, he chooses to focus it on the 2011 multiple Tony Award-nominated Broadway revival, and a forthcoming movie production, of his 1985 play The Normal Heart, about the early years of the AIDS epidemic in New York. as for his AIDS activism? the co-founder of GMHC and father of ACT UP, the man who became the angry voice of a gentle but frightened people in the darkest of the plague years, told me in his Washington Square apartment — a sacred space in gay American history — on a sweltering day in July 2010 that he’d recently had “a lot of interaction with Dr. Fauci.” Kramer said he pushed his old nemesis, Anthony Fauci, long since a friend, to aim higher in the research he oversees as director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), to go for a cure.
“The numbers make it almost unfeasible to sustain a situation where you have 2.7 million getting newly infected every year.”
Words matter for a man like Kramer, who has wielded them like a surgeon’s scalpel, able to heal or cut to the quick as needed. He chooses his own words carefully, intentionally, in full consideration of their denotation and connotation. “I’ve been after him to use the word ‘plague,’” said Kramer of Fauci. “It’s a useful tool, it scares people.” In fact, Kramer dared me to use ‘plague’ in this book “from beginning to end.” A plague, he said, “is out of control, which it is.”
When I asked him about it, Fauci said, “I understand what Larry is getting at.” He said he has used the word “plague” himself, depending on the audience and the point he wants to make. He said, “Larry wants to use the word plague because he wants to put it into the historical perspective of the handful of diseases throughout the history of mankind that had an enormous impact.” Fauci said that when he talks about HIV to the White House or Congress or OMB (Office of Management and Budget) or constituencies, “I always put it in the context that we are living through a historic period from the standpoint of public health. There have only been a couple other periods where there have been such horrendous pandemics against the human population — bubonic, flu, smallpox.”
As for a cure, Fauci said, “The numbers make it almost unfeasible to sustain a situation where you have 2.7 million getting newly infected every year.” For every one person that receives HAART, two or three others get newly infected. “More people are getting infected than we are able to put on therapy,” said Fauci. He said there are two choices: do a better job with prevention, or “get to a point where you can get people off therapy.” as it is now, he said, we face “an economically unsustainable situation.”
There was a renewed push for a cure in the wake of stunning news from Berlin in 2006, that an HIV-positive American man also diagnosed with acute leukemia appears to have been cured of HIV infection. He was the beneficiary of a complex, expensive, and experimental stem cell transplant from a very rare donor with a genetic resistance to HIV infection found in only about one to two percent of white Americans and Western Europeans, about four percent of Scandinavians, and in no Africans, African-Americans, or Asians. the man’s leukemia was successfully treated after the donor cells essentially replaced his immune system. To everyone’s astonishment, the man also has remained HIV-negative since the procedure.
Underscoring the exceptional nature of the so-called Berlin Patient’s experience, Fauci said the total eradication of HIV isn’t likely in the foreseeable future. “We have very good drugs that block HIV replication,” he said, “but we don’t have any drugs that can eliminate the virus from HIV-infected cells.” For this reason, he explained, “Getting an eradication cure will require fundamental science and discovery — which is truly unpredictable.”
On the other hand, there is what is called a “functional” cure. It likely would involve a sort of super dose of HAART, or another compound not yet known, to “smoke out” the latent virus that remains in the body. Virus drained from these so-called reservoirs would then be dispatched with existing or adapted medication. Fauci said one of the greatest obstacles, even for a functional cure, is that HIV-positive individuals have to be treated early enough in their infection that they don’t yet have reservoirs of virus. “The earlier you start therapy,” he said, “the smaller is the reservoir of infection.” He explained, “When you start earlier rather than late, you preserve HIV immune function. You bring the viral reservoir to such a small, miniscule segment so if you stop therapy, either with or without enhancing the immune system, you hope the immune system is able to rebound from its reservoir. that is a functional cure, because even though you haven’t eliminated the virus from the body, you have a functional cure.”
In 2010, NIAID announced a new $42.5 million research initiative, dedicated to the memory of Project Inform founder Martin Delaney, who died in 2009 of liver cancer. the “Martin Delaney Collaboratory: Towards an HIV-1 Cure” will support efforts to purge the reservoirs of HIV from the body and provide the functional cure Fauci described.
