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How HIV/AIDS Works, Part I · Stuff You Should Know

0:00
Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you Should Know friend House Stuff Works
0:04
Speaker 1: dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark,
0:13
Speaker 1: There's Charles W Chuck Bryant, and uh, this is stuff
0:17
Speaker 1: you should know the podcast. That's right, treating sir. Two
0:23
Speaker 1: part podcast. Yeah, today release day, not the day we're recording.
0:28
Speaker 1: We're not that good. But today's December one, it is
0:32
Speaker 1: World Aids Day. And we were going to record this
0:35
Speaker 1: a while ago, and then I noticed it was World
0:38
Speaker 1: Aids Day coming up. I was like, well, why don't
0:40
Speaker 1: we wait and record it later and release it then?
0:42
Speaker 1: And then there was so much stuff right that it
0:47
Speaker 1: became clear it was a two parter. And I still
0:50
Speaker 1: don't think we're gonna even well, we'll scratch the surface.
0:53
Speaker 1: That's selling it short. But you can have an entire
0:56
Speaker 1: podcast series about HIV and AIDS, for sure. There's so
1:00
Speaker 1: much information there, really is. It's like daunting, it is,
1:04
Speaker 1: but it's all luckily because it's such a huge, massive topic. Yeah, um,
1:10
Speaker 1: an important topic. There's a lot of information out there,
1:13
Speaker 1: so usually we do pretty well with those that'll be daunted,
1:16
Speaker 1: is what I'm trying to say. Well, I'm just nervous,
1:19
Speaker 1: you know, I don't want to mess this one up.
1:21
Speaker 1: We will mess something up here there, I guarantee it.
1:24
Speaker 1: But yeah, how about this, then we pledge. We often
1:27
Speaker 1: read corrections, but we super pledge to correct anything on
1:31
Speaker 1: this because we're bound to mess something up. It's just
1:33
Speaker 1: a lot of a lot of stuff. You want to
1:37
Speaker 1: start from the beginning. Dump be nervous. That's fine. Everybody
1:39
Speaker 1: tell Chuck, it'll be fine. It'll be fine, Chuck. So
1:43
Speaker 1: it's a collective sound of our audience, like high pitched
1:47
Speaker 1: audience voice. Um so chuck. When you think of HIV
1:53
Speaker 1: AIDS UM, you typically tend to like go back to
1:57
Speaker 1: the late seventies early eighties when like the real panic
2:00
Speaker 1: first started. UM. But it later research and that's about
2:05
Speaker 1: the time it arrived in the United States. But later
2:08
Speaker 1: research found that UM HIV, the first case of it
2:14
Speaker 1: came in ninety nine actually, and that they think that um,
2:18
Speaker 1: it goes back even earlier than that. But this is
2:21
Speaker 1: the first documented case. They had blood work of this
2:24
Speaker 1: guy who died mysteriously in conshasa and congo. Right, um
2:29
Speaker 1: and uh, he had the first documented case of HIV.
2:34
Speaker 1: That's right, HIV one. Uh. There are two hivs, HIV one,
2:39
Speaker 1: and HIV two. The one that has been responsible for
2:42
Speaker 1: the global pandemic is HIV one. And there's been a
2:47
Speaker 1: lot of debate over the years about where it actually
2:49
Speaker 1: came from. Uh. Most people agreed that it was primates
2:54
Speaker 1: in Africa, right, that it started as s I V. Yes, Uh, simeon,
2:59
Speaker 1: I mean no deficiency virus. HIV. We should say is
3:02
Speaker 1: human immunodeficiency virus. Yes, and AIDS is acquired immune deficiency syndrome.
3:08
Speaker 1: They're not separate things. It's actually been very much confused
3:13
Speaker 1: in the media. We're gonna set the record straight. Yeah,
3:15
Speaker 1: and uh at the end, boy, how about this for
3:18
Speaker 1: a tease. At the end of the second episode, there's
3:20
Speaker 1: a big musical number no three days from now. There
3:24
Speaker 1: is an argument that we should not even call it
3:26
Speaker 1: AIDS any longer. So how's that first set up? People
3:30
Speaker 1: are gonna be waiting where they could just google it
3:32
Speaker 1: fast forward. Well, but they can't fast forward in time,
3:36
Speaker 1: my friend. No, but find the time these come out,
3:39
Speaker 1: they'll have been done and they can fast forward. Yes,
3:42
Speaker 1: that's true. So what scientists believe, this is the most
3:45
Speaker 1: current agreed upon theory, is that a type of chimpanzee
3:51
Speaker 1: and West Africa is the source of HIV one uh,
3:55
Speaker 1: which was transmitted to humans. They don't know for sure
3:58
Speaker 1: how because probably are probably be bushed me, undercooked, pushed
4:01
Speaker 1: me exactly, you know, wanting to eat chimpanzee and there's blood,
4:05
Speaker 1: and all of a sudden it spreads to humans, and
4:08
Speaker 1: you tube, chimpanzees fight back, they do, That's what I've heard. Yeah.
4:13
Speaker 1: But yeah, if you ingest blood that was infected with
4:16
Speaker 1: s i V and then the SIV virus um evolved
4:20
Speaker 1: into HIV and humans, that's the likeliest version of what
4:25
Speaker 1: happened somewhere in West Africa, probably the thirties or forties. Yeah,
4:29
Speaker 1: and they I saw one article that said that they
4:31
Speaker 1: think that it could have originally started in primates even
4:34
Speaker 1: in the nineteen twenties, which is just crazy to think about,
4:38
Speaker 1: like the Roaring twenties, somewhere in the depths of Africa
4:43
Speaker 1: s i V was brewing, you know, because it seems
4:45
Speaker 1: like such a modern thing for sure. Uh. And then uh,
4:49
Speaker 1: in the late seventies and early eighties is when um,
4:53
Speaker 1: these normally healthy people in Los Angeles and New York
4:56
Speaker 1: started getting sick. Didn't make any sense. Uh. They first
5:04
Speaker 1: started using the term um AIDS right, and before that
5:08
Speaker 1: they had a really clumsy name for it, um O
5:12
Speaker 1: for HIV. Yeah. Are you ready? Yea, So just the
5:16
Speaker 1: abbreviation is clumsy ht l V three slash l a V.
5:22
Speaker 1: That's just the abbreviation. The full name of what was
5:24
Speaker 1: originally the term for um was it is it aids
5:30
Speaker 1: V for HIV human T cell lymphotropic virus type three
5:34
Speaker 1: slash lymphidano pathy associated virus. Yeah. And I think they
5:40
Speaker 1: all looked around the room whoever proposed that, and said, guys,
5:44
Speaker 1: if we want to ever get this in the news,
5:46
Speaker 1: let's just sweeten that and shorten it to HIV. You
5:50
Speaker 1: the person who proposed it, you have to go buy
5:52
Speaker 1: everyone quiz Nos for lunch. Uh. And actually we should say,
5:57
Speaker 1: chuck that this this definitely just kind of we're giving
6:00
Speaker 1: the farrest overview of this. But um there's a really
6:04
Speaker 1: really interesting movie based on what I understand is an
6:07
Speaker 1: equally interesting book called and the band played On. My
6:10
Speaker 1: brother worked on that movie. That was a great, great movie.
6:13
Speaker 1: I watched it again in the last few months and
6:15
Speaker 1: it's just as good as ever. Yeah, that's where he
6:18
Speaker 1: got to work with Ellen Aldnei, Tomlin and like some
6:20
Speaker 1: real legends. So yeah, there's a lot of people in it.
6:24
Speaker 1: Phil Collins does a great job. Yeah, he plays a
6:27
Speaker 1: bath house owner who's reluctant to close down. Interesting. Um,
6:30
Speaker 1: but it's it basically chronicles the early investigation into what
6:35
Speaker 1: the heck was going on. What was suddenly killing gay
6:38
Speaker 1: men in San Francisco and Los Angeles and New York.
6:41
Speaker 1: And it seemed like it was just targeting gay men
6:44
Speaker 1: so much so that early on, like the the non
6:47
Speaker 1: clinical term for this was gay cancer is what people
6:50
Speaker 1: called it. And all of a sudden, doctors were reporting
6:53
Speaker 1: that otherwise healthy men were suddenly getting really really rare cancers,
6:59
Speaker 1: rare types of ammonia, stuff that people who have like
7:02
Speaker 1: zero immune systems die from. All of a sudden, they
7:05
Speaker 1: were just turning up with this stuff, and um, it
7:09
Speaker 1: was very curious and very scary, especially in the gay community.
7:13
Speaker 1: And then um, it wasn't until what was eighty three
7:18
Speaker 1: three where they identified the virus and there was a
7:21
Speaker 1: there were competing teams, this French team who most likely
7:25
Speaker 1: did discover the HIV virus on their own, and Alan Alda,
7:29
Speaker 1: the American team who may or may not have ripped
7:32
Speaker 1: off their findings and unfairly taken credit for it. But
7:35
Speaker 1: and I've never seen that movie. Fascinating. It's fascinating, it's moving,
7:40
Speaker 1: it's got it all. It's really good. It's good. It's
7:42
Speaker 1: like um uh, epidemiological detective stories threaded throughout a lot
7:48
Speaker 1: of cultural history. It's really really worth watching. Well in uh.
7:52
Speaker 1: In episode two, we're also going to get to that
7:54
Speaker 1: book in the so called patient zero um, which will
7:58
Speaker 1: be coming up on Thursday. Another tease. Alright, so um,
8:04
Speaker 1: and we should point out to the reason these men
8:06
Speaker 1: were dying of cancers and pneumonia and things like that
8:09
Speaker 1: is because and most people know this by now. A
8:11
Speaker 1: lot of this we think is just common knowledge, but
8:14
Speaker 1: you never know. You're you don't die of AIDS. You
8:18
Speaker 1: die of complications from AIDS, infections, other sicknesses and diseases
8:24
Speaker 1: because you can't mount any kind of immune response. Okay,
8:29
Speaker 1: I think that was a good move. Yeah, well, smooth move, excellence.
8:36
Speaker 1: You never know, Like some of this stuff, I'm like, dude,
8:38
Speaker 1: really have to say this stuff, but you do well.
8:42
Speaker 1: The weird thing is you do, especially in is compared
8:46
Speaker 1: to say, like because Um, there's become this idea that
8:51
Speaker 1: AIDS has been as being largely conquered, it doesn't have
8:54
Speaker 1: to be worried about as much and not true. I
8:56
Speaker 1: think the education on HIV and AIDS is not nearly
8:59
Speaker 1: as widespread as it once was. Like when we were
9:02
Speaker 1: like teenagers, you know, like everybody knew everything about AIDS
9:06
Speaker 1: basically at least had a working knowledge of what AIDS was,
9:10
Speaker 1: how you got it, how widespread it was. And UM,
9:14
Speaker 1: it seems like today it's that that kind of public information.
9:17
Speaker 1: Is it nearly is widespread? Yeah, I think that's one
9:19
Speaker 1: of the issues now, is that, Um, a large segment
9:22
Speaker 1: of the public is like, yeah, they have the AIDS cocktail.
9:24
Speaker 1: Look at Magic Johnson. It's all great, sure, And um
9:27
Speaker 1: it is great when we're gonna talk about why he's
9:29
Speaker 1: still with us, but it's it's still a very big problem. Um.
9:33
Speaker 1: Here's a here's a stat for you. Uh. And these
9:36
Speaker 1: are the most recent stats I could find. Seventy eight
9:38
Speaker 1: million HIV infected people worldwide to date, thirty nine million
9:44
Speaker 1: people dead. Um. Compared to World War Two, which killed
9:49
Speaker 1: forty million people. That helps put it into perspective a
9:51
Speaker 1: little bit. Uh. And sub Saharan South Africa, which is
9:55
Speaker 1: where AIDS is an HIV or most threatening. Um, this
10:00
Speaker 1: is a scary status, dude. One and twenty people have
10:03
Speaker 1: HIV what in sub Saharan South Africa and the account
10:07
Speaker 1: for seventy of all cases worldwide of HIV man a lie,
10:12
Speaker 1: I know. It's it's a very dire situation over there,
10:14
Speaker 1: to say the least. Uh, Well, that's that's that's especially
10:19
Speaker 1: chilling because if you look at the statistics in the
10:21
Speaker 1: United States, like it's it's slowing and it's it's definitely
10:26
Speaker 1: if you look at the statistics, it seems like it's
10:28
Speaker 1: being figured out. Well, yeah, it depends on what demographic
10:32
Speaker 1: though it's rising in some demos, right, Yeah, for sure.
10:35
Speaker 1: If you take the United States as a whole, the
10:38
Speaker 1: picture seems okay. But yeah, if you start to break
10:40
Speaker 1: it down into specific subgroups, then some are definitely doing
10:44
Speaker 1: better than others. As far as new infections, death from infections,
10:48
Speaker 1: that kind of stuff come absolutely. Uh So, HIV is
10:52
Speaker 1: a scary disease and it was super scary before we
10:55
Speaker 1: knew much about it because, um, it's still technically incurable.
11:00
Speaker 1: Although we're going to get to that. There are some
11:03
Speaker 1: rare cases where it's what do they call it, functionally cured? Yes, Um,
11:09
Speaker 1: it does seem like there's at least one person who
11:12
Speaker 1: is widely considered to be fully cured, and he is
11:16
Speaker 1: a proof of concept that you can cure AIDS, and
11:19
Speaker 1: that's coming in part two. What are we going to
11:22
Speaker 1: do in part one? We're just yeah, like we're just talking. Basically,
11:27
Speaker 1: this is all one big setup for part two. Apparently, No,
11:31
Speaker 1: it's not. So. One reason AIDS and so deadly is uh,
11:36
Speaker 1: it's sort of a conundrum because AIDS you can't catch
11:40
Speaker 1: it through the air. It's not airborne. You can't catch
11:42
Speaker 1: it from a kitchen counter. You can only catch it
11:45
Speaker 1: through very specific ways intimate contact, intimate context. You would think, hey,
11:50
Speaker 1: it's not gonna be that widespread because intimate contact is
11:55
Speaker 1: something you can avoid and so it should be a
11:57
Speaker 1: pretty slow spreading disease, right, and not all intimate contact
12:00
Speaker 1: includes like whips and chains and stuff like that. Intimate
12:04
Speaker 1: contact is basically any situation where um, you know sure, Uh.
