An article in POZ Magazine today reported that for the first time, an individual on the HIV-prevention protocol pre-exposure prophylaxis, or PrEP, for over two years not only became infected with HIV, but became infected with a drug resistant strain of the virus. In a case presented at the 2016 Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections (CROI) in Boston, researchers found that a 43 year-old man whose blood serum levels suggested had been adherent to the medication portion of the HIV prevention regimen nevertheless became infected with HIV and that “… his drug resistance had been transmitted from another person, rather than acquired post-transmission.”
Fortunately I expect these guys will be responsible, recognize the death and destruction they now carry, and forego all future unprotected sex with other men so this strain won’t spread any further.
The drugs are all that have been containing HIV, and now at least two of the main four used in treatment are useless. Even better, clearly the original patient who passed this on would likely have been on all four, so this strain probably has a leg up on the remaining two drugs already, if it hasn’t found the seed of a way around them.
Once HIV begins to advance back into the gay population unimpeded by treatment, and begins cooking, it will begin to adapt faster. It wouldn’t surprise me if a lack of drug treatment is what happened in Cuba, and the virus being able to move unimpeded there is why they were the first to evolve the new faster moving strain. Eventually, without the drugs checking it, it could even adapt to better transmit between heterosexuals, and begin taking out leftists.
Of course, if I wanted to kill every gay on the planet, what I would do is open up Cuba now to sex tourism and travel, so we could begin increasing the lethality by getting some of that faster moving Cuban HIV strain into the mix up here.
It never ceases to amaze me how based upon behavior, the right is almost as hell bent on saving our ideological opposition as the left is on eradicating it.
Bear in mind, this will quite possibly come into full bloom just as the Apocalypse hits and resources snap back. So anyone thinking there will be a ton of funding to find new drugs like there was back in the 80’s and 90’s, is smoking crack. This will bloom, and an angry population irritated by shortage and pissed at everyone will vociferously prevent any shifting of the remaining limited research funding away from pediatric cancer and other non-preventable diseases.
The old AIDS protestors are going to find out that the squeaky wheel only gets the grease in r-selection. In K-selection the quiet might makes the right.