Of course receiving treatment is predicated on knowing one’s HIV status. But in the U.S., with thousands of HIV-positive citizens already waiting to be accepted in the AIDS Drug assistance Program, and others discouraged even from being tested, there is still a tremendous gap between what would be nice and what is. Fauci is diplomatic. “It’s somewhat problematic at the domestic level,” he said. “If you can’t treat all the people who have advanced disease, how are you going to seek and treat people who don’t even know their HIV status?”
Whether we call it a plague or pandemic, there are times it can, and does, seem HIV/AIDS is still out of control, still very much a crisis, even after thirty years. just ask Lorri Jean, executive director of the Los Angeles Gay and Lesbian Center, the world’s largest LGBT service provider. “I still think it feels like a crisis that 50 percent of African-American gay men are infected with HIV,” Jean told me. She said it’s “shocking and outrageous” that African-American gay and bisexual men in particular are so heavily affected by HIV, and that organizations in the gay community haven’t seemed to care, judging by the agendas they set and the priorities they pursue.
Maybe her way of looking at things is shaped by the fact that a couple of floors below her office, the Center’s health clinic each month takes care of 2,500 people with HIV, and tests another 1,000 for the virus. Maybe it’s the “throwaway” kids — mostly gay teenage boys, kicked out of or running away from their homes for being gay, at high risk for HIV infection from older men who promise love or pay them to have unprotected sex — in the center’s homeless shelter a short elevator ride down from where she works. Maybe it’s the center’s HIV prevention programs that Jean said are being “eviscerated” by state and county funders. Or maybe it’s that she simply hasn’t forgotten the center’s proud 40-year commitment to gay equality rooted in its founders’ belief that only healthy, strong gay people can create and enjoy true gay liberation. no matter what it is, and no matter how you look at it, Lorri Jean said, simply, “We’ve reached a tipping point where there is harm to our community by people not realizing AIDS disproportionately affects our community.”
Excerpted from John-Manuel Andriote’s Victory Deferred: how AIDS Changed Gay Life in America
MediGene AG : MediGene: Veregen? Marketing Approval Process Initiated for 17 Additional European Countries
Press Release MediGene: Veregen? Marketing Approval Process Initiated for 17 Additional European Countries Decision on Marketing Approvals Expected end of Q1 2012
Martinsried/Munich, December 12, 2011. MediGene AG (Frankfurt, Prime Standard) announces that the regulatory authorities of seventeen additional European countries accepted the marketing authorization applications for Veregen ? ointment using the mutual recognition procedure. this means that the review procedure has started. The decision for marketing approval in Belgium, Bulgaria, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Greece, Hungary, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, and Sweden is expected by the end of the first quarter of 2012. Assuming a positive decision, the individual countries will grant marketing approvals for Veregen? in the course of the subsequent national phase of the approval procedure. Veregen? is currently available in the United States, German, and Austrian markets. in Spain, the drug was granted marketing approval and market launch is expected in 2012. Veregen?’s German marketing approval serves as the basis for the mutual recognition procedure. The Federal Institute for Drugs and Medical Devices (Bundesinstitut f?r Arzneimittel und Medizinprodukte, BfArM) will make its evaluation reports on Veregen?’s quality, efficacy, and safety available to the participating countries. The Institute will also coordinate the process between MediGene and the other countries. MediGene has entered into several marketing partnerships for Veregen?, including Fougera (formerly Nycomed) for the United States; Abbott for Germany, Austria, and Switzerland; Laboratoires Expanscience for France; and with a number of other partners across Europe, America, and Asia. MediGene is planning to continue this global licensing strategy.
Veregen?: Veregen? (previously Polyphenon E? ointment), a topical treatment of external genital warts, contains a concentrate of catechins with a complex defined composition extracted from green tea leaves. MediGene acquired the basic rights to the active ingredient in Veregen? from Epitome Pharmaceuticals, inc. in 1999, and was solely responsible for the drug’s successful preclinical and clinical development, as well as the approval process. Sinecatechins
15 % ointment (Veregen?) is now also recommended as a treatment option in the US Department of Health and Human Services Center for Disease Control and Prevention’s the Sexually Transmitted Diseases Treatment Guidelines 2010 for the treatment of genital warts.
this press release contains forward-looking statements representing the opinion of MediGene as of the date of this release. The actual results achieved by MediGene may differ significantly from the forward- looking statements made herein. MediGene is not bound to update any of these forward-looking statements. MediGene? and Veregen? are registered trademarks of MediGene AG. Polyphenon E? is a
trademark of Mitsui Norin Co., Ltd. These trademarks may be owned or licensed in select locations only.
