[vashtee]

Originally Posted by CT Pixie

The math works. $250 x 12 months=$3000.00 per year
$3000.00 x 10 yrs = $30,000

I was doing my "figuring" on say one person getting the vaccine vs not getting and the drug companies making more money if the person didn't get the vaccine and got the disease.

Yes there are more and more people born everyday, but more and more are being dx's with HIV/AIDS everyday too.

Okay, you made me break out my calculator.

According to wikki, the current US population is 304,394,060. If you multiply that by $250 per vaccine, you get $76,098,515,000.

Add to that the cost of vaccinating the estimated 4 million new births in the US per year, and that adds up to another $1,000,000,000 per year.


Using the $30,000 figure you provided for medication costs for HIV patients (I have no idea of the actual costs, so if you were wrong, then I am too), and assuming these guys are correct about the number of people suffering from HIV, http://www.aids.org/info/how-many-ha...-and-aids.html, the drug companies are only making $24,000,000,000 - $27,000,000,000 over the course of 10 years. And I could have sworn the rates of new infections were kind of leveling off, but maybe I am remembering it wrong.

I am still not convinced.

[John20]

Originally Posted by Sandy_dfw

The first time I was in college (in 1990) I had a biology professor who told his class that there already was a vaccine but it was not being released. He reasoning was that the pharmaceutical companies made so much money of the HIV drugs that they would lose money if there was a vaccine. In his theory the testing was done in Africa also.

These stories have been around for a long time. I really hope they do have a vaccine soon. But I just do not think they would keep it secret if they did.

Just my oppinion.

There are no vaccine's that cure viruses. A virus infects a cell and rewire's it's DNA to replicate the virus. Science has not found a way to kill viruses (HIV, common cold). It's that simple.

[rph3664]

Originally Posted by kmoonshine

This was an interesting video that I saw some time ago from PBS called "Rx for Survival: Disease Warriors (A Vaccine for AIDS)". Its about several prostitutes from Nairobi who appear to be "immune" to HIV (their body has the ability to fight off the HIV virus), and the development of a vaccine for HIV.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/rxforsurviva...ids2_qt_h.html

There are some people who do indeed appear to be immune to AIDS (mostly hemophiliacs) and it appears that their ancestors were immune from bubonic plague because of the same gene.

The best known example of this was the hemophiliac son of Robert and Suzanne Massie, whose dual biography "Journey" was published in the early 1970s, can be found in nearly every used book store, and is the story of life with him. He's now about 60 years old, HIV-positive and AIDS-free. He's an Episcopalian priest, IIRC.

If you think people have difficulty getting health insurance nowadays with pre-existing conditions, read this and be in for a huge surprise. It was even harder then.

[Sandy_dfw]

Originally Posted by John20

There are no vaccine's that cure viruses. A virus infects a cell and rewire's it's DNA to replicate the virus. Science has not found a way to kill viruses (HIV, common cold). It's that simple.

Actually I posted what my biolgy professor said 18 yrs ago to make the point that these rumours have been going around for a long time. I am sorry I really did not mean to cause a controversy.

Sandy

[rph3664]

Originally Posted by rph3664

There are some people who do indeed appear to be immune to AIDS (mostly hemophiliacs) and it appears that their ancestors were immune from bubonic plague because of the same gene.

The best known example of this was the hemophiliac son of Robert and Suzanne Massie, whose dual biography "Journey" was published in the early 1970s, can be found in nearly every used book store, and is the story of life with him. He's now about 60 years old, HIV-positive and AIDS-free. He's an Episcopalian priest, IIRC.

If you think people have difficulty getting health insurance nowadays with pre-existing conditions, read this and be in for a huge surprise. It was even harder then.

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/ar...5423-1,00.html

He's 52, not 60. My bad. The book's not quite as old as I thought it was.

It's still a staple in used book stores. Must have been a huge best-seller.

[RXtech]

I heard the same thing about cancer when I was a kid. Doctors knew how to cure it, but it was some cheap remedy that couldn't be patented so they kept it secret so they could continue to get rich off the expensive treatments. Just your run-of-the-mill conspiracy theory. LOL

[rph3664]

Originally Posted by RXtech

I heard the same thing about cancer when I was a kid. Doctors knew how to cure it, but it was some cheap remedy that couldn't be patented so they kept it secret so they could continue to get rich off the expensive treatments. Just your run-of-the-mill conspiracy theory. LOL

There are numerous such "remedies." The best known is the Hoxsey Treatment, which had its own clinic with licensed doctors and nurses in Dallas in the late 1950s and now operates out of Tijuana. Harry Hoxsey had to resort to traditional medicine when he was stricken with prostate cancer circa 1970 and his own treatment failed. In the mid-1980s, someone made a movie about the Hoxsey story and you can get it on Netflix (I did).

Did it work? Hard to tell, since it hasn't been studied along with traditional therapies. Some of the people believed to have had cancer actually had non-healing abscesses, a common problem in the pre-antibiotic days.

[rph3664]

http://www.princeton.edu/~paw/archiv...features1.html

This story is more recent. He does have Hepatitis C; I'll see if he needed, or got, a liver transplant.

[ann945n]

Originally Posted by elkpark

Ya gotta love the conspiracy theories ...

Stole the words right out of my mouth!
Did you also hear that the government blew up the levees and caused the floading recently!