25 Years After HIV Discovery: A Global Call to Action

Today we call on international organizations and governments to immediately implement six objectives to end the HIV/AIDS pandemic. We made this announcement and were joined by Jeff Crowley, Director, White House Office of National AIDS Policy.

Globally, many are acting as though HIV and AIDS are no longer the threat they were 25 years ago when the HIV virus was first discovered. However, in fact they remain an unparalleled global health threat, and despite progress in treatment, they could worsen unless determined action is taken. We believe these recommendations are key to reducing and ultimately minimizing the devastation of HIV and AIDS.

Our Global Call to Action is as follows:

1. Invest in medical infrastructure and educational outreach programs in U.S. communities most affected by the HIV/AIDS epidemic

2. Promote global development of HIV/AIDS treatment and control programs along with regional research institutions in developing countries

3. Cultivate and inspire young scientists in the field of human virology

4. Enhance HIV/AIDS education and prevention, especially in countries with high infection rates

5. Support cutting-edge vaccine research and the development of new effective therapies

6. Continue the focus on preventing mother-to-child HIV transmission

Here we are, 25 years after discovering the cause of AIDS and we still have a major, public health HIV/AIDS crisis. Never in the history of mankind have we so quickly identified the cause of an epidemic, developed a test for it and begun to develop drug therapy, changing a once-deadly virus to a lifelong condition with proper medical intervention. It is important for governments and organizations from around the world to come together and combat this collective HIV/AIDS emergency.

Crowley said, "President Obama is fully committed to the worldwide effort to combat HIV/AIDS, and is equally committed to the effort here at home, where we are facing a serious challenge. With more than 56,000 new infections each year and more than 1.1 million people living with HIV/AIDS in the United States, we continue to have a very serious domestic epidemic. As part of the National HIV/AIDS Strategy development process, we will be developing strategies to lower HIV incidence, get all people living with HIV/AIDS into care, and address health disparities."

Despite many advances in HIV research from the virus discovery to the antiretroviral therapy, the AIDS epidemic is still spreading and remains a major health problem in many countries. It is therefore of utmost importance to continue the research to find new ways of treatment and prevention for eradicating the virus infection.

This global action coincides with the publishing of Dr. Gallo and his colleagues' four key groundbreaking articles in Science magazine, May 4, 1984 Vol 224 (#4648). These four papers proved how the then-new, deadly virus was the cause of AIDS. This significant global contribution lead to the development of the HIV blood test, thereby diagnosing individuals and helping to control the pandemic, while paving the way for drug and vaccine research initiated at the National Cancer Institute (NCI). These reports followed the publication by Dr. Montagnier and his co-workers who showed the first existence of this new retrovirus and subsequently contributed to demonstrate its causative role in AIDS.

We are participating in a symposium, "25 Years After Discovering HIV as the Cause of AIDS," co-hosted by the University of Maryland School of Medicine and the National Cancer Institute. The symposium, which will be held May 9-11, 2009, will look back at the origins of research on human retroviruses and the 25 years since proving HIV as the cause of AIDS, summarize the accomplishments of a successful research enterprise, and look forward to overcoming obstacles in treatment and prevention for the global AIDS epidemic.

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Comments

[rhdsma]

It's sad to think that "AIDS" has been around all these years. Some of us remember the foot dragging by the Reagan Administration, who wanted to do nothing. After all , only gays get AIDS, was the thinking back then. Many "treatments" are now available, not only helping HIV patients to remain healthy, but in the end, benefits $$$ Big Pharma. I remember the start of aids and the panic it created. I also remember the gathering of blood from gay men who volunteered to serve their communities in New York, LA, and San Fransisco, to help develop a vaccine for Hepatitis B. This was in 1977. Shortly after, gay men were getting sick. A coworker died in 1979 from a mysterious virus. AIDS hit the scene in 1981. Reagan did not mention AIDS until 1986. But after all these years, why no cure or less expensive treatments available?

