I’m kinda blown away by this story. At first, I was too baffled to really be angry. That someone could lack any sense of community of civic virtue was more surprising than enraging. But the more I think about it, the less charitable I’m feeling.
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I’m not quite sure about whatever motivates the man to avoid testing. A few bloodtests or such might very well yield invaluable data. But this guy says no, and that’s after he said he’d do anything he could to help find a cure.
I wonder if any charitable foundations will throw some serious cash his way so he’ll comply and give the doctors the access that they need?
Well, here’s the reason that he has declined further testing, and he may be a greedy lout, but he’s not exactly satan incarnate.
He did have a positive HIV result in 2002 followed by a negative test in 2003, but there is a false positive rate for the test and there wasn’t some sort of intervening series of tests which demonstrated a gradual fall and eventual elimination of viral loads.
He’s gone on to sell his story for a fair amount of cash to the less reputable news organizations in England saying that, “he has a cure for AIDS,” but really he’s just a man with a false positive HIV test followed by a negative test.
Let us say there are ten thousand men who are tested for HIV. From this test, two men will test positive. 9,998 will test negative. Out of those two men who tested positive, only 1 will have HIV and the other one will test positive but won’t have the disease. This gives us a false positive rate of about 50%, so it is very likely that the man in question did in fact recieve a false positive the first time.
It is important to understand that when being tested, the false positive rate is tremendous. For women’s breast cancer screening, usually only 1 out of 10 women who test positive actually have cancer. Sadly, most doctors don’t even undestand the statistics involed, which gives the population at large both a false sense of security and a false sense of doom depending on the outcome of the tests. There have been many suicides of people who thought they had HIV because of a positve test result, despite not actually having the disease.
Some but not all of the false positive rates are due to labatory errors, and various other mistakes can be made. Always, always get a second test in these situations.
In all, the man in question merely recieved a false positive the first time, sold his story, and now refuses tests because he knows that he isn’t magical.
I’m inclined to agree with the “never had it” crowd. What I’m wondering, though, is why no further testing to track his treatment? Did he refuse treatments? (Haven’t read the article yet). Does it sound like some elaborate hoax wherein he somehow knowingly provides a “hot” sample only to be “cured” at the next testing?
He may be an asshole, but there is apparently some hope coming out of Nairobi. There are a number of prostitutes there who have demonstrated an apparent natural immunity to HIV. This afternoon I was watching a PBS show called RX for Survival, and there was a segment showing that these women have killer T-cells that attack two of the proteins that show up on the surface of cells infected with HIV. Here’s hoping this pans out.
Yes, I’d like to back this up too. I’ve read about the same findings. Also, it seems that Laos has a remarkably low transmission of HIV via female prostitutes as well - but for a different reason. Apparently, it’s an age old cultural custom in Laos to use high concentrated citric juice inserted into the vagina to act as a natural contraceptive. By accident, it appears that the citric juice also kills the HIV virus dead in it’s tracks.
There are some people who have a genetic immunity to HIV. Mostly, they’re decended from the same small community of jews, who had a founding population of several hundred people in an area of Austria. Here’s a relevant article.
I saw a presentation of the paper by the scientist who did the work a few years ago (I love satalite television). To sum up very generally, some people have a deletion mutation which causes a specific protien marker on their T-cells to be very badly deformed. Instead of having a complex three dimension structure, it’s basically a long wiggly noodle. It just so happens that this protien is the specific protien that HIV uses to recognize the T-Cells. Since they have a deformed protien marker, HIV never finds its target, and they won’t get infected, no matter much HIV they are exposed to.
Maybe this guy is immune, maybe he got a false positive test.
I didn’t insert that orthodox smiley, though it is appropriate. I’m too much of a newbie to know ho to correct that, to break the smilely and leave the link intact. Can I get a mod’s help?
I’m not entirely sure I buy the “false positive” line.
The guy had TWO documented positive antibody tests and at least one documented viral load test, which showed that although his HIV virus levels were low, there were not non-existent.
That’s from threemae’s link BTW.
One false-positive is possible, that’s why this guy was tested 3 times…one indeterminate, 2 positive. No-one just gets a diagnosis of HIV based on one test BTW. All positive tests are re-tested in 2 separate labs to reduce the false-positive rate.
Then his viral load was tested, and the virus was found, although not in levels high enough for him to be offered treatment.
The blood was re-tested after the negative results, it was definitely his and was found to give the same results again.
Now, ONE false positive test I can buy, FOUR is a little harder to get my head around.
But whoever he is, and whatever the case he has a right to keep his blood in his veins, just as I have a right to think that he is an asshole for doing so.
Regardless of if you think an event is highly improbable, it is still to some degree able to happen. The statistics I gave above take into account the multiple tests, because nobody is told they are HIV positive untill there have been some type of restrictiveness. No doctor wants to have a high false negative rate, but a false positive does not fare too much better.
