Talk to me about the viral load test.
What is the false positive rate for it?
Because it did detect HIV virus, just not a lot of it.
From the avert.org website, it claims that prior cases of false positives derive from heightened immune responses after a flu-shot etc. Even the fluid from the initial positive tests were retested again and still came up positive for HIV antibodies, so it certainly seems that there were HIV antibodies in his system and lab error or whatever isn’t at fault here, but the point is that there have been documented false positives before due to some special immune circumstances.
Again, is it more likely that he had a false positive, of which there are documented cases, or some sort of amazing and previously undocumented ability to cure himself of AIDS?
Maybe he was afraid he’d get the old Henrietta Lacks treatment. Sure hope it doesn’t happen to those prostitutes in Nairobi if they turn out to be the source of an AIDS cure.
I think we are looking at this HIV positive from too great a distance in terms of the person.
We are largely distanced from the personal consequencies from being told we are HIV positive, as such I doubt many of us can really appreciate the effect of being effectively told of a death sentence.
Imagine for the last few years that you’ve been living under this shadow, the effect it must have on your thoughts, values, how you see the future, your life plans, your relationships with others.
Suddenly the death sentence is cast aside, decisions you might have made about your future have been delayed, or completely stopped, and to cap it all, your patient confidentiality appears to have been breached, and now everyone in the world wants to know you, they were not interested before, when you were dying, now they are.
I would expect that rationality after such experience is not easy to come by, the media are vying for your exclusive signature, agents pestering you, along with the rest of society somehow putting an implied pressure on you that you are under and obligation to submit to testing, society didn’t care too much about you before.
What happend to his privacy, what happens if retesting shows you either never had it, or maybe even retesting is actually the wrong diagnosis, you still have HIV.
There must be a whole host of conflicting thoughts going throught this young mans mind, and it will not be helped by all those hangers on.
Stardom is enough to turn any persons head, relief from a death sentence and the consequent media flurry must be morally disorientating.
I think the OP is thinking too much in terms of loving humanity, but not considering the individuals that make it up, sure, it would seem this young man has some duty to help save us all, but that’s only from your point of view, now try it from his.
Already done.
Sorry, I hate to do this in the Pit, but cite? For the false positive rate and suicide claim.
He does.
I almost made the same mistake untill I saw this.
I must be missing something, because I read that whole thing already and didn’t see anything about suicides or false positive rates (other than that they’re very rare). Perhaps elaboration is in order? Or some other cites?
Perhaps Mr. Stimpson is a real Scotman. And as everyone knows, real Scotmen don’t worry about HIV. Nooo lads… 'e just g’it the heed!
Sorry, I was referring more to the assumption that the subject in queston is most likely the result of a false positive. I can’t vouch for the other stats.
It seems that the claimed 50% accuracy (or inaccuracy if you’d prefer) rate is totally specious.
[
](http://www.sfaf.org/aids101/hiv_testing.html#accuracy)
Maybe the CDC is wrong, but for a claim of a 50% false positive rate, I think we’re gonna need a solid cite.
Mea culpa, the false positve rate is in fact 1 in 10,000. However, the point still stands: the chances of you having the disease if you recieve a positive test is still 50%.
To understand this, imagine 10,000 men being tested for HIV. One male has the disease (base rate) and will test positive with practical certainity, better known as sensitivity. Out of the rest who are not infected, some 9,999 men, another dude will also test positive. This is the false positive rate, which I jumbled above. Now, in all, 2 men have tested positive out of 10,000 men.
But, out of those 2 men, only 1 has the disease. This means that there is a 50% likelihood of testing positive and having the disease.
Sorry I screwed up my post above. Are we clear now?
(Most of this information comes from Gerd Gigerenzer’s Calculated Risk. His cites for the above are varied, but I will provide one. First off, I’ll make the same disclaimer that he does, which is that no real standardization has been applied to calculating false positive rates. With available data, though, He, Hoffrage, and Ebert found a false positive rate the same as the CDC one, which can be found in AIDS Care, 10, 197-211.)
