"Secret" HIV Vaccine in use?

[Annisme]

In a class discussion (not a nursing class), someone brought up that there is a "secret" HIV vaccine in use in Africa that the FDA will not approve here. The statement was made that "they" are vaccinating babies so they won't get HIV and that there is also a "cure". All of this information is supposedly maintained is some obscure African government files and websites but the American public is not supposed to know about it. I have found information that there are vaccine trials going in Africa, but nothing has been proven as yet. Has anyone else heard this? I'd like to have good

information to go back with so that misinformation doesn't continue to spread. I did ask the person who made the statement to bring her "proof". As a nursing student, our program has stressed critical thinking. I want to see the valid research and clinical trials (yes, I am one that takes things apart to see how they work!) Thanks!

[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/article/0,9171,945423-1,00.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]

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/archive_new/PAW04-05/15-0608/features1.html

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

[ann945n, RN]

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!