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Dr. Gary Null provides a commentary on "Universal  Healthcare"       Universal Healthcare is the Solution to a Broken Medical System Gary Null, PhD Progressive Radio Network, March 3, 2025 For over 50 years, there has been no concerted or successful effort to bring down medical costs in the American healthcare system. Nor are the federal health agencies making disease prevention a priority. Regardless whether the political left or right sponsors proposals for reform, such measures are repeatedly defeated by both parties in Congress. As a result, the nation's healthcare system remains one of the most expensive and least efficient in the developed world. For the past 30 years, medical bills contributing to personal debt regularly rank among the top three causes of personal bankruptcy. This is a reality that reflects not only the financial strain on ordinary Americans but the systemic failure of the healthcare system itself. The urgent question is: If President Trump and his administration are truly seeking to reduce the nation's $36 trillion deficit, why is there no serious effort to reform the most bloated and corrupt sector of the economy? A key obstacle is the widespread misinformation campaign that falsely claims universal health care would cost an additional $2 trillion annually and further balloon the national debt. However, a more honest assessment reveals the opposite. If the US adopted a universal single-payer system, the nation could actually save up to $20 trillion over the next 10 years rather than add to the deficit. Even with the most ambitious efforts by people like Elon Musk to rein in federal spending or optimize government efficiency, the estimated savings would only amount to $500 billion. This is only a fraction of what could be achieved through comprehensive healthcare reform alone. Healthcare is the largest single expenditure of the federal budget. A careful examination of where the $5 trillion spent annually on healthcare actually goes reveals massive systemic fraud and inefficiency. Aside from emergency medicine, which accounts for only 10-12 percent of total healthcare expenditures, the bulk of this spending does not deliver better health outcomes nor reduce trends in physical and mental illness. Applying Ockham's Razor, the principle that the simplest solution is often the best, the obvious conclusion is that America's astronomical healthcare costs are the direct result of price gouging on an unimaginable scale. For example, in most small businesses, profit margins range between 1.6 and 2.5 percent, such as in grocery retail. Yet the pharmaceutical industrial complex routinely operates on markup rates as high as 150,000 percent for many prescription drugs. The chart below highlights the astronomical gap between the retail price of some top-selling patented pharmaceutical medications and their generic equivalents. Drug Condition Patent Price (per unit) Generic Price Estimated Manufacture Cost Markup Source Insulin (Humalog) Diabetes $300 $30 $3 10,000% Rand (2021) EpiPen Allergic reactions $600 $30 $10 6,000% BMJ (2022) Daraprim Toxoplasmosis $750/pill $2 $0.50 150,000% JAMA (2019) Harvoni Hepatitis C $94,500 (12 weeks) $30,000 $200 47,000% WHO Report (2018) Lipitor Cholesterol $150 $10 $0.50 29,900% Health Affairs (2020) Xarelto Blood Thinner $450 $25 $1.50 30,000% NEJM (2020) Abilify Schizophrenia $800 (30 tablets) $15 $2 39,900% AJMC (2019) Revlimid Cancer $16,000/mo $450 $150 10,500% Kaiser Health News (2021) Humira Arthritis $2,984/dose $400 $50 5,868% Rand (2021) Sovaldi Hepatitis C $1,000/pill $10 $2 49,900% JAMA (2021) Xolair Asthma $2,400/dose $300 $50 4,800% NEJM (2020) Gleevec Leukemia $10,000/mo $350 $200 4,900% Harvard Public Health Review (2020) OxyContin Pain Relief $600 (30 tablets) $15 $0.50 119,900% BMJ (2022) Remdesivir Covid-19 $3,120 (5 doses) N/A $10 31,100% The Lancet (2020) The corruption extends far beyond price gouging. Many pharmaceutical companies convince federal health agencies to fund their basic research and drug development with taxpayer dollars. Yet when these companies bring successful products to market, the profits are kept entirely by the corporations or shared with the agencies or groups of government scientists. On the other hand, the public, who funded the research, receives no financial return. This amounts to a systemic betrayal of the public trust on a scale of hundreds of billions of dollars annually. Another significant contributor to rising healthcare costs is the widespread practice of defensive medicine that is driven by the constant threat of litigation. Over the past 40 years, defensive medicine has become a cottage industry. Physicians order excessive diagnostic tests and unnecessary treatments simply to protect themselves from lawsuits. Study after study has shown that these over-performed procedures not only inflate costs but lead to iatrogenesis or medical injury and death caused by the medical  system and practices itself. The solution is simple: adopting no-fault healthcare coverage for everyone where patients receive care without needing to sue and thereby freeing doctors from the burden of excessive malpractice insurance. A single-payer universal healthcare system could fundamentally transform the entire industry by capping profits at every level — from drug manufacturers to hospitals to medical equipment suppliers. The Department of Health and Human Services would have the authority to set profit margins for medical procedures. This would ensure that healthcare is determined by outcomes, not profits. Additionally, the growing influence of private equity firms and vulture capitalists buying up hospitals and medical clinics across America must be reined in. These equity firms prioritize profit extraction over improving the quality of care. They often slash staff, raise prices, and dictate medical procedures based on what will yield the highest returns. Another vital reform would be to provide free medical education for doctors and nurses in exchange for five years of service under the universal system. Medical professionals would earn a realistic salary cap to prevent them from being lured into equity partnerships or charging exorbitant rates. The biggest single expense in the current system, however, is the private health insurance industry, which consumes 33 percent of the $5 trillion healthcare budget. Health insurance CEOs consistently rank among the highest-paid executives in the country. Their companies, who are nothing more than bean counters, decide what procedures and drugs will be covered, partially covered, or denied altogether. This entire industry is designed to place profits above patients' lives. If the US dismantled its existing insurance-based system and replaced it with a fully reformed national healthcare model, the country could save $2.7 trillion annually while simultaneously improving health outcomes. Over the course of 10 years, those savings would amount to $27 trillion. This could wipe out nearly the entire national debt in a short time. This solution has been available for decades but has been systematically blocked by corporate lobbying and bipartisan corruption in Washington. The path forward is clear but only if American citizens demand a system where healthcare is valued as a public service and not a commodity. The national healthcare crisis is not just a fiscal issue. It is a crucial moral failure of the highest order. With the right reforms, the nation could simultaneously restore its financial health and deliver the kind of healthcare system its citizens have long deserved. American Healthcare: Corrupt, Broken and Lethal Richard Gale and Gary Null Progressive Radio Network, March 3, 2025 For a nation that prides itself on being the world's wealthiest, most innovative and technologically advanced, the US' healthcare system is nothing less than a disaster and disgrace. Not only are Americans the least healthy among the most developed nations, but the US' health system ranks dead last among high-income countries. Despite rising costs and our unshakeable faith in American medical exceptionalism, average life expectancy in the US has remained lower than other OECD nations for many years and continues to decline. The United Nations recognizes healthcare as a human right. In 2018, former UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon denounced the American healthcare system as "politically and morally wrong." During the pandemic it is estimated that two to three years was lost on average life expectancy. On the other hand, before the Covid-19 pandemic, countries with universal healthcare coverage found their average life expectancy stable or slowly increasing. The fundamental problem in the U.S. is that politics have been far too beholden to the pharmaceutical, HMO and private insurance industries. Neither party has made any concerted effort to reign in the corruption of corporate campaign funding and do what is sensible, financially feasible and morally correct to improve Americans' quality of health and well-being.   The fact that our healthcare system is horribly broken is proof that moneyed interests have become so powerful to keep single-payer debate out of the media spotlight and censored. Poll after poll shows that the American public favors the expansion of public health coverage. Other incremental proposals, including Medicare and Medicaid buy-in plans, are also widely preferred to the Affordable Care Act or Obamacare mess we are currently stuck with.   It is not difficult to understand how the dismal state of American medicine is the result of a system that has been sold out to the free-market and the bottom line interests of drug makers and an inflated private insurance industry. How advanced and ethically sound can a healthcare system be if tens of millions of people have no access to medical care because it is financially out of their reach?  The figures speak for themselves. The U.S. is burdened with a $41 trillion Medicare liability. The number of uninsured has declined during the past several years but still lingers around 25 million. An additional 30-35 million are underinsured. There are currently 65 million Medicare enrollees and 89 million Medicaid recipients. This is an extremely unhealthy snapshot of the country's ability to provide affordable healthcare and it is certainly unsustainable. The system is a public economic failure, benefiting no one except the large and increasingly consolidated insurance and pharmaceutical firms at the top that supervise the racket.   Our political parties have wrestled with single-payer or universal healthcare for decades. Obama ran his first 2008 presidential campaign on a single-payer platform. Since 1985, his campaign health adviser, the late Dr. Quentin Young from the University of Illinois Medical School, was one of the nation's leading voices calling for universal health coverage.  During a private conversation with Dr. Young shortly before his passing in 2016, he conveyed his sense of betrayal at the hands of the Obama administration. Dr. Young was in his 80s when he joined the Obama campaign team to help lead the young Senator to victory on a promise that America would finally catch up with other nations. The doctor sounded defeated. He shared how he was manipulated, and that Obama held no sincere intention to make universal healthcare a part of his administration's agenda. During the closed-door negotiations, which spawned the weak and compromised Affordable Care Act, Dr. Young was neither consulted nor invited to participate. In fact, he told us that he never heard from Obama again after his White House victory.   Past efforts to even raise the issue have been viciously attacked. A huge army of private interests is determined to keep the public enslaved to private insurers and high medical costs. The failure of our healthcare is in no small measure due to it being a fully for-profit operation. Last year, private health insurance accounted for 65 percent of coverage. Consider that there are over 900 private insurance companies in the US. National Health Expenditures (NHE) grew to $4.5 trillion in 2022, which was 17.3 percent of GDP. Older corporate rank-and-file Democrats and Republicans argue that a single-payer or socialized medical program is unaffordable. However, not only is single-payer affordable, it will end bankruptcies due to unpayable medical debt. In addition, universal healthcare, structured on a preventative model, will reduce disease rates at the outset.    Corporate Democrats argue that Obama's Affordable Care Act (ACA) was a positive step inching the country towards complete public coverage. However, aside from providing coverage to the poorest of Americans, Obamacare turned into another financial anchor around the necks of millions more. According to the health policy research group KFF, the average annual health insurance premium for single coverage is $8,400 and almost $24,000 for a family. In addition, patient out-of-pocket costs continue to increase, a 6.6% increase to $471 billion in 2022. Rather than healthcare spending falling, it has exploded, and the Trump and Biden administrations made matters worse.    Clearly, a universal healthcare program will require flipping the script on the entire private insurance industry, which employed over half a million people last year.  Obviously, the most volatile debate concerning a national universal healthcare system concerns cost. Although there is already a socialized healthcare system in place -- every federal legislator, bureaucrat, government employee and veteran benefits from it -- fiscal Republican conservatives and groups such as the Koch Brothers network are single-mindedly dedicated to preventing the expansion of Medicare and Medicaid. A Koch-funded Mercatus analysis made the outrageous claim that a single-payer system would increase federal health spending by $32 trillion in ten years. However, analyses and reviews by the Congressional Budget Office in the early 1990s concluded that such a system would only increase spending at the start; enormous savings would quickly offset it as the years pass. In one analysis, "the savings in administrative costs [10 percent of health spending] would be more than enough to offset the expense of universal coverage."    Defenders of those advocating for funding a National Health Program argue this can primarily be accomplished by raising taxes to levels comparable to other developed nations. This was a platform Senator Bernie Sanders and some of the younger progressive Democrats in the House campaigned on. The strategy was to tax the highest multimillion-dollar earners 60-70 percent. Despite the outrage of its critics, including old rank-and-file multi-millionaire Democrats like Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer, this is still far less than in the past. During the Korean War, the top tax rate was 91 percent; it declined to 70 percent in the late 1960s. Throughout most of the 1970s, those in the lowest income bracket were taxed at 14 percent. We are not advocating for this strategy because it ignores where the funding is going, and the corruption in the system that is contributing to exorbitant waste.    But Democratic supporters of the ACA who oppose a universal healthcare plan ignore the additional taxes Obama levied to pay for the program. These included surtaxes on investment income, Medicare taxes from those earning over $200,000, taxes on tanning services, an excise tax on medical equipment, and a 40 percent tax on health coverage for costs over the designated cap that applied to flexible savings and health savings accounts. The entire ACA was reckless, sloppy and unnecessarily complicated from the start.    The fact that Obamacare further strengthened the distinctions between two parallel systems -- federal and private -- with entirely different economic structures created a labyrinth of red tape, rules, and wasteful bureaucracy. Since the ACA went into effect, over 150 new boards, agencies and programs have had to be established to monitor its 2,700 pages of gibberish. A federal single-payer system would easily eliminate this bureaucracy and waste.    A medical New Deal to establish universal healthcare coverage is a decisive step in the correct direction. But we must look at the crisis holistically and in a systematic way. Simply shuffling private insurance into a federal Medicare-for-all or buy-in program, funded by taxing the wealthiest of citizens, would only temporarily reduce costs. It will neither curtail nor slash escalating disease rates e. Any effective healthcare reform must also tackle the underlying reasons for Americans' poor state of health. We cannot shy away from examining the social illnesses infecting our entire free-market capitalist culture and its addiction to deregulation. A viable healthcare model would have to structurally transform how the medical economy operates. Finally, a successful medical New Deal must honestly evaluate the best and most reliable scientific evidence in order to effectively redirect public health spending.    For example, Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, a former Obama healthcare adviser, observed that AIDS-HIV measures consume the most public health spending, even though the disease "ranked 75th on the list of diseases by personal health expenditures." On the other hand, according to the American Medical Association, a large percentage of the nation's $3.4 trillion healthcare spending goes towards treating preventable diseases, notably diabetes, common forms of heart disease, and back and neck pain conditions. In 2016, these three conditions were the most costly and accounted for approximately $277 billion in spending. Last year, the CDC announced the autism rate is now 1 in 36 children compared to 1 in 44 two years ago. A retracted study by Mark Blaxill, an autism activist at the Holland Center and a friend of the authors, estimates that ASD costs will reach $589 billion annually by 2030. There are no signs that this alarming trend will reverse and decline; and yet, our entire federal health system has failed to conscientiously investigate the underlying causes of this epidemic. All explanations that might interfere with the pharmaceutical industry's unchecked growth, such as over-vaccination, are ignored and viciously discredited without any sound scientific evidence. Therefore, a proper medical New Deal will require a systemic overhaul and reform of our federal health agencies, especially the HHS, CDC and FDA. Only the Robert Kennedy Jr presidential campaign is even addressing the crisis and has an inexpensive and comprehensive plan to deal with it. For any medical revolution to succeed in advancing universal healthcare, the plan must prioritize spending in a manner that serves public health and not private interests. It will also require reshuffling private corporate interests and their lobbyists to the sidelines, away from any strategic planning, in order to break up the private interests' control over federal agencies and its revolving door policies. Aside from those who benefit from this medical corruption, the overwhelming majority of Americans would agree with this criticism. However, there is a complete lack of national trust that our legislators, including the so-called progressives, would be willing to undertake such actions.    In addition, America's healthcare system ignores the single most critical initiative to reduce costs - that is, preventative efforts and programs instead of deregulation and closing loopholes designed to protect the drug and insurance industries' bottom line. Prevention can begin with banning toxic chemicals that are proven health hazards associated with current disease epidemics, and it can begin by removing a 1,000-plus toxins already banned in Europe. This should be a no-brainer for any legislator who cares for public health. For example, Stacy Malkan, co-founder of the Campaign for Safe Cosmetics, notes that "the policy approach in the US and Europe is dramatically different" when it comes to chemical allowances in cosmetic products. Whereas the EU has banned 1,328 toxic substances from the cosmetic industry alone, the US has banned only 11. The US continues to allow carcinogenic formaldehyde, petroleum, forever chemicals, many parabens (an estrogen mimicker and endocrine hormone destroyer), the highly allergenic p-phenylenediamine or PBD, triclosan, which has been associated with the rise in antibiotic resistant bacteria, avobenzone, and many others to be used in cosmetics, sunscreens, shampoo and hair dyes.   Next, the food Americans consume can be reevaluated for its health benefits. There should be no hesitation to tax the unhealthiest foods, such as commercial junk food, sodas and candy relying on high fructose corn syrup, products that contain ingredients proven to be toxic, and meat products laden with dangerous chemicals including growth hormones and antibiotics. The scientific evidence that the average American diet is contributing to rising disease trends is indisputable. We could also implement additional taxes on the public advertising of these demonstrably unhealthy products. All such tax revenue would accrue to a national universal health program to offset medical expenditures associated with the very illnesses linked to these products. Although such tax measures would help pay for a new medical New Deal, it may be combined with programs to educate the public about healthy nutrition if it is to produce a reduction in the most common preventable diseases. In fact, comprehensive nutrition courses in medical schools should be mandatory because the average physician receives no education in this crucial subject.  In addition, preventative health education should be mandatory throughout public school systems.   Private insurers force hospitals, clinics and private physicians into financial corners, and this is contributing to prodigious waste in money and resources. Annually, healthcare spending towards medical liability insurance costs tens of billions of dollars. In particular, this economic burden has taxed small clinics and physicians. It is well past the time that physician liability insurance is replaced with no-fault options. Today's doctors are spending an inordinate amount of money to protect themselves. Legions of liability and trial lawyers seek big paydays for themselves stemming from physician error. This has created a culture of fear among doctors and hospitals, resulting in the overly cautious practice of defensive medicine, driving up costs and insurance premiums just to avoid lawsuits. Doctors are forced to order unnecessary tests and prescribe more medications and medical procedures just to cover their backsides. No-fault insurance is a common-sense plan that enables physicians to pursue their profession in a manner that will reduce iatrogenic injuries and costs. Individual cases requiring additional medical intervention and loss of income would still be compensated. This would generate huge savings.    No other nation suffers from the scourge of excessive drug price gouging like the US. After many years of haggling to lower prices and increase access to generic drugs, only a minute amount of progress has been made in recent years. A 60 Minutes feature about the Affordable Care Act reported an "orgy of lobbying and backroom deals in which just about everyone with a stake in the $3-trillion-a-year health industry came out ahead—except the taxpayers.” For example, Life Extension magazine reported that an antiviral cream (acyclovir), which had lost its patent protection, "was being sold to pharmacies for 7,500% over the active ingredient cost. The active ingredient (acyclovir) costs only 8 pennies, yet pharmacies are paying a generic maker $600 for this drug and selling it to consumers for around $700." Other examples include the antibiotic Doxycycline. The price per pill averages 7 cents to $3.36 but has a 5,300 percent markup when it reaches the consumer. The antidepressant Clomipramine is marked up 3,780 percent, and the anti-hypertensive drug Captopril's mark-up is 2,850 percent. And these are generic drugs!    Medication costs need to be dramatically cut to allow drug manufacturers a reasonable but not obscene profit margin. By capping profits approximately 100 percent above all costs, we would save our system hundreds of billions of dollars. Such a measure would also extirpate the growing corporate misdemeanors of pricing fraud, which forces patients to pay out-of-pocket in order to make up for the costs insurers are unwilling to pay.    Finally, we can acknowledge that our healthcare is fundamentally a despotic rationing system based upon high insurance costs vis-a-vis a toss of the dice to determine where a person sits on the economic ladder. For the past three decades it has contributed to inequality. The present insurance-based economic metrics cast millions of Americans out of coverage because private insurance costs are beyond their means. Uwe Reinhardt, a Princeton University political economist, has called our system "brutal" because it "rations [people] out of the system." He defined rationing as "withholding something from someone that is beneficial." Discriminatory healthcare rationing now affects upwards to 60 million people who have been either priced out of the system or under insured. They make too much to qualify for Medicare under Obamacare, yet earn far too little to afford private insurance costs and premiums. In the final analysis, the entire system is discriminatory and predatory.    However, we must be realistic. Almost every member of Congress has benefited from Big Pharma and private insurance lobbyists. The only way to begin to bring our healthcare program up to the level of a truly developed nation is to remove the drug industry's rampant and unnecessary profiteering from the equation.     How did Fauci memory-hole a cure for AIDS and get away with it?   By Helen Buyniski   Over 700,000 Americans have died of AIDS since 1981, with the disease claiming some 42.3 million victims worldwide. While an HIV diagnosis is no longer considered a certain death sentence, the disease looms large in the public imagination and in public health funding, with contemporary treatments running into thousands of dollars per patient annually.   But was there a cure for AIDS all this time - an affordable and safe treatment that was ruthlessly suppressed and attacked by the US public health bureaucracy and its agents? Could this have saved millions of lives and billions of dollars spent on AZT, ddI and failed HIV vaccine trials? What could possibly justify the decision to disappear a safe and effective approach down the memory hole?   The inventor of the cure, Gary Null, already had several decades of experience creating healing protocols for physicians to help patients not responding well to conventional treatments by the time AIDS was officially defined in 1981. Null, a registered dietitian and board-certified nutritionist with a PhD in human nutrition and public health science, was a senior research fellow and Director of Anti-Aging Medicine at the Institute of Applied Biology for 36 years and has published over 950 papers, conducting groundbreaking experiments in reversing biological aging as confirmed with DNA methylation testing. Additionally, Null is a multi-award-winning documentary filmmaker, bestselling author, and investigative journalist whose work exposing crimes against humanity over the last 50 years has highlighted abuses by Big Pharma, the military-industrial complex, the financial industry, and the permanent government stay-behind networks that have come to be known as the Deep State.   Null was contacted in 1974 by Dr. Stephen Caiazza, a physician working with a subculture of gay men in New York living the so-called “fast track” lifestyle, an extreme manifestation of the gay liberation movement that began with the Stonewall riots. Defined by rampant sexual promiscuity and copious use of illegal and prescription drugs, including heavy antibiotic use for a cornucopia of sexually-transmitted diseases, the fast-track never included more than about two percent of gay men, though these dominated many of the bathhouses and clubs that defined gay nightlife in the era. These patients had become seriously ill as a result of their indulgence, generally arriving at the clinic with multiple STDs including cytomegalovirus and several types of herpes and hepatitis, along with candida overgrowth, nutritional deficiencies, gut issues, and recurring pneumonia. Every week for the next 10 years, Null would counsel two or three of these men - a total of 800 patients - on how to detoxify their bodies and de-stress their lives, tracking their progress with Caiazza and the other providers at weekly feedback meetings that he credits with allowing the team to quickly evaluate which treatments were most effective. He observed that it only took about two years on the “fast track” for a healthy young person to begin seeing muscle loss and the recurrent, lingering opportunistic infections that would later come to be associated with AIDS - while those willing to commit to a healthier lifestyle could regain their health in about a year.    It was with this background that Null established the Tri-State Healing Center in Manhattan in 1980, staffing the facility with what would eventually run to 22 certified health professionals to offer safe, natural, and effective low- and no-cost treatments to thousands of patients with HIV and AIDS-defining conditions. Null and his staff used variations of the protocols he had perfected with Caiazza's patients, a multifactorial patient-tailored approach that included high-dose vitamin C drips, intravenous ozone therapy, juicing and nutritional improvements and supplementation, aspects of homeopathy and naturopathy with some Traditional Chinese Medicine and Ayurvedic practices. Additional services offered on-site included acupuncture and holistic dentistry, while peer support groups were also held at the facility so that patients could find community and a positive environment, healing their minds and spirits while they healed their bodies.   “Instead of trying to kill the virus with antiretroviral pharmaceuticals designed to stop viral replication before it kills patients, we focused on what benefits could be gained by building up the patients' natural immunity and restoring biochemical integrity so the body could fight for itself,” Null wrote in a 2014 article describing the philosophy behind the Center's approach, which was wholly at odds with the pharmaceutical model.1   Patients were comprehensively tested every week, with any “recovery” defined solely by the labs, which documented AIDS patient after patient - 1,200 of them - returning to good health and reversing their debilitating conditions. Null claims to have never lost an AIDS patient in the Center's care, even as the death toll for the disease - and its pharmaceutical standard of care AZT - reached an all-time high in the early 1990s. Eight patients who had opted for a more intensive course of treatment - visiting the Center six days a week rather than one - actually sero-deconverted, with repeated subsequent testing showing no trace of HIV in their bodies.   As an experienced clinical researcher himself, Null recognized that any claims made by the Center would be massively scrutinized, challenging as they did the prevailing scientific consensus that AIDS was an incurable, terminal illness. He freely gave his protocols to any medical practitioner who asked, understanding that his own work could be considered scientifically valid only if others could replicate it under the same conditions. After weeks of daily observational visits to the Center, Dr. Robert Cathcart took the protocols back to San Francisco, where he excitedly reported that patients were no longer dying in his care.    