• Fear of the Invisible & Alive and Well SF websites restored

    Janine Roberts may well be my favorite investigative reporter on the topic of AIDS and HIV. She has published several books and produced documentary films, on topics ranging from Aboriginal resistance to British colonialism in Australia, to the shame of deBeers’ diamond mining operations in Africa.

    Janine has also written the much more personal story about her life as a transgendered person—The Seven Days of My Creation: Tales of Magic and Gender. 

    The book that has most helped me form an alternative view about what the heck HIV might really be, and its role in the disease most people call AIDS is titled Fear of the Invisible.

  • 2014: time to move on beyond AIDS dissidence

    As the winter solstice approaches, I am aware of what a noteworthy month this December is for me, in ways that have nothing to do with the holidays. Fifteen years ago this month I was informed that I was “HIV-positive”. Five years ago, I started this blog, primarily to share my experiences with both the diagnosis, as well as previous and new health issues. I will be sharing some exciting news about some changes that will be happening to resistance is fruitful a bit later in this post.

  • AIDS drugs: when resistance is futile

    In nearly every conversation I’ve had with Affecteds who are experimenting with ways to reduce the toxicity of antiretroviral (ARV) regimens, questions about “AIDS drug resistance” comes up. Resistance is often raised as a boogeyman in research trials of monotherapy and intermittent treatment options. While drug resistance—especially bacterial antibiotic resistance to staphylococcus or tuberculosis, for example—is increasingly a problem in modern medicine, one is unlikely to hear drug resistance discussed quite the way it is with AIDS. No other pathogen is described as “sneaky”, “clever”, or more mutable than HIV, despite the fact that retroviruses do not even meet most definitions for being a living entity, let alone have a brain.

  • AIDS drug guidelines: Stop the nukes!

    Stop the nukes! No, not nuclear weapons. Well, yes, those too, but today I’m writing about the increase in reports I’m seeing from the AIDS drug medical literature calling for an end to the use of nucleoside(tide) reverse transcriptase inhibitors (NRTIs), not-so-ironically referred to as “nukes”. As I have written previously, there have been rumblings from clinicians and researchers in the medical literature since at least 2010 to get rid of the NRTI class of antiretroviral drugs entirely from treatment guidelines.

    Unfortunately, it is unlikely that this change will occur at anything comparable to the speed with which AZT and other poison pills were “fast-tracked” to market more than 25 years ago.

  • Quitting drugs is not enough

      Some folks who have read my story about quitting AIDS drugs and nearly two dozen other prescription drugs seem to think I attribute my improved health to that choice alone. It isn’t that simple. There is no doubt in my mind that taking so many prescription drugs, even under the care of physicians,…

  • Cancer scare 2: CANCELLED

    Very good news: I just received the results of the confirmatory AMAS cancer screen, and it was “normal”, or negative. In fact, the results were in the lowest possible range provided on the test. The result from my first AMAS test a couple of months ago was “elevated”, which required a confirmatory test. For obvious reasons, I have very mixed feelings about this test, but I am ready to put it behind me.

  • Clearing out the drafts folder

    As I was doing some housekeeping on my blog, clearing crud out of my drafts folder, I noticed a couple of reasonably complete posts that were never published, for whatever reason. Since they are rather old, and I chose to post-date them, they may not get noticed by the email subscription service, or RSS feeds.

    Here’s a list of old posts that have never been seen before:

  • WAD marks the beginning of SAD

    Meanwhile, I have been fighting severe fatigue again, and that has led me back into that dark place called depression. I don’t want to write about that, of course. I want to write only about successes and victories. Twice last month I felt the onset of shingles in my left eye. The first time I was able to send it into remission quickly and with no evidence of an outbreak. The second time, the inflammation persisted for nearly two weeks, and I am only now feeling as if I might have kept it from erupting into a serious and disfiguring outbreak, like the one that hospitalized me in September, 2012.

  • AIDS dissident crosses enemy lines to find common ground

    The first real bombshell dropped about six minutes into our chat, while talking about ARV drugs. Almost too casually, JTD said “I haven’t been on meds for going on 14 months now.” I had not yet publicized my own decision to start taking ARV drugs again, though I had dropped some pretty serious hints in our email exchange about “going over to the dark side”, and I was sure he knew I was planning to restart them. The irony of JTD’s comment hit me like a slap in the face. “I can’t believe that,” I told JTD, “you quit the drugs, and I’m getting ready to take them.”

    This was probably the pivotal point in our conversation where my doubts and apprehensions about JTD started to soften.

  • Cancer scare: round two

    Once again, the choice and the decisions are mine alone to make. I have an appointment to see a doctor I really liked at the Cancer Center of Kansas City, to get his opinion, and I will be having another blood draw for the confirmatory test.

    Cancer risks aside, I am getting conflicting advice from various alternative healers about how I am dealing with chronic illness in general.