Talk:HIV/AIDS/Archive 16

'''DO NOT EDIT OR POST REPLIES TO THIS PAGE. THIS PAGE IS AN ARCHIVE.'''

This archive page covers approximately the dates between October 20, 2005 and May 3, 2006

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Oral Sex?
The article says AIDS can be transmitted by oral sex. I thought the risk for this was negligable?--Sonjaaa 06:26, 17 October 2005 (UTC)
 * Of course it can be transmitted by oral sex. If the receiving partner has sores or open wounds in the mouth, for example.  Also I :believe it is possible to absorb it even without open wounds/sores, but I lack an actual source and I'm about to sleep :) -- take it :for what it's worth, though I'm sure you will find evidence if you look for it.  Piepants 02:10, 15 June 2006 (UTC)Piepants
 * As the CDC table makes quite clear, the probablilty of transmission is small but nonzero -- 0.01% per act for the person giving the BJ and 0.005% per act for the person recieving it. &rarr;Raul654 06:34, 17 October 2005 (UTC)
 * Actually the article says that "HIV is transmitted through oral sex" and this is a direct quote from UNAIDS This is precisely the problem that editors have when sources are removed by other editors. I will restore the source Sci guy 14:39, 18 October 2005 (UTC)
 * The CDC table implies that the risk of catching hiv by having se with an infected person is less than 1%? If it is that low, why so much money spent on the safe sex issue? Javier
 * Because that's the risk per "encounter". If the risk is 1% each time and you do it 50 times, on average you'll be infected. Sure, nobody does it 50 times in a single one-night stand, but it doesn't take a terribly long relationship to reach those numbers. Colden46 06:40, 14 November 2005 (UTC)
 * If I recall my statistics lessons correctly, after 50 times, you will have a 39,5% chance of being infected ((1 - 0,99^50) *100%) --WS 11:13, 14 November 2005 (UTC)
 * Yes, but u must do it 50 times with an infected person, and most probably, unless you live in swaziland, your partner will not be infected. Javier

What if you have got one with a condom on. Will that cause Aids?

Over at medhelp.org, in their HIV/Safe sex forum, the doctor there says on several occasions that no known case of oral-only transmission is on record. Can anyone produce a medical jounral that contradicts what he's telling people? Or are the statistics that are presented here are several orders of magnatude higher than reality? 206.156.242.36 14:24, 15 June 2006 (UTC)

This reference (Rothenberg RB, Scarlett M, del Rio C, Reznik D, O‚Daniels C: Oral transmission of HIV. AIDS 1998, 12:2095-2105) |, may be helpful, specifically the section titled "transmission estimates". Quoting: "In an assessment of per-contact risk for transmission associated with four types of homosexual contact, Vittinghoff et al. [28] estimated that the risk for unprotected receptive anal sex (0.24%; 95% CI, 0.05-0.43) was eight times the risk for unprotected receptive oral sex (0.03%; 95% CI, 0.01-0.18)." In light of this, and other statsistics from this journal article, I think it would be fair to include oral sex as a method of transmission. However, seeing as it is less risky (by almost an order of magnitude), it perhaps should be mentioned seperately from the more common transmission events. We don't want to give the impression that it is as easy to get it from oral sex as it is from anal sex, or blood transfusions. -20:17, 15 June 2006 (UTC)

inflated numbers?
I dont know what to make of this article. what do you all think?--Gozar 00:32, 3 November 2005 (UTC)


 * Try this link and this link (abstracts only I'm afraid, unless you have a subscription) to read about how the estimates are made. This link has recent data from South Africa, and more recent death statistics can be found here. Evidence that HIV causes AIDS in Africa can be found here (quite near the top) and here (near the end). Trezatium 21:39, 19 June 2006 (UTC)


 * The Afrol article is largely based on another article by Rian Malan, to which a rebuttal can be found here. Trezatium 18:15, 21 June 2006 (UTC)

I would like to see someone explictly state that HIV infection does not occur in 100% of the AIDS cases. AIDS (since this is about AIDS and not HIV)

http://bmj.bmjjournals.com/cgi/content/full/311/7008/785 I will gladly find more references.


