That Feminist Dyke

searchingforknowledge:

latinegrasexologist:

email i received from bosslady at hiv ed job:

Michigan health department has been secretly collecting information on people who test for HIV at federally funded clinics. For a decade! While the department claims the database does not contain personally identifiable information, a recent study has found that some Michigan local health departments with access to the database are using it to pursue civil actions – known as “health threat to others” actions – AND criminal prosecutions against people living with HIV. Find the article at the American Independent website here.  

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projectqueer:

When compared with other industrialized nations, Americans have a lower life expectancy, as well as increased rates of injury and disease, USA Today reports. A major report from the National Research Council and Institute of Medicine has conducted a dynamic anlysis of health benchmarks among 17 industrialized nations, including the United States, Australia, Canada, Japan and much of Western Europe.  

Despite spending more per capita on health care than any other nation, the United States ranked as the worst in nine major health areas, including: HIV/AIDS prevalence, infant mortality and low birth weight, drug-related deaths, injuries and homicides, teenage pregnancies and sexually transmitted infections, obesity and diabetes, heart disease, chronic lung disease, and disability.  

The United States has the highest HIV prevalence among ages 15 to 49. For the past two decades, the country has also maintained the highest rates of adolescent pregnancies. America does, however, fare well in reducing deaths from strokes and cancer, as well as in controlling blood pressure and cholesterol levels. Nearly two thirds of the drag on life expectancy in the United States is a consequence of deaths before the age of 50.

In a release, Steven H. Woolf, a professor of family medicine at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond and chair of the panel that authored report, said, “We were struck by the gravity of these findings. Americans are dying and suffering at rates that we know are unnecessary because people in other high-income countries are living longer lives and enjoying better health. What concerns our panel is why, for decades, we have been slipping behind.”

To read the USA Today Report, click here.

For a PDF of the National Research Council and Institute of Medicine report, click here.

gaywrites:

Researchers at UCLA have drawn on findings from 2009 to develop a genetically engineered stem cell that kills HIV in mice.

As it’s working on a living organism, the researchers believe it could be the beginning of an “aggressive approach” to attacking HIV cells in humans as well. More on how it works:

After implanting engineered stem cells into virus-affected mice, the researchers found the cells developed into a large population of “mature, multi-functional HIV-specific CD8 cells that could specifically target cells containing HIV proteins.”

HIV may mutate slower in mice than humans, so researchers are working on ways to combat that difference.

Oooh, so cool. This is very, very exciting news.