– ends – MediGene AG is a publicly listed (Frankfurt: MDG, prime standard) biotechnology company headquartered in Martinsried/Munich, Germany. MediGene is the first German biotech company to have revenues from marketed products. it has various drug candidates in clinical development and possesses innovative platform technologies. MediGene focuses on clinical research and development of novel drugs against cancer and autoimmune diseases. Contact MediGene AG
Julia Hofmann, Kerstin Langlotz Tel.: +49 – 89 – 85 65 – 33 01 Fax: +49 – 89 – 85 65 – 29 20 Email: investor@medigene.com
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#Newstracker Forty killed and 100 wounded in suicide bombings in Syria
Several people were killed, mostly civilians, in a double suicide car bombing targeting security and intelligence buildings in the Syrian capital today.
#NewsTracker Akkunji, 5 others, handed one-year ban for doping
India’s six top women athletes, including Asian Games double gold-medallist Ashwini Akkunji, were today handed one-year bans for flunking dope tests earlier this year.
#NewsTracker EPFO fails to fix interest rate, wants FinMin to take final call
While the EPFO has suggested payment of interest at the rate of 8.25 percent for the fiscal, trade union members insisted that it should be 9.5 percent.
#PersonalFinance Car sales: Is grabbing the year-end discount worth it?
Almost every major auto company is gearing up to elevate sales and clear inventory by offering year-end discounts on petrol and diesel cars.
#AnnaDolan Anna invites civil society to join him in jail
Team Anna today opened registrations for supporters to join Hazare’s campaign and be part of the “Jail Bharo” movement through a website called Jailbharo.com.
#ConnectTheDots Food Bill will tie Manmohan’s hands in raising prices
A minor change in clause will make it necessary for governments to seek parliamentary consent to change subsidised prices.
#India vs Australia Come Boxing Day, all bets are on Sachin’s 100th ton
Tendulkar reaching the milestone figure at the Melbourne Cricket Ground has evoked a bid of 9/4, according to Australian media.
#NewsTracker FDI in retail not shelved, working to build up consensus: FM
The plan to give foreign supermarkets access to India’s retail industry is “very much on the government’s mind”, Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee said.
#NewsTracker Satyagraha for you, nuisance for others: Bombay HC to Anna
The Bombay High Court said it can’t allow “parallel canvassing” when Parliament is seized with debate on Lokpal Bill and questioned Team Anna’s decision to seek exemption from charges to use MMRDA grounds for Anna’s proposed fast.
Vaccinating Boys Against HPV Makes Good Sense
DEAR DOCTOR K: I know it’s recommended that young girls get vaccinated against HPV, since this virus can cause cervical cancer. what about boys? At one time I read it was not recommended for them, but recently I heard that this had changed. has it changed, and why?
DEAR READER: You’re right. the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) has recently recommended that boys also get the HPV vaccine.
HPV (human papillomavirus) causes genital warts. In women, some strains of the virus cause cancer of the cervix. the cervix is a part of a woman’s uterus, the opening into the uterus from the vagina. Vaccines for HPV have been shown to reduce a woman’s later risk of getting cervical cancer. the discovery that HPV causes cervical cancer was a landmark discovery that was honored with the Nobel Prize.
So it’s clear why the HPV vaccine is recommended for girls. But why is it recommended for boys? HPV can also cause cancers of the anus, penis, vagina, mouth and throat. This makes it a problem for both men and women. In fact, in the U.S., 7,000 men each year get cancers caused by HPV.
When it was first approved in 2006, the first vaccine against HPV — Gardasil — was for use only in girls and young women. Although it also was approved for boys in 2009, at that time it wasn’t recommended that all boys also be vaccinated. But the recent ACIP recommendations are a stronger push. They actively recommend that boys should be vaccinated at 11 or 12. Why?
