Category: Science

HIV dissidents foam at the mouth about the treatment of newborns with anti-retroviral drugs, but this new study shows that it works:

The Stanford team found that HIV-infected infants treated with anti-retroviral drugs within two months of birth were less likely to develop AIDS as toddlers than were infants whose treatment was only delayed slightly, to the age of 3 to 4 months.

Of 10 children who started therapy before they were 2 months old, three (30 percent) got sick before they were 3 years old. In contrast, of 16 children who started therapy later, 11 (68 percent) got sick before the age of 3.

But both groups benefited from the treatment, whether given soon after birth or a little later. Without treatment, as many as 20 to 30 percent of HIV-infected infants will develop AIDS by the age of only 4 months — and almost all will get sick by age 6.

Posting this would cause Google Ads to flood us with AIDS-testing ads, one of the reasons I’ve ditched Google.

There’s a nice, pithy critique of Intelligent Desgn at the Ayn Rand Institute web site:

Its advertising to the contrary notwithstanding, “intelligent design” is inherently a quest for the supernatural. Only one “candidate for the role of designer” need apply. Dembski himself–even while trying to deny this implication–concedes that “if there is design in biology and cosmology, then that design could not be the work of an evolved intelligence.” It must, he admits, be that of a “transcendent intelligence” to whom he euphemistically refers as “the big G.”

The supposedly nonreligious theory of “intelligent design” is nothing more than a crusade to peddle religion by giving it the veneer of science–to pretend, as one commentator put it, that “faith in God is something that holds up under the microscope.”

The insistence of “intelligent design” advocates that they are “agnostic regarding the source of design” is a bait-and-switch. They dangle out the groundless possibility of a “designer” who is susceptible of scientific study–in order to hide their real agenda of promoting faith in the supernatural. Their scientifically accessible “designer” is nothing more than a gateway god–metaphysical marijuana intended to draw students away from natural, scientific explanations and get them hooked on the supernatural.

Right to the point.

From The New Criterion’s Weblog we find an odd quote from Santayana:

What governs the Englishman is his inner atmosphere, the weather in his soul. Instinctively the Englishman is no missionary, no conqueror. He prefers the country to the town, and home to foreign parts. He is rather glad and relieved if only natives will remain natives and strangers strangers, and at a comfortable distance from himself. Yet outwardly he is most hospitable and accepts almost anybody for the time being; he travels and conquers without a settled design, because he has the instinct of exploration. His adventures are all external; they change him so little that he is not afraid of them. He carries his English weather in his heart wherever he goes, and it becomes a cool spot in the desert, and a steady and sane oracle amongst all the deliriums of mankind. Never since the heroic days of Greece has the world had such a sweet, just, boyish master. It will be a black day for the human race when scientific blackguards, conspirators, churls, and fanatics manage to supplant him.

Scientific blackguards? I had no idea the Englishman was anti-science. Now we know who settled Kansas, the place where science is on trial.

Ecstasy’s a good drug for treating anxiety and stuff:

Just ask Marcela Gomez and Sue Stevens, two women who used MDMA in underground therapy. Gomez, 47, a rape victim, spent years suffering from panic attacks. Ecstasy, she says, helped her express her fears more openly. “MDMA lets you open a door and not be traumatized,” she says. In 1996, Stevens, now 36, and her dying husband, Shane, used MDMA illegally to explore why they were wasting their last months fighting or not talking at all. The couple were lucid through the experience, occasionally telephoning a therapist for guidance and calmly planning Shane’s funeral. “It wasn’t like after drinking, when you can’t remember what was said,” recalls Stevens. “It was all still there.”

Don’t ask you HMO to pay for it just yet, however – it’s kinda like experimental right now.

I’m surprised Dean Esmay isn’t all over this story about the phantom AIDS superbug.

A new study shows how HIV hijacks T-cells, one of the great puzzles in AIDS research:

One of the first hurdles facing AIDS researchers in the early understanding of the disease was that they could not grow the virus in a dish of T-cells until they learned to put in chemicals that activated those cells.

The latest research, conducted by Dr. Warner Greene and colleagues at the Gladstone institute, provides a plausible reason why HIV can only infect T- cells when they are active.

Greene said most scientists had assumed that resting T-cells were missing some crucial element that HIV needed to get inside them. Instead, his laboratory discovered that resting T-cells have a powerful anti-viral defense wired into their genes.

“Resting T-cells deploy an anti-viral shield that is amazingly effective against HIV,” Greene explained in an interview. “Unfortunately, the shield ‘goes down’ when the T-cell is activated.”

Once the mechanics of this “shields up-shields down” response are fully understood, researchers may be able to design drugs to keep the natural defenses deployed, or turn on similar shields in other cells vulnerable to HIV.

The shield is a naturally occurring protein known as APOBEC3G.

This is interesting if you’ve been watching the arguments put up by the so-called AIDS dissidents who argue that HIV is either non-existent or has nothing to do with AIDS.

I happened to see a bit of their propaganda recently, a pseudo-documentary called The Other Side of AIDS put out by Christine Maggiore and her husband. The film was actually quite hilarious because it was not only utterly non-persuasive, it actually put the the star Maggiore in an extremely bad light. Most of the footage was shot while she was holding forth on a radio program, but the highlight was a presentation she gave to a very bored Willie Brown while cuddling a kid who looked to be about 4 or 5 years old.

Most of us know that If you’ve got an important message to deliver to an important public official, it’s probably a good idea to get yourself a baby sitter, but Maggiore is an attachment parenting fanatic in addition to being a professional AIDS dissident.

The Other Side is very much like a Michael Moore film, but even more like the infamous What the Bleep do We Know? classic of stupidity put out by followers of JZ Knight, the alleged channel for the 35,000 year old warrior spirit Ramtha.

These films hope to capitalize on the fear of religion and ignorance of science that are rampant in our culture by offering perfectly ridiculous claims wrapped-up in scientific terminology.

Professor Irwin Corey would be proud.

This is no April Fool’s Day joke:

Importantly, various recent studies on the topic suggest that laughter in animals typically involves similar play chasing. Could be that verbal jokes tickle ancient, playful circuits in our brains.

More study is needed to figure out whether animals are really laughing. The results could explain why humans like to joke around. And Panksepp speculates it might even lead to the development of treatments for laughter’s dark side: depression.

Meanwhile, there’s the question of what’s so darn funny in the animal world.

“Although no one has investigated the possibility of rat humor, if it exists, it is likely to be heavily laced with slapstick,” Panksepp figures. “Even if adult rodents have no well-developed cognitive sense of humor, young rats have a marvelous sense of fun.”

Science has traditionally deemed animals incapable of joy and woe.

Heh.

H/t reader Ruth.