Null's own colleague at the Institute of Applied Biology, senior research fellow Elana Avram, set up IV drip rooms at the Institute and used his intensive protocols to sero-deconvert 10 patients over a two-year period. While the experiment had been conducted in secret, as the Institute had been funded by Big Pharma since its inception half a century earlier, Avram had hoped she would be able to publish a journal article to further publicize Null's protocols and potentially help AIDS patients, who were still dying at incredibly high rates thanks to Burroughs Wellcome's noxious but profitable AZT. But as she would later explain in a 2019 letter to Null, their groundbreaking research never made it into print - despite meticulous documentation of their successes - because the Institute's director and board feared their pharmaceutical benefactors would withdraw the funding on which they depended, given that Null's protocols did not involve any patentable or otherwise profitable drugs. When Avram approached them about publication, the board vetoed the idea, arguing that it would “draw negative attention because [the work] was contrary to standard drug treatments.” With no real point in continuing experiments along those lines without institutional support and no hope of obtaining funding from elsewhere, the department she had created specifically for these experiments shut down after a two-year followup with her test subjects - all of whom remained alive and healthy - was completed.2   While the Center was receiving regular visits by this time from medical professionals and, increasingly, black celebrities like Stokely Carmichael and Isaac Hayes, who would occasionally perform for the patients, the news was spreading by word of mouth alone - not a single media outlet had dared to document the clinic that was curing AIDS patients for free. Instead, they gave airtime to Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergies and Infectious Diseases, who had for years been spreading baseless, hysteria-fueling claims about HIV and AIDS to any news outlet that would put him on. His claim that children could contract the virus from “ordinary household conduct” with an infected relative proved so outrageous he had to walk it back,3 and he never really stopped insisting the deadly plague associated with gays and drug users was about to explode like a nuclear bomb among the law-abiding heterosexual population. Fauci by this time controlled all government science funding through NIAID, and his zero-tolerance approach to dissent on the HIV/AIDS front had already seen prominent scientists like virologist Peter Duesberg stripped of the resources they needed for their work because they had dared to question his commandment: There is no cause of AIDS but HIV, and AZT is its treatment. Even the AIDS activist groups, which by then had been coopted by Big Pharma and essentially reduced to astroturfing for the toxic failed chemotherapy drug AZT backed by the institutional might of Fauci's NIAID,4 didn't seem to want to hear that there was a cure. Unconcerned with the irrationality of denouncing the man touting his free AIDS cure as an  “AIDS denier,” they warned journalists that platforming Null or anyone else rejecting the mainstream medical line would be met with organized demands for their firing.    Determined to breach the institutional iron curtain and get his message to the masses, Null and his team staged a press conference in New York, inviting scientists and doctors from around the world to share their research on alternative approaches to HIV and AIDS in 1993. To emphasize the sound scientific basis of the Center's protocols and encourage guests to adopt them into their own practices, Null printed out thousands of abstracts in support of each nutrient and treatment being used. However, despite over 7,000 invitations sent three times to major media, government figures, scientists, and activists, almost none of the intended audience members showed up. Over 100 AIDS patients and their doctors, whose charts exhaustively documented their improvements using natural and nontoxic modalities over the preceding 12 months, gave filmed testimonials, declaring that the feared disease was no longer a death sentence, but the conference had effectively been silenced. Bill Tatum, publisher of the Amsterdam News, suggested Null and his patients would find a more welcoming audience in his home neighborhood of Harlem - specifically, its iconic Apollo Theatre. For three nights, the theater was packed to capacity. Hit especially hard by the epidemic and distrustful of a medical system that had only recently stopped being openly racist (the Tuskegee syphilis experiment only ended in 1972), black Americans, at least, did not seem to care what Anthony Fauci would do if he found out they were investigating alternatives to AZT and death.    PBS journalist Tony Brown, having obtained a copy of the video of patient testimonials from the failed press conference, was among a handful of black journalists who began visiting the Center to investigate the legitimacy of Null's claims. Satisfied they had something significant to offer his audience, Brown invited eight patients - along with Null himself - onto his program over the course of several episodes to discuss the work. It was the first time these protocols had received any attention in the media, despite Null having released nearly two dozen articles and multiple documentaries on the subject by that time. A typical patient on one program, Al, a recovered IV drug user who was diagnosed with AIDS at age 32, described how he “panicked,” saw a doctor and started taking AZT despite his misgivings - only to be forced to discontinue the drug after just a few weeks due to his condition deteriorating rapidly. Researching alternatives brought him to Null, and after six months of “detoxing [his] lifestyle,” he observed his initial symptoms - swollen lymph nodes and weight loss - begin to reverse, culminating with sero-deconversion. On Bill McCreary's Channel 5 program, a married couple diagnosed with HIV described how they watched their T-cell counts increase as they cut out sugar, caffeine, smoking, and drinking and began eating a healthy diet. They also saw the virus leave their bodies.   For HIV-positive viewers surrounded by fear and negativity, watching healthy-looking, cheerful “AIDS patients” detail their recovery while Null backed up their claims with charts must have been balm for the soul. But the TV programs were also a form of outreach to the medical community, with patients' charts always on hand to convince skeptics the cure was scientifically valid. Null brought patients' charts to every program, urging them to keep an open mind: “Other physicians and public health officials should know that there's good science in the alternative perspective. It may not be a therapy that they're familiar with, because they're just not trained in it, but if the results are positive, and you can document them…” He challenged doubters to send in charts from their own sero-deconverted patients on AZT, and volunteered to debate proponents of the orthodox treatment paradigm - though the NIH and WHO both refused to participate in such a debate on Tony Brown's Journal, following Fauci's directive prohibiting engagement with forbidden ideas.    Aside from those few TV programs and Null's own films, suppression of Null's AIDS cure beyond word of mouth was total. The 2021 documentary The Cost of Denial, produced by the Society for Independent Journalists, tells the story of the Tri-State Healing Center and the medical paradigm that sought to destroy it, lamenting the loss of the lives that might have been saved in a more enlightened society. Nurse practitioner Luanne Pennesi, who treated many of the AIDS patients at the Center, speculated in the film that the refusal by the scientific establishment and AIDS activists to accept their successes was financially motivated. “It was as if they didn't want this information to get out. Understand that our healthcare system as we know it is a corporation, it's a corporate model, and it's about generating revenue. My concern was that maybe they couldn't generate enough revenue from these natural approaches.”5   Funding was certainly the main disciplinary tool Fauci's NIAID used to keep the scientific community in line. Despite the massive community interest in the work being done at the Center, no foundation or institution would defy Fauci and risk getting itself blacklisted, leaving Null to continue funding the operation out of his pocket with the profits from book sales. After 15 years, he left the Center in 1995, convinced the mainstream model had so thoroughly been institutionalized that there was no chance of overthrowing it. He has continued to counsel patients and advocate for a reappraisal of the HIV=AIDS hypothesis and its pharmaceutical treatments, highlighting the deeply flawed science underpinning the model of the disease espoused by the scientific establishment in 39 articles, six documentaries and a 700-page textbook on AIDS, but the Center's achievements have been effectively memory-holed by Fauci's multi-billion-dollar propaganda apparatus.     FRUIT OF THE POISONOUS TREE   To understand just how much of a threat Null's work was to the HIV/AIDS establishment, it is instructive to revisit the 1984 paper, published by Dr. Robert Gallo of the National Cancer Institute, that established HIV as the sole cause of AIDS. The CDC's official recognition of AIDS in 1981 had done little to quell the mounting public panic over the mysterious illness afflicting gay men in the US, as the agency had effectively admitted it had no idea what was causing them to sicken and die. As years passed with no progress determining the causative agent of the plague, activist groups like Gay Men's Health Crisis disrupted public events and threatened further mass civil disobedience as they excoriated the NIH for its sluggish allocation of government science funding to uncovering the cause of the “gay cancer.”6 When Gallo published his paper declaring that the retrovirus we now know as HIV was the sole “probable” cause of AIDS, its simple, single-factor hypothesis was the answer to the scientific establishment's prayers. This was particularly true for Fauci, as the NIAID chief was able to claim the hot new disease as his agency's own domain in what has been described as a “dramatic confrontation” with his rival Sam Broder at the National Cancer Institute. After all, Fauci pointed out, Gallo's findings - presented by Health and Human Services Secretary Margaret Heckler as if they were gospel truth before any other scientists had had a chance to inspect them, never mind conduct a full peer review - clearly classified AIDS as an infectious disease, and not a cancer like the Kaposi's sarcoma which was at the time its most visible manifestation. Money and media attention began pouring in, even as funding for the investigation of other potential causes of AIDS dried up. Having already patented a diagnostic test for “his” retrovirus before introducing it to the world, Gallo was poised for a financial windfall, while Fauci was busily leveraging the discovery into full bureaucratic empire of the US scientific apparatus.   While it would serve as the sole basis for all US government-backed AIDS research to follow - quickly turning Gallo into the most-cited scientist in the world during the 1980s,7 Gallo's “discovery” of HIV was deeply problematic. The sample that yielded the momentous discovery actually belonged to Prof. Luc Montagnier of the French Institut Pasteur, a fact Gallo finally admitted in 1991, four years after a lawsuit from the French government challenged his patent on the HIV antibody test, forcing the US government to negotiate a hasty profit-sharing agreement between Gallo's and Montagnier's labs. That lawsuit triggered a cascade of official investigations into scientific misconduct by Gallo, and evidence submitted during one of these probes, unearthed in 2008 by journalist Janine Roberts, revealed a much deeper problem with the seminal “discovery.” While Gallo's co-author, Mikulas Popovic, had concluded after numerous experiments with the French samples that the virus they contained was not the cause of AIDS, Gallo had drastically altered the paper's conclusion, scribbling his notes in the margins, and submitted it for publication to the journal Science without informing his co-author.   After Roberts shared her discovery with contacts in the scientific community, 37 scientific experts wrote to the journal demanding that Gallo's career-defining HIV paper be retracted from Science for lacking scientific integrity.8 Their call, backed by an endorsement from the 2,600-member scientific organization Rethinking AIDS, was ignored by the publication and by the rest of mainstream science despite - or perhaps because of - its profound implications.   That 2008 letter, addressed to Science editor-in-chief Bruce Alberts and copied to American Association for the Advancement of Science CEO Alan Leshner, is worth reproducing here in its entirety, as it utterly dismantles Gallo's hypothesis - and with them the entire HIV is the sole cause of AIDS dogma upon which the contemporary medical model of the disease rests:   On May 4, 1984 your journal published four papers by a group led by Dr. Robert Gallo. We are writing to express our serious concerns with regard to the integrity and veracity of the lead paper among these four of which Dr. Mikulas Popovic is the lead author.[1] The other three are also of concern because they rely upon the conclusions of the lead paper .[2][3][4]  In the early 1990s, several highly critical reports on the research underlying these papers were produced as a result of governmental inquiries working under the supervision of scientists nominated by the National Academy of Sciences and the Institute of Medicine. The Office of Research Integrity of the US Department of Health and Human Services concluded that the lead paper was “fraught with false and erroneous statements,” and that the “ORI believes that the careless and unacceptable keeping of research records...reflects irresponsible laboratory management that has permanently impaired the ability to retrace the important steps taken.”[5] Further, a Congressional Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations led by US Representative John D. Dingell of Michigan produced a staff report on the papers which contains scathing criticisms of their integrity.[6]  Despite the publically available record of challenges to their veracity, these papers have remained uncorrected and continue to be part of the scientific record.  What prompts our communication today is the recent revelation of an astonishing number of previously unreported deletions and unjustified alterations made by Gallo to the lead paper. There are several documents originating from Gallo's laboratory that, while available for some time, have only recently been fully analyzed. These include a draft of the lead paper typewritten by Popovic which contains handwritten changes made to it by Gallo.[7] This draft was the key evidence used in the above described inquiries to establish that Gallo had concealed his laboratory's use of a cell culture sample (known as LAV) which it received from the Institut Pasteur.  These earlier inquiries verified that the typed manuscript draft was produced by Popovic who had carried out the recorded experiment while his laboratory chief, Gallo, was in Europe and that, upon his return, Gallo changed the document by hand a few days before it was submitted to Science on March 30, 1984. According to the ORI investigation, “Dr. Gallo systematically rewrote the manuscript for what would become a renowned LTCB [Gallo's laboratory at the National Cancer Institute] paper.”[5]  This document provided the important evidence that established the basis for awarding Dr. Luc Montagnier and Dr. Francoise Barré-Sinoussi the 2008 Nobel Prize in Medicine for the discovery of the AIDS virus by proving it was their samples of LAV that Popovic used in his key experiment. The draft reveals that Popovic had forthrightly admitted using the French samples of LAV renamed as Gallo's virus, HTLV-III, and that Gallo had deleted this admission, concealing their use of LAV.  However, it has not been previously reported that on page three of this same document Gallo had also deleted Popovic's unambiguous statement that, "Despite intensive research efforts, the causative agent of AIDS has not yet been identified,” replacing it in the published paper with a statement that said practically the opposite, namely, “That a retrovirus of the HTLV family might be an etiologic agent of AIDS was suggested by the findings.”  It is clear that the rest of Popovic's typed paper is entirely consistent with his statement that the cause of AIDS had not been found, despite his use of the French LAV. Popovic's final conclusion was that the culture he produced “provides the possibility” for detailed studies. He claimed to have achieved nothing more. At no point in his paper did Popovic attempt to prove that any virus caused AIDS, and it is evident that Gallo concealed these key elements in Popovic's experimental findings.  It is astonishing now to discover these unreported changes to such a seminal document. We can only assume that Gallo's alterations of Popovic's conclusions were not highlighted by earlier inquiries because the focus at the time was on establishing that the sample used by Gallo's lab came from Montagnier and was not independently collected by Gallo. In fact, the only attention paid to the deletions made by Gallo pertains to his effort to hide the identity of the sample. The questions of whether Gallo and Popovic's research proved that LAV or any other virus was the cause of AIDS were clearly not considered.  Related to these questions are other long overlooked documents that merit your attention. One of these is a letter from Dr. Matthew A. Gonda, then Head of the Electron Microscopy Laboratory at the National Cancer Institute, which is addressed to Popovic, copied to Gallo and dated just four days prior to Gallo's submission to Science.[8] In this letter, Gonda remarks on samples he had been sent for imaging because “Dr Gallo wanted these micrographs for publication because they contain HTLV.” He states, “I do not believe any of the particles photographed are of HTLV-I, II or III.” According to Gonda, one sample contained cellular debris, while another had no particles near the size of a retrovirus. Despite Gonda's clearly worded statement, Science published on May 4, 1984 papers attributed to Gallo et al with micrographs attributed to Gonda and described unequivocally as HTLV-III.  In another letter by Gallo, dated one day before he submitted his papers to Science, Gallo states, “It's extremely rare to find fresh cells [from AIDS patients] expressing the virus... cell culture seems to be necessary to induce virus,” a statement which raises the possibility he was working with a laboratory artifact. [9]  Included here are copies of these documents and links to the same. The very serious flaws they reveal in the preparation of the lead paper published in your journal in 1984 prompts our request that this paper be withdrawn. It appears that key experimental findings have been concealed. We further request that the three associated papers published on the same date also be withdrawn as they depend on the accuracy of this paper.  For the scientific record to be reliable, it is vital that papers shown to be flawed, or falsified be retracted. Because a very public record now exists showing that the Gallo papers drew unjustified conclusions, their withdrawal from Science is all the more important to maintain integrity. Future researchers must also understand they cannot rely on the 1984 Gallo papers for statements about HIV and AIDS, and all authors of papers that previously relied on this set of four papers should have the opportunity to consider whether their own conclusions are weakened by these revelations.      Gallo's handwritten revision, submitted without his colleague's knowledge despite multiple experiments that failed to support the new conclusion, was the sole foundation for the HIV=AIDS hypothesis. Had Science published the manuscript the way Popovic had typed it, there would be no AIDS “pandemic” - merely small clusters of people with AIDS. Without a viral hypothesis backing the development of expensive and deadly pharmaceuticals, would Fauci have allowed these patients to learn about the cure that existed all along?   Faced with a potential rebellion, Fauci marshaled the full resources under his control to squelch the publication of the investigations into Gallo and restrict any discussion of competing hypotheses in the scientific and mainstream press, which had been running virus-scare stories full-time since 1984. The effect was total, according to biochemist Dr. Kary Mullis, inventor of the polymerase chain reaction (PCR) procedure. In a 2009 interview, Mullis recalled his own shock when he attempted to unearth the experimental basis for the HIV=AIDS hypothesis. Despite his extensive inquiry into the literature, “there wasn't a scientific reference…[that] said ‘here's how come we know that HIV is the probable cause of AIDS.' There was nothing out there like that.”9 This yawning void at the core of HIV/AIDS “science" turned him into a strident critic of AIDS dogma - and those views made him persona non grata where the scientific press was concerned, suddenly unable to publish a single paper despite having won the Nobel Prize for his invention of the PCR test just weeks before.  10   DISSENT BECOMES “DENIAL”   While many of those who dissent from the orthodox HIV=AIDS view believe HIV plays a role in the development of AIDS, they point to lifestyle and other co-factors as being equally if not more important. Individuals who test positive for HIV can live for decades in perfect health - so long as they don't take AZT or the other toxic antivirals fast-tracked by Fauci's NIAID - but those who developed full-blown AIDS generally engaged in highly risky behaviors like extreme promiscuity and prodigious drug abuse, contracting STDs they took large quantities of antibiotics to treat, further running down their immune systems. While AIDS was largely portrayed as a “gay disease,” it was only the “fast track” gays, hooking up with dozens of partners nightly in sex marathons fueled by “poppers” (nitrate inhalants notorious for their own devastating effects on the immune system), who became sick. Kaposi's sarcoma, one of the original AIDS-defining conditions, was widespread among poppers-using gay men, but never appeared among IV drug users or hemophiliacs, the other two main risk groups during the early years of the epidemic. Even Robert Gallo himself, at a 1994 conference on poppers held by the National Institute on Drug Abuse, would admit that the previously-rare form of skin cancer surging among gay men was not primarily caused by HIV - and that it was immune stimulation, rather than suppression, that was likely responsible.11 Similarly, IV drug users are often riddled with opportunistic infections as their habit depresses the immune system and their focus on maintaining their addiction means that healthier habits - like good nutrition and even basic hygiene - fall by the wayside.    Supporting the call for revising the HIV=AIDS hypothesis to include co-factors is the fact that the mass heterosexual outbreaks long predicted by Fauci and his ilk in seemingly every country on Earth have failed to materialize, except - supposedly - in Africa, where the diagnostic standard for AIDS differs dramatically from those of the West. Given the prohibitively high cost of HIV testing for poor African nations, the WHO in 1985 crafted a diagnostic loophole that became known as the “Bangui definition,” allowing medical professionals to diagnose AIDS in the absence of a test using just clinical symptoms: high fever, persistent cough, at least 30 days of diarrhea, and the loss of 10% of one's body weight within two months. Often suffering from malnutrition and without access to clean drinking water, many of the inhabitants of sub-Saharan Africa fit the bill, especially when the WHO added tuberculosis to the list of AIDS-defining illnesses in 1993 - a move which may be responsible for as many as one half of African “AIDS” cases, according to journalist Christine Johnson. The WHO's former Chief of Global HIV Surveillance, James Chin, acknowledged their manipulation of statistics, but stressed that it was the entire AIDS industry - not just his organization - perpetrating the fraud. “There's the saying that, if you knew what sausages are made of, most people would hesitate to sort of eat them, because they wouldn't like what's in it. And if you knew how HIV/AIDS numbers are cooked, or made up, you would use them with extreme caution,” Chin told an interviewer in 2009.12   With infected numbers stubbornly remaining constant in the US despite Fauci's fearmongering projections of the looming heterosexually-transmitted plague, the CDC in 1993 broadened its definition of AIDS to include asymptomatic (that is, healthy) HIV-positive people with low T-cell counts - an absurd criteria given that an individual's T-cell count can fluctuate by hundreds within a single day. As a result, the number of “AIDS cases” in the US immediately doubled. Supervised by Fauci, the NIAID had been quietly piling on diseases into the “AIDS-related” category for years, bloating the list from just two conditions - pneumocystis carinii pneumonia and Kaposi's sarcoma - to 30 so fast it raised eyebrows among some of science's leading lights. Deeming the entire process “bizarre” and unprecedented, Kary Mullis wondered aloud why no one had called the AIDS establishment out: “There's something wrong here. And it's got to be financial.”13   Indeed, an early CDC public relations campaign was exposed by the Wall Street Journal in 1987 as having deliberately mischaracterized AIDS as a threat to the entire population so as to garner increased public and private funding for what was very much a niche issue, with the risk to average heterosexuals from a single act of sex “smaller than the risk of ever getting hit by lightning.” Ironically, the ads, which sought to humanize AIDS patients in an era when few Americans knew anyone with the disease and more than half the adult population thought infected people should be forced to carry cards warning of their status, could be seen as a reaction to the fear tactics deployed by Fauci early on.14   It's hard to tell where fraud ends and incompetence begins with Gallo's HIV antibody test. Much like Covid-19 would become a “pandemic of testing,” with murder victims and motorcycle crashes lumped into “Covid deaths” thanks to over-sensitized PCR tests that yielded as many as 90% false positives,15 HIV testing is fraught with false positives - and unlike with Covid-19, most people who hear they are HIV-positive still believe they are receiving a death sentence. Due to the difficulty of isolating HIV itself from human samples, the most common diagnostic tests, ELISA and the Western Blot, are designed to detect not the virus but antibodies to it, upending the traditional medical understanding that the presence of antibodies indicates only exposure - and often that the body has actually vanquished the pathogen. Patients are known to test positive for HIV antibodies in the absence of the virus due to at least 70 other conditions, including hepatitis, lupus, rheumatoid arthritis, syphilis, recent vaccination or even pregnancy. (https://www.chcfl.org/diseases-that-can-cause-a-false-positive-hiv-test/) Positive results are often followed up with a PCR “viral load” test, even though the inventor of the PCR technique Kary Mullis famously condemned its misuse as a tool for diagnosing infection. Packaging inserts for all three tests warn the user that they cannot be reliably used to diagnose HIV.16 The ELISA HIV antibody test explicitly states: “At present there is no recognized standard for establishing the presence and absence of HIV antibody in human blood.”17   That the public remains largely unaware of these and other massive holes in the supposedly airtight HIV=AIDS=DEATH paradigm is a testament to Fauci's multi-layered control of the press. Like the writers of the Great Barrington Declaration and other Covid-19 dissidents, scientists who question HIV/AIDS dogma have been brutally punished for their heresy, no matter how prestigious their prior standing in the field and no matter how much evidence they have for their own claims. In 1987, the year the FDA's approval of AZT made AIDS the most profitable epidemic yet (a dubious designation Covid-19 has since surpassed), Fauci made it clearer than ever that scientific inquiry and debate - the basis of the scientific method - would no longer be welcome in the American public health sector, eliminating retrovirologist Peter Duesberg, then one of the most prominent opponents of the HIV=AIDS hypothesis, from the scientific conversation with a professional disemboweling that would make a cartel hitman blush. Duesberg had just eviscerated Gallo's 1984 HIV paper with an article of his own in the journal Cancer Research, pointing out that retroviruses had never before been found to cause a single disease in humans - let alone 30 AIDS-defining diseases. Rather than allow Gallo or any of the other scientists in his camp to respond to the challenge, Fauci waged a scorched-earth campaign against Duesberg, who had until then been one of the most highly regarded researchers in his field. Every research grant he requested was denied; every media appearance was canceled or preempted. The University of California at Berkeley, unable to fully fire him due to tenure, took away his lab, his graduate students, and the rest of his funding. The few colleagues who dared speak up for him in public were also attacked, while enemies and opportunists were encouraged to slander Duesberg at the conferences he was barred from attending and in the journals that would no longer publish his replies. When Duesberg was summoned to the White House later that year by then-President Ronald Reagan to debate Fauci on the origins of AIDS, Fauci convinced the president to cancel, allegedly pulling rank on the Commander-in-Chief with an accusation that the “White House was interfering in scientific matters that belonged to the NIH and the Office of Science and Technology Assessment.” After seven years of this treatment, Duesberg was contacted by NIH official Stephen O'Brien and offered an escape from professional purgatory. He could have “everything back,” he was told, and shown a manuscript of a scientific paper - apparently commissioned by the editor of the journal Nature - “HIV Causes AIDS: Koch's Postulates Fulfilled” with his own name listed alongside O'Brien's as an author.18 His refusal to take the bribe effectively guaranteed the epithet “AIDS denier” will appear on his tombstone. The character assassination of Duesberg became a template that would be deployed to great effectiveness wherever Fauci encountered dissent - never debate, only demonize, deplatform and destroy.    Even Luc Montagnier, the real discoverer of HIV, soon found himself on the wrong side of the Fauci machine. With his 1990 declaration that “the HIV virus [by itself] is harmless and passive, a benign virus,” Montagnier began distancing himself from Gallo's fraud, effectively placing a target on his own back. In a 1995 interview, he elaborated: “four factors that have come together to account for the sudden epidemic [of AIDS]: HIV presence, immune hyper-activation, increased sexually transmitted disease incidence, sexual behavior changes and other behavioral changes” such as drug use, poor nutrition and stress - all of which he said had to occur “essentially simultaneously” for HIV to be transmitted, creating the modern epidemic. Like the professionals at the Tri-State Healing Center, Montagnier advocated for the use of antioxidants like vitamin C and N-acetyl cysteine, naming oxidative stress as a critical factor in the progression from HIV to AIDS.19 When Montagnier died in 2022, Fauci's media mouthpieces sneered that the scientist (who was awarded the Nobel Prize in 2008 for his discovery of HIV, despite his flagging faith in that discovery's significance) “started espousing views devoid of a scientific basis” in the late 2000s, leading him to be “shunned by the scientific community.”20 In a particularly egregious jab, the Washington Post's obit sings the praises of Robert Gallo, implying it was the American scientist who really should have won the Nobel for HIV, while dismissing as “