Obviously, males can’t get cervical cancer. But if they are infected with the virus, they can spread it to women through sexual activity. so vaccinating boys and young men against the virus will help prevent its transmission to women. it will also help prevent some of the 7,000 HPV-related cancers that occur in men each year.
The CDC hopes that the recommendation will help make up for the fact that fewer girls than it had hoped have been vaccinated. so far, only about one-third of girls eligible for vaccination against HPV have gotten all three necessary shots.
The more people who are vaccinated against a virus, the less that virus can circulate in the community. Vaccinating boys, too, helps our health as a group. This is sometimes called “herd immunity.”
Some parents take issue with the idea of vaccinating young children against a disease that is transmitted sexually. This may be part of the reason not as many girls as expected have been vaccinated. Making the HPV vaccine part of routine vaccines for all children may help remove some of the stigma. Vaccinating kids before they might become sexually active makes sense.
I know some people ask the question: Why should you vaccinate a child against a sexually transmitted disease he or she may never get? But there is another question I’d ask these people to consider: Why wouldn’t you vaccinate your child to protect them against a cancer that they could get? In my view, it’s a miracle that we can vaccinate against a life-threatening cancer. the arguments in favor of routinely giving the HPV vaccine to kids are very strong.
Dr. Komaroff is a physician and professor at Harvard Medical School. go to his website to send questions and get additional information: AskDoctorK.com.
Soda-soap mix as contraceptives? Experts are alarmed
BAGUIO CITY—Young Filipinos have been resorting to a concoction of detergent or bath soap plus cola drink, which they consume after engaging in premarital sex because they believe that the mixture can prevent the transmission of sexually-transmitted infections, a doctor revealed in this year’s national school health and nutrition congress here.
“The reality is that many students are engaging in premarital sex and are resorting to methods, which they think can prevent pregnancy and protect them from sexually-transmitted infections like mixing Tide or Safeguard with Coke,” said Dr. Susan Gregorio, a medical specialist of the Philippine National AIDS-Watch Council (PNAC) on Wednesday.
The three-day school health congress was opened by Education Secretary Armin Luistro on Tuesday and was attended by a thousand school heads and school health personnel from various provinces.
Gregorio said the fact that sexually-active youths tend to experiment with household products to avoid pregnancies should compel educators to integrate lessons about sexually-transmitted infections, including HIV-AIDS.
She said the Department of Health and the PNAC have noted an increasing number of teenage youths who are infected with warts and herpes.
“The sad thing is that when they get these infections, they (youths) are ashamed to get medical advice.
This makes them all the more vulnerable to other sexually-transmitted infections such as HIV,” she said.
The Philippines was among the first few countries to pass Republic Act No. 8504 (the Philippine AIDS Prevention and Control Act of 1998), which mandates, among other things, the integration of AIDS education in the school curricula.
“But we are slow in implementation compared to our neighbors in the Asean region,” said Gregorio.
The law requires the Department of Education (DepEd), the Commission on Higher Education and the Technical Education and Skills Development Authority to “integrate instruction on the causes, modes of transmission and ways of preventing HIV/AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases in subjects taught in public and private schools at intermediate grades, secondary and tertiary levels, including nonformal and indigenous learning systems.”
The AIDS education module seeks to promote not only awareness of HIV and other sexually-transmitted diseases, but also behavioral change, said Gregorio.
We also Recommend:
Can genital warts cause birth defects?
I have genital warts and I got my gf pregnant! Can genital warts cause any harm to the baby? and this is a little off topic but does smoking cigarettes speed up the growth of genital warts?
If you have genital warts and got your gf pregnant, then you gave warts to your gf. and when she has the baby, the baby will be able to get the warts. and i have no clue about the smoking thing.
