The AIDS virus has infected over 1 million people in the United States and over 40 million people worldwide and this will be quite a breakthrough. Back in the 1990′s AIDS patients had to get up in the middle of the night to take from 50 to 60 pills and had to do this other times during the day. They also had severe dietary restrictions due to this intake of pills.

Companies have been combining pills for years. Now they are down to only one pill. This was due to the fact that no one company had the rights to all the medicines necessary to create one pill. Under pressure the companies began working together. Bristol-Myers Squibb Company and Gilead Sciences Inc. are the two companies cooperating on this breakthrough pill. The cost of taking the reduced amount of pills will also save money for those suffering from AIDS.

The porno industry is not happy with this study being pushed by the AIDS Healthcare Foundation. The porno industry like many others has been hit hard by the downturn in the economy. They are claiming that the wearing of condoms will lose customers who want to see it all, not a condom taking away from their view and action. The wearing of a condom will practically nullify some raunchier areas of the industry, where proof of something actually happening, is necessary to satisfy certain porno watchers.

A big decision might be on the horizon for the porn industry. To fight this measure if it passes, or to accept it. It comes down to the decision of which is more important, life or the bottom line.

This study by the health council was started in 2006. The long study has concluded with no positive out come. The question is still in the air. The Catholic faith is probably going to stick to their no birth control policies.

Pope Benedict XVI has said he would consider all aspects of the study but the moral issues may be too great. The scientific and health questions the condom may answer can not overcome these moral issues.

The condom may not stop the spread of Aids but it could add fuel to the fire. A condom offers promiscuous sexual activity and this has caused the epidemic. What happens when there is no condom to use.

Abstinence is and has always been the Catholics motto on issues like this. It will be hard to change the policy of the whole church for the solving of the Aids epidemic or other stds.

What this means is that the findings provide a better understanding of how HIV hides in the body. This could lead to better strategies to kill it or to at least control it. One of the on-going mysteries has been to wonder where the virus hides when it is not present in the blood. Researchers have long suspected that the hiding place is the bone marrow which creates the blood cells.

Still, it remains, although it sounds simple, that killing off all of the blood-producing marrow cells would be lethal to humans. Perhaps a new strategy shall be to target only the latently infected bone marrow cells. Still, finding that there is a hiding place in the bone marrow is just a first step. It is reported that years of research must still be completed in order to reach the next steps. Still, knowing that bone marrow is a hiding place is a great discovery.

The Daily Express reports that the 35-year-old man pricked his 33-year-old wife with a needle contaminated with his HIV positive blood.

Court documents detail how the woman once caught the man handling a syringe with his blood.

She described how in May last year she discovered a sting-like mark on her left thigh and two days later she awoke to a stinging feeling in her leg.

She said, “I got up… and I flicked the blankets… I looked at (the husband) and he was wide awake.”

The wife asked him if he had pricked her and he said: ‘No’.

During a routine checkup, the woman found out she was infected with HIV.

The man found out in 2004 that he had HIV, but the couple agreed they would stay tegether for their children.

“All he said (was) he was sorry. He said: ‘I used needles on you because I wanted you to be the same as me so that you can live with me and you won’t leave me’,” she said.

The husband has admitted willfully infecting another with a disease and faces up to 14 years in jail when he is sentenced at Auckland High Court next year.

New Zealand Man Injects Wife With HIV Twice

Titled “Coming Together As ONE,” the PSA features Kellan Lutz, Nikki Reed, Jackson Rathbone and Ashley Greene from Twilight; Leighton Meester, Jessica Szohr and Ed Westwick from Gossip Girl; Corbin Bleu from High School Musical; Hayden Panettiere from Heroes; Tristan Wilds from 90210; Flash Forward’s John Cho and Tropic Thunder’s Brandon T. Jackson.

The video encourages young people to get involved in the campaign to fight AIDS.

You can watch it here.

The ONE Campaign also fights global poverty.

Today, of course, is World AIDS Day.

Go out and make a difference.

Stars Come Together For World AIDS Day PSA

The number of people living with HIV AIDS has hardly changed over the past two years, stabilizing at 33 million people in most regions, except Africa, according to a report released Tuesday by the UN. The epidemic has probably reached its peak in 1996.

Last year, HIV infections in sub-Saharan Africa accounted for 72% of the 2.7 million new cases worldwide.

Daniel Halperin, AIDS experts at the American University of Harvard, welcomed the reduction in the number of new infections and the deaths due to better access to medicines. According to the UN, four million people are alive today thanks to treatment, ten times more than five years ago.

In their joint report, UNAIDS and the World Health Organization (WHO) estimate that 33.4 million the number of HIV infected people worldwide, is a quasi-stable compared to 33.2 million in 2007. However, this is an estimate made by a mathematical model which has a margin of error of several million people.

AIDS has killed more than 25 million people between 1981 and 2007.

According to Wikipedia, World AIDS Day was first conceived in August 1987 by James W. Bunn and Thomas Netter, two public information officers for the Global Programme on AIDS at the World Health Organization in Geneva, Switzerland.  Bunn and Netter took their idea to Dr. Jonathan Mann, Director of the Global Programme on AIDS (now known as UNAIDS). Dr. Mann liked the concept, approved it, and agreed with the recommendation that the first observance of World AIDS Day should be 1 December, 1988.

Number Of People With AIDS Stabilizing, World AIDS Day Dec 1

According to the UN report, half the world’s population who need HIV treatment are getting it.

Africa still has the highest rate of HIV infections.

Since 2001, when the United Nations Declaration of Commitment on HIV/AIDS was signed, the number of new infections has dropped by 15 percent in sub-Saharan Africa, 25 percent in South Asia and 10 percent in Southeast Asia, according to the joint report released by the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS and the World Health Organization (WHO).

“The good news is that we have evidence that the declines we are seeing are due, at least in part, to HIV prevention,” said Michel Sidibé, Executive Director of UNAIDS.

“However, the findings also show that prevention programming is often off the mark and that if we do a better job of getting resources and programmes to where they will make most impact, quicker progress can be made and more lives saved.”

World HIV Infections On The Decline: Report