12:10
Speaker 1: Intimate contact is basically any situation where blood is transferred
12:14
Speaker 1: or semen is transferred. Um, So it doesn't necessarily just
12:21
Speaker 1: mean intercourse of any sort. It can also mean sharing needles,
12:26
Speaker 1: and it definitely does mean sharing needles too. That's a
12:28
Speaker 1: very high risk UM subgroup for sure. But the reason,
12:34
Speaker 1: and here's the key, that AIDS has spread an HIV
12:37
Speaker 1: um so widely and quickly is because it can You
12:41
Speaker 1: can have HIV for more than ten years without knowing it.
12:46
Speaker 1: And if you are a promiscuous individual. I did a
12:51
Speaker 1: little math. Let's say you have let's say you're considered
12:55
Speaker 1: highly promiscuous. What what what do you rate that as
12:59
Speaker 1: hundred partners a year, which apparently also so. I want
13:03
Speaker 1: to say this to UM, but AIDS being associated with
13:08
Speaker 1: gay people, gay man especially UM is it hit at
13:13
Speaker 1: precisely the worst possible time in the history of homosexuality
13:19
Speaker 1: in the world because it came right after, right after Stonewall,
13:22
Speaker 1: when men were just starting to be like, it's all
13:25
Speaker 1: about gay pride and we are love and life and
13:29
Speaker 1: having more sex than we've ever had ever as a community,
13:33
Speaker 1: and having a hundred or a couple hundred sexual partners
13:37
Speaker 1: in the late seventies among gay men was pretty standard. Yeah,
13:41
Speaker 1: I don't know it definitely. I don't think it made
13:42
Speaker 1: you an outlier, you know, continue so and a caveat
13:48
Speaker 1: all this with I'm assuming, Well, let me just get
13:52
Speaker 1: into it. Let's say a hundred partners in a year.
13:54
Speaker 1: Let's say of those partners are promiscuous. Man, this is so,
14:00
Speaker 1: then they have a mathematic. Then they have a hundred partners.
14:04
Speaker 1: So that's people. And and this is not people who
14:08
Speaker 1: are infected. This is assuming. Let's say that there's a
14:11
Speaker 1: smaller percentage that don't use condoms. And even if you
14:14
Speaker 1: don't use a condom, it's not like every time you
14:17
Speaker 1: have sex you're going to transmit aids um. But this
14:20
Speaker 1: is a possibility, is what I'm saying. Let's say that
14:24
Speaker 1: group are promiscuous. You end up from that one single
14:30
Speaker 1: person people who could possibly potentially be exposed if nobody
14:37
Speaker 1: wore condoms at all. And of course that number goes
14:41
Speaker 1: way down because people are smarter now and use condoms.
14:43
Speaker 1: But in the late seventies, I mean that number could
14:46
Speaker 1: be accurate, you know, oh yeah easily. So I mean,
14:50
Speaker 1: what are you gonna wear a condom back then? For
14:52
Speaker 1: nobody's getting pregnant, you know, yeah, I mean there was
14:55
Speaker 1: no reason to. Uh, so you can see how can
15:00
Speaker 1: spread so quickly, and that is also the reason why
15:03
Speaker 1: it stays latent, or the reason the fact that it
15:05
Speaker 1: stays latent for so long, that's the single reason why
15:08
Speaker 1: you need to get tested. Yeah, regularly, gay, straight, black, brown,
15:14
Speaker 1: candy striped. It doesn't matter, get tested because you may
15:18
Speaker 1: have it and not know it. And HIV eighth is
15:20
Speaker 1: an outlier as far as diseases go, in that there's
15:23
Speaker 1: no there's no vaccine against it, um, there is no
15:28
Speaker 1: way to easily treat it. It spreads quickly, and because
15:33
Speaker 1: it has what's called late onset symptoms, like you said,
15:36
Speaker 1: people go ten years after being infected before they realize
15:40
Speaker 1: they're sick, especially if they're not getting tested in the meantime.
15:43
Speaker 1: And so it just keeps spreading and spreading and spreading
15:46
Speaker 1: among people who think they're healthy but who actually have
15:49
Speaker 1: the virus. Yeah, and if you're promiscuous, it's not like
15:51
Speaker 1: you can name the partners you've had over the last
15:55
Speaker 1: decade to tell them maybe you want to get tested,
15:58
Speaker 1: you know. And then even more than that, and again, well,
16:02
Speaker 1: so with the gay community, it's such an at risk
16:06
Speaker 1: UM subgroup. We'll explain why in a second, but one
16:09
Speaker 1: of the reasons why it spreads quickly in the gay
16:11
Speaker 1: community because it's a relatively small community. So that means
16:15
Speaker 1: that the pool you have to draw from for sexual partners,
16:20
Speaker 1: statistically speaking, you're at higher risk. Yeah, because it's smaller,
16:24
Speaker 1: because it is a smaller community. But even beyond that,
16:27
Speaker 1: biologically speaking, they're at higher risk as well. Gay men are. Yeah,
16:32
Speaker 1: well we should just go ahead talk about that. The
16:35
Speaker 1: main reason is it's easier to get HIV from anal
16:39
Speaker 1: sex and that is men and women because um, the well,
16:44
Speaker 1: there's a few reasons for that. One, the lining of
16:46
Speaker 1: the rectum is very fragile, it tears very easily. UM,
16:50
Speaker 1: and intercourse lots of blood vessels, lots of blood vessels. Um.
16:54
Speaker 1: The cells that line the rectum are more susceptible to
16:57
Speaker 1: HIV than cells of the vagina. Right and then uh
17:01
Speaker 1: semen and rectal mucosa, which is the lining of the rectum,
17:06
Speaker 1: carry more HIV than vaginal fluid. So boom, right there,
17:10
Speaker 1: you're I think eighteen percent eighteen eighteen times more risky
17:15
Speaker 1: with anal intercourse than just regular vaginal inter course. Right,
17:20
Speaker 1: and saying that right, you are, yes, and um, gay
17:23
Speaker 1: men and straight women are equal risk of AIDS through
17:29
Speaker 1: um through unprotected sex anally, because it doesn't it doesn't
17:35
Speaker 1: matter that you're a man or not. No, a man's
17:38
Speaker 1: rectum is the same as a woman's right exactly as
17:40
Speaker 1: far as I know. I'm pretty sure you're right about that. Yeah,
17:43
Speaker 1: I mean it says in here, uh the risk. Yeah,
17:46
Speaker 1: that's exactly right. Another reason is a role versatility is
17:50
Speaker 1: what they call it. Whether or not you're a top
17:52
Speaker 1: or a bottom, you can get it either way by
17:56
Speaker 1: giving anal sex or receiving anal sex. So you're kind
18:00
Speaker 1: of in a lose lose situation precisely. Uh. So that
18:05
Speaker 1: and I never knew that until I've studied this, that switching,
18:10
Speaker 1: like why why do gay men get a HIV more
18:15
Speaker 1: than uh, straight people if it's passed through intercourse? And
18:18
Speaker 1: now it all makes sense, all right? Going back to
18:25
Speaker 1: why AIDS is so scary and HIV, I feel like
18:28
Speaker 1: we're interchanging those and we shouldn't be. No, let's let's
18:31
Speaker 1: lay this out right here right now, you're ready, because
18:34
Speaker 1: I didn't realize this fully until we started researching this episode.