Virology vanguard Dr. Bob Gallo is far from ready to slow down. Now in his seventh decade as one of America's top scientists, he could easily sit back and enjoy the fruits of his numerous and pioneering achievements. His groundbreaking work began in the 1970s with research into human retroviruses, including the discovery of the T-cell growth factor (IL-2) and the identification of the Human T-Cell Lymphotropic Virus (HTLV-1) in 1980, earning him his first Lasker Award, often referred to as “America's Nobel Prize.” His subsequent research led to the identification of HIV-1 as the cause of AIDS, securing him a second Lasker Award. In the 1980s, he was the world's most cited scientist. Along with his team, he developed the first HIV blood test, crucial for understanding the spread of AIDS and managing HIV patients. In the mid 1990's Gallo and his collaborators discovered chemokines, naturally occurring compounds that were essential for understanding how HIV infects cells. Dr. Gallo later founded the Institute of Human Virology at the University of Maryland School of Medicine in 1996 and co-founded the Global Virus Network (GVN) in 2011 to enhance global virus detection and management. Recently, Dr. Gallo and his team moved to Tampa, the new global headquarters for GVN, where he now serves as director of the University of South Florida (USF) Virology Institute and Head of the Microbial Oncogenesis Program at the Cancer Institute at Tampa General Hospital (TGH).   In the first part of this wide-ranging interview, Dr. Gallo shares insights into his entry into virology and his initial research into the etiology of certain cancers. This work included crucial discoveries around T cell growth factors, paving the way for identifying HTLV-1. He discusses his collaboration with CDC epidemiologists, which led to recognizing AIDS as being caused by a retrovirus. Once the HIV virus was identified as the cause, creating the first blood test for HIV had profound impacts on the epidemic and patient care.   In the second segment, Dr. Gallo discusses the origins of the HIV virus and its early global spread. He also reflects on the COVID-19 pandemic, why the focus on its origins is irrelevant and reflects on how to rebuild public trust in science and medicine, which may have been damaged during the pandemic.   In the concluding segment, Dr. Gallo talks about his reasons for joining USF Health and TGH and the research areas he finds most promising going forward. He speculates on the prospects for an HIV vaccine, the impact of artificial intelligence on virology, and why he doesn't necessarily worry about the threat of the next global pandemic. Finally, Dr. Gallo opens up about how the early loss of his young sister deeply affected his life and his desired legacy. Dr Vega would like to thank her friend Job Meiller, her YES Man, for the wonderful musical contributions and coming through on every idea she has. This time he contributes his renditions of Bruce Springsteen's "Streets of Philadelphia" and "Your Song," by Elton John. Thank you Job! Thanks also to Dr. Ana Velez, our artistic contributor, for her painting, "HIV," used in our episode thumbnail.

A mielopatia associada ao HTLV-1, também denominada como paraparesia espástica tropical, é uma doença com potencial incapacitante causada pelo vírus T-linfotrópico humano 1 (HTLV-1). Nesse episódio tivemos o convidado especial Dr Bruno Guedes, que é neurologista e veio conversar sobre investigação e manejo dessa doença.

Although most viruses don't directly trigger autoimmune thyroid conditions such as Graves' disease or Hashimoto's, certain types of viral infections can play a role in developing these conditions. This can happen via a number of different mechanisms, including molecular mimicry and direct bystander activation.In my practice, I've seen numerous patients where different viral infections, including COVID, were a trigger in the development of their autoimmune thyroid conditions. Today, I'm sharing some of the more common viruses associated with thyroid autoimmunity and what you can do to support your thyroid.In this episode, you'll learn about:- How viruses trigger autoimmunity- COVID-19 as a potential trigger for Graves' disease and Hashimoto's- Epstein-Barr Virus and its association with autoimmune conditions- Hepatitis C and its implications for thyroid health- Parvovirus B19 and its potential role in developing Hashimoto's thyroiditis- Herpes virus and HTLV-1's association with thyroid autoimmunity- My approach to testing for specific viruses- Natural treatment options to support immune health- Why I focus on optimizing the immune system to combat viral infectionsAs always, I hope you find this episode valuable, and I look forward to catching you in the next episode!To learn more, visit the show notes at https://savemythyroid.com/podcast/which-viruses-can-trigger-thyroid-autoimmunity/. Do You Want Help Saving Your Thyroid? Access hundreds of free articles at www.NaturalEndocrineSolutions.com Visit Dr. Eric's YouTube channel at www.youtube.com/c/NaturalThyroidDoctor/ To work with Dr. Eric, visit https://savemythyroid.com/work-with-dr-eric/

This show has the second part of the interview with Philip Dehany and Nathaniel J Hall about his documentary for Channel 4 about 'Bug Chasers'. Also, Sue and David interviewed Robert James who was infected with Hepatitis C and HTLV 3 (Later HIV) when he was given infected blood to treat his Haemophilia as a child in the 1980's.

No Podcast de hoje, vamos compreender sobre o vírus HTLV, bem como sua forma de transmissão, sintomas e tratamento. Vem aprender com a gente?!

Spinal cord disorders are common and frequently disabling. Despite advances in our ability to diagnose and treat patients with spinal cord disease, many are underserved by their health care systems due to gaps in knowledge and care. In this episode, Lyell K. Jones Jr, MD, FAAN, speaks with Shamik Bhattacharyya, MD, FAAN, who served as the guest editor of the Continuum® February 2024 Spinal Cord Disorders issue. They provide a preview of the issue, which publishes on February 8, 2024. Dr. Jones is the editor-in-chief of Continuum: Lifelong Learning in Neurology® and is a professor of neurology at Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota. Dr. Bhattacharyya is the Anne M. Finucane Distinguished Chair in Neurology and chief of the division of spinal cord disorders at Brigham Women's Hospital and an assistant professor of neurology at Harvard Medical School in Boston, Massachusetts. Additional Resources Continuum website: ContinuumJournal.com Subscribe to Continuum: shop.lww.com/Continuum American Academy of Neurology website: aan.com Social Media facebook.com/continuumcme @ContinuumAAN Host: @LyellJ Guest: @shamik_b Full transcript available here Transcript  Dr Jones: This is Dr. Lyell Jones, Editor-in-Chief of Continuum, the premier topic-based neurology clinical review and CME journal from the American Academy of Neurology. Thank you for joining us on Continuum Audio, a companion podcast to the journal. Continuum Audio features conversations with the guest editors and authors of Continuum, who are the leading experts in their fields. Subscribers to the Continuum journal can read the full article or listen to verbatim recordings of the article by visiting the link in the show notes. Subscribers also have access to exclusive audio content not featured on the podcast. As an ad-free journal entirely supported by subscriptions, if you're not already a subscriber, we encourage you to become one. For more information on subscribing, please visit the link in the show notes. Dr Jones: This is Dr. Lyell Jones, Editor-in-Chief of Continuum: Lifelong Learning in Neurology. Today I'm interviewing Dr. Shamik Bhattacharyya, who recently served as Continuum's Guest Editor for our latest issue, on spinal cord disorders. Dr. Bhattacharyya is a neurologist at Brigham and Women's Hospital, where he serves as Chief of the Division of Spinal Cord Disorders and as an Assistant Professor of Neurology at Harvard Medical School, in Boston, Massachusetts. Dr.  Bhattacharyya, it's great to see you - welcome. Thank you for joining us today. Dr Bhattacharyya: Good to see you, Dr. Jones. I look forward to speaking. Dr Jones: So, for our listeners who are new to Continuum, Continuum is a journal dedicated to helping clinicians deliver the highest neurologic care to their patients. We do so with high-quality clinical reviews and content in our journal and in our audio format. For our long-time listeners to Continuum Audio, you'll notice a few different things with our latest issue and our latest author interviews. For many years, Continuum Audio has been a great way to learn about Continuum articles. Starting with this issue on spinal cord disorders, I'm happy to announce that our Continuum Audio interviews will now be available to all on your favorite open podcast platforms. We'll hear some exciting new content in our interviews, and we're also going to introduce interviews with our guest editors, like Dr Bhattacharyya, who are really indispensable in putting these issues together. In this issue, specifically, Dr. Bhattacharyya is full of extremely helpful clinical descriptions and treatment strategies for patients with spinal cord disorders. As the editor, you got really a broad view of the whole range of spinal cord disease. What was the most surprising thing when you were reviewing these articles? Dr Bhattacharyya: I think as a field, neurology - the knowledge base in neurology - grows bigger and bigger and bigger each day and in fields hard to keep up and how to integrate all of it together, right? I think all of us deal with it. And that's the hope of Continuum, is that you can provide these periodic refreshers. I got refreshed myself! Even though I see the patients day in and day out, when you actually read about the advances, for example, in hereditary spastic paraplegias, or the nuances of how neoplasms in the spinal cord are now classified- you say “wow”, I didn't actually know that. The knowledge spreads and grows, and I think that's the beauty of being an editor of some of these issues - is that you get to learn yourself and maybe perhaps even apply them in the clinical situation. Dr Jones: You and I are both educators. And that's, I think, one of the secret joys of teaching is that you end up learning a lot, sometimes from the people you're teaching, right? I guess maybe that's not a surprise - that you learn something by reading it. I guess it was probably pretty nice, huh? Dr Bhattacharyya: It was very good. I think the authors all come from different geographic backgrounds, even from different training backgrounds. In spinal cord disorders, there are trials in some aspects, but in other aspects it's really opinion-based practice, right? So, it was good to also see how other institutions do it. And I imagine it's the same for readers when they see how they do it at their institution and also get a viewpoint of how it's done at other places. That's the valuable perspective piece for putting together a different of authors and see how people do it at different places. Dr Jones: Always nice to learn from others. And speaking of learning - for our clinicians who are listening to our interview today, Shamik, tell us a little bit about the basics of how spinal cord disorders present. I know as an educator, sometimes for, especially junior learners, it's a little mysterious and I'm not really sure why that is, but what are some of the basic clinical tenets of how spinal cord disorders present? Dr Bhattacharyya: I'm glad you brought this up, because in some ways, spinal cord is the orphan child of neurology, right? I think for most neurology trainees, the nervous system stops at the brainstem and then progresses again at the nerves. The spinal cord is really just viewed as this conduit of tracts up and down, and that's all it does is a big set of wires, which is not true, right? A lot of primary neurological processing happens at the level of the spinal cord, and it really is a continuation of the central nervous system. And I hope, with this issue, people get a sense of that. For spinal cord disorders (also called myelopathy; the name goes, synonymously, hand in hand), I think one of the principal functions of the spinal cord is balance. A lot of the program - the neural programming of balance on postural reflexes are hard wired into the spinal cord. I think one of the key aspects of spinal cord disorders is imbalance. I think that people should think of this as a core feature of myelopathy. If you take an example for cervical spondylotic disease, people think, is it going to be off your hands? Well, I think most patients with cervical spondylotic myelopathy actually complain of gait imbalance as one of the early features of the disease. So, imbalance, bilateral weakness, and/or bilateral numbness, tingling, paresthesia - those aspects are suggestive of spinal cord disorder. Bowel and bladder dysfunction can be, but it's not universally true. Now, there's some specific symptoms that I think are especially suggestive of spinal cord disorders I think that are kind of fun to ask about, and if true, can help you localize. One is the Lhermitte sign; you ask people to flex their neck and say, like, “Do you feel sharp, shooting thing, like, down your hands or your back?” In your legs? If true, you have something, right? That's a spinal cord disorder. The other sign that I think is clinically helpful is weakness on one leg and numbness on the other, like Brown-Séquard syndrome or hemicord syndrome. If you find that to be true - and you often see that with multiple sclerosis lesions or other traumatic lesions - that is a spinal cord disorder. I think those clues can come out in history and on exam, and can help you localize it better. Dr Jones: It's nice to know those specific features - in other words, those things that, when you do see or hear them, really should make us think about spinal cord disorders, right? Again, they might not be the most common way they present, but it's good to have those in your pocket, right? Dr Bhattacharyya: Right. Dr Jones: You mentioned this - spinal cord pathology occupies kind of an interesting place in the neurological world, right? There really aren't “myelopathists,” but you direct a division on spinal cord disorders, which is - I think is pretty uncommon. Tell us a little about that. How does that work at your institution? Dr Bhattacharyya: Maybe I can start with the history of this, right - of how this actually came about. I was graduating as a fellow and entering as a faculty in our neurology department. Initially, my interest was in autoimmune neurological disorder - it still is in autoimmune neurological disorders. And yet, when they saw patients who came in for myelitis and turned out they didn't have an inflammatory myelopathy, there really was no home for them, right? - it's a strange space. And that includes even for garden-variety, cervical spondylotic disease that's causing myelopathy - there is no good neurology home for those patients. After the first year of seeing patients, I felt that we need to do better for that. That's why we ended up opening the spinal cord disorders clinic, which was actually the only neurology-based one in our system. There are plenty run by physiatry, surgery, pain management, and other services. But the only neurology one in our system focused specifically on neurologic management of patients with any type of spinal cord pathology. Dr Jones: That's a distinctive way that it came about at your institution and in your own career. It sounds like this does need to be a team effort. Who are the other disciplines or specialists who need to be involved in the care of these patients? Dr Bhattacharyya:  Our spinal cord clinic itself is a part of the comprehensive spine center in our hospital. In that center are pain management doctors, physiatry, as well as different spine specialties, including orthopedics and neurosurgeons and interventional radiologists. So, it's kind of a multidisciplinary group effort to take care of these patients. Dr Jones: I know it'll vary according to the problem with the spinal cord, right? There's dozens or hundreds of different diseases that can affect the spinal cord. So, treatments are different for different diseases, right? But what do you see, therapeutically, as being some of the next big things on the horizon for patients with spinal cord disease? Dr Bhattacharyya: I think one of the common, unifying aspects is pain from spinal cord injury. Especially if there's interruption in the spinothalamic tracts, the pain can be a very severe thing that ranges all the way from neuromyelitis optica, the tonic spasms, to spinal cord infarcts, chronic sequelae of pain, to trauma (spinal cord trauma) - pain is such a big aspect. And our both interventional and oral neuropathic pain medicines don't do a good job with it. I think there's a wave of new medications that are in trials for neuropathic pain and I'm hopeful that they will be helpful and that they will improve pain control and quality of life for our patients. The medication approaches to pain also come with side effects that all of the medicines have. Some of our patients are on high doses of multiple medicines and have cognitive impairment, right? I think that was also the motivation behind our getting a specific section in this issue on symptomatic management of spinal cord injury. Because I think no matter where you are in the spectrum of spinal cord disorders, whether you're a vascular doctor or a family doctor, you will be prescribing gabapentin and baclofen, right - as for helping the patient, and it's good to know how to do it. The other aspect that I'm really hopeful about are sort of second-generation prosthetic devices. These are some of the electrostimulation devices where there's intelligence built into the device that detects you moving your leg and then artificially stimulates a peroneal nerve. This is much better than foot braces, for example, for foot drops. And there are now multiple companies who make these devices, and for some of our patients who have had spinal cord disorders and had difficulty walking or tripping, these have actually made a big difference. I think prosthetic and electric stimulation also has potential of helping a broad range of patients with spinal cord disorders. Dr Jones: And I'm glad you mentioned that article on the symptomatic management of the problems with spinal cord disease, regardless of the cause. And it's a wonderful article that will encourage our listeners to seek out. To go back to the pain, this is something that - many of us who care for patients with spinal cord problems - we encounter is this. And I think it's underrecognized (the pain complications of spinal cord disease). Medications on the horizon - what about devices and neuromodulation? This is another thing I get asked about a lot. Dr Bhattacharyya: Exactly. I think the - for example, spinal cord stimulators for pain management - I think it's been controversial in the sense of who are the best people for it. The history of neuromodulation in spinal pain in some senses has been unfortunate because it was first approved for so-called “failed back syndrome,” right? And the name is terrible. The patient population is heterogeneous. And it has come to a point where it was unclear who it was helping and what the right indications were. I think for neuropathic pain and, in particular, for spinal cord injury pain, I think there is now a renewed push to study neuromodulation, both implantable devices and external devices, to see if those aspects can help. I think they're part of the new wave of things. I think the question patients often ask me is, “Can you regrow my spinal cord?” - right? “Is there something on the horizon yet?” As far as I know, right at this moment, there is not, that's clinically applicable, but perhaps in the future that might be true. But I think, short of regrowing the spinal cord, we can help function and help pain in meaningful ways. Dr Jones: We'll be hopeful about cell therapies and other regenerative therapies down the road. I don't think it's in our immediate future, but we maintain hope. You know, I know this is an area that, again - spinal cord problems are common, spine disease is common - but it does kind of fall between the cracks clinically. If there were one point, Dr Bhattacharyya, that you would want to make to our listeners about the one thing not to miss, or the thing that you most commonly see being missed in the clinical evaluation and/or care of these patients, what would that one thing be? Dr Bhattacharyya: I think the time to clinical evolution of myelopathy probably has the biggest value in determining the cause of it. I think this was beautifully brought out by the article by Dr. Pardo, where he talks about an integrative approach to myelopathy, and in contrast to prior conceptions of whether it's inflammatory based on your CSF cell count or your MRI features, it's actually based on time - time from onset of symptom to nadir of symptom. Is it a few hours, is it days, is it months, right? And having that diagnostic framework is, I think - I go back to it time and time again - is key in trying to figure out, because none of the measures we use, both on imaging or CSF or laboratories, are very sensitive or specific, and actually do not outperform just categorizing by time alone, right? So, I think the one take-home message is, if you have sudden, rapid-onset myelopathy that evolves over minutes, it's probably a vascular process. Even if you find ten cells in the CSF, it's still vascular, right? If it's something that evolves over days, maybe 7, 8, 9 days, and then you find diffusion restriction in the spinal cord on imaging, it's probably still an inflammatory process rather than a sudden spinal cord infarct, right? So, I think that the time aspect cannot be ignored and should play a central role in decision making. Dr Jones: That's very helpful. And I think maybe the corollary to that is - there are chronic spinal cord disorders, right? And I think clinicians, especially if you're not familiar with spinal cord disease, it's terrifying, right? As soon as you start to think, “Wow, this patient's telling me a story and I'm worried this could be a spinal cord problem - should I send them to the emergency department?” - right? They have some bladder dysfunction; they have some gait disorder. But if it has been going on for years, the emergency department is probably not the best place to evaluate that, is it? Dr Bhattacharyya: I'm glad you mentioned it because we see that in the emergency room, right? Someone clearly has a myelopathy; you asked him how long it's going on – it going for months or even years sometimes, right? And it was first noticed and sent out. So, yes - there are multiple causes of chronic myelopathies. They range all the way from structural causes, where you can have things like, for instance, webs, of arachnoid webs, that cause slow progressive myelopathies, to vascular malformations of myelopathies, to nutritional causes (even that can cause a slow, progressive myelopathy), Not to speak of infections; I think we often think of infections as causing fast myelopathies, but especially with HTLV-1-associated myelopathy, the usual clinical progression is slow and progressive. I think across all categories of disease, there are instances of slow, progressive myelopathies that really require thoughtful workup but doesn't require an emergency workup. Dr Jones: Yeah, it's good to know that not every spinal cord problem is an emergency. I think it does terrify clinicians, right? I mean, this is the broadband connection between the brain and the body, and it's fragile, and it's unforgiving, and it's every command sent to the body - every piece of information sent back to the brain, all traveling through a billion neurons with a maximum diameter slightly larger than a dime, right? I think that's why it creates consternation. But I imagine it's also - on the clinical side - it's probably in part challenging and in part rewarding to care for these patients. When you think about what's most rewarding about the care of patients with spinal cord disorders, what comes to mind for you? Dr Bhattacharyya: I think, a couple of aspects. And just thinking back to my last clinic - I put it on Fridays, just because I get the most joy out of this clinic, right? The first is that there's no single piece of test that gives you the answer totally, right? It's usually about putting the history together, the labs, the imaging, and talking about it together, right? And I think it's that integrated piece that, as clinicians, I think that brings us joy; it's that figuring something out, that's more than saying, “Is there diffusion restriction or not on the brain MRI?” – right? The second piece that I think is helpful is that, that patients really want to learn, and for spinal cord disorders in particular, there's easy anatomic things that you can point to patients and say, like, “This is why you are weak in the arm and maybe numb in the leg, and that's causing your problem, and this is what we're going to do about it.” And I think, the ability to communicate that with the patient through images is, I think, unique in the sense that patients understand it - that this is the connection and there's something wrong here and that's why I'm having these symptoms. I think those are aspects of spinal cord disorders that I think are really neat. I will say that I also hope that, for our trainees, right, - I think their comfort with imaging stops at the brainstem, right? The moment it gets below the spine, whether looking at foraminal narrowing or canal stenosis, it's about, “Do they have a T2-hyperintense lesion or not?” And beyond that, people are hesitant. I hope that if this issue can give a different categories of spinal cord disorders, our trainees also become a little bit more facile with different aspects of spinal pathology. Dr Jones: I think a lot of neurologists are drawn to our field because of the problem-solving nature, right? Which is what you have to do before you start helping the patient. And you clearly have a lot of enthusiasm for this - I mean, it's contagious, right? There aren't a lot of myelopathists right now, but maybe after listening to your interview, Dr Bhattacharyya, reading your issue in Continuum, maybe you've created some myelopathists. Dr Bhattacharyya: And just remind, there's an AAN spine section that exists in the American Academy of Neurology, and it's very small and can use more members. Certainly, you're welcome to join. Dr Jones: Well, that's a great plug and, Dr Bhattacharyya, once again, I want to thank you for joining us and thank you for such a thorough, fascinating, engaging discussion on spinal cord disorders. Thank you for guest editing a really phenomenally well-done issue that I think is going to be really informative to our readers and our listeners. Again, we've been speaking with Dr Shamik Bhattacharyya, Guest Editor for Continuum's most recent issue, on spinal cord disease. Please check it out, and thank you to our listeners for joining today. Dr. Monteith: This is Dr. Teshamae Monteith, Associate Editor of Continuum Audio. If you've enjoyed this episode, please consider subscribing to the journal. There's a link in the episode notes. We'd also appreciate you following the podcast and rating or reviewing it. Thank you for listening to Continuum Audio.

