In addition to vaccine research, McElrath oversees a long-running study of a rare subset of people who were infected with HIV years or even decades ago but whose bodies control the virus without medication. It is home to international and national research efforts such as the HIV Vaccine Trials Network, or HVTN, the largest network working on developing and testing preventive vaccines, and defeatHIV, one of three federally funded consortiums working on a cure. Best known for its cancer research, including pioneering work in bone marrow transplantation, the Hutch has one of the largest infectious disease divisions of any cancer research center. Julie McElrath, director of Fred Hutch’s Vaccine and Infectious Disease Division and, like Corey, a physician-scientist who has been on the front lines since the epidemic’s beginning. To answer this, he came to Seattle to talk with Corey and Dr. Smith noted that it was in covering that epidemic for VICE that he asked himself, “How in 2015 is AIDS still surging in middle America? How is HIV surging at all? How much progress has been made since 1981,” the year the first cases were reported? A cancer center and home to infectious disease research The program quickly shifted to the present – the outbreak earlier this year of 175 HIV cases in rural Indiana fueled by an intravenous heroin and methamphetamine epidemic. Rather than facing an automatic death sentence, HIV-positive people with access to the drugs can live a normal lifespan, Corey said.īut VICE founders and correspondents Shane Smith and Suroosh Alvi didn’t linger in the past. “Countdown to Zero” opens with a montage of photos and film clips from the pandemic’s beginnings in the 1980s: wrenching shots of young gay men wasting away from the disease and of protestors shouting, “Where are the drugs?” Such images largely disappeared – along with much of the public’s attention – in the mid-1990s, when scientists developed a cocktail of antiretroviral drugs that, if taken daily, can stop the virus from progressing to AIDS. A public screening is being held today in New York City’s Lincoln Center. The program is available on HBO Now and HBO GO and, for the next few weeks, streaming free via YouTube. “I do think we’re having a renaissance in our knowledge to how we can get to the endgame and AIDS-free generation.” Corey, Fred Hutch’s president and director emeritus decades ago laid the groundwork for the first HIV treatments and is now leading the search for a vaccine. “There’s been a real explosion of knowledge in the last five years,” said virologist Dr. Bush, “Countdown to Zero” painted a clear picture both of a scourge that is very much still with us and the progress being made toward preventing and even curing it. The other half thinks it’s such an overwhelming problem that we will never again achieve a generation free of HIV/AIDS.Ī VICE special report, which aired on HBO on Tuesday, World AIDS Day, upended both of those perceptions.īy showcasing people with HIV from Seattle to South Africa, cutting-edge HIV researchers at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center and elsewhere, activists such as U2 singer Bono and even the seldom-interviewed President George W. Scientists and activists who have been battling HIV since the first cases were documented more than 30 years ago often cite two oddly contradictory challenges to their work: Half the general public seems to believe that the pandemic is over, at least in the United States. Viruses, Vaccines and Infectious Diseases.Institutional Partners & Collaborations.Vaccine and Infectious Disease Division.Subscribe to Oncology Insights Newsletter.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |