Why is HIV so difficult to cure?

[Guest guest]

Your fear can be a great motivator and energizer if used properly.

I'm a great believer in the inspirational effects of fear. Most of us

need to be pretty scared before we'll start anything new that we

consider even slightly difficult. We're just too horrendously lazy.

But fear it can also be crippling. Fear can stop you from curing

something. One of our colleagues was going great guns with immunics

and then multiple sclerosis grabbed her by the throat and threw her to

the ground. She stopped doing immunics.

When I tell people that our game is 5 billion cures over the next five

years they often suggest that we make HIV our first target. And then

I have to tell them I don't think that's a good idea. People are too

scared of it. They'll do good things against it with immunics -- they

do now. We have good cure shows on HIV. But cure it?

Not yet.

I've long known to that if we can get up to five figures on any given

disease, let's say lupus, or HIV for that matter, that is if we can

have 10,000 plus cures of a disease, any disease, we will very soon

thereafter produce a world sweep. IF WE CAN DO 10,000 TIMES WHAT WE

DID WITH CELESTE TURNER'S LUPUS, WE CAN ERADICATE LUPUS FROM THE

PLANET. Lupus would exist only in the disease history books.

The way to do about this is to attack the easy diseases first, and

then work up to the hard ones. And this is why I don't think HIV

should be our No. 1 priority. In and of itself HIV is no more

difficult to cure than herpes simplex -- not intrinsically. But THE

POLITICS of HIV, and I'm using the word politics here to describe a

kind of attitudinal environment, make it virtually impossible to

produce a world sweep against HIV. Or even get our HIV cures into

five figures.

HIV suffers, and the people who love them and who are trying to help

them, have gone through a long series of traumatic shocks over the

last 15 or so years. And while it's impossible to describe any great

detail the nature of the political cycles the shocks produce, it might

shine a light on the subject if I say a few things about it.

Back in the late '80s a lot of my friends began to turn out HIV

positive. One of my most vivid memories is of Ehrato sitting

on the seawall behind my house on Summerland Key talking to a member

of my staff. I was looking down on them from the deck outside my

second floor room, and thinking, wondering, if 's hopes would

be realized and he would survive, because at that point had

high hopes. He believed he'd live. That something would come along.

died within a few months of that moment.

Something did, but at that point was too late. This something was the

HIV cocktail, designed by the brilliant medical Field Marshal Ho.

When people started taking the cocktail they had misgivings --

understandably -- which later turned to feelings of relief and

security -- for those who could stand the drugs.

Since the mid-1980s I've been talking to people who believe they'll be

on the cocktail for the rest of their lives, and feel fine about that.

One, who stayed with me as a houseguest in 1996, said he couldn't

remember the names of his drugs or what they did. He said he used to

know, but that was five years earlier, when he first began taking

them. Now he just takes them on schedule. He was living with,

managing, the allergies to the drugs.

1 showed him how to remove the HIV, and he killed it. He felt dizzy

and nauseated when he first did that. But the nausea passed in a few

minutes, and then he felt better than he had felt in quite awhile.

Killing HIV is good for HIV suffers. It makes them happy. They go to

the calm, clear place when they do it, just like the rest of us. You

can hear that on the cures shows about HIV.

But do they keep up with it? Why would they? Why bother, when the

drugs hold the disease under control.

It's easier not to think about it.

Do we think they should stop taking their drugs? Absolutely not.

We're immuners, not idiots. We think they should use immunics to kill

the HIV, take their drugs, and do everything else they can possibly

due to help themselves, and do a sufficient amount of all of it to

win. And we think that at some point, possibly years down the line,

and in complete alliance and partnership with their doctors, there

might be mutual doctor/patient decision to get off the cocktail.

Because, as every doctor knows, it is extremely dangerous to continue

taking the HIV cocktail indefinitely -- both because of developing

side effects, and because at some point its effectiveness may wane, in

which case it will be child's play for the HIV to completely overrun

the torn and tattered immunological defenses of the HIV sufferer.

My observation of people I have known with down through the years has

shown that feeling calm and clear is not reason enough for most to go

around doing and immunics all day. Which is what you have to do to

kill slow viruses.

Now herpes suffers, lupus sufferers, and people with other diseases

where there are no drugs that control the disease, have a big

incentive to do immunics all day. And, for most of them, even that is

not enough to keep them doing it.

How much less for someone with HIV!

There's something else I should go into here:

An attitude that was disseminated among the HIV body politic, and that

they were asked to adopt at the level of a political philosophy, was

that " you must learn to live with HIV, " in order to feel better,

because for many HIV suffers, the knowledge that they have HIV is

devastating. They can experience emotions that would be typical of an

innocent person who is condemned to death as a criminal. Many of them

fall into a clinical level depression within weeks after they get the

diagnosis. Ehrato, talking about his hopes for the future of

his life with me, was also in a low-grade depression. And he battled

it mightily, right to the end.

The philosophy of living with HIV has made it difficult for HIV

suffers to continue fighting the disease.

Fighting was something we did that when the disease is first

discovered, back in the '80s. And FIGHTING BECAME POLITICALLY

INCORRECT ONCE WE STARTED LEARNING TO LIVE WITH IT. Some New Age

pundits even advocated welcoming the virus as a friend, and thanking

it for the lessons it is giving. The funny thing is that sometimes

that approach unconsciously produces immunic actions that really do

cause the person to become more immune to the virus. Everything works

sometimes. A stopped clock is right twice a day.

Anyway, I suggest that our way of producing a world sweep in HIV is to

focus on other diseases. When we succeeded against them, the HIV

suffers will see the results and feel emboldened to attack HIV en

masse. If we could eradicate lupus, or cytomegalovirus infections,

that would inspire HIV suffers.

The best diseases to focus on are the ones we've had the most success

with: hepatitis B, the flu, cytomegalovirus, herpes simplex, cancer.

All these diseases have their difficulties, but none of those

difficulties are more serious than the ones waiting for us if we try

to go head-to-head against the political, attitudinal fortress that

protects HIV from immunics.

Your loving and supportive friend,

The Eradicating Angel

A Not For Profit Yoga Of Immunity

www.immunics.org

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