No Programa Em Sintonia, (FM 106.1) , a Comunicadora Patricia Tosta entrevistou nesta segunda-feira, (13.11) : Márcia Carneiro BrandãoPresidente da Associação HTLVIDA , Adijeane Oliveira,Representante da Associação Htlvida, e Alessandra Dominguez, Infectologista CRM – BA-30.312 Tema da conversa: HTLV: o que você sabe sobre ele ?.

In honour of World Hepatitis Day, today we focus on the Hepatitis B virus (HBV), a virus that can be transmitted through contact with infected blood and from mother to child during labour. HBV can also be transmitted sexually. It infects liver cells and causes both acute and chronic infections, which can be severe. Since HBV was discovered in 1965, we have made great progress in reducing the burden of infections and disease through prevention and antiviral treatment, but much is left to do. The World Health Organization has called for enhanced efforts along four main pathways: i) increasing awareness of HBV infection, ii) promoting prevention strategies, iii) expanding access to testing and treatment; and iv) improving surveillance, data collection and research. Today we will discuss these topics with a focus on the European Region with our three guests: - Dr. Erika Duffell, Public Health Physician, the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC), Stockholm, Sweden - Prof. Anna Maria Geretti, Editor in Chief, STI journal; Professor & Consultant in Infectious Diseases & Virology, Fondazione PTV, University of Rome Tor Vergata, Rome, Italy; North Middlesex University Hospital and King's College London, London, United Kingdom - Prof.  Simon de Lusignan, Senior Academic General Practitioner (GP) and Director of the Royal College of GPs Research & Surveillance Centre, Nuffield Department of Primary Care Health Sciences, University of Oxford, Oxford, United Kingdom Hosted by: Dr. Fabiola Martin, Sexual Health, HIV, HTLV specialist, BMJ STI Podcast Editor, Brisbane, Australia    Relevant papers: Hepatitis B virus infection in general practice across England: An analysis of the Royal College of General Practitioners Research and Surveillance Centre real-world database https://www.journalofinfection.com/article/S0163-4453(23)00130-5/ Impact of maternal HIV–HBV coinfection on pregnancy outcomes in an underdeveloped rural area of southwest China https://sti.bmj.com/content/96/7/509 Prevalence of hepatitis B immunity and infection in home self-sampling HIV service users https://sti.bmj.com/content/98/4/286 Hepatitis A and B vaccination in gbMSM in Ireland: findings from the European MSM Internet Survey 2017 (EMIS-2017) https://sti.bmj.com/content/99/5/337 Hepatitis A and B vaccine uptake and immunisation among men who have sex with men seeking PrEP: a substudy of the ANRS IPERGAY trial https://sti.bmj.com/content/99/2/140 Hepatitis A, hepatitis B and HPV vaccine needs and coverage in MSM initiating HIV PrEP in a sexual health clinic in Paris https://sti.bmj.com/content/99/5/361    

O governo federal instalou, no último mês, o Comitê Interministerial para Eliminação da Tuberculose e Outras Doenças Determinadas Socialmente (Cieds). O grupo, de acordo com o Ministério da Saúde, tem como objetivo eliminar, até 2030, enfermidades como a própria tuberculose, a doença de Chagas e a malária, que acometem sobretudo populações mais vulneráveis socialmente. O Cieds tem como meta inicial a eliminação como problema de saúde pública oito doenças de determinação social, a eliminação da transmissão vertical de outras quatro e ainda alcançar as metas operacionais de controle de mais três doenças. Entre as doenças estão: Doença de Chagas; esquistossomose; filariose linfática (Elefantíase); geo-helmintíase; hepatites virais; HTLV; malária e oncocercose. Em entrevista à CBN Vitória, o diretor do Departamento de HIV/aids, Tuberculose, Hepatites Virais e Infecções Sexualmente Transmissíveis do Ministério da Saúde, Draurio Barreira, coordenador do Cieds, fala sobre o assunto.

On episode #29 of the Infectious Disease Puscast, Daniel and Sara review the infectious disease literature for the weeks of 5/11 – 5/23/23. Hosts: Daniel Griffin and Sara Dong Subscribe (free): Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, RSS, email Become a patron of Puscast! Links for this episode Harmonie phase IIIb study trial results of nirsevimab against RSV lower respiratory tract infection hospitalization for infants (ESPID) Mogamulizumab for treatment of HTLV-1 associated Myelopathy/Tropical Spastic Paraparesis (IDSA) Revised protocol for secondary prevention of congenital cytomegalovirus infection with valaciclovir (IDSA) Increase in false positive fourth generation HIV tests in patients with COVID-19 (CID) Implementation of an antibiotic stewardship initiative in a large urgent care network (JAMA) Clindamycin + vancomycin versus linezolid for treatment of necrotizing soft tissue infection (OFID) Assessing empiric antimicrobial therapy with the dundee classification for skin and soft tissue infections (OFID) Combination of amoxicillin 3000mg and probenecid vs 1500mg amoxicillin monotherapy for treating syphilis in patients with HIV (CID) The sympathetic nervous system is necessary for development of CD4+ T cell memory following Staphylococcus aureus infection (JID) Efficacy and safety of sulbactam-durlobactam versus colistin for the treatment of patients with infections caused by Acinetobacter baumannii-calcoaceticu complex (The Lancet) First reported US cases of tinea caused by Trichophyton indotineae (CDC) How to use direct microscopy for diagnosing fungal infections (CMI) Limited Cutaneous Leishmaniasis as Ulcerated Verrucous Plaque on leg (EID) Can Ivermectin kill Sarcoptes scabiei during the molting process? (PLOS) The Infectious Diseases Specialist, at risk of extinction (JID) Ticks harbor and excrete chronic wasting disease prions (NIH) Music is by Ronald Jenkees

Cách nay đúng 40 năm, 3 nhà nghiên cứu người Pháp của Viện Pasteur, Paris, đã phát hiện ra LAV - virus mới tấn công hệ miễn dịch - sau này được gọi là HIV và được xác định là virus gây AIDS/SIDA, căn bệnh mà cho tới nay đã có tới gần 40 triệu người phải sống chung. Công bố của nhóm nhà nghiên cứu Pháp là bước khởi đầu cho cuộc đua với thời gian kéo dài 4 thập niên. Hiện nay, cho dù chưa có được vac-xin phòng bệnh nhưng đã có phương thức điều trị SIDA. Cuộc ganh đua Pháp - Mỹ và giải Nobel Y học cho nhóm nhà khoa học PhápCó lẽ không nhiều người biết rằng Pháp và Mỹ đã trải qua nhiều năm ganh đua để giành danh hiệu ai là người đã xác định được virus gây bệnh SIDA. Phải đến năm 2008, chiến thắng chính thức mới được công bố : giải Nobel Y học được trao « danh chính ngôn thuận » cho 2 nghiên cứu gia người Pháp, Montagnier và Barré-Sinoussi « vì đã khám phá ra » virus HIV. Ngược dòng lịch sử, theo AFP, việc « phân lập » loại virus mới được công bố vào ngày 20/05/1983 trong một bài báo đăng trên tạp chí khoa học Science của Mỹ. Ba tác giả, Françoise Barré-Sinoussi, Jean-Claude Chermann và Luc Montagnier là các nhà khoa học của Viện Pasteur, Paris, đã thận trọng viết rằng virus mà họ mới phát hiện ra « có thể liên quan đến một số hội chứng bệnh lý, trong đó có SIDA », một căn bệnh bí hiểm mới được báo động lần đầu tại Mỹ trước đó 2 năm, hồi năm 1981. Công bố của ba nhà khoa học Pháp đã vấp phải thái độ dè chừng, kể cả từ các đồng nghiệp Mỹ. Ba năm sau đó, các nhà khoa học Mỹ công bố tìm ra virus HTLV-3 và xem đó có thể là nguyên nhân gây bệnh SIDA. Nhưng ít lâu sau, hai nhóm nhà khoa học Pháp - Mỹ đã công nhận LAV và HTLV-3 thực ra là cùng một loại virus. Dù vậy, hai nước bên hai bờ Đại Tây Dương tiếp tục có nhiều tranh cãi về việc ai là tác giả của phát hiện về virus HIV, bởi đó không chỉ là danh tiếng khoa học mà còn liên quan đến nguồn lợi tài chính từ việc thực hiện các xét nghiệm tầm soát dựa trên các phát hiện về virus. Phải đến năm 1987, đôi bên mới ký thỏa thuận về việc công nhận là các nhà khoa học của cả hai nước đã đồng phát hiện ra virus gây bệnh SIDA (từ năm 1986 được gọi là virus HIV (theo tiếng Anh) và VIH (theo tiếng Pháp).40 năm : Từ « căn bệnh 4 chữ H » đến những thuyết âm mưuBan đầu, bệnh chưa được gọi là AIDS/SIDA, tên chính thức này chỉ có từ năm 1982, chỉ hội chứng suy giảm hệ miễn dịch. Hai người đầu tiên được ghi nhận mắc bệnh mới tại Mỹ hồi năm 1981 là hai thanh niên đồng giới, vì thế tại Mỹ căn bệnh này thời đó bị gọi là « dịch bệnh của những người đồng tính (homosexuel) và sử dụng chất gây nghiện (héroinomane) » Sau đó, do phát hiện ra nhiều người dân Haiti cũng bị bệnh, người ta lại gọi đây là bệnh 3H. Và chữ H thứ tư được thêm vào để nói về việc những người này bị chứng chứng máu khó đông (hémophile). Ngày nay, theo tiến sĩ Djebbar, được AFP trích dẫn, « vấn đề chính nằm ở chỗ thiếu hiểu biết về virus, nhất là ở giới trẻ », trong bối cảnh Nhà nước giảm tài trợ cho các chương trình nâng cao hiểu biết về SIDA cho giới học sinh sinh viên cũng như sự phát triển của tôn giáo. Ông lấy làm tiếc về việc một số người vẫn nghĩ rằng chỉ cần ôm hôn đồng nghiệp cũng có nguy cơ bị lây bệnh, trái lại một số khác lại tin rằng họ miễn nhiễm vì không phải người đồng tính. Chính những định kiến trên đã làm chậm việc xét nghiệm tầm soát. Tổ chức Sida Info Service cho biết hiện nay có đến 1/3 số người nhiễm bệnh không được xét nghiệm tầm soát. Trong 40 năm qua, không chỉ bị gắn liền với những định kiến về người nghiện hút, có quan hệ tính dục đồng giới, bị gọi là « bệnh ung thư đồng tính », SIDA còn gắn với nhiều thuyết âm mưu phản khoa học. Theo AFP ngày 18/05, ngay cả đến Giáo hoàng Benedicto 16 hồi năm 2009 cũng từng khẳng định chính việc phân phát bao cao su đã làm vấn đề SIDA thêm nghiêm trọng. Các đồn đoán, thuyết âm mưu về nguồn gốc bệnh SIDA đặc biệt lan truyền mạnh. Ngay từ năm 1983, vào thời Chiến Tranh Lạnh, Ủy ban An ninh Quốc gia (KGB), cơ quan tình báo của Liên Xô, đã tung ra chiến dịch « Infektion », nhằm làm mọi người tin rằng SIDA được phát triển từ một phòng thí nghiệm bí mật ở Mỹ. Thuyết âm mưu này đã lan truyền trên cả thế giới trong vòng 10 năm sau đó. Một số khác thì cho rằng đó là căn bệnh của các nước giàu tung ra để diệt trừ người nghèo, hay là chính các hãng dược phẩm đã phát tán virus để rồi kiếm tiền. Châu Phi, bị dịch bệnh ảnh hưởng nặng nề, cũng nằm ở tuyến đầu mặt trận phát tán thông tin sai lệch về SIDA, kể cả ở thượng tầng lãnh đạo. Đơn cử là trường hợp cựu tổng thống Nam Phi Thabo Mbeki : khẳng định bệnh này không liên quan đến virus HIV mà do đói nghèo gây ra, vị tổng thống này đã trì hoãn nhiều năm việc người dân Nam Phi được tiếp cận các phương pháp điều trị SIDA. Đôi khi những người tung tin sai lệch cũng là người bán thứ mà họ quảng bá là phương thuốc hiệu nghiệm hơn thuốc của các tập đoàn dược phẩm lớn « Big Pharma » mà họ tố là thuốc « giết người ». Một chuyên gia trị liệu tự nhiên khẳng định bệnh có thể được chữa khỏi bằng các loại hạt, rau sống hay trái cây. Đáng nói hơn là chính Luc Montagnier, 1 trong hai nhà khoa học Pháp đồng đoạt giải Noel Y Khoa 2008 vì đã tìm ra virus HIV, cũng từng khẳng định nước đu đủ lên men là phương thuốc kỳ diệu để chữa bệnh SIDA. Bên cạnh những thuyết âm mưu là cuộc chạy đua tìm phương thuốc Bác sĩ Françoise Barré-Sinoussi, 1 trong 3 bác sĩ đã khám phá ra virus HIV hồi năm 1983 và đến năm 2008 được trao giải Nobel về Y học cùng đồng nghiệp Luc Montagnier (1932-2022), hồi tưởng với AFP là sau khi virus HIV được phát hiện, các nhà nghiên cứu có rất nhiều việc phải làm, bởi vì trước mắt họ là một loại virus chưa từng được biết đến. Vì thế, các nhà khoa học phải tìm hiểu mọi thứ về loại virus này, từ các protein cấu thành nên virus, cấu trúc bộ gien của virus, loại tế bào mà virus lây nhiễm vào, các hậu quả của việc bị lây nhiễm ...Ngoài ra, các nhà khoa học phải khẩn trương phát triển các xét nghiệm huyết thanh, cả để phục vụ việc chẩn đoán và thực hiện các cuộc điều tra quy mô lớn nhằm chứng minh rằng virus HIV chỉ gây bệnh SIDA chứ không phải các bệnh khác. Rồi sau đó là nghiên cứu các chiến lược để ngăn chặn dịch bệnh. Công việc nghiên cứu về virus HIV cần đến nhiều nhóm nhà chuyên môn khác nhau, từ các nhà miễn dịch học, sinh học phân tử, bác sĩ lâm sàng và cả bệnh nhân. Nói tóm lại, đó là một cuộc chạy đua với thời gian vì các nhà nghiên cứu đã phát hiện ra rằng virus lây truyền cả qua đường máu, quan hệ tình dục và lây từ mẹ sang con.   Năm 1994, SIDA là nguyên nhân gây tử vong hàng đầu ở nhóm người Mỹ trong độ tuổi 25-44 tuổi. Trả lời BFMTV, nhà nghiên cứu Pháp Françoise Barré-Sinoussi gợi nhắc lại tình cảnh « người bệnh bị kỳ thị, bị gia đình, bạn bè, đôi khi bị cả các chuyên gia y tế bỏ rơi. Một số bị mất nhà cửa, mất việc làm ». Việc bắt đầukết hợp 3 nhóm thuốc kháng virus vào năm 1996 đã đánh dấu một bước ngoặt đáng kể : tại Hoa Kỳ, lần đầu tiên số nạn nhân đã giảm. Bốn năm sau đó, chương trình phòng chống SIDA của Liên Hiệp Quốc và 5 hãng dược phẩm lớn đã ký thỏa thuận phân phối thuốc điều trị với giá phù hợp với khả năng tài chính của các nước nghèo. Một thỏa thuận khác đã được ký kết vào năm 2001, lần này cho phép các nước đang phát triển sản xuất các loại thuốc có cùng gốc (thuốc générique) điều trị SIDA. Vào ngày 16/07/2012, phương pháp điều trị dự phòng trước phơi nhiễm HIV đầu tiên đã được cấp phép tại Hoa Kỳ. Năm 2017, lần đầu tiên hơn một nửa số người nhiễm HIV trên toàn thế giới được điều trị bằng thuốc kháng virus. Theo ước tính mới nhất của Chương trình phòng chống SIDA của Liên Hiệp Quốc, vào năm 2021, tỷ lệ này là khoảng 75% : hơn 28 triệu người trong số 38,4 triệu người nhiễm bệnh được điều trị. Chặng đường phía trướcTuy nhiên, cuộc chiến chống SIDA có lẽ vẫn còn chặng đường dài ở phía trước. Trên đài RFI Pháp ngữ ngày 24/03/2023, bác sĩ Françoise Barré-Sinoussi nhận định : « Tất nhiên là như vậy, cuộc chiến vẫn chưa kết thúc : hiện nay trên thế giới vẫn còn hơn 38 triệu người đang phải sống chung với virus HIV và 25% những người này vẫn chưa được tiếp cận với các liệu pháp điều trị. Ngoài ra, còn có sự chậm trễ trong việc thực hiện các xét nghiệm tầm soát, điều này cũng khiến việc điều trị của họ bị chậm hơn. Như vậy là vẫn còn rất nhiều việc phải được ưu tiên tiến hành, nhìn từ quan điểm nghiên cứu, bởi vì chúng ta vẫn chưa có được vac-xin và dù là phương pháp điều trị hiện nay đã rất tốt, nhưng bệnh vẫn là chưa thể chữa khỏi ». (…) Không phải chúng ta không dành phương tiện cho việc đó, nhưng mà đúng là cũng cần có phương tiện và nhân lực. Chúng ta cần có thêm các nhà nghiên cứu trẻ để nghiên cứu về đề tài này. Nhưng cũng đúng là chúng ta đang phải đối phó với một loại virus phức tạp, nhất là vì sự tấn công của virus HIV nhắm vào các bộ phận khác nhau trong cơ thể con người là đặc biệt phức tạp.  Chúng ta đang phải đối phó với một loại virus tấn công vào chính các tế bào miễn dịch trong cơ thể con người. Và đó chính là vấn đề, bởi vì virus không chỉ tấn công vào đó, không chỉ khiến hệ thống miễn dịch không vận hành được bình thường, mà nó còn có thể ẩn náu trong hệ thống miễn dịch, gây ra hàng loạt bất thường trong cơ thể con người và kể cả khi người bệnh đang trong quá trình được điều trị, kể cả khi họ dùng thuốc kháng virus, thì chúng tôi biết rằng vẫn có những bất thường trong cơ thể người bệnh, vẫn có những ổ viêm nhiễm ngay cả khi người bệnh đang được điều trị và vẫn cảm thấy khỏe mạnh. Như vậy là vẫn rất còn nhiều điều chúng ta cần phải hiểu về loại virus này, về sự tương tác của virus với cơ thể. Theo tôi thì những hiểu biết đó sẽ có thể cho phép chúng ta hiểu rõ về nhiều điều khác, về những căn bệnh khác có liên quan đến sự viêm nhiễm, Covid là một ví dụ nhưng không phải là trường hợp duy nhất ».Điều mà có lẽ giờ đây giới chuyên môn mong chờ nhất, có lẽ là việc tìm ra vac-xin phòng bệnh. Bác sĩ Françoise Barré-Sinoussi cho biết thêm :« Có rất nhiều bệnh mà con người vẫn chưa có vac-xin, chẳng hạn đối với các bệnh sốt rét, viêm gan C, chúng ta đã có cách điều trị nhưng vẫn chưa có vac-xin. Có nhiều bệnh như vậy. Nghiên cứu về các cơ chế phản ứng của một loại vac-xin tạo ra cho cơ thể để đối phó với virus HIV đồng thời cũng có thể được áp dụng vào nghiên cứu các loại virus khác. Chúng tôi nghiên cứu để phục vụ cả cộng đồng nói chung để có thể hiểu rõ hơn về mọi điều, nhằm phát triển những chiến lược tiêm chủng mới trong tương lai ».