18:38
Speaker 1: So HIV is a it's called the progressive disease in
18:44
Speaker 1: that it goes through stages. So technically UM and HIV
18:48
Speaker 1: infection has zero stage zero to stage three UH and
18:54
Speaker 1: all of this is based on the number of T
18:58
Speaker 1: helper cells you have in a milli leader of blood.
19:01
Speaker 1: Normal healthy person has about a million T helper cells
19:05
Speaker 1: called CD plus four cells in one milli leader of
19:08
Speaker 1: their blood. As you um, as the the HIV infection progresses,
19:14
Speaker 1: it diminishes the number of these helper cells. And as
19:18
Speaker 1: it goes down you go to certain stages, so like
19:22
Speaker 1: stage three HIV is um I think five hundred thousand
19:27
Speaker 1: per milli leader or blood or less. And then once
19:30
Speaker 1: you reach two hundred thousand uh c D plus four
19:34
Speaker 1: cells in your blood UH, you have AIDS. So AIDS
19:38
Speaker 1: is not a separate disease. It's not a it's not
19:41
Speaker 1: a new condition that that arises out of HIV. It's
19:46
Speaker 1: all it's just part of a classification system. Yeah, it's
19:49
Speaker 1: basically ND stage HIV. It's stage four HIV, and it's
19:54
Speaker 1: really bizarre that they have a whole different name for
19:57
Speaker 1: it if you think about it. But a this is
20:00
Speaker 1: just basically the end category of HIV. And it used
20:05
Speaker 1: to be that was a death sentence. Once you had AIDS,
20:08
Speaker 1: you were basically dead. And in the eighties and nineties,
20:12
Speaker 1: especially before I think the AIDS cocktail, which we'll talk
20:16
Speaker 1: about came out, it was, um, you basically were diagnosed
20:21
Speaker 1: and you were dead in twelve to eighteen months. That
20:23
Speaker 1: was that. Now it can keep going you, I mean,
20:26
Speaker 1: people just live for decades now with AIDS. But once
20:29
Speaker 1: you have AIDS, once you have that designation, UM, you
20:34
Speaker 1: have that for the rest of your life, unless you're cured,
20:37
Speaker 1: which has only happened a handful of times. Yeah, and
20:39
Speaker 1: there's a guy named Todd Heywood that wrote this great
20:42
Speaker 1: article uh saying it's time to retire the medical category
20:45
Speaker 1: of AIDS, and he makes a lot of good reasons
20:47
Speaker 1: why we should just call it HIV disease like you
20:50
Speaker 1: would say heart disease. Right, So we're not gonna say
20:54
Speaker 1: HIV disease in this show. We're not that big as friends. Well,
20:58
Speaker 1: I just wanna go with traditional terms because some people learn.
21:02
Speaker 1: But I think there is a good case to be
21:04
Speaker 1: made for that is what I'm saying. I mean, this
21:07
Speaker 1: is also another UM. Another mark in that guy's in
21:13
Speaker 1: favor of that argument is that AIDS was named in
21:18
Speaker 1: and we've learned so much about this disease since then,
21:23
Speaker 1: and one of the things we've learned is this is
21:24
Speaker 1: a progressive disease that goes through stages. AIDS is just
21:28
Speaker 1: the end stage of it. Why have a different name
21:30
Speaker 1: for it? And there's no, it's not the same in
21:32
Speaker 1: any two people. Uh, And HIV disease is just more
21:36
Speaker 1: all encompassing. I think, yeah, so we're not going to
21:39
Speaker 1: use it, are we. That's gonna be tough. What to
21:42
Speaker 1: not say HIV disease? Oh, AIDS, I thought you were
21:45
Speaker 1: saying yeah. Uh. And the final reason, boy, this took
21:49
Speaker 1: like twenty minutes to get back to us. Wait what
21:51
Speaker 1: are we talking about? The final reason that HIV is
21:54
Speaker 1: uh super scary is because of its very unique way
21:58
Speaker 1: it manifests itself, which is um it invades and destroys
22:02
Speaker 1: the immune system. The very system that is supposed to
22:05
Speaker 1: protect you from disease is ruined. It's yeah, it's HIV
22:10
Speaker 1: is a virus, so it behaves like a virus. But
22:12
Speaker 1: other viruses attacks, say like you're fat cell that you
22:16
Speaker 1: could care less about, So who cares? AIDS or HIV
22:21
Speaker 1: attacks your immune system directly. The cells, a specific type
22:25
Speaker 1: of cell of your immune system and that's what eventually
22:27
Speaker 1: leads to your death or used to definitely lead to
22:30
Speaker 1: your death. You know, I'm back in my day, all right.
22:33
Speaker 1: I think we should take a break and we will
22:34
Speaker 1: talk a little bit about how it is and is
22:36
Speaker 1: not transmitted right after this, all right, Josh, it's uh,
23:02
Speaker 1: George Orwell is in charge. I'm in elementary school, and
23:06
Speaker 1: AIDS is a scary thing, and you can get it
23:08
Speaker 1: from toilet seats and mosquitoes and kissing and shaking hands.
23:13
Speaker 1: Shaking hands, Yeah, being too near to somebody. It was
23:17
Speaker 1: very scary as far as times go to be a kid.
23:21
Speaker 1: None of that stuff is true. Think about it, man.
23:22
Speaker 1: We were raised during that horrible little ven diagram where
23:26
Speaker 1: the Cold War and the AID scare overlapped. Like we
23:30
Speaker 1: just basically didn't want to leave our houses. We missed
23:32
Speaker 1: out on the days where free secs and and drugs
23:35
Speaker 1: was like, didn't hurt anybody, and just sprinkle in a
23:38
Speaker 1: little stranger danger in there too, why not? Yeah, a
23:41
Speaker 1: little satanic panics sure. And the eighties what a crazy
23:44
Speaker 1: time now that you know we've got a little distance
23:46
Speaker 1: from it. Parachute pants is that all about culture? Club
23:51
Speaker 1: was actually great? That's the only good thing about the eighties.
