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many thanks for the pcp article. the stories of the pentamidine nebuliser in most of the history books are vital but also often sketchy. this more personal piece puts them in perspective. also, it sent shivers up my spine. while i was off meds in 2005 my cd4s crashed below 200 and caught everyone by surprise. i reacted badly to bactrim/septrin as prophylaxis and was offered nebulised pentamidine instead. having been fascinated with aids-drug history for a good while, my heart leaped when i heard the name. i was sixteen and totally unaffected by aids at the time the nebuliser was trialled. twenty-six years later, puffing away in my sealed-off room, all i could think of were the ccc/cri trials and all the work it took to get this little piece of history developed and licensed. i had three rounds of treatment and i asked to keep the nebuliser and tubes each time. the nurses had to check, and probably thought i was mad, but as i struggled to explain: there aren't many bits and pieces of aids around these days, and the nebuliser is a total gem. i've only seen a couple of photos from the trials, so thanks for that as well. rob
Dr. Sonnabend, Is there some particular reason why you neglect to mention that through-out the 80's, inhalent drug abuse was epidemic among those who came down with PCP? Why are you neglecting to mention that those who filled their lungs with sniffing poppers, snorting crystal meth and coke and crack, and smoking tobacco like fiends was the common ingredient in coming down with PCP? Were you really that outside the gay community in the 80's and 90's that you had not noticed the rampant snorting and sniffing drug addiction that had overtaken our gay community in New York during the time of PCP? The only other explanation for your oversight would be that you perhaps saw nothing unhealthy about chronic drug abuse or filling ones lungs with such toxic chemicals, but I doubt you could possibly be that naive. But please explain why you choose to overlook the massive sniffing and snorting of drugs that almost always also went hand in hand with PCP pneumonia. Yours, Michael Geiger
Alex, I love Lady Bunny, but do you really think Bunny is able to evaluate Sudhir Paul's claims about this research? Why is Paul not able to obtain funding through normal routes? Have any independent scientists confirmed the effects he has claimed? How many people now doing PR for Sudhir Paul actually have the qualifications to review his methodologies and rule out artifacts, etc.?
http://covalentimmunology.org/ Help support the research of Dr. Sudhir Paul of The University of Texas Houston Medical School, who has published the development of a chemically activated prototype vaccine that causes production of protective antibodies against genetically-diverse strains of HIV in an animal model. Paul is the senior author on a paper about this theory in a June issue of the journal Autoimmunity Reviews. Additional data supporting the theory are to be presented at the XVII International AIDS Conference Aug. 3-8 in Mexico City in two studies titled "Survivors of HIV infection produce potent, broadly neutralizing IgAs directed to the superantigenic region of the gp120 CD4 binding site" and "Prospective clinical utility and evolutionary implication of broadly neutralizing antibody fragments to HIV gp120 superantigenic epitope." First reported in the early 1980s, HIV has spread across the world, particularly in developing countries. In 2007, 33 million people were living with AIDS, according to a report by the World Health Organization and the United Nations. Paul's group has engineered antibodies with enzymatic activity, also known as abzymes, which can attack the Achilles heel of the virus in a precise way. "The abzymes recognize essentially all of the diverse HIV forms found across the world. This solves the problem of HIV changeability. The next step is to confirm our theory in human clinical trials," Paul said. Now he needs your help to continue his research so they can raise the money to begin human trials. It's easy, just go to endHIV.com to donate or here: http://covalentimmunology.org/sections/donate.html A video has been created to spread the word about Dr. Paul's work, and we need your help. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JjP_H5n33Eo The video features several celebs (Wilson Cruz, Lady Bunny, Angie Pontani, Thea Gill, Clifford Banagale, Ben Andrews, Kristen Renton and more) and a prominent HIV activist who was born HIV positive (Hydeia Broadbent).
Yeldarb1983
Dr. Sonnabend, your account of Dr. Fauci Eshewing inexpensive, live-saving drugs with pedigrees of saving lives in favor of experimental newer ones which made large pharmaceutical companies large amounts of money seems to parallel the situation we're seeing with the good doctor today in relation to COVID-19. What are your thoughts on those parallels. Will we see a repeat of history in a few years with the mRNA "vaccines?"
September 17, 2021