Convidado desta edição do Podcast do Portal M!, o infectologista Carlos Brites tratou do vírus HIV e dos casos de Aids que foram amplamente tratados como curados. O pesquisador baiano, referência na área de infectologia, é semifinalista do Prêmio Euro, que reconhece inovações na área médica, por ter desenvolvido um teste rápido para detectar o tipo 1 do vírus HTLV. A escolha dos 12 finalistas será no dia 28 de junho, através de uma votação online dos médicos dos países participantes. O infectologista Carlos Brites é graduado (1982) e doutorado (1997) em Medicina pela Universidade Federal da Bahia. Ele fez pós-doutorado na Harvard School of Public Health e atualmente é professor titular de Infectologia da Faculdade de Medicina da UFBA.

Dr. Robert Gaynes, distinguished physician and professor of infectious diseases at Emory University, joins Meet the Microbiologist for a unique episode, in which we share the story of Françoise Barré-Sinoussi, the French, female scientist who discovered HIV and found herself at the heart of one of the most bitter scientific disputes in recent history. Subscribe (free) on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Android, RSS or by email. Ashley's Biggest Takeaways The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)'s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report first reported on a cluster of unusual infections in June of 1981, which would become known as AIDS. Evidence suggested that the disease was sexually transmitted and could be transferred via contaminated blood supply and products, as well as contaminated needles, and could be passed from mother to child. All hemophiliacs of this generation acquired AIDS (15,000 in the U.S. alone). The fact that the microbe was small enough to evade filters used to screen the clotting factor given to hemophiliacs indicated that the etiologic agent was a virus. AIDS patients had low counts of T-lymphocytes called CD4 cells. By 1993, the most likely virus candidates included, a relative of hepatitis B virus, some kind of herpes virus or a retrovirus. Howard Temin discovered reverse transcriptase, working with Rous sarcoma in the 50s and 60s. His work upset the Central Dogma of Genetics, and at first people not only did not believe him, but also ridiculed him for this claim. Research conducted by David Baltimore validated Temin's work, and Temin, Baltimore and Renato Dulbecco shared the Nobel Prize for the discovery in 1975. Robert Gallo of the U.S. National Institute of Health (NIH), discovered the first example of a human retrovirus—human T-cell lymphotropic virus (HTLV-1). Françoise Barré-Sinoussi worked on murine retroviruses in a laboratory unit run by Luc Montagnier, where she became very good at isolating retroviruses from culture. In 1982, doctors gave lab Montagnier's lab a sample taken from a with generalized adenopathy, a syndrome that was a precursor to AIDS. Barré-Sinoussi began to detect evidence of reverse transcriptase in cell culture 2 days after the samples were brought to her lab. Barré-Sinoussi and Luc Montagnier were recognized for the discovery of HIV with the 2008 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. Links for the Episode: From the ancient worlds of Hippocrates and Avicenna to the early 20th century hospitals of Paul Ehrlich and Lillian Wald to the modern-day laboratories of François Barré-Sinoussi and Barry Marshall, Germ Theory brings to life the inspiring stories of medical pioneers whose work helped change the very fabric of our understanding of how we think about and treat infectious diseases. Germ Theory: Medical Pioneers in Infectious Diseases The second edition of Germ Theory, which will include chapters on Françoise Barré-Sinoussi, Barry Marshall and Tony Fauci, will publish in Spring 2023.

Thank you for joining us for the HTLV2022 Conference review. Dr Fabiola Martin speaks to Joanna Curteis, the Australian patient representative, Dr Carolina Rosadas, researcher associate at National Centre for Human Retrovirology, Imperial College London, who specialises in HTLV-1 vertical transmission and Prof Damian Purcell. Damian's research group investigates the HIV-1 and HTLV-1 human retroviruses that cause AIDS and leukaemia/inflammatory pathogenesis respectively at Doherty Institute, Melbourne. We also discuss the Global Call to Action towards the elimination of HTLV-1 and an important message from the World Health Organisation delivered by Dr Meg Doherty. Related blog post: https://blogs.bmj.com/sti/2022/07/06/ichr-2022/ Related links: https://www.htlvnet.com https://www.htlvaware.com HTLV Channel https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCI6aLSTtk7chXMeybJ92Fhw Follow @HTLVChannel National Centre for Human Retrovirology http://www.htlv.eu/ WHO HTLV technical report https://apps.who.int/iris/handle/10665/339773

No episódio de hoje, vamos tirar o HTLV - o vírus linfotrópico de células T humanas - do mundo dos vírus esquecidos respondendo perguntas dos nossos ouvintes. E teremos a presença das Doutoras Carolina Rosadas e Tatiane Assone. A Carolina fez o doutorado na UFRJ e atualmente trabalha no Imperial College London, Department of Infectious Disease, no Reino Unido. Além disso, foi eleita como representante da International RetroVirology Association. A Dra. Tatiane fez o doutorado no Instituto de Medicina Tropical de São Paulo e atualmente trabalha na Faculdade de Medicina da USP. Juntas elas fundaram o HTLV Channel no YouTube. Vamos lá?! Aperte o play e aproveite. Você pode ouvir os episódios do Microbiando através do Orelo, iTunes, Spotify, Google Podcast, Deezer e outros aplicativos de podcasts. Quer citar esse episódio na sua pesquisa ou trabalho acadêmico? De acordo com a ABNT NBR 6023, cite assim: MICROBIANDO: Dia de conscientização do HTLV. [Locução de]: Carolina Rosadas, Juliana Echevarria, Leandro Lobo e Tatiane Assone. [S. l.]: A Ciência Explica, 16 de novembro, 2021. Podcast. Disponível em: . Acesso em: (data).

On the World HTLV Day (10th November), we focus on how the Human T leukaemia virus affects people, and review new developments in HTLV treatment and vaccination medicine. HTLV is a retrovirus similar to HIV which incorporates its DNA indefinitely into the human CD4 T lymphocytes. It is predominantly transmitted through condomless sex, but also from mother-to-child and through contact with HTLV positive blood. Unlike HIV, HTLV causes severe disease only in about 5% of PLHTLV, so it is easy for HTLV transmission to go unnoticed. The two dominant HTLV associated diseases are Adult T cell leukaemia (ATL) and HTLV-1 associated myelopathy (HAM/TSP). Participants: STI's Podcast Editor, Dr Fabiola Martin, interview Ms Kristy Blakeborough, Lived experience and UK patient rep; Prof Yoshihisa Yamano, Neurologist St Marianna University Japan; A/P Keith Chappell, University of Queensland. Read the blog post: https://blogs.bmj.com/sti/2021/11/10/world_htlv_day/ Other relevant links: https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736%2818%2930974-7/fulltext https://gvn.org/who/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/27965813/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33250897/ https://www.htlvaware.com

No programa Excelsior Saúde de hoje, 28.09. Patricia Tosta conversou com Adijeane Oliveira, membro da Associação HTLVida e com a Dra Erica Pedreira, Fisioterapeuta e Dra em Medicina e Saúde humana. o tema foi o enfrentamento do HTLV

Skabies, halk arasında bilinen adıyla uyuz, Sarcoptes Scabiei isimli bir artropodun insan cildinde infestasyonu ile ortaya çıkan bir hastalıktır. Uyuz, klasik olarak şiddetli kaşıntılı döküntüler ve kendine özel tutulum dağılımı ile tanınır. El ve parmaklar, el bilekleri, aksilla (koltuk altı), areola (meme halkası) ve genital bölge en sık tutulum alanları arasındadır. Kurutlu skabies (pullu uyuz ya da Norveç uyuzu) ise daha nadir olup bağışıklık sisteminin zayıfladığı durumlarda görülen ve daha yüksek parazit yükü ile ilişkili bir formdur. Uyuz tanısı mikroskopik olarak Sarcoptes scabei'nin yumurtalarının veya dışkısının tespiti ile konur. Epidemiyoloji ve Yaşam Siklusu Uyuz tüm dünyada yaygın olarak görülen, toplumun her seviyesinden her yaş ve cinsiyette insanları etkileyebilen bir hastalıktır. Dünya geneli prevelansı yaklaşık 100 milyon olarak tahmin edilmektedir. Yatılı yurtlar, hapishaneler, askeriye gibi kalabalık alanlar uyuz için riskin yüksek olduğu yerlerdir ve buralarda salgın oluşturma ihtimali daha yüksektir. Sarcoptes Scabiei, 8 bacaklı, beyaz-kahverengi renkte bir artropottur. Boyutları yaklaşık olarak 0.4 x 0.3 mm civarındadır ve dişileri erkeklerinden büyüktür. Çiftleşmeden sonra dişi akar epidermise yuvalanır. Proteolitik enzimlerin salgılanması nedeniyle keratinosit (cilt hücresi) hasarı ortaya çıkar. Dişi akarlar epidermiste tünel oluşturarak ilerlerler ve günde 2-3 adet yumurtlarlar. 4-6 hafta kadar süren ilerleme sonrasında dişi akarlar hayatlarını kaybeder. Akarlar konak dışındaki ortamda yaklaşık 24-36 saat canlı kalabilmektedir. Hastalarda genellikle akar yükü düşük seyreder, ilk atakta yaklaşık 10-15 adet akar vücutta bulunur. Kurutlu skabieste ise bu sayı milyonlar seviyesindedir. Bulaşma ve Klinik Bulaş genellikle direkt ve uzamış temas ile gerçekleşir. Aile üyeleri arasında veya cinsel temas ile bulaş yaygındır. Kısa süreli temas ile bulaşması olası değildir. Elbiseler, havlular, yatak örtüleri gibi nesneler aracılığıyla bulaş çok nadirdir ancak kurutlu uyuzda akar yükü çok yüksek olduğu için bulaş olabilir. Hayvandan insana ise bulaş görülmez. Klinik, klasik ve kurutlu uyuz olarak ikiye ayrılır. Klasik uyuzun en temel bulgusu kaşıntıdır. Genellikle geceleri artan şiddetli kaşıntı olur. Kaşıntı, akarlara, yumurtalarına ve dışkılarına karşı ortaya çıkan gecikmiş tipte hipersensitivite reaksiyonundan dolayı ortaya çıkar. Semptomlar genellikle bulaş olduktan sonra 3-6 hafta arasında başlar. Cilt bulguları, çoklu küçük genellikle ekskoriye eritematöz papüllerdir. Parazitin ilerlediği tünel bazen görülebilir. Bu tünellerin uç kısmında parazitin bulunduğu bölgeye delta yada jet bulgusu denirken onu takip eden genellikle beyaz renkli tünele ise jet izi bulgusu denir. Uyuz parazitinin epidermiste oluşturduğu tüner yapısı. Lezyonların sıklıkla görüldüğü bölgeler, el-ayak parmakları ve çevreleri, el bileğinin fleksör yüzeyleri, dirseklerin ekstensör yüzeyleri, aksiller bölge, özellikle kadınlarda periaerolar bölge, periumblikal bölge, erkeklerde genital bölge, dizlerin ekstensör yüzeyleri, ayakların lateral ve posterior bölgeleridir. El bilek fleksör yüzeyinde uyuz lezyonları. Hastalarda sırt ve kafa bölgesi genellikle korunmuştur. Çocuk hastalarda genellikle avuç içleri ve ayak tabanı tutulur. Çocuklarda tutulumlar genellikle daha inflamatuar görünümlüdür ve veziküller veya büller görülebilir. Kurutlu uyuz, özellikle AIDS, HTLV-1 enfeksiyonu, lepra ve lenfoma gibi hücresel bağışıklığın baskılandığı durumlarda görülür. Yaşlılarda ve Down sendromlu insanlarda da görülebilir. Vücutta bulunan toplam parazit sayısı çok yüksektir. Kurutlu uyuz, sınırları belirsiz eritematöz lezyonlar ile başlar ve hızlıca kabuklu bir yapıya dönüşür. Cildin her yerini tutabilir ancak saçlı deri, eller ve ayaklar özellikle etkilenir. Lezyonlar tedavi edilmezse hızla büyür. Özellikle kemik çıkıtılarının üzerindeki bölgelerde siğil benzeri görüntü oluşturur.