No, it’s still 9,999 in 10,000.
The math there is seriously screwed.
Where are you getting that out of those two men, one will have it? Where are you getting that our of 10,000 tests, only one will test positive? Can you provide some oneline cites?
No, it’s not, and the math is not particularly screwed. Meet conditional probability and Bayes’ Theorem.
Hope this helps.
Wouldn’t be saving lives anyway, just not possibly taking lives.
You’re going to have to do a lot better than a wiki cite.
Why don’t you quote the parts you view as relevant and maybe show the work that one would use to get at the result of a 50% error rate in a test that’s 99% accurate?
Because otherwise it sounds like a plan ol’ Gambler’s Fallacy.
Cut the guy a little slack; he’s probably under intense pressure from the pharmaceutical mafia.
*“Mr. Stimpson? I represent a consortium of businesses with heavy financial investments in the palliative care and management of HIV. We were very interested to hear that the key to eliminate this disease may reside in your blood. You know, blood is a very powerful and mysterious substance, Mr. Stimpson. Sometimes it can vanish from a person’s body entirely, at high speed. Sometimes people are found floating in the river without any blood in their body at all.” *
I am going to have to? You have got to be kidding.
I am not paid to teach elementary probability to man-children.
I post to the SDMB for fun and to fight ignorance. The wiki articles are sufficiently informative without being overly rigorous. Someone of your intellect should have little difficulty figuring out the important parts and perhaps learning something about basic probability in the process. The tools are in your hands. If you don’t want to bother, I won’t lose any sleep. Like scott_plaid, “you win”.
Nope, no joke. Non peer reviewed user-created often-wrong wiki articles are a piss poor cite. Besides which you refuse to quote the relevant part or show your work at how you arrive at your conclusion.
Cute schnookums. So you make a driveby wiki post, and then can’t even quote the relevant part, and then you whine about it.
You still can’t even tell me how this is not just a Gambler’s Fallacy.
I call bullshit on the second part.
.Telling people that a 1 in 10,000 chance of getting a false positive is actually a 50% chance is termendously dangerous and irresponsible.
And yet you refuse to quote the specific part you’re saying proves that a test with a false positive rate of 1 in 10,000 actually has a false positive rate of 1 in 2.
The example given above by Zebra assumed that instead of having 10,000 positives, there is at first only one, and then a second. It wasn’t one false positive out of 10,000 tests, but one false positive out of 10,000 postive results. Again, the math is screwy as the chance out of 10,000 positive results is that only one is a false positive. Not 5,000.
And someone so quick to condescend to someone asking for more than a driveby wiki cite should be able to explain something rather than whatever the heck your post is supposed to ‘prove’.
If I won’t bother? You drop a user-created non-peer-reviewed wiki cite and then refuse to even quote which part of it would be applicable? And I’m the one who won’t bother?
Yeah, asking which part of your cite supports the claim that a test with a false positive rate of 1 in 10,000 actually has a false positive rate of 1 in 2 is beyond the pale. I’m definitely claiming that “I win.” Mmm hmmmmmm.
Now if you’re going to get all snippy and call me a ‘man-child’ because I want you to actually do more than make a driveby post with a cite whose credibility is poor at best, and then claim I’m somehow acting dishonorably, you can be my guest.
Now if you’d like to, calmly and without the snark, simply explain why a chance of 1 in 10,000 for a false positive is equal to a chance of 1 in 2, I’d like to hear it. I’m honestly asking that, just as I was honestly saying that to prove such a massively important point you’d sure as heck need more than a simple wiki cite.
For instance, it does seem that I made a mistake and that, if I’m reading it correctly, the stat of 1 in 10,000 is for 10,000 tests one will come back with a false postive, and not 10,000 positives one will be false. But, still, that doesn’t mean you’ve done anything other than offer a driveby wiki cite.
But if you don’t want to cut the needless condesencion and driveby flinging of wiki stuff, I guess that ‘fighting ignorance’ is too big a mission for the day and ‘snarking’ will replace it.