 * Yes, you're right. Ten cases from the whole of Italy, and 47 from the whole of the USA (see here). Such cases are extremely rare, but I agree they're worth mentioning. Trezatium 21:14, 19 June 2006 (UTC)

Major edits
I am in the process of going through the article, removing duplications, adding in more detail and giving it a major overhaul. Some sections have been dropped as they are better described in HIV and AIDS pandemic and IMO don't contribute to the AIDS article, instead, they confuse it. I am trying to keep the language basic, for most people to understand with correct links to other articles as I go through it. I will also add some diseases and more specific symptoms and prevention strategies. It would be good if it was a good standard for national AIDS day. --Bob 19:44, 8 November 2005 (UTC)
 * This is done. Now I will look for references and start to cite sources throughout the article as I did over at HIV.--Bob 23:36, 8 November 2005 (UTC)
 * Haven't done this yet, but is on my list of things to do... --Bob 23:46, 17 November 2005 (UTC)
 * I just glanced through the article, and noticed that the main body is a bit disorganized (it reads in a very 'disjointed' manner, with topics being dropped and/or interrupted, and then resumed (and subsequently dropped again) farther down the page). I don't really trust myself quite yet to re-structure it at that scale, so I thought I'd mention it here. DarkMasterBob 10:08, 12 June 2006 (UTC)

Discrepancy?
under Infection by HIV heading, "the median survival time after developing AIDS is only 9.2 months", and under symptomology, "After the diagnosis of AIDS is made, the average survival time is estimated to be 2-3 years". Do the two pieces of information contracted each other? i know that median is different from average, but the difference here is so huge. Fangyuan1st 19:04, 24 November 2005 (UTC)


 * The 9.2 months is without antiretroviral therapy, and is what is found in developing countries and in developed countries before the advent of ART. 2-3 years is with ART. This has now been clarified. --Bob 18:44, 28 November 2005 (UTC)

Homosexuality?
I heard that if a man has a sexual intercourse with another man, one of them at least will give AIDS even though they do not suffer from it. Would someone clarify this?
 * Someone has misinformed you. AIDS results from infection with the HIV virus, and the virus can only be transmitted during sex if one of the people having sex is already infected by HIV. If two men who are not infected have sex, they will remain not infected afterwards. (Note, though, that this doesn't mean that sex with someone who has a negative HIV test is risk-free: one can be infected for weeks before the test becomes positive.). - Nunh-huh 16:54, 3 December 2005 (UTC)
 * That's why the US has a law (proposed by Jesse Helms) to block federally-funding sexual-education material if it so much as references homosexuality--to keep kids confused and throw up FUD. &mdash; BRIAN 0918 &bull; 2006-06-15 02:20
 * Thanks for the incredibly unconstructive comment Brian. This isn't the place to whine about your government's spending and how it is or is not related to homophobia, this is an international encyclopedia project. BigNate37 08:12, 19 June 2006 (UTC)

First paragraph (Section 0)
The first paragraph looks like literature review than the encyclopedia to me. It's totally way off from other articles in Wikipedia here. ^_^ --manop 04:54, 8 December 2005 (UTC)


 * I agree that the references make the intro very hard to parse on a scanning read. Most of these facts will be discussed (and cited) further down in the article. As the intro should only cover the content of the remainder of the article, I would not object to the removal of the Harvard references, or the change to footnotes. JFW | T@lk  14:28, 9 January 2006 (UTC)
 * It is true that the references do make it harder to read, but the references were added because of repeated removal of huge chunks by Sciguy and cronies because of the lack of citations. Foot notes may make it easier to read, but that would entail carrying over this format for the rest of the article. --Bob 21:12, 9 January 2006 (UTC)

AIDS in nonhumans
I am admittedly not an expert on AIDS, but...

As I understand it, AIDS is not exclusive to humans. Following that, this article is unfortunately neglecting like...all other creatures and immunodeficiency viruses, etc.. SIV is mentioned once (ironically in a section devoted to the origin of HIV), and is not even defined.

