Daily Pill May Prevent AIDS, and Other Links
Can a pill prevent AIDS? Men who faithfully take a daily pill can reduce their HIV risk by up to 95 percent.
There are those who do not become fitter or stronger, no matter what exercise they undertake. The findings suggest that “there will be millions of humans who cannot improve their aerobic capacity or their insulin sensitivity, nor reduce their blood pressure” through standard exercise.
Separate and unequal: The New York Times wants poor people to stay in Medicaid.
Positive-outcome bias: It means you are more likely to hear about research findings about stuff that works than stuff that doesn’t work, even thought the two types of information are equally valuable.
Not surprised by the NYT. you can be certain that no one who works there is on Medicaid.
The pill will never work. For the same reasons that we don’t have a male birth control pill: men can’t remember to do anything.
Perhaps it’s a little late in the day for sexism, but I’ve never met any man more organized than I am, and I personally wouldn’t want the hassle of remembering a pill every day. Give me a choice between abstinence and taking a pill to avoid HIV, and I choose the former.
You didn’t mention the cost of the AIDS pill: as much as $13,000 a year. And since it is preventive this is for otherwise healthy people.
The anti-viral drug that when taken regularly can prevent AIDs costs about $13,000 per year — so we can assume it’s beyond the reach of most people. The drug supposedly only costs $0.40 in some developing countries, which suggests a black market for re-importing the drug will develop.
A bigger worry is that unscrupulous counterfeiters could make a fake drug with no active ingredients and sell it on the Internet to unsuspecting people. I can easily see how these findings could increase AIDS cases rather than reduce infections.
Not surprising that there are people that exercise won’t help. The entire purpose of medicine is to defeat natural selection. People with chronic high blood pressure, morbidly obese, etc are those that in previous generations would have died. However, medicine can now keep them alive and lower the negative effects of their medical problems.
I’ve seen this in my own family. As a kid, my father was told that he would have died from his asthma if he had been born 10 years earlier. Because he could be treated, he has lived to 78 (and still going strong). I have 4 children and 2 of them have asthma.
BTW, I also think of this every time someone says that global warming/pollution/the factory next door is causing an increase in asthma. No, the fact that people that would have previously died BEFORE passing it along to their descendants is causing the increase.
Virginia may have a legitimate point. BTW, Virginia sexism is permitted as long as the victim is male. Preferaby a white male. It’s Political Correctness 101.