MediGene AG : MediGene: Veregen? Marketing Approval Process Initiated for 17 Additional European Countries
Press Release MediGene: Veregen? Marketing Approval Process Initiated for 17 Additional European Countries decision on Marketing Approvals Expected End of Q1 2012
Martinsried/Munich, December 12, 2011. MediGene AG (Frankfurt, Prime Standard) announces that the regulatory authorities of seventeen additional European countries accepted the marketing authorization applications for Veregen ? ointment using the mutual recognition procedure. This means that the review procedure has started. the decision for marketing approval in Belgium, Bulgaria, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Greece, Hungary, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, and Sweden is expected by the end of the first quarter of 2012. Assuming a positive decision, the individual countries will grant marketing approvals for Veregen? in the course of the subsequent national phase of the approval procedure. Veregen? is currently available in the United States, German, and Austrian markets. In Spain, the drug was granted marketing approval and market launch is expected in 2012. Veregen?’s German marketing approval serves as the basis for the mutual recognition procedure. the Federal Institute for Drugs and Medical Devices (Bundesinstitut f?r Arzneimittel und Medizinprodukte, BfArM) will make its evaluation reports on Veregen?’s quality, efficacy, and safety available to the participating countries. the Institute will also coordinate the process between MediGene and the other countries. MediGene has entered into several marketing partnerships for Veregen?, including Fougera (formerly Nycomed) for the United States; Abbott for Germany, Austria, and Switzerland; Laboratoires Expanscience for France; and with a number of other partners across Europe, America, and Asia. MediGene is planning to continue this global licensing strategy.
Veregen?: Veregen? (previously Polyphenon E? ointment), a topical treatment of external genital warts, contains a concentrate of catechins with a complex defined composition extracted from green tea leaves. MediGene acquired the basic rights to the active ingredient in Veregen? from Epitome Pharmaceuticals, inc. in 1999, and was solely responsible for the drug’s successful preclinical and clinical development, as well as the approval process. Sinecatechins
15 % ointment (Veregen?) is now also recommended as a treatment option in the US Department of Health and Human Services Center for Disease Control and Prevention’s the Sexually Transmitted Diseases Treatment Guidelines 2010 for the treatment of genital warts.
This press release contains forward-looking statements representing the opinion of MediGene as of the date of this release. the actual results achieved by MediGene may differ significantly from the forward- looking statements made herein. MediGene is not bound to update any of these forward-looking statements. MediGene? and Veregen? are registered trademarks of MediGene AG. Polyphenon E? is a
trademark of Mitsui Norin co., ltd. These trademarks may be owned or licensed in select locations only.
– ends – MediGene AG is a publicly listed (Frankfurt: MDG, prime standard) biotechnology company headquartered in Martinsried/Munich, Germany. MediGene is the first German biotech company to have revenues from marketed products. It has various drug candidates in clinical development and possesses innovative platform technologies. MediGene focuses on clinical research and development of novel drugs against cancer and autoimmune diseases. Contact MediGene AG
Julia Hofmann, Kerstin Langlotz Tel.: +49 – 89 – 85 65 – 33 01 Fax: +49 – 89 – 85 65 – 29 20 Email:
Cryosurgery Offers a Quick and Easy Solution
Fulham, London — (SBWIRE) — 12/08/2011 — The ailments which can lead to a person suffering from painful feet are many and widely varied in both cause and effect. no matter what the cause, however, whether it’s injury prompted by an accident or a condition brought about by underlying factors, foot problems are frequently ignored. amongst the things which people often feel they should just put up with are verrucaes, but the truth is that quick and easy treatment is available. It takes the form of cryosurgery and is offered by any state of the art foot clinic. Many people don’t actually pay any conscious thought to looking after their feet, and assume that everything is well until such time as something goes wrong and they start feeling pain. The simple fact that our feet aren’t visible for the vast bulk of each day means that they are easy to forget about and ignore. this is in spite of the incredibly difficult task which everybody’s feet perform on a daily basis. Putting one foot in front of the other and walking is such a reflex action that the amount of work the foot is doing each and every time is easy to ignore. Bearing the weight of your whole body, keeping you balanced and taking the impact of a wide variety of different surfaces and terrains – it all adds up to a difficult and strenuous task and it’s one which is performed many hundreds if not thousands of times each day.It’s easy to understand, then, that things will sometimes go wrong and, when they do, the wisest course of action is to book the earliest available appointment at a foot clinic. A foot or ‘chiropody’ clinic will be capable of treating the whole of the vast range of different problems which can afflict the feet .In some cases, this treatment may be mainly preventative in nature, dealing with an ongoing problem such as the way in which you actually walk, and coping with any side effects before they become too painful. Cases such as this will require the use of insoles or orthotics which will change the way in which you walk over a prolonged period of time. At the other end of the spectrum are problems such as ingrown toe nails, which are exceedingly painful and require intervention at the earliest possible stage. A problem such as this will require recourse to foot surgery, and it is not the only such situation where a surgical approach is necessary. another condition which calls for an approach of this kind is the appearance of warts or verrucaes on the soles of the feet. Often painful and frequently very contagious, these can be removed using a technique known as cryosurgery. this is a treatment which uses chemicals such as liquid nitrogen, or gases like carbon dioxide in order to freeze and kill both the wart and the virus which caused it. Combined with the application of medicines such as Glutarol, which you can use in your own home, this treatment will successfully remove verrucaes in a manner which is speedy, simple, virtually pain free and quick.
Ask Dr. K: Vaccinating boys against HPV makes good sense
Dear Dr. K: I know it is recommended that young girls get vaccinated against HPV, since this virus can cause cervical cancer. What about boys? At one time I read it was not recommended for them, but recently I heard that this had changed. has it changed, and why?
Dear Reader: You’re right. The CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) has recently recommended that boys also get the HPV vaccine.
HPV (human papillomavirus) causes genital warts. In women, some strains of the virus cause cancer of the cervix. The cervix is a part of a woman’s uterus, the opening into the uterus from the vagina. Vaccines for HPV have been shown to reduce a woman’s later risk of getting cervical cancer. The discovery that HPV causes cervical cancer was a landmark discovery that was honored with the Nobel Prize.
So it’s clear why the HPV vaccine is recommended for girls. but why is it recommended for boys? HPV can also cause cancers of the anus, penis, vagina, mouth and throat. This makes it a problem for both men and women. In fact, in the U.S., 7,000 men each year get cancers caused by HPV.
when it was first approved in 2006, the first vaccine against HPV — Gardasil — was for use only in girls and young women. Although it also was approved for boys in 2009, at that time it wasn’t recommended that all boys also be vaccinated. but the recent ACIP recommendations are a stronger push. They actively recommend that boys should be vaccinated at 11 or 12. Why?
obviously, males can’t get cervical cancer. but if they are infected with the virus, they can spread it to women through sexual activity. So vaccinating boys and young men against the virus will help prevent its transmission to women. It will also help prevent some of the 7,000 HPV-related cancers that occur in men each year.
The CDC hopes that the recommendation will help make up for the fact that fewer girls than it had hoped have been vaccinated. So far, only about one-third of girls eligible for vaccination against HPV have gotten all three necessary shots.
The more people who are vaccinated against a virus, the less that virus can circulate in the community. Vaccinating boys, too, helps our health as a group. This is sometimes called “herd immunity.”
some parents take issue with the idea of vaccinating young children against a disease that is transmitted sexually. This may be part of the reason not as many girls as expected have been vaccinated. making the HPV vaccine part of routine vaccines for all children may help remove some of the stigma. Vaccinating kids before they might become sexually active makes sense.
Dr. Komaroff is a physician and professor at Harvard Medical School. Go to his website to send questions and get additional information: AskDoctorK.com.
Teenage boys set to get Gardasil anti-cancer injections for free
Gardasil is an effective vaccine against human papillomavirus, which causes genital warts and can cause cervical cancer. Source: AFP
THE anti-cancer drug Gardasil may be approved for a national immunisation program for teenage boys.
Gardasil has federal government financial approval for a national vaccination program for girls aged 12-13.
The drug is an effective vaccine against human papillomavirus, which causes genital warts and can cause cervical cancer.
The Pharmaceutical Benefits Advisory Committee has recommended Gardasil be approved for vaccination of boys aged 12-13, plus a two-year catch-up program covering boys in year 9 at school.
A Department of Health and Ageing spokeswoman said further steps needed to be completed, including pricing agreement and supply guarantee, before the Federal Government could consider financing the program.
An approval would not result in the drug being available to boys before 2013.
CSL shares rose 31c to $32.34 after yesterday’s announcement.