New messenger RNA vaccines to fight the coronavirus are based on a technology that could transform medicine. Next up: sickle cell and HIV.
Tuberculosis kills 1.5 million people each year. Lockdowns and supply-chain disruptions threaten progress against the disease as well as H.I.V. and malaria.
Susan Reverby’s riveting biography of Alan Berkman is a magnificent book. Berkman was imprisoned in the 60s, convicted for his political work. On regaining his freedom he devoted his life to public health and helping those the system abandoned.
...60 percent of newly diagnosed cases of HIV in women in 2017 were Black. Yet, Black women’s voices are notoriously absent from the national discourse on HIV.
The CDC projects that the risk for black men who have sex with men could grow to a staggering 50 percent, if trends continue. That compares with a risk of 1 in 11 for white gay and bisexual men, 1 in 20 for black men and 1 in 48 for black women.
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Death rates of African Americans living with HIV dropped 28% between 2008 and 2012. Still, Black people with HIV were 1.5 times more likely to die in 2012 than white people with the virus. They were also 3.2 times more likely to die that year than Latinos with HIV. All of the biomedical interventions in the world will not end the AIDS epidemic in this country unless the people on the frontlines understand them, believe in them, and know how to use them.
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Cuts up copies of HIV that have inserted themselves into the genome.
A radical new gene therapy for HIV using genetically modified cells mimics a rare but natural mutation that makes about 1% of the population resistant to the most common strains of HIV. Scientists were cautious not to draw strong conclusions from the small scale trial, which was designed to assess the safety of the therapy, but the early signs have raised their hopes.
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