Please let's be more accurate. ¦ Reisio 20:55, 29 April 2006 (UTC)

phrasing of 'dying from AIDS' or 'AIDS-related illness'
hi everyone. i'm sure this has been discussed before, but i was over at Randy Shilts]'s article, (who wrote [[And the Band Played On, great book on the beginnings of AIDS), and it is phrased there that he 'died from AIDS'. shouldn't it be 'died from AIDS-related illness'? and why the heck isn't there that article yet, or at least a redirect to opportunistic infections? JoeSmack Talk 02:39, 3 May 2006 (UTC)


 * If someone dies of an AIDS related illness, one is simultaneously dying of AIDS. It's better to be specific if one can. A man who dies of an acute myocardial infarction secondary to thrombus formation in the left anterior descending artery is also dying of a hypertension-related illness and a hypercholesterolemia-related illness, but the former formulation is more informative. (In short, nearly all proximate causes of death have ancillary, underlying, or related secondary causes of death. If someone dies of pneumocystis carinii pneumonia secondary to AIDS, that's the most informative way of specifying it.) - Nunh-huh 03:42, 3 May 2006 (UTC)


 * of course, if the illness is described it would be better to state it in addition to being afflicted with AIDS. however, AIDS never really kills a person per se, it makes them suceptable to extremely dangerous and fatal disease. at least thats how i understand it. so would it not be more accurate to describe someone 'dying of AIDS' as 'dying of AIDS related illness'?  the cons i can think of for that are however that it sounds more vauge (even if it's more precise), and that if i kill someone with a gun, i killed them just as much as the bullet did. opinions anyone?
 * oh, and i use WP:AWB pretty regularly with a bot i run; i could easily change most every occurence to one way or the other :/ .... JoeSmack Talk 06:45, 3 May 2006 (UTC)
 * If the proximate cause of death is unknown (i.e., if the death is reported as "of AIDS-related causes") then "dying of AIDS" and "dying of AIDS-related illness" provide exactly the same amount of information. I don't know that uniformity is necessary. What would be good is determining the actual cause of death. - Nunh-huh 20:12, 3 May 2006 (UTC)

Should somebody maybe update the chart about transmission rates of AIDS?? It's from 1992.. Not very helpful. thanks, Ardo 22:59, 3 May 2006 (UTC)
 * Actually, it's from 2005... --Bob 00:33, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

Stigma section error
In the Stigma section, the ordered list items are stuffing up because of the Ref tags. I can't figure it out - someone else can? --203.206.245.238 02:00, 5 May 2006 (UTC)

ease of reading
Guys, this thing is written like an 8th grader with a medical dictionary. How did this happen? It first of all needs to be a bit more accessible; it isn't actually that hard. For example 'malignancies' to 'malignant cancers'. Also, the long run on sentences are tiring, especially when packed with like 8 diseases in their original latin that you'd never remember anyways. Try and keep examples to 2 or 3. Here's what i mean: High-grade B cell lymphomas such as Burkitt's lymphoma, Burkitt's-like lymphoma, and diffuse large B-cell lymphoma (DLBCL), including primary central nervous system lymphoma, have substantially increased incidence in HIV-infected patients and often portend a poor prognosis.

to something a little easier on the eyes: High-grade B cell lymphomas such as Burkitt's lymphoma, Burkitt's-like lymphoma, and diffuse large B-cell lymphoma (DLBCL), show up a lot more in HIV-infected patients. These particular cancers often foreshadow a poor prognosis.

I'm pretty sure this is all related to people adding little bits here and there, but it just kinda got out of hand. This whole article could use a good thorough copyedit. Anyone else agree? JoeSmack Talk 17:51, 6 May 2006 (UTC)

P.S. Sorry guys, i'm hung over and being bold, so if i remove anything that is totally vital you let me know (as i'm being kinda ruthless on my edits here).


 * Agreed. This article is needlessly overloaded with medical terminology in parts. ---Robert Merkel 05:50, 23 May 2006 (UTC)