23:54
Speaker 1: UM the ways that you can get HIV sexual contact,
23:58
Speaker 1: sharing needles interview in his needles, breastfeeding, mother to baby,
24:04
Speaker 1: UM infected mother to fetus during pregnancy, at birth, and
24:08
Speaker 1: blood transfusions, which used to happen a lot and doesn't
24:13
Speaker 1: happen that much anymore. No, and there was It's another
24:16
Speaker 1: thing for me in the band played on, was this
24:17
Speaker 1: big to do about whether or not UM Blood Donation
24:22
Speaker 1: Center say like the Red Cross should have to test
24:25
Speaker 1: blood for this new disease. They were like, do you
24:28
Speaker 1: know how much this is gonna cost. It's gonna completely
24:30
Speaker 1: dent the blood supply. People are gonna die because we
24:32
Speaker 1: have to do this. But then as it became very
24:35
Speaker 1: obvious that you this stuff spread really easily through blood transfusions,
24:40
Speaker 1: they definitely started to check it. They came up with
24:42
Speaker 1: a I think a fairly cheap test for it in UM. Yeah,
24:48
Speaker 1: the FDA approved something in to test it. But I
24:52
Speaker 1: mean without these tests suck. You have a nine thousand,
24:57
Speaker 1: two hundred and fifty chants out of ten thousand of
25:02
Speaker 1: of acquiring HIV from a blood transfusion. That's yeah, man, Yeah,
25:08
Speaker 1: that those are pretty high chances because think about it,
25:11
Speaker 1: and for unprotected anal sex, if you are receiving, you
25:16
Speaker 1: have a hundred and thirty eight out of ten thousand chance. Okay,
25:20
Speaker 1: this is nine thousand, two hundred and fifty out of
25:22
Speaker 1: ten thousand chants from a blood transfusion. I tried to
25:25
Speaker 1: find those stats. Actually I couldn't find that one. Oh
25:27
Speaker 1: I got some more for you, buddy, if you want them. Well,
25:29
Speaker 1: I was trying to find when I was doing my
25:31
Speaker 1: my stupid mathematical equation earlier, I was trying to find
25:35
Speaker 1: out the possibility or percentage rate of having unprotected anal sex,
25:41
Speaker 1: Like what are your chances of getting if you're if
25:45
Speaker 1: you're giving, you have an eleven out of ten thousand chance,
25:49
Speaker 1: so one point one out of every thousand encounters. So
25:54
Speaker 1: even if my yeah, that's sixty two, number goes way
25:57
Speaker 1: way down, thankfully, but I think it's still you know
26:00
Speaker 1: this is this is based on and I should say
26:02
Speaker 1: this is based on the distribution of HIV infected people
26:07
Speaker 1: across the United States as of like I think two
26:10
Speaker 1: thousand ten, so, um, I mean, it's all statistics, man,
26:16
Speaker 1: It depends on where you are, who you're hanging out
26:18
Speaker 1: with UM. I mean, if you're like sharing needles with
26:21
Speaker 1: with like UM addicts in the street, your risk is
26:25
Speaker 1: probably going to be a little higher than the national
26:28
Speaker 1: average across the United States, you know what I mean.
26:30
Speaker 1: So it definitely is contextual. It's almost to the point
26:33
Speaker 1: where it's like these these stats are meaningless, really, but
26:36
Speaker 1: they do put a I think stats help people put
26:39
Speaker 1: like a face to things. For sure. The blood transfusion
26:42
Speaker 1: one is a tad eye open for real um. And
26:45
Speaker 1: then finally we need to mention And the only reason
26:48
Speaker 1: we mentioned this is because technically it is possible. There
26:52
Speaker 1: has been one case of HIV infection through open mouth kissing. Yes,
26:57
Speaker 1: but I hesitate to even say that because people like
27:01
Speaker 1: Josh and Chokes said, you get through kissing, So you're
27:03
Speaker 1: there has to be bloody gums of an HIV infected
27:08
Speaker 1: person present. I think both people have to have bleeding
27:11
Speaker 1: gums and one of the people has to have HIV
27:15
Speaker 1: and they just make out and the the HIV is
27:19
Speaker 1: transferred that way. That clearly doesn't happen much. Apparently it
27:23
Speaker 1: happened at least once, which is pretty crazy. But yes,
27:26
Speaker 1: you're you're very it's extraordinarily unlikely that you're going to
27:31
Speaker 1: contract HIV through open mouth kissing. It does not transmit um. Well,
27:36
Speaker 1: here's the good news. This sounds like it's all bad news.
27:38
Speaker 1: The good news is it is not airborne, does not
27:42
Speaker 1: transfer through the surface contact. It's very fragile outside the body,
27:46
Speaker 1: super fragile, which is awesome. Like once saliva or blood
27:50
Speaker 1: dries up, there's practically zero chance of transmission. Um and yeah,
27:56
Speaker 1: it just it doesn't live very long outside the body,
27:58
Speaker 1: which it sounds bad, but it could be a lot worse.
28:01
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, you know, super hard through um breathing. Yeah,
28:07
Speaker 1: through the air, it would be bad. Uh. It is
28:11
Speaker 1: not transmitted through saliva, tears, or sweat. Uh. And saliva
28:14
Speaker 1: and tears have trace amounts of HIV. They have not
28:18
Speaker 1: detected HIV and sweat at all, which is good news
28:22
Speaker 1: for me because I'm a sweaty guys. Yeah, it's good
28:25
Speaker 1: news for us. I guess you're right, uh, insects. I
28:28
Speaker 1: guess we need to talk about the whole mosquito thing,
28:30
Speaker 1: because I think I talked about this in the virus episode.
28:33
Speaker 1: Um was it virus? There was something? Maybe I remember
28:37
Speaker 1: it might have been just the mosquitoes. One, Oh yeah,
28:39
Speaker 1: maybe so. I remember thinking when I was a kid
28:42
Speaker 1: like and this before I had read anything about it.
28:44
Speaker 1: I came up with it on my own. It's like, wow, mosquitoes,
28:48
Speaker 1: those are like little needles. I bet they could transmit
28:50
Speaker 1: AIDS or HIV, and um, it's not true. So here's why.
28:55
Speaker 1: There's very very good scientific reasons why you can't catch
28:59
Speaker 1: HIV from a mosquito. When a mosquito injects its probosis
29:04
Speaker 1: into your skin, um, it uses its own saliva to
29:08
Speaker 1: lubricate this, this whole thing right um. And and when
29:14
Speaker 1: it draws blood out, it can conceivably draw the HIV
29:17
Speaker 1: virus out of an HIV infected person through their blood. Right.
29:21
Speaker 1: But there's a couple of things that that um happened
29:25
Speaker 1: after that. One, the mosquito goes and digests its blood
29:28
Speaker 1: meal to the so it doesn't just immediately go to
29:32
Speaker 1: another person and pick up some more blood usually um
29:36
Speaker 1: to the virus does not replicate within the mosquito. Uh.
29:40
Speaker 1: And Three, that virus isn't present in the mosquito saliva.
29:44
Speaker 1: So even if it went and drank the blood of
29:48
Speaker 1: an HIV infected person got HIV in it and then
29:51
Speaker 1: went and and and injected you and got some of
29:55
Speaker 1: your blood and then went back and digestis blood meal.
29:57
Speaker 1: You still would not catch HIV from that. There would
29:59
Speaker 1: be no transfer of HIV from that person's blood into
30:03
Speaker 1: your body. Yeah. And they've even investigated in like parts
30:06
Speaker 1: of Africa where aids in HIV are rampant and where
30:09
Speaker 1: mosquitoes are rampant and transmit all kinds of diseases, and
30:13
Speaker 1: they've still said nope, nope, nope, not happening, thank god. Uh.
