During our last office visit a couple of months ago, the infectious disease specialist I am now seeing repeatedly referred to “The Guidelines”, as if they were some kind of Holy Grail for treating her patients. The guidelines she was referring to are actually several documents, published by the U.S. Department of Health and…
I’m willing to grant that gay men are entitled to use PrEP… provided they have access to all the information they need to make an informed decision. Informed consent has been a hallmark of the HIV and AIDS research and prevention efforts for three decades, and that shouldn’t be waived for the campaign favoring PrEP.
Gay men deserve to know that all the claims for Truvada reducing the risk of acquiring HIV-positivity are based on trials—funded by Gilead—that emphasized the importance of using condoms…
One of the most vexing issues I’ve had to deal with since I started exploring alternatives to ART (antiretroviral therapy) for keeping my immune system as healthy as I can, is my inability to abide by some of the most basic rules of scientific research. I’m not beating myself up too much for this…
Rarely a day goes by that I do not scan the headlines collected from various blogs and sources by Google Reader. Smashing a recent lull in AIDS news, some pretty outrageous headlines have been breaking through lately. Last week, it was Baby AZeTa, the little girl in Mississippi who researchers claimed was cured of…
As I spend time this week with one of my dearest friends, a man who has been HIV-positive since at least 1987, and who has been on ARVs almost continuously since 1990, I am reminded that Affecteds have always had the option to consider alternatives to conventional pharmaceutical treatment. Last night we recalled some…
After meeting with my orthomolecular doctor last month to update him on my current status, and to discuss the goals I hope to accomplish this year, I found myself sitting in a chair in the laboratory draw station, waiting for Brad, the phlebotomist, to prepare all the paperwork necessary for the long list of…
Today is Valentine’s Day, and I am sitting in a motel room in Wichita, Kansas, pondering: how do I dare ask friends, family and strangers to give me money so I can continue to experiment with alternative health therapies? The painful answer is: I have no choice, but to try. I left KC at…
I first learned of ultraviolet blood irradiation (UBI) a few months ago from a mutual friend. UBI is also known as extracorporeal photopheresis (ECP) in the medical literature, and most recently BioPhotonic Therapy and Photoluminescent Therapy. Photopheresis been around for more than a century, and started gaining attention in medical circles as early as 1902. Like many alternative protocols, the spectacular success of antibiotics to fight battle field infections in WWII captured the hearts and minds of physicians and started the West’s love affair with pharmaceutical solutions to disease.
Today, as best as I can tell, UBI is approved by the FDA for only two purposes: cutaneous t-cell lymphoma and graft-vs-host disease. It’s use is far more widespread in Europe, Russia, China and South America for a variety of conditions, though it is currently being studied in the U.S. as an alternative treatment or adjunctive treatment for malignancies, auto-immune disorders, and yes, AIDS.
As I have reported previously, high dose intravenous vitamin C seems to improve my energy, my mood and my sense of well-being, if not the laboratory markers often associated with HIV and AIDS. Because the infusions are so expensive, I was intrigued by the possibility of preparing my own IV sodium ascorbate ala Dr….
Some of my AIDS dissident friends reject outright the tests used by mainstream AIDS (AIDStream) doctors to evaluate ‘HIV-positive’ patients and to determine if and when to start treating them with highly active antiretroviral therapy (HAART), more commonly known as the “AIDS cocktail” of drugs. While I agree with them that we can’t know…
This site is no longer updated, but kept online for reference. You should not see this popup notice on future visits.
While much of the information on this site is no longer current, it represents almost a decade of my life. It was a period of considerable reflection and writing was my therapy.
I have moved on from that era and am now moving into what will undoubtedly be the last chapter of my life. My love for writing and telling stories-mine, as well as those of others-goes with me. Join me, if you will, at jondbarnett.com for the adventure.