Join Justice in the hunt for Justice and explanation by diving into some articles about HTLV, Mycosis Fungoides, Borrelia Burgdorferi, and Herbicides. Justice is headed to MD Anderson this month to get some answers about these topics and if they explain her Morgellons. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/morgellons-fireside/message

Five years ago, the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) set an ambitious 2030 target to achieve an equitable future for all. Aligning research with the SDGs has offered the academic community a valuable way to demonstrate their impact. Then, in 2019 Times Higher Education launched its global Impact Rankings to track and report on universities' contributions towards the UN goals.In this episode, our host Fernanda Gusmao, an Elsevier Solutions Manager, speaks with Professor Aluísio Segurado, Head of Research at the University of São Paulo in Brazil. Professor Aluísio shares insights into the university's progress toward meeting the UN SDGs, their recognition in THE Impact Rankings, and how their work benefits both the University of São Paulo and Brazil.Visit our webpage for the full show notesAbout our guests:ALUÍSIO SEGURADOProfessor, School of Medicine, University of São Paulo , BrazilMD, MSc and PhD. Full Professor in the Department of Infectious Diseases, School of Medicine, University of São Paulo. While a full professor in the Department of Infectious Diseases, School of Medicine, University of São Paulo, Aluísio is also in charge of the university institutional research office at the University of São Paulo, Brazil. The office manages the academic data to provide feedback to the university governance, particularly to the Rector’s office and to the academic community. His research focuses on human retroviral infections (HIV/AIDS and HTLV) with a particular interest in understanding the vulnerability of different population groups to viral acquisition, disease progression and response to interventions. His academic activities cross disciplines and encompass the fields of molecular virology, clinical medicine and public health. Visiting Scientist at the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention and also Technical advisor to the WHO.FERNANDA GUSMÃOFernanda Gusmão is a research information manager at Elsevier. In this role, she supports universities and governments with research evaluation, development of collaboration strategies and impact assessment. Fernanda holds a Master's degree from the London School of Economics and a Bachelor's degree in International Relations.Professor Aluisio and Fernanda did a similar podcast last year in Portuguese. You can also listen to that episode here:  Listen in Portuguese

Cet épisode est pour nous l’occasion de parler d’un sujet très important : le virus HTLV1. Il est certain qu’en cette période, aborder une telle thématique peut être anxiogène pour certain.e.s. Cependant, nous tenions à vous en parler car ce virus touche très largement les personnes racisées. En effet, l’infection par le HTLV-1 est particulièrement répandue en Afrique de l’Ouest et Centrale, en Asie, principalement au Japon, en Amérique Centrale et du Sud, et dans les Caraïbes. Ce virus est responsable, chez 3 à 8% des personnes infectées, d’un cancer de type leucémie/lymphome ou d’une neuromyélopathie. Un des moyens de transmission de ce virus est l’allaitement. Pourtant, en tant que mères racisées, nous n’avons, ni durant nos grossesses respectives, ni durant nos allaitements, été informées, par le corps médical, du risque encouru. Alors que, au Japon et dans certains pays des Caraïbes et d'Amérique du Sud, un dépistage HTLV1 est réalisé chez les femmes enceintes afin d’empêcher toute transmission à leur enfant. Tout comme nous, nombreuses sont les mères qui souhaitent allaiter pour la santé et le bien-être de leur enfant. C’est pour cette raison que, personnellement touchée par cette infection, Ulriche a souhaité témoigner afin de sensibiliser les mères, sur ce virus assez méconnu qui provoque de graves pathologies. Sources citées dans le podcast : https://www.pasteur.fr/fr/centre-medical/fiches-maladies/htlv-i Face aux multiples obstacles qu’enfants et parents rencontrent ou rencontreront, ce podcast a pour finalité d’être un « lieu » d’écoute et d’entraide. Afin de mettre à profit les connaissances de tous pour que nos enfants grandissent sans perdre leurs rêves. Nous vous attendons nombreux et à très bientôt. Présenté par Ulriche et Prisca. CREDITS : Création originale : Ulriche Ale et Prisca RATOVONASY Production : Ulriche ALE et Prisca RATOVONASY Enregistrement : Prisca RATOVONASY Réalisation, montage et mixage : Prisca RATOVONASY Identité graphique : https://www.instagram.com/lareveuz_illustrations/ Générique : https://audiohub.fr/chanson/the-last-fight Musique libre de droits: https://youtu.be/C5OUN5OEBcs Extrait du discourt de Jacques CHIRAC : https://youtu.be/4BxaVdu0hqU Twitter : https://twitter.com/EnfantsduBruit Instagram : https://www.instagram.com/lesenfantsdubruietdelodeur/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/lesenfantsdubruietdelodeur-117420343385484/ Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCEmD_yaD3iQLMAikWJmofDQ Mail : lesenfantsdubruitetdelodeur@gmail.com

Crystal claims “the maps overlap” when it comes to the epidemiological distribution of strongyloides, HTLV, and Morgellons. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/more-morgellons/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/more-morgellons/support

Vincent visits Ohio State University (March 2020) and speaks with Shan-Lu, David, Amanda, Mark, Matt, Chris, and Qiuhong about their careers and their work on retroviruses, hepatitis C virus, coronaviruses, paramyxoviruses, and environmental viruses. Host: Vincent Racaniello Guests: Shan-Lu Liu, David Bisaro, Amanda Panfill, Mark Peeples, Matt Sullivan, Chris Walker, Qiuhong Wang Subscribe (free): iTunes, Google Podcasts, RSS, email Become a patron of TWiV! Links for this episode New virus requires international control (Nature) TIM-family proteins inhibit HIV-1 release (PNAS) Designing a HCV vaccine (Curr Op Virol) Attenuated vaccines for RSV in children (J Inf Dis) Plant histone reader suppresses geminivirus infection (J Virol) HTLV-associated malignancy (Curr Op Virol) Coronaviruses in pigs (Curr Op Virol) Marine DNA viral diversity pole to pole (Cell) Timestamps by Jolene. Thanks! Intro music is by Ronald Jenkees Send your virology questions and comments to twiv@microbe.tv

Vincent visits Ohio State University (March 2020) and speaks with Shan-Lu, David, Amanda, Mark, Matt, Chris, and Qiuhong about their careers and their work on retroviruses, hepatitis C virus, coronaviruses, paramyxoviruses, and environmental viruses. Host: Vincent Racaniello Guests: Shan-Lu Liu, David Bisaro, Amanda Panfill, Mark Peeples, Matt Sullivan, Chris Walker, Qiuhong Wang Subscribe (free): iTunes, Google Podcasts, RSS, email Become a patron of TWiV! Links for this episode New virus requires international control (Nature) TIM-family proteins inhibit HIV-1 release (PNAS) Designing a HCV vaccine (Curr Op Virol) Attenuated vaccines for RSV in children (J Inf Dis) Plant histone reader suppresses geminivirus infection (J Virol) HTLV-associated malignancy (Curr Op Virol) Coronaviruses in pigs (Curr Op Virol) Marine DNA viral diversity pole to pole (Cell) Timestamps by Jolene. Thanks! Intro music is by Ronald Jenkees Send your virology questions and comments to twiv@microbe.tv

The Sexually Transmitted Infections podcast is back and we start with relevant advice for both clinicians and patients about HIV and COVID-19. STI podcast editor Dr Fabiola Martin* talks to Associate Professor Dr Edwina Wright, who's leading the COVID-19 Taskforce for the Australasian Society of HIV, viral hepatitis and STIs (ASHM), and Mr Adam Ehm, President of Living Positive Victoria and is a member of the COVID-19 ASHM Taskforce.  They discuss the recent statements released by the British HIV Association and ASHM to assist health care providers and people living with HIV during the COVID-19 pandemic. *Dr Fabiola Martin is a Consultant Physician in Sexual Health, HIV and HTLV medicine in Brisbane and Senior Research Fellow at School of Public Health, University of Queensland.Read more about this subject on the Sexually Transmitted Infections blog: https://blogs.bmj.com/sti/2020/04/07/covid-19-and-hiv-calling-attention-to-the-importance-of-ensuring-hiv-status-and-testing-is-included-in-the-management-of-covid-19/ https://blogs.bmj.com/sti/2020/06/04/hiv-covid-19-podcast/ Join the conversation on Twitter and Facebook and please subscribe to the podcast on your favourite platform to get the latest episodes.

The Sexually Transmitted Infections podcast is back and we start with relevant advice for both clinicians and patients about HIV and COVID-19. STI podcast editor Dr Fabiola Martin* talks to Associate Professor Dr Edwina Wright, who’s leading the COVID-19 Taskforce for the Australasian Society of HIV, viral hepatitis and STIs (ASHM), and Mr Adam Ehm, President of Living Positive Victoria and is a member of the COVID-19 ASHM Taskforce.  They discuss the recent statements released by the British HIV Association and ASHM to assist health care providers and people living with HIV during the COVID-19 pandemic. *Dr Fabiola Martin is a Consultant Physician in Sexual Health, HIV and HTLV medicine in Brisbane and Senior Research Fellow at School of Public Health, University of Queensland.Read more about this subject on the Sexually Transmitted Infections blog: https://blogs.bmj.com/sti/2020/04/07/covid-19-and-hiv-calling-attention-to-the-importance-of-ensuring-hiv-status-and-testing-is-included-in-the-management-of-covid-19/ https://blogs.bmj.com/sti/2020/06/04/hiv-covid-19-podcast/ Join the conversation on Twitter and Facebook and please subscribe to the podcast on your favourite platform to get the latest episodes.

O ano já está acabando e nos pegamos lembrando como foram os últimos 12 meses. Para Ciência USP, foram 12 meses especiais, que encerramos completando um ano de podcast! Comemore conosco escutando essa retrospectiva que recorda alguns momentos importantes e temas preferidos dos nossos seguidores neste ano. Deixamos também uma lista dos episódios citados, para quem quiser ouvir cada um na íntegra: Ciência USP #01: Como o cérebro processa o trauma Ciência USP #02: HTLV, um vírus que os brasileiros deveriam conhecer Ciência USP #04: Quem decide como serão as políticas de uma cidade? Ciência USP #05: A inteligência artificial pode ajudar a entender o cérebro? Ciência USP #10: A volta do sarampo Ciência USP #13: O carboidrato é um vilão ou um injustiçado? Ciência USP #14: Será que a inteligência é exclusiva dos seres humanos? Ciência USP #17: Por que o antissemitismo ainda persiste na sociedade? Ciência USP #19: Sobreviventes do câncer de mama remam por reabilitação e vida plena Ciência USP #20: O que dizem mães e cientistas sobre a maconha medicinal? Ciência USP #22: Procurando dinossauros no interior do Brasil Ciência USP #23: A culpa não é da capivara Boas festas e até 2020! Ficha técnica Apresentação: Silvana Salles Edição de som: Guilherme Fiorentini

No podcast de hoje, vou até o LabVir (laboratório de Virologia da UFPA) para conversar com o Prof. Dr. Antonio Carlos Vallinoto sobre a sua atuação como Biomédico na Virologia, abordando temas como HIV e HTLV.