30:18
Speaker 1: And then of course toilet seats, swimming in a pool
30:21
Speaker 1: with someone eating at the same restaurant sharing a fork.
30:25
Speaker 1: Even social kissing closed mouth kissing. Did you know there
30:28
Speaker 1: was a name for that closed mouth kissing? Yeah? I
30:31
Speaker 1: call it no fun social kissing? What like the French
30:35
Speaker 1: you do? Like yeah? Or I call that wedding ceremony kissing.
30:45
Speaker 1: You don't often see people when they say you may
30:46
Speaker 1: kiss the bride just like go full to its gross.
30:49
Speaker 1: I think I saw one guy do that once at
30:51
Speaker 1: a wedding. I was like, oh, man, man, come on,
30:54
Speaker 1: do like a nice respectful kiss on the lips. You
30:57
Speaker 1: mean I went to a friend's wedding recently and um,
31:00
Speaker 1: they had a nice kiss Tony and Wenney. Congratulations. By
31:04
Speaker 1: the way, guys, what was nice about it? It was
31:06
Speaker 1: not social kissing, but it was not like you gross
31:09
Speaker 1: it was. It was a good wedding kiss, a good romantic,
31:13
Speaker 1: but tasteful kiss, perfectly perfectly put. Well, that's nice. I
31:18
Speaker 1: hate that. I miss that. Um do you maybe I
31:21
Speaker 1: can get my hands on video of it or they?
31:26
Speaker 1: Uh yeah, Virus Talk with Josh and Chuck by the way, October, Yeah,
31:30
Speaker 1: but I really think it was the Mosquito's episode that
31:32
Speaker 1: you talked about it. No, no no, no, I mean we're
31:34
Speaker 1: about to talk about virus is because HIV is a virus, agreed,
31:38
Speaker 1: And as you learned and Virus Talk, um, viruses require
31:42
Speaker 1: a host cell because viruses are basically they're not their
31:47
Speaker 1: own thing, like they they just are carrying information basically
31:52
Speaker 1: to invade another cell and poop it out in there,
31:55
Speaker 1: right exactly. I mean, like they are the definition of um.
32:00
Speaker 1: I guess what Dawkins would have called the selfish gene.
32:03
Speaker 1: It just the whole purpose, if there is such thing
32:07
Speaker 1: as a purpose to the universe, the whole purpose of
32:09
Speaker 1: a virus is to create more viruses. That's it. And
32:12
Speaker 1: when you think about the effect that a virus like
32:15
Speaker 1: HIV has on human beings and has had on the
32:18
Speaker 1: entire population of humanity over the last few decades, to
32:22
Speaker 1: think that these viruses aren't even thinking that, they're not
32:26
Speaker 1: that all that, all of that is just a byproduct
32:28
Speaker 1: of its singular purpose, Yeah, of replicating itself. It's it's
32:32
Speaker 1: kind of astounding. It's just so, yeah, it is because
32:36
Speaker 1: it's just like the virus couldn't care less, because the
32:39
Speaker 1: virus couldn't care literally, it doesn't have feelings. It's just
32:43
Speaker 1: it's bizarre to think of it like that. Yeah, it's
32:46
Speaker 1: it truly is uh. So viruses, including HIV, they don't
32:49
Speaker 1: have cell walls or nucleus. Um. It's just those genetic
32:53
Speaker 1: instructions and it's got a little protective shell. Um. A
32:56
Speaker 1: virus HIV particle called a very of irene. I think
33:02
Speaker 1: both of those are acceptable all uh it is spherical
33:05
Speaker 1: uh and one ten thousand of a millimeter in diameter,
33:09
Speaker 1: and it has little buds sticking out of the top
33:12
Speaker 1: of it where it's basically it docks with the host cell. Yeah.
33:16
Speaker 1: So um, like you said, it's just some instructions to
33:20
Speaker 1: replicate itself. It's RNA strands wrapped in like a little
33:23
Speaker 1: um protective shell made of proteins and lipids, I think,
33:28
Speaker 1: and um, it enters the body and it goes straight
33:31
Speaker 1: for your lymph nodes. I believe, yeah, because that's where
33:34
Speaker 1: the T helper cells like to hang out. And of
33:37
Speaker 1: course because it wants to recaboc on your body, it
33:39
Speaker 1: goes straight there. And let's talk a little bit real
33:41
Speaker 1: quick about T helper cells. So basically you have T
33:44
Speaker 1: cells and they are like these they're like jaws from
33:47
Speaker 1: James Bond, Okay, Lurch from the Adams family, UM, and
33:54
Speaker 1: Jason Vorhees all rolled into one. As far as like
33:59
Speaker 1: white blood cells in your immune system, they are mindless, bloodthirsty,
34:05
Speaker 1: just killers. Lurch wasn't a bad guy, no, but he's scary, intimidating,
34:10
Speaker 1: and you do a pretty good lurch by the way. Um,
34:15
Speaker 1: I thought it was a great lurch. I appreciate it.
34:17
Speaker 1: So it's just these things, these things are just kind
34:20
Speaker 1: of hanging out. These T T cells are just hanging
34:22
Speaker 1: out waiting to be told what to do. So, okay,
34:24
Speaker 1: so there's one more character that they're like master blaster,
34:29
Speaker 1: but they need the master guy a little shrimp. And
34:33
Speaker 1: the little shrimp comes in the form of the the
34:36
Speaker 1: c D four plus T cells that the T helper cells.
34:40
Speaker 1: They go to the T cells and say, hey, get ready,
34:43
Speaker 1: get all wrapped up and go get those guys, right.
34:47
Speaker 1: So HIV goes right to the c D four plus
34:51
Speaker 1: T cells, the T helper cells, and that's its preferred
34:54
Speaker 1: cell to attack. Those are the ones that it hijacks.
34:56
Speaker 1: And it goes up and it docks with the CD
35:00
Speaker 1: four plus T cells and it it basically takes over,
35:04
Speaker 1: It hijacks it in turns those cells into HIV byrian factories.
35:10
Speaker 1: That is correct, sir. And more specifically, there are seven
35:14
Speaker 1: it's a seven part um process and how HIV invades
35:19
Speaker 1: the T cells. And yeah, because I don't know if
35:22
Speaker 1: we said that the replication is a really big part
35:25
Speaker 1: of HIV and why it's so devastating. Yeah, we did.
35:29
Speaker 1: We mention that we'll talk about a little more. Okay,
35:31
Speaker 1: let's let's just get to the nitty gritty though. Yeah,
35:33
Speaker 1: and we should point out to we're gonna talk about
35:35
Speaker 1: the drug cocktail later. And then each stage there's another
35:40
Speaker 1: there's a corresponding drug in the drug cocktail that helps
35:44
Speaker 1: disrupt this process. Yeah, it's like a very smart, multi
35:47
Speaker 1: pronged approach because the HIV virus is like what the hey, yeah,
35:52
Speaker 1: exactly going on here. I can't get anything done and
35:55
Speaker 1: it just leaves all right. So part one binding as
35:58
Speaker 1: when the HIV actually attaches to the immune cell, the
36:02
Speaker 1: T helper cell and they actually fused together. Yeah, there's
36:06
Speaker 1: special proteins. There's proteins on the helper cell that allow
36:11
Speaker 1: these things to dock with it. That's right. It's like
36:14
Speaker 1: a receptor's site almost. It's like a couple of rednecks
36:17
Speaker 1: and boats when they tie their boats together out in
36:19
Speaker 1: the lake from fourth of July. Right. I was thinking
36:21
Speaker 1: more like a space capsule in the I S S.
