In March 2011, the medical journal Blood published an article written by German specialists. The information in this article shook the world: HIV was removed from a terminally-ill, 48-year-old HIV and leukemia patient. In an interview with the BBC, the Noble Award winning scientist and discoverer of AIDS, Francoise Barre-Sinouss, said that HIV/AIDS treatments have “progressed beautifully,” and that on an international level, we can soon expect an “AIDS-free generation.” But, this road to the cure has been one tainted with stigma, prejudice and hysteria. And some people suggest the stigma still exists.
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“The disease is here, protect your children! Get rid of AIDS in your town!”
These words reverberate in the Captain Planet episode titled “A Formula for Hate” (1992) as a broken-voiced Ma-Ti reads the Eco-Villains’ latest fear-mongering propaganda . This was the first children’s cartoon to address the disease and the discrimination that AIDS-infected people were facing. Considering the episode aired contemporaneously to the peak of the AIDS epidemic, this cartoon was revolutionary. It can be easy to forget now, but when AIDS began to pop up in industrialized countries, it was literally viewed as the modern-day plague.
People who contracted this “plague” were not treated with the sort of charity we would now expect. In fact, if you contracted the disease in the 1980s or ‘90s, you would find yourself at the mercy of a public all too eager to outcast, stereotype and blame, rather than console, understand and help. The media coverage at the time didn’t help either.
From the very beginning, infected people were marginalized. The New York Times featured an article titled, “New Homosexual Disorder Worries Health Officials.” Throughout the article, the author refers to the disease not as AIDS, but rather, “gay-related immunodeficiency” or GRID, an acronym created by none other than the Center for Disease Control (CDC). Incidentally (or not) all levels of society were ready and able to redirect their fears on already marginalized groups. Instead of facing the disease with poise, our culture contained its fear by bottling it up in its already existing ones: sexual promiscuity, drug use and the third world; it was uncanny. Eventually, it wasn’t people who contracted and spread the disease, but specifically, the homosexuals, the junkies, the sluts, the Africans, etc., etc. So, all was fine. Well, not FINE. Actually horrible, really horrible, but good enough. The Western world deferred its fear for the virus on things it was already afraid of, but then something happened. “Normal” people started getting sick. Return of the repressed?
The very likely inspiration for Captian Planet’s “A Formula for Hate” was a teenage hemophiliac named Ryan White who was barred from his high school when officials found out that he was infected by the virus. The prejudice and discrimination he suffered forced his family to relocate. In a state of exile, Ryan White died in 1991. Historically, his life is probably the most popular of heart-wrenching stories of AIDS discrimination, and it illustrates that it took a so-called “normal” person to fall victim of this discrimination in order to convince the public not to treat infected people like shit.
Luckily, with the help of Kwame, Wheeler, Linka, Ma-Ti and Gi—but mainly because of organizations like the World Health Organization (WHO), the Aids Coalition to Unleash Power (ACT UP), Averting Aids and HIV (AVERT) and the activist artist collective Gran Fury— the shocking bright light of truth gleamed through the dark spectre of HIV proving that the disease is, well, just a disease. And while this fact does not diminish the OHMYGODAIDSF—INGSUCKS factor, it does remind us that, like victims of all other diseases, HIV- and AIDS-infected people should be treated with dignity and charity.
Moving rapidly forward into the present day (about a decade later), a team of medical researchers from Berlin claim that by using stem cell transplantation (SCT), they can functionally cure HIV and AIDS. Pretty amazing, right? Here’s how it happened. In March 2011, the medical journal Blood published an article written by German doctors who hold a wide of array specializations regarding HIV and AIDS treatment. According to their reports, they began treating an HIV patient named Timothy Ray Brown (aka The Berlin Patient) with SCT in 2005. Brace yourself, here’s where it gets pretty scientific.
Test donors carry CCR5 gene variant △32 (CCR5△32/△32), which is medically transplanted into the infected person. These receptors are naturally resistant to CCR5-tropic HIV strains. Why is this so important? Well, HIV typically infects a human by clinging on to a receptor known as CCR5; however, some people have a mutated CCR5 called △32, and because the △32 receptor’s surface is smoother than most, the virus is unable attached itself— no host, no virus. As the treatment progressed, the transplanted △32 began replacing the patient’s original CCR5, along with the virus attached to them. At the final stages of testing, samples were taken from different areas of the immune system. The test showed zero traces of the virus. In 2011, CBS San Francisco conducted an interview with the Berlin Patient during recovery. He commented that both HIV and leukemia were absent from his system.
So, the Berlin Patient is officially cured, but are we out of the woods? We can’t get over excited about this case. The Berlin Patient is only one person out of the 37 million people infected. Furthermore, the treatment is not by any means a vaccine. And people continue to contract the disease every day. In fact, approximately 2.7 million people contracted the virus in 2010 alone.
So, again, what do these facts mean? They mean that although the technology for this functional cure exists, we aren’t there yet. Some might ask, “If this new cure exists, shouldn’t every infected person receive it?” First, it’s not really a question of should we, but rather of could we. This cure is a new and experimental procedure, which means money is a factor. Even if you have health insurance, this procedure would not be covered by it. Second, the CCR5△32 is extremely rare. Less than 1 percent of Europeans carry it, so that puts the number of potential donors at well below 1 percent of the entire human population. Third, although legislation was passed in 2009 to encourage stem-cell research, SCT is still a stigmatized medical practice in the United States and around the world. So, really there’s not much we can do other than rely on prevention and pre-existing treatment options. Bummer, right?
Well, wait a minute, there is one thing that everyone can do. We can all make sure that we do not proliferate the AIDS stigma. And we really should try to do so because according to AVERT, discrimination and denial are the biggest threats to the efforts of stopping the spread of AIDS. Yeah, that’s right, denial. Despite everyone’s best efforts, the stigma still exists. And due to this stigma, many people deny, or in some cases ignore, that they are infected, and thereby refuse to treat the illness.
Keeping in mind the theme for Worlds AIDS Day 2011 “Getting to Zero: Zero new infections, Zero discrimination,” we should continue to keep our minds and hearts open, continue to educate people about how to prevent and treat the disease, and, most importantly, to help fight the stigma. Science in the 21st Century has given us an opening to the end of AIDS, but whether, or not, we ever get there is up to you.