[Waltfl]

Exactly. Why no cure. Bacuse all science works like this:

Someone gets funded to do a job. If the job isn't done in a timely manner, efforts may increase for a short period of time, but then, if still no result comes out, funding is being cut or even stopped. Aids research works the opposite way. If a result ever came out, all funding would stop, and scientist who have Billions to throw around right now, would have to cut back. As long as no acceptable result is there, funding doubles every year, because the the aids- topic -having a sexual connotation- is so overblown in the public eye, while other diseases are virtually non-existent or underrated.

If, after all those years, no cure for hiv/aids has been found, there are three possibilities.

1. There is no cure
2. People who are working on it are incapable
3. They don't want to find a cure any time soon, because they feel pretty comfortable with things going as they are right now.

Either way, cut back on funding.

[teaberry]

A college pal does HIV research. Why? because that was where the money is. I don't think Dr. Luc was involved at all, but France also had the scandal of knowingly using contaminated blood for transfusions. And why are we spending all this money to treat Africans when the usa doesn't have national health care? I would prefer more money go into alzheimer's research. I've avoided aids, but I don't like that the best cure for alzheimer's is offing yourself.

[tellbarackdotorg]

One of the largest obstacles to treatment is the incredible cost of antiviral drugs. A typical regimen in the US can cost at retail $20-$30k or more each year. I always think of what a different world it would be if the research and development costs had been covered by the government and the drugs offered at their true cost. Even if each of the 30 or so antivirals out there had cost $500 million each to develop, that would only be $15 billion dollars over the past 25 years. By cutting out the sometimes unbelievable profits by the pharmaceutical companies everyone would benefit.

[peterg76]

AIDS is associated with both sex and death, and people get completely irrational about it. AIDS is a very serious disease, and a complex medical pathology that we need to understand. It is not, however, an "
unparalleled global health threat."

[Morcat]

I am so glad to see this call for an aggressive strategy to combat and treat HIV/AIDS. Some can carp about "behaviors" and who discovered what all they wish, but humans all over the world are dying if this terrible disease. I wholeheartedly support prevention and treatment, and I give my time and money for those causes. However, nothing less than a cure can be enough. Since when have Americans said, "Oh it's too hard" do to something like this? Why are we settling for excuses when the lives of our friends and loved ones are at stake?

Yes, here we are, 25 years down the road with this disease, and we've settled for allowing it to be turned into a chronic disease that fills the coffers of of the pharmaceutical companies. There will never be a cure unless the government mandates a cure, in the same way that putting an American on the moon was mandated. We simply have to do it, and nothing less than curing HIV/AIDS is sufficient. What kind of people are we?

[GardenerNorCal]

Kind of like the way diabetes is treated socially and look at the costs long term. Why no cure?

[Liberal2]

Because the science needed to understand how to cure it is just becoming known. One must understand the difference between basic research and applied research.

[Waltfl]

Come on, stop that "it's everybody's own fault if they get HIV"-talk. In many cases it is not. With the same argument we may abandon kardio-vascular research, because people eat too much unhealthy food and it's their own fault.

[wdw505]

it is a mostly life style issue

[daveny]

Prevention has to be the cornerstone of ANY effort.

In the US, especially in the gay community, the charitably subsidized care from groups like GMHC, the glossy pharmeceutical ads that make HIV treatment look no more difficult than popping an Advil, and the obsession with any glimmer of news about a "cure" has led to nothing but an explosion in unsafe behavior, and accordingly, new infections. This is especially prevalent among younger gay men who both grew up after the development of the first drug treatments, and after the Republicans and Clinton administration gutted comprehensive sex-ed programs.

Prevention is not only far more cost-effective than research and treatment, but it is the ONLY effective method of stopping HIV.

Most reputable immunologists who AREN'T looking for grants from AIDS charities acknowledge that we're about as likely to cure the common cold as we are to ever truly "cure" a retrovirus. It's simply beyond the current scope of our technology. We can all hope that someday it comes to pass that we unlock the secret to doing so, but in the meantime, lives are being destroyed and people are dying because of misinformation, and a decline in the cultural taboo against "bareback" sex that we worked so hard to build in the 90's.

As I'm sure you know, may of the earliest treatments are no longer effective in controlling an HIV infection, because the virus mutates and changes so rapidly even in a single individual.

[Morcat]

I support prevention and treatment. Reliance on prevention alone, however, relinquishes the lives of those who are already infected, and they aren't any more disposable than anyone else. it is utter nonsense to say it's too hard to cure AIDS. There is a cure. We simply have settled for not discovering it, yet.

[ronfromhollywood]

HIV can be avoided really easily. Many other viruses, cancers, diseases however, can not. But leave it to the activists to neglect true human suffering for selfish desires & their consequences. Or rather, selfish desires and the desire to have no consequences.

[Dynamohum]

I'm guessing that you have never met any of the hundreds of thousands of people who were deceived by someone else, being passed the virus, under what could be what someone thinks is a monogamous long term trusting relationship. What should happen to the innocent victims? While some cases are due to exactly what you are talking about, the majority ARE NOT. If it weren't for HIV/AIDS activism there wouldn't be as many breakthroughs treating a whole host of other viral conditions including CANCER. Fact of the matter is, the intense research has yielded treatment for hundreds of other conditions. That would not have happened so quickly without HIV research.

[Waltfl]

Dear Drs. Gallo & Montagnier:

I am not a physician or virologist, but I have some questions. It has come to the point where it is almost a must for western world leaders, to have aids research on top of their agendas. Often, their compassion as politicians is evaluated by how much money he or she approves to fight the aids epidemic. However, 25 years and Billions of dollars later, no groundbreaking progress has been made. At the same time, scientists researching other and sometimes even deadlier epidemics than aids, like the flu, malaria, or hepatitis, live financially in the shadows of the big HIV-virologists. In virology in these days it seems to be: aids or nothing.

Considered the outrageous amounts of money that were spent in the past 25 years on aids research, and the comparably small progress that has been made, wouldn't it be fair and more promising to create general funding for virology and bacteriology, a big pot, where all researchers get a similar share, instead of neglecting 90% of the filed in favor of the sole topic that gets the most press coverage? Don't get me wrong, I am all for aids research, but science is result-oriented. If the results aren't there in a timely matter, we need to change the methods. Deliver or cut back.

[Dynamohum]

The government has actually put very little money in HIV/AIDS research and development. Private companies spent far far more in a couple of years than the government has spent on HIV/AIDS. Money from Ryan White for HIV/AIDS care does not count in the equation either. Africa has gotten more HIV dollars in recent years from the US and it dwarves what the government invested in further research of HIV/AIDS.

[Waltfl]

Please define "very little money". This year's budget alone contains $10.4 billion for medical research, the biggest part goes to aids research. This is only in the USA. The total amounts spent world wide in the past 25 years on aids research accumulate probably to a multiple three figure billion amount, even though nobody has bothered to tally up. That is not "very little money", that is a significant amount.

[csavage]

HIV seems to be emerging as a desirable infection in some gay populations...

Also, although Dr. Gallo is credited as being a co-discoverer of HIV, the judgment of a lawsuit between Dr. Gallo and Dr. Montagnier awards that distinction to Dr. Montagnier alone. I think you should amend your post to reflect that....

[CrzyRussell]

Prevention is the key. Since Aids is strictly a behavior related disease I think a lot more should be done in that area.

[daveny]

Agreed. While I wholly support compassion for those who have become infected, i think the MOST compassionate thing we can do is help prevent people from becoming infected in the first place!

[Morcat]

So we just throw away those who are infected? Set them out by the dumpster, like the other compassionate people wanted to do in the mid-1980s. What kind of people are we supposed to be, anyway?