36:23
Speaker 1: But I guess that's a lower tech version of it,
36:27
Speaker 1: right next tying their boats. One man's space capsule is
36:30
Speaker 1: another man's party boat. Uh. Some some redneck boater who
36:35
Speaker 1: was listening to this and didn't realize he'd be implicated.
36:37
Speaker 1: It was like, hey, I'm not gay. He just said
36:40
Speaker 1: that to his his iPhone number two. Reverse transcription, Uh,
36:46
Speaker 1: reverse transcript days. It's a viral enzyme. It copies. We
36:51
Speaker 1: said that HIV was RNA initially correct. I don't know
36:55
Speaker 1: if we said that it's a retrovirus. So the the
36:58
Speaker 1: genetic instructions that are inside the virus is RNA, not DNA, right.
37:03
Speaker 1: But it goes through the reverse transcription process where the
37:06
Speaker 1: virus is RNA becomes DNA, right, And it just when
37:10
Speaker 1: it docks with the helper sell it does this little
37:13
Speaker 1: bit of work on its own. It says it's got
37:16
Speaker 1: this little enzyme. It runs it's RNA through it, and
37:19
Speaker 1: there's a DNA strand that it just built, right, correct,
37:23
Speaker 1: number three integration. Now you have your DNA and it
37:26
Speaker 1: is carried into the cells nucleus by something called viral
37:30
Speaker 1: integras binds what that sells DNA, and now you are
37:33
Speaker 1: no longer a retro virus. You writ provirus right. But
37:37
Speaker 1: then strangely, the cells DNA, the helper cells DNA takes
37:42
Speaker 1: this new instruction, these new blueprints, and spits out RNA
37:47
Speaker 1: again m rna correct. Right. It's it's called messenger RNA
37:52
Speaker 1: and it is instructions on how to build new HIV virans.
37:57
Speaker 1: It all sounds very sinister, it does, because if you
38:00
Speaker 1: think about it on A. On a cellular level, it
38:02
Speaker 1: is like, um, it's like I'm trying to kill this thing, right,
38:06
Speaker 1: but it's very insidious, and that it's it comes up with.
38:10
Speaker 1: It translates its own little instruction manual into the language
38:14
Speaker 1: of the cell, inserts it into the cells like main
38:18
Speaker 1: section the brain of it, and that makes the brain
38:21
Speaker 1: spit out new instructions that are taken to the rest
38:25
Speaker 1: of the cell. So it almost like it it gets
38:28
Speaker 1: the stamp of approval from the cell to go for
38:32
Speaker 1: the other parts of the cell to start building these
38:34
Speaker 1: new parts for the virus. Yeah, we're totally humanizing it
38:38
Speaker 1: by making it sound like it's nefarious, but it does
38:41
Speaker 1: seem that way. You know, it's very interesting. So that
38:44
Speaker 1: last step was called transcription. Then you have translation. You've
38:47
Speaker 1: got that m r n A at this point is
38:50
Speaker 1: carried back out of the cell. This is like a
38:52
Speaker 1: work order, Yeah, exactly, carry back out of the cell
38:56
Speaker 1: and then basically follows a natural progression where these long
39:00
Speaker 1: chains of proteins and enzymes are strung together by the
39:03
Speaker 1: own cells, own functions, and own components. Yeah, it just
39:07
Speaker 1: starts doing its normal thing, right, but it's not doing
39:10
Speaker 1: its normal stuff any longer. What it's doing is using
39:12
Speaker 1: its energy and time to build new HIV viruns rather
39:16
Speaker 1: than go prime T cells exactly. Uh. Part six assembly
39:22
Speaker 1: the RNA and viral enzymes they get together at the
39:25
Speaker 1: edge of the cell, and another enzyme called proteas basically cuts.
39:31
Speaker 1: I don't really understand this part, So imagine what's more
39:35
Speaker 1: like making one cell at a time, having somebody just
39:39
Speaker 1: spit out a whole bunch of the same parts, and
39:41
Speaker 1: then assembling them later. One of the steps of assembly
39:44
Speaker 1: is cutting them into individual bits from these long chains
39:48
Speaker 1: of polypeptides, and then finally, butting is when it actually
39:52
Speaker 1: splits off. It pinches out from the cell membrane becomes
39:56
Speaker 1: its own thing, and one of the key components there
39:59
Speaker 1: is it doesn't have to destroy the host cell in
40:01
Speaker 1: the process. No, it doesn't. UM. There's a lot of
40:03
Speaker 1: viruses out there that just keep building and building and
40:05
Speaker 1: building until they literally rupture the cell, and that's how
40:09
Speaker 1: they spread through the body. These like say, hey, thanks
40:12
Speaker 1: for a little bit of that lipid action, I'm now
40:15
Speaker 1: a new HIV virus and UM. But you can keep
40:20
Speaker 1: going on and build some more virans. I don't have
40:22
Speaker 1: to destroy you to spread. It's really a nasty, nasty disease.
40:26
Speaker 1: It really is how it works. So eventually the the
40:29
Speaker 1: helper cell does figure out that there's something terribly wrong
40:33
Speaker 1: and it it self destructs. But this makes the whole
40:36
Speaker 1: thing even even worse. So the CD the c D
40:39
Speaker 1: four plus T helper cell is not out there doing
40:42
Speaker 1: what it's supposed to be doing, priming T cells to
40:44
Speaker 1: attack the HIV instead of spending its time making more HIV.
40:50
Speaker 1: And then when it finally is like, this has messed up.