The purpose of this podcast is to educate and to inform. This is not a substitute for professional medical care, and is not intended for use in the diagnosis or treatment of individual conditions. Guests on this podcast express their own opinions, experience, and conclusions. The mention of any product, service, organization, activity, or therapy should not be construed as an ASCO endorsement. Welcome to Cancer Stories. I'm Dr. Daniel Hayes, a medical oncologist. And I'm a translational researcher at the University of Michigan Rogel Cancer Center. And I'm also the past president of ASCO. Over the next several podcasts, I am privileged to be your host for a series of interviews with the founders of our field. Over the last 40 years, I've been fortunate to have been trained, mentored, and frankly, inspired by many of these pioneers. It's my hope that through these conversations, we can all be equally inspired by gaining an appreciation of the courage, the vision, and the scientific understanding that led these men and women to establish the field of cancer clinical care over the last 70 years. By understanding of how we got to the present, and what we now consider normal in oncology, we can also imagine and work together towards a better future, where we offer patients better treatments, and are also able to support them and their families during and after cancer treatment. Today, I am very pleased to have as my guest on this podcast, Dr. John Minna. John is generally considered one of the pioneers of translational research in solid tumors, and he's widely recognized as a leader in lung cancer. Dr. Minna is currently the director of the Hammond Center for Therapeutic Oncology Research, and Professor of Internal Medicine and Pharmacology at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas, where he also holds the Max L. Thomas Distinguished Chair in Molecular Pulmonary Oncology, and the Sarah M. and Charles E. Seay Distinguished Chair in Cancer Research. Dr. Minna received undergraduate medical degrees from Stanford in the mid-1960s, which were followed by a residency at Harvard's Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston. He then went to the NIH, and the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute for his fellowship in biochemical genetics at the NIH with Dr. Marshall Nirenberg. And then he stayed at the NHLBI as the head of the section on somatic cell genetics. In 1975, he became chief of the NCI-VA Medical Oncology branch within the Clinical Oncology program of the Division of Cancer Treatment. And in 1991, he then moved to University of Texas Southwestern in Dallas, where he served as the director of the Sammons Cancer Center and Chief of the Division of Medical Oncology for four years. And since, he has held his current position. Doctor Minna has authored over 700 peer-reviewed papers, and well over 100 other reviews, book chapters, and educationally related manuscripts. He's won too many awards and honors for me to go through in detail. But these include the AACR's Rosenthal award, and ASCO's Scientific Achievement Award, two of the highest in those two organizations. He's also received the ASCO Statesman Award, and he's served on both the AACR and the ASCO boards of directors. He's been PI of the combined UTSW and M.D. Anderson Cancer Center Lung Cancer Specialized Program in Research Excellence. And in 2015, he was named one of the Giants of Oncology by OncLive. Dr. Minna, that's quite a mouthful, though. Welcome to our program. Thank you so much, Dan. And thanks for all your work in ASCO and everything, too. Well, actually, it was, as you can imagine, a great privilege. I just had a fabulous time. Just as an aside, when I got elected, I interviewed about 10 former presidents. And at the end of each of my set of questions, I said, well, fill in the blanks. What do you want to talk about? Almost everyone of them said the saddest day of their career was the day they had to quit being president of ASCO. And I know that now. Anyway, now I know you went to Stanford. Were you always a California boy? Or how did you get to Stanford? Well, yes. I was born in San Francisco, actually at the Presidio, which is now a fancy movie set-- some of the priciest real estate. And then, my dad was in the Army. My mom was a nurse. And then I grew up in San Diego. And my Dad had the largest family practice in San Diego. And my mom was the nurse that ran the office. I never forget, I called them one day when I was an intern at Mass General and complained I had 25 outpatients that I saw that day. And they laughed. They'd seen 80. And I made maybe 500 house calls with my dad, carrying his bag when I was younger. And so, he obviously was in medical school just before and then right after the Depression. And so, he had had an opportunity. He was going to do a fellowship in pediatrics at Harvard, but couldn't do it. He had to support all his parents and everything. And, by the way, he had immigrated from Italy when he was a kid. So this was quite a story. And so they always encouraged me to go into academic medicine. It was interesting, because all his buddies were surgeons that kept telling me to come back and be a general surgeon in San Diego. So anyways, I grew up in San Diego. And then was lucky enough to get into Stanford undergraduate medical school. So I went back and looked at your publication list, which dates back to the mid-1960s. By the way, I was in junior high then. It looks to me from your list of publications that you weren't originally headed to a career in oncology. In fact, it looks like you were doing genetics. So you've done a lot in lung cancer. Tell us what happened at the NIH that you sort of changed gears and went into lung cancer. Well, actually, the cancer decision was actually made back in medical school. And it was those-- two of the people that you mentioned when we were talking before, Henry Kaplan and Saul Rosenberg, that really inspired me at Stanford. And they both took me under their wing. I remember the last six months of medical school I spent full-time on radiation oncology. Actually, I worked up nearly 100 new patients with Hodgkin's, if you can imagine that. It's all because of the clinical trials going on there at Stanford. So there were all these new patients coming in. So both of them absolutely got me committed to a career in cancer way back in medical school, and then helped get me internships, residencies. It was Henry's letter to get me a position with Marshall Nirenberg. But both of them were instrumental. And they took a group of young people-- another person that was a year behind me was Ron Levy, obviously, a very prominent person in oncology. And there was a group of us at Stanford that they took under wing. And so as medical students, we were going to these clinical protocol conferences in cancer, which probably didn't exist anywhere else in the United States at that time. And it was just amazing to see the two of them work together-- totally different personalities, but extremely skilled clinically and in terms of clinical trials. So that was an exciting time. And so the decision for me was made way back there when. And as part of it, at Stanford Medical School, I was fortunate enough to do my research in the Department of Genetics. And the person that took me under his wing there was Leonard Herzenberg, who was the guy that invented the fax machine. Obviously, probably should have won the Nobel Prize for that. And so it was kind of genetics on the one side, and cancer on the other. So you can see how that kind of evolved going forward. What struck me at Mass General was that there were fantastic clinicians and everything. Obviously, a lot of cancer. But nobody wanted to take care of the cancer patients in Mass General. So an intern resident, I kind of volunteered for all of that. And then when I got to the NIH with Marshall, it was more genetics and everything. And we can talk about that. But I realized after five to seven years there I was either going to be a basic researcher, or get back to my clinical love. And that would have been cancer. So those were the ties that brought genetics and cancer together for me. So can I ask you, when you were in Boston, who was the chief of medicine at Mass General? Oh, gosh. [INAUDIBLE]. The real question I'm asking is, had Dr. Farber's work filtered across town to you guys? That was just about the same time he was starting to give chemotherapy to kids over at Children's. Right. No. Obviously, they knew about it. But it really wasn't discussed at all there. And there was obviously a separation between what was going on at Farber and the Brigham and then at Mass General. Now, obviously, things are much more integrated. So what made you go into lung cancer after you got to the NIH? I think it was Vince DeVita. But it happened because I actually-- so I'd been with Marshall and they had given me my own group to work with there that we mentioned. And I'd been working on somatic cell genetics. And so I went to Vince and I said, look it, I have to do an oncology fellowship so I can learn about this stuff now and get ready. Of course, this is-- the boards came in '75, which were later. And so he said, well, John, I'm not going to do that. But I tell you what. There's this branch of the VA hospital that [INAUDIBLE] [? Anson ?] and Frank [INAUDIBLE] and [INAUDIBLE] are running. And I'm trying to decide whether or not to shut it down. So I tell you what. Why don't you go down and run that? And then you'll kind of learn on the job. And, of course, being 35, 36 years old, you think you can do everything. And I said, well, who's the staff there? And he said, well, they're all leaving. And fortunately, one guy [AUDIO OUT]. So I said, well, who are the fellows coming out of the program that are the best fellows? He said, well, that's easy. It's Dan [INAUDIBLE], Paul Bunn, and Jack McDonald. And so I said, well, if I go talk to them, will you at least back me up? And so I did. And fortunately, two of the three agreed to come. I said, you're going from being a fellow to being a senior investigator here in one fell swoop. But this is it. Jack went with Phil [? Stein ?] and did all the work on GI. Phil was leaving the NCI to go down to Georgetown. So they did that. And fortunately, Marty Cohn was down at the VA. He is fantastic clinical trials [INAUDIBLE] and done work with lung cancer. And we did all of that. And so, we went down there. And so, I said, well, OK, got to work on lung cancer. And so we've got to then start working on the genetics of lung cancer. Of course, everybody said that was totally stupid and not possible. And fortunately, I had my collaborator who had been part of the oncogenic virus program, a pathologist, Dr. Adi Gazdar [INAUDIBLE]. So I said, Adi, come on down, and we can do that. So there was people that really gambled on me. Yeah. I wanted to talk about your association with Adi. Before I get to that though, what were you doing for lung cancer in the mid '70s? It must have been pretty crude. Well, we thought it was pretty sophisticated. And, in fact, what we-- obviously, there was the whole series of the first phase of small cell lung cancer clinical trials. There were first reports that occasionally patients respond, have these dramatic responses. And so we set up these whole series of trials. And, of course, at that time, nobody out in the private world wanted to take care. So these patients would come flooding in. And we would do all the staging, get their tissues, and then try to start cell lines from them that nobody had been able to that before. But then they all went on to randomized clinical trials. And Marty Cohn played a big role in that. Obviously, Dan [INAUDIBLE] and Paul Bunn were instrumental. Des Carney came on. And so, these were various combination therapies that [INAUDIBLE] essentially leukemia-like treatment. But Vince always thought the reason we weren't in small cell lung cancer was that we weren't tough enough. And I kept saying, Vince, we're getting-- we're putting them in isolation. We're treating them with more intensive regimens than with leukemia. And so odd responses, but not. And then the other important component of that was Eli Glatstein's recruitment to the NCI as head of the NCI radiation oncology branch. And he really was-- I mean, briefly had known each other at Stanford. And because we were both tied to Henry Kaplan, that made Eli and me instant friends. And basically, we were like brothers. And so he totally threw the support of the radiation oncology branch behind that. And then there were a series of trials with that. Allen Lichter, former president, obviously, and Joel Tepper, he [? added ?] parts to that. So that was fantastic. Anyone from-- So it must have been pretty exciting for you to see some of the first complete responses with chemotherapy in a solid tumor with a small cell. Absolutely. And that's what-- you know, at that time, and particularly then when we started putting this with limited stage, we were really hoping there was going to be a big tail on the survival curve with people who got put into complete remission being able to remain there. And obviously, the therapies would combine modality with chemo and radiotherapy were complex, too. And we were very fortunate to have the various skillful skill set from the radiation oncologists to work with that. And then in '81, by the way-- so we were at the VA from '75 to '81. And then from '81 to '91, it was the NCI-Navy Medical Oncology Branch, when Vince moved us all up to the new National Naval Medical Center. So you and Dr. Gazdar obviously have had a decades-long collaboration. And how did the two of you even hook up? Was it just because you were providing specimens to him in the pathology lab? Or-- No, no. It all actually started five or six years before. We were-- as part of the somatic cell genetics effort is-- I don't know if you remember, there was also a big effort in terms of isolating tumor viruses and the study of retroviruses. And it turned out that the genetics that I was doing with somatic cell genetics could be used to map receptors for retroviruses. And so he and I collaborated on studying the genetics of RNA viruses in human cells and assigning the various linkages to different chromosomes. And so when, again, as I said, when Vince offered me this battlefield promotion, I knew were going to need a laboratory thing. So I said, Adi, come on down. I said that we were going to have to-- we can't study viruses. We're going to need to study something else. And it's going to probably be lung cancer. And so he agreed. And obviously, he has trained as a pathologist, even better part. And he's now, obviously, one of the world's leading lung cancer pathologists. The other person that was at the VA whose name you may not know is Dr. Mary Matthews, who is a pathologist. And she did a lot of the first VA studies, actually determining that small cell lung cancer was highly metastatic, even when it appeared to be localized. So she was-- I've seen her work. Yeah. Actually, so you were there when viruses were going to be the cause of every cancer. Did you get a lot of pushback if you began to say, I don't think that's the case? Well, it's kind of what goes around comes around. We didn't-- no. As it turned out, it was oncogenes that are cause of cancer, which were discovered through Bishop and [INAUDIBLE] thing too. But you do know the other interesting connection with us and viruses and cancer is that we were obviously studying lung cancers and patients and that. But then, Paul Bunn was extremely still interested in lymphomas. But the way the politics, the Onco politics at the NCI intramural program went, that was already the domain of the medicine branch, Bob Young's branch-- Bruce [? Jander ?] and Dan Longo and Bob Young. But there was one lymphoma that they absolutely wanted to have nothing to deal with. And that was Sézary syndrome mycosis fungoides. So Paul said, OK, we're going to study mycosis fungoides. So both at the VA and at the Navy, we had just huge numbers of patients with [? MF ?] come in. And that involved a variety of studies with electron beam and various therapies and staging that Paul was a major figure in. Well, as part of that-- so we started cell lines, tried to start cell lines from those as well. Well, the other thing that was happening was Bob Gallo's discovery of IL-2, T-cell growth factor. And so we got some of that from him, and were able to study, to grow several of these. And it turned out, one of these was from a young patient with highly aggressive HTLV-1 disease. It was a young black guy from the South. He had one of the first-- you know, his bone scan was a super scan with [INAUDIBLE]. Now, we know. So we didn't do that. And it turned out that Bernie Poiesz was a fellow rotating with us. And he went back to work in Gallo's lab and took those cells. And, of course, Gallo was searching everywhere for oncogenic viruses and retroviruses. And the super [? agent ?] from this cell line, H102, blew the roof off. And it turned out to produce HTLV-1. And that was [INAUDIBLE]. Actually, Henry Kaplan submitted for us to PNAS that was with Bernie and Bob Gallo. And that was the first human retrovirus that was discovered. And then it turned out there were other patients that we had, obviously with T-cell lymphomas, that didn't produce virus. But it turned out that those were ones that the virus could replicate in. And that leads off into a whole separate story that you probably need to talk to Adi Gazdar about, because he started this line. And that's the whole Bob Gallo thing. But the point is that Bob knew that if you could get a T-cell line to grow, it could make the retrovirus, and you could identify it. And so, he kept trying to grow T-cells from patients, at that time young, gay guys from New York and San Francisco. Of course, nothing would grow because they were all being killed by HIV. But there were these T-cell lymphoma lines that had that property. So, in any event, this whole thing came back to viruses, that-- it's not my [INAUDIBLE] study. But it was Adi's and Bob Gallo's. You know, you've through this talked a lot about the basic science and the observations. And the term translational medicine really hadn't been invented yet. But you, and I would argue, Marc Lippman and Bill McGuire in breast cancer, were really some of the first to span the gap between [INAUDIBLE] in the clinic in solid tumors. My impression is leukemia and lymphoma had been going on, but it was the solid tumors where you made your big step. Were you thinking about that the whole time? How can I take this and take better care of Mr. Smith or Mr. Jones? Were people trying to stop you from doing that? Who was your role model to give you the courage to move forward? No. I think if you were present back at the NCI-VA and NCI-Navy, it was pretty clear-- and this didn't require any set of smarts-- that the whole idea to start these things was to have models that you could then test to see about new therapies in order to find out what were the underlying causes. And so you remember back there was the [? Amberg ?] and Dan Von Hoff assays for tumor cell sensitivities. So a lot of our first studies were looking at drug response and radiation response phenotypes. And one of the interesting first things was that the small cells, most of them were exquisitely-- they were like lymphocytes, sensitive to radiotherapies, which was what it was like in the clinic. So I think that there was probably kind of obvious some of the things to do. I think the obstacles were-- first of all, the major obstacle was everybody blamed the lung cancer patient for having lung cancer because they smoke. And I'm sure Franco and anybody working in the lung cancer field with Franco Muggia would tell you this. And we're finally over that, I think, and also with the never smoking lung cancer cases. So that was one big obstacle. I think having these models to work with was another. And then just having the genomic techniques to study them. I look at our first publications in Nature with Southern blots and a few samples. And now, you couldn't even-- this wouldn't even qualify as supplementary supplementary data. Actually, I don't know if you were at ASCO. Bruce Johnson's presidential address was an elegant description of the progress made in lung cancer. And he showed pie charts of 10 years ago. And the entire treatment was chemotherapy. And now it's broken up into all the different precision medicine and immunoncology. I've got to think if you were in the audience, and if you weren't, that's fair. But if you were sitting here thinking, boy, shake my head. We've made a lot of progress. Oh, [INAUDIBLE]. Well, I tell you, I get-- some of those slides I know Bruce was-- I was giving those to Bruce. So, you know, clearly, those were the types of obstacles. And everybody thought that-- first of all, everybody thought that lung cancer was not a genetic disease. And in retrospect now, it's obvious. But, you know, so I think there's that-- the technologies. So one brief anecdote about-- and you probably saw this, too, at the Farber. I'll never forget at the NCI-Navy, all of the senior staff rotated. And we had several months worth of attending in there. And we were taking care of patients with all kinds of tumors-- breast, lung, everything. And we had our own ward with 40 beds. And we saw about 70 patients elsewhere in the hospital. And we had 100 patients a day in clinic. So it was a huge service. So I go up, and I'm doing my first day of attending. And I introduce myself. And I'll tell you who my fellows were on that round. So one of them was Nancy Davidson. The other was [INAUDIBLE]. The other was Neal Rosen. And one was George Morstyn, who subsequently became a-- Australian guy became a VP at Amgen. And so they're presenting these cases and everything. And I go back, and I sit down with Paul and [INAUDIBLE] and Dan [INAUDIBLE]. And I say, Jesus. I said, I can't believe it. We have some really good fellows this time. At another time offline when it's not recorded, I'll tell you some of the presentation that Neal Rosen gave that time, which was vintage Neal. And I say this mainly because to our oncology fellows now, I say, look right, look left, and there's going to be some really interesting people that you're meeting right now. Just remember them several years down the line. You know? Nancy was no different in her presentation today than when she gave her presidential address. She had all the [AUDIO OUT] and everything. And so, that was great. Nancy and I are the same age, but she's been my role model for 25 years. [AUDIO OUT] The other thing-- Well, a couple of other questions-- you've been on the board of both the AACR and ASCO. And I'm interested in what you see as both the contrasts and the mutual initiatives going forward and how they've evolved. Do you have any insights into that? Well, I think Saul Rosenberg may have said something about this [INAUDIBLE] to you. He always, from early on, lamented that, quotes, "commercialization" of ASCO, as opposed to its academic thing. I think, number one, ASCO has done a fantastic job in terms of medical education at many different levels. So I think that's a major success. I think also what clearly is needed now is that we get more of the real world experience. So if patients are treated with checkpoint inhibitors with lung cancer, we don't need to know the results of 300, or 400 patients, or 500. We need to know what happens in 10,000 or 20,000 patients. And the only way we're going to get this is to have some kind of interaction with everything that's going on in the real world. And I think ASCO is positioned to do that. And so, I see that type of interaction being very important. Back when I was on the board, there was-- well, how many people from the private sector should be on the board? And we need to have them have a voice, and all of this. And there was kind of the-- then some people in the private sector trying to take control of ASCO for their own group practices. And we won't go into any names or anything here. But I think what's eventually come out is the possibility to really be the best for everything, both educational, translation of findings. So if there's real improvement in discoveries which have happened to be made, we obviously want to get them out as quickly as possible. Patients demand it. But then also, that we can work out some way to get feedback. Actually, this is one of the reasons-- you've hit on a couple of big initiativies over the last 10 years that I've been involved with. One is the development of CancerLinQ. And we hope that CancerLinQ will provide exactly the kind of data you just asked for. The other is the establishment of the Department of Clinical Affairs, and reaching out to the state-affiliated councils. Steve Grubbs is our Vice-President for that. And it's made a big difference. So that instead of being us versus them, academic versus private practice, it's us versus cancer all together. I'm glad you noticed that, actually. One final question, and this is a bit of a trite question. But I'm asking each of my guests on the show, what do you consider your legacy, your greatest accomplishment? In the end, what are people going to remember John Minna has done to change the face of oncology? Is it your science, or your mentoring? Or what's the one thing you would put your finger on? Well, I think Bob Young and I have an agreement about this. It's the mentoring and everything. And I think training the next generation, setting the example, is very important. I would say one other thing that's really important about ASCO that I see going forward is integrating surgery, radiotherapy, other disciplines, too. And I think it's been very successful. It wasn't necessarily all that way at first. But it's been really key. And getting a chance to know some of the giants in surgery and giants in radiation oncology, like Sam Hellman and Eli Glatstein. And I think Vince, in his book, in many ways saw that, too. The DeVita textbook with Hellman and Steve Rosenberg was an important example of that. So I think that's another important legacy from ASCO too. I agree. Well, actually, I think we've run out of time. Dr. Minna, I can't tell you how much I appreciate your taking the time to speak with us today. I'm sure the memberships can be thrilled to listen to the stories you've told. It's interesting, you've referred to several people I've actually already interviewed, or have planned to interview in the near future. You dropped a lot of names. And that's because-- and you sort of alluded to this. I'm not sure any of us recognize where we are in history at the time that history is being made. And then you look back and say, wow, I was there. And that you were fortunate to be at the NIH in those days. I was fortunate to be at the Dana-Farber in a few years after that. And you shed a lot of light. It's been terrific. Any final comments or parting words? Well, no. I think the one thing I would say is I was thinking back to those early ASCO meetings where there would be 5,000, 7,000, 8,000. So you couldn't even walk from one place to another, because you were always stopping and talking. And now you go to 15,000, 17,000 more. And I remember John Niederhuber and I, when he was director of the NCI, on the third day of ASCO walks through and he grabbed me, and he said, John, you're the first person I recognize. And I [INAUDIBLE]. We had roughly 40,000 people at the meeting this year. Yeah. I think that the question-- so going forward is how we need this family, but how do we get it so it could also be on the personal level? Anyway, Dan, it's been good talking to you. And we thank you for your service, Dan. Thank you. It's been great. For more original research, editorials, and review articles, please visit us online at JCO.org. This production is copyrighted to the American Society of Clinical Oncology. Thank you for listening. [MUSIC PLAYING]

Pouco conhecido no Brasil, o HTLV é um vírus da família do HIV. Ele já infectou centenas de milhares de pessoas no País. Se para a maioria das pessoas, a infecção é assintomática e não causará complicações, para 5% a 10% dos portadores as consequências são devastadoras – e, até mesmo, fatais. As complicações mais graves incluem um tipo de leucemia bastante agressivo e uma condição que afeta a medula espinhal e pode deixar o paciente em cadeira de rodas. E também nesta edição: o novo recorde do reator nuclear experimental de Hefei, na China. Ficha técnica Reportagem: Ignacio Amigo Redação: Luiza Caires e Silvana Salles Apresentação: Silvana Salles Edição: Silvana Salles e Rafael Simões Sonorização: Rafael Simões

 HTLV-1   It's been reported as the cousin to HIV affecting remote communities in Australia, with up to 40% of some communities affected. So why don't we know as much about HTLV-1 as its distant relative, HIV? Michael talks with Damian Purcell, the Head of Molecular Virology Laboratory, The University of Melbourne at the Doherty Institute to unpack exactly what this virus is, how it relates to the HIV epidemic here in Australia, and what we need to consider. We unpack the epidemiology of the virus, symptoms, what health concerns HTLV-1 has for those at risk, and the future of treatments and potential cures being researched. Links: Human T lymphotropic virus information from Northern Territory Government From the U.S. National Institute of Health: Human T-cell leukemia virus type 1  The Australasian Society for HIV Medicines (ASHM) Letter to the WHO: Time for Action on HTLV-1    Subscribe to Well, Well, Well podcasts on iTunes! Head to www.vac.org.au for more information about VAC's LGBTI health and well-being services This show, Episode #620 originally aired Thursday 24th May, 2018.            

Hosts: Ed Brown, Penny Dumsday, Dr. Carolyn de Graaf 00:11:15 Harvard researchers have systematically profiled every cell in developing zebrafish and frog embryos, showing how one cell develops into an entire organism. 00:15:28 81-year-old James Harrison has saved millions of babies. His weekly blood donations have been used to create a treatment to protect unborn babies from the deadly Rhesus D Haemolytic Disease (HDN). 00:23:16 Experts from around the wold have signed a letter to the World Health Organisation calling for more action to fight the cancer-causing retrovirus HTLV-1. 00:29:36 Ancient tools found on Mediterranean islands could suggest that Neanderthals had at least rudimentary seafaring skills.   This episode contains traces of US congressman Mo Brooks grilling climate scientist Dr. Philip Duffy before the House Science, Space and Technology Committee about the causes of sea level rise.

This Podcast for the Neurology Journal begins and closes with Dr. Robert Gross, Interim Editor-in-Chief, briefly discussing highlighted articles from the print issue of Neurology. In the second segment Dr. Juliana Lockman interview Dr. Cynthia Harden about the three AAN guidelines on women with epilepsy. In the next segment, Dr. Ryan Overman is reading our e-Pearl of the week about HTLV-1 associated neurologic disease. The podcast concludes with Dr. Ted Burns interviewing Dr. Robert Griggs for an In Memoriam segment about the life of Dr. George Karpati, who died suddenly on February 7, 2009. The participants had nothing to disclose.