Why the "supervirus" story may end not with a bang but a whimper
Scary new HIV strain discovered,” blared the February 12 Miami
Herald. “Rare strain of HIV resists drugs, builds rapidly into AIDS,”
trumpeted the February 14 Wall Street Journal. Only three days after
New York City health commissioner Thomas Frieden, MD, made the
bombshell February 11 announcement that a local man had been diagnosed
with triple-drug-resistant and rapidly progressing HIV, worldwide media
outlets took the sensationalist superbug story hostage—each to advance
its own agenda.
After Frieden’s televised press conference—which
included a public-health alert for medical providers—little additional
information about the new patient zero and the consequences of this new
strain followed. Was this a public-health crisis or a one-off
phenomenon? Ongoing studies of the man’s virus and his sex partners
would, at best, slowly yield an answer. But the media onslaught
continued.
Syndicated right-wing columnist Cal Thomas conjured the
gay men = promiscuity = evil = death formula: “There have been some
reports of ‘suicide missions’ by uninfected men who knowingly have sex
with HIV positive men, believing that to be infected gives them a
certain societal status.” Thomas’ argument was bolstered by patient
zero’s irresistible hook—a middle-aged gay man who had reportedly had
unprotected sex with hundreds in recent months while using crystal
meth.
Within the gay community, author Charles Kaiser wrote in the
New York Daily News: “A person who is HIV positive has no more right to
unprotected sex with someone else than he has the right to put a bullet
through that person’s head.” Nonexperts and experts alike seemingly
crawled out of AIDS dormancy to debate the efficacy and longevity of
HIV meds and prevention.
Scientists, researchers and activists
were quoted arguing whether conclusive evidence supported Frieden’s
revelation. HIV codiscoverer Robert Gallo voiced skepticism. Activist
Richard Jefferys told the Gay City News that “based on the [press
release], to call this a new strain is incorrect.” Right-leaning HIVer
Andrew Sullivan noted in his blog that it’s “extremely common for newly
infected people to see their CD4 counts plummet in the early stages
before their own immune system bounces back.” Others correctly noted
that some HIVers receive AIDS diagnoses within a year of infection,
though a sizable number also take 10 years or more.
David Ho, MD,
director of the Aaron Diamond AIDS Research Center (ADARC), where the
patient was treated and the strain identified, addressed a packed,
hastily organized session at the February 24 annual Retrovirus
conference in Boston. He and his colleagues fielded oft-hostile
questions. “Only additional investigations will reveal whether this is
an isolated case,” he said. “Irrespective of the outcome, the
public-health implications of this single patient should not be
minimized.” At press time, the man’s “untreatable” virus was reportedly
responding to combo therapy. No additional superbug cases have arisen. Was Frieden’s alarm and the
media blitzkrieg justified? Pulitzer Prize–winning AIDS journalist
Laurie Garrett (The Coming Plague) says yes—even if
SO MANY SUPERS... POZ broke the first-ever “superbug” story in 1996. That’s why we’ve cast a cold eye on "super" stories ever since.
"SUPERVIRUS" NEWS: In
August/September 1996’s
“Attack of the Mutation Monster,” Mike Barr issues the first
popular-press report of drug- resistant HIV, caused by AZT monotherapy.
Musing darkly, he asks whether a new epidemic of untreatable
multidrug-resistant (MDR) HIV has been spawned. FOLLOW-UP: Resistance soon materializes as a bane of the protease boom, but Barr’s worst-case scenario does not.
"SUPERINFECTION" NEWS: In May 1997’s “Who’s Afraid of Reinfection?” Mark Schoofs dares
to disclose that many gay HIVers are having unprotected sex with one
another. Schoofs speculates about the risk of reinfection with a second
strain that may cause serious treatment complications. FOLLOW-UP:
Only a handful of reinfection—a.k.a. “superinfection"—cases have ever
been found, though last month Frieden’s own health officials were
warning of “many cases.”
“SUPER TRANSMISSION” NEWS: In November
1999’s “Both Sides Now,” HIVer vet Stephen Gendin and his partner, Hush
MacDowell, offer first-person accounts of how MacDowell contracted
Gendin’s MDR virus—and became the first reported case of resistant-HIV
transmission. FOLLOW-UP: After Dr. David Ho’s ADARC first turned him away, dismissing his MDR transmission fears as unscientific, MacDowell went on to be tested and successfully treated at the clinic. Today, he remains healthy. -Walter Armstrong
confusion and panic
had ensued. “Denial and silence are the true dangers,” she wrote in a
Los Angeles Times op-ed, adding that the news should spur drug
companies to “create new HIV drugs” to confront future mutant
viruses. “We can’t tell our public-health officials we would simply
rather not know the bad news about AIDS.”
Indeed, knowing the “bad
news” about AIDS—and reinforcing infection fears—may help those most at
risk. Yet the unmistakable response to the media hysteria among many
gay men remains a puzzled “Is that all there is?” Indifference will
become the true deadly contagion if health officials, facing atypical
HIV infections, keep crying wolf—that is, unless the supervirus somehow
proves worthy of its super PR.
