02 October 2007

Stephen Fry - HIV And Me

An interesting programme on BBC 2 tonight at 9pm.

Stephen Fry, a patron of the Terrence Higgins Trust, presents the first of a two-part documentary on how HIV infections are rising, particularly among three groups: the young; black African communities; and heterosexuals.

He was interviewed about the programme for the Northern Echo:

Stephen believes the only way to fight the global battle against the HIV virus is to destroy the deeply entrenched stigmas through frank and honest dialogue. "Talking about Aids is precisely what helps to dispel the myths," he says. "At the moment HIV is a bit like Voldemort and we all have to be Harry Potter and be brave enough to say his name, and then it will get less and less powerful the more we do. However, if we continue to privilege it with this huge power and mystique and make out that it's best not talked about, then it will flourish."
See also: HIV testing in Coventry (THT)

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Selenium defeats HIV. This is from PubMed.
"CONCLUSIONS: Daily selenium supplementation can suppress the progression of HIV-1 viral burden and provide indirect improvement of CD4 count. The results support the use of selenium as a simple, inexpensive, and safe adjunct therapy in HIV spectrum disease." Suppression of human immunodeficiency virus type 1 viral load with selenium supplementation: a randomized controlled trial. Hurwitz BE, et al. And they only used 200 mcg, where it is safe to take 800 mcg.

There are 184 medical articles about it on PubMed.

scott redding said...

I think if you look at the fine print about selenium, it's an "adjunct therapy" that helps blunt the short-term progression of HIV viral load. The authors of the study in question (Barry Hurwitz, Uni of Miami et al) state that the magnitude of benefit pales in comparison to that of antiretrovirals.

So, it doesn't defeat HIV, but it might play a larger role in treatment.