This is your brain on AIDS drugs

Remember 2004 and 2005?  The years you couldn’t walk without falling and spraining your ankles?
You could no longer climb the stairs in your home without dropping to your hands and knees, and could only come back down by crawling backwards?
Do you remember the times you came out of unconsciousness to see the faces of [...]

I really, really, don’t care what causes AIDS

Once in a while I come across a piece of writing that resonates so closely with my own experiences that I want to say “I wish I had written that”.
Carl Stryg wrote just such an essay recently, published at The Truth Barrier, a website founded by journalist Celia Farber. From the first paragraph, Stryg has [...]

Better AIDS drugs, or just fewer suicides?

I’m on a roll this month with AIDS research reports that intrigue me, particularly because so many of them raise more questions than they answer.  I’m not sure if there is a Holiday uptick in these reports, or if the cold weather just means I have more time on my hands to sit at [...]

Rabid fox no match for AIDS dissident

Keep reading to find out why I just could not resist the headline.  But first, there is a little discussion about AIDS vaccine research I need to get out of the way.
I did a double take when I saw this report promising “further progress” in the search for an AIDS vaccine.  Don’t worry, I will [...]

LOTTI: Take a vacation from AIDS drugs

The LOTTI study, based in Italy, found that patients taking highly active retroviral treatment (HAART) for HIV/AIDS who took a “vacation” from drug treatment fared as well as those who remained on their drugs continuously.
This study offers a desperately needed offer of hope for those in treatment who cannot tolerate the AIDS drugs’ toxicity, or who want to avoid know side effects such as disfigurement and organ failure.

Those poor affluent gays…

Gays and lesbians are far more affluent as a group than their hetero counterparts.
That’s been an accepted marketing mantra for decades. I know. When I worked for a gay newspaper in the 1990s we used various “research” reports that gave the numbers. Even then I puzzled about how these research marketing firms got their numbers.
Now [...]

My socialist Kansas upbringing

(Note: This was originally written as my first blog post on OpenSalon (account no longer active) February 6, 2009, where it was selected as an Editor’s Pick and People’s Pick.)
I have only a few fond memories of growing up in Colby, Kansas in the 1960s.  Actually, I was raised on a wheat farm about [...]

surviving "aids" without drugs

Despite the fact that I was at or near ground zero of the “HIV” explosion in Kansas City during the 1980s and had been sexually active since puberty, for years I repeatedly tested negative on the ELISA tests. I went to the local testing site every year or so, certain the results would be “positive”… [...]