40:52
Speaker 1: Something's really wrong. I need to self destruct. It actually
40:56
Speaker 1: signals other c D four plus he helped ourselves to
41:00
Speaker 1: come surround it, and then it basically blows up, taking
41:04
Speaker 1: them with it. Yeah, it's like a mass suicide. It's yeah,
41:06
Speaker 1: it's like it's like a massacre down there on the
41:09
Speaker 1: cellular level. Yeah. So this is one of the things
41:11
Speaker 1: that makes HIV so insidious. All Right, I think we
41:16
Speaker 1: need to take another break because people's minds are exploding
41:19
Speaker 1: at this point and hopefully expanding, so we'll be right
41:23
Speaker 1: back after this. Um chuck. One of the things we
41:46
Speaker 1: also have to mention about HIV and UM one of
41:49
Speaker 1: the other aspects that makes it so difficult to cure
41:53
Speaker 1: or to even treat. Um. In addition to these cells
41:57
Speaker 1: like being hijacked, some of these irons that are being
42:01
Speaker 1: produced are just going off and accumulating in other cells,
42:06
Speaker 1: but they're not hijacking it, right, So as far as
42:09
Speaker 1: the cells concerned, there's nothing weird going on. There's nothing
42:12
Speaker 1: worth blowing yourself up over. It's just um, there's just
42:16
Speaker 1: some extra little virus hanging out on my surface. But
42:19
Speaker 1: who cares, It's fine. And these start to spread over
42:22
Speaker 1: that decade from infection to the onset of symptoms, they
42:25
Speaker 1: start to spread and accumulate throughout the body and the
42:28
Speaker 1: growing area and your bone marrow and your lymph nodes,
42:31
Speaker 1: like all over your bodys Yes, they form HIV reservoirs, right,
42:36
Speaker 1: And since these things can just hide out and they're
42:39
Speaker 1: not active and then they can become active whenever, it
42:42
Speaker 1: makes HIV a chronic, lifelong disease, and it makes it
42:45
Speaker 1: really really difficult to eradicate because the body mounts its
42:50
Speaker 1: own defense against the HIV infection. Initially, it's those reservoirs
42:56
Speaker 1: that become more and more widespread and increasing number to
43:00
Speaker 1: where they finally get to a point where your viral
43:02
Speaker 1: load is what it's called. There's just so many HIV
43:06
Speaker 1: viryans infecting so much of your body that when they
43:09
Speaker 1: do start to finally become active, it just totally overloads
43:12
Speaker 1: your c D four count and your number just goes down,
43:16
Speaker 1: and all of a sudden you have the stage three
43:19
Speaker 1: year four HIV, which is again is AIDS and um
43:24
Speaker 1: we uh yeah, thanks for pointing that out. Um, I
43:27
Speaker 1: think that one of the also more dangerous parts is
43:30
Speaker 1: those reservoirs are invisible in that right, like immunologically speaking, Yeah,
43:35
Speaker 1: and you know, it's just like there's a there's a
43:37
Speaker 1: virus on the on the protein outside and that's it.
43:40
Speaker 1: And we're gonna talk about the AIDS cocktail and stuff.
43:43
Speaker 1: But even though it is effective, I think they said
43:46
Speaker 1: it's it's um, it's so slow moving that it will
43:50
Speaker 1: require sixty to eighty years of the cocktail therapy to
43:54
Speaker 1: completely eradicate the virus. In other words, you can't completely
43:57
Speaker 1: eradicate the virus. I mean technically good. It depends it
44:02
Speaker 1: to be very old when you were very young. If
44:04
Speaker 1: you acquired it at age ten and you lived to
44:06
Speaker 1: age ninety, then technically you could probably completely rad KHIV.
44:11
Speaker 1: That's not the way that this goes though, you know. Yeah,
44:14
Speaker 1: well no, but there have been plenty of kids who
44:16
Speaker 1: get it through other ways, you know. Yeah, I mean
44:18
Speaker 1: like you can be infected as a fetus, um and
44:21
Speaker 1: again through breastfeeding. I think are two of the ways
44:23
Speaker 1: you said, right, yeah, and you know with I think
44:27
Speaker 1: Ryan White got it through a blood transfusion, didn't heah is,
44:31
Speaker 1: Well we'll talk about that too, man. There's so much
44:33
Speaker 1: future goodness coming. All right, Well, we're gonna close this
44:37
Speaker 1: episode out with some stats. UM. I went to uh,
44:41
Speaker 1: and this is for the United States. We've already given
44:44
Speaker 1: some worldwide stats, but geez, where to start. There's so
44:48
Speaker 1: many UM. Estimated incidents of HIV has remained stable in
44:54
Speaker 1: recent years, about fifty thousand new HIV infections per year
44:58
Speaker 1: in the United States. But like we said, some groups
45:01
Speaker 1: UM are worse off than others. Uh if you go
45:05
Speaker 1: by groups UM. And this is where categorizing sexuality gets
45:10
Speaker 1: so tricky, because you can say homosexual men, bisexual men,
45:15
Speaker 1: or this term that was invented in the mid nineties
45:18
Speaker 1: m s M men who have sex with men, which
45:21
Speaker 1: is meant to be a neutral term. Yeah, that's not
45:24
Speaker 1: casting any judgment or anything that right. It also takes
45:26
Speaker 1: into account dudes are into like download stuff who don't
45:29
Speaker 1: self identify as gay, right, Um, like I'm not gay bisexual,
45:33
Speaker 1: I just have sex with men exactly every Wednesday, you know,
45:36
Speaker 1: in the park. Yeah, and those those people would be
45:39
Speaker 1: counted in this correct Uh. And there's we might as
45:42
Speaker 1: well say, there's there's the very people who created that
45:45
Speaker 1: term in the science community. Um, some of them are
45:48
Speaker 1: now lobbying to have that term removed or used more sparingly,
45:53
Speaker 1: I think is another interpretation. Yeah, And the thought is
45:56
Speaker 1: and it makes a lot of sense, is uh. And
45:58
Speaker 1: there's also women sleeping with women us w Uh, it says,
46:02
Speaker 1: and I'm gonna read this directly, so don't goof it up,
46:04
Speaker 1: said ms M and w SW often imply a lack
46:07
Speaker 1: of lesbian or gay identity and absence of community networks
46:10
Speaker 1: and relationships in which same gender peerings mean more than
46:13
Speaker 1: merely sexual behavior. Uh. Plus it's ex sense. They are
46:18
Speaker 1: also saying that it's overly broad too, that you're really
46:21
Speaker 1: not taking into account specifically who you're talking about, you know,
46:25
Speaker 1: like if you're lumping in Wednesday download guys with um,
46:31
Speaker 1: you know, men who have been openly homosexual since age
46:35
Speaker 1: sixteen who are now sixty. Those are two totally different
46:38
Speaker 1: communities and in most ways, absolutely and to lump them
46:42
Speaker 1: in together, especially if you're if it's an epidemiological paper,
46:45
Speaker 1: for example, that's that's doing a disservice to the person
46:49
Speaker 1: you're writing the paper for. So they're there, they propose
46:52
Speaker 1: to just be more specific, like you don't have to
46:55
Speaker 1: get do away with MSM. But say you know Wednesday
46:59
Speaker 1: downlow ms um right, you know, when you're talking about
47:01
Speaker 1: a specific population and in your study site, the the
47:06
Speaker 1: type of subgroups that you study that participated in the study,
47:10
Speaker 1: like you had twenty Wednesday download ms M, you had
47:14
Speaker 1: uh thirty old gay guys. Surely there's other abbreviations that
47:18
Speaker 1: could come out of this, but they're saying, just be
47:20
Speaker 1: more scientific about this show. We yeah, and I think
47:22
Speaker 1: it started out with a well meaning, well intended thing,
47:25
Speaker 1: but um there, you know, this whole thing is evolved.
47:28
Speaker 1: Everyone's learning how the best deal with terminologies, you know,
47:31
Speaker 1: and we've in ten years there'll be more specific terminology.
47:35
Speaker 1: You know, what are you about to say he had
47:36
Speaker 1: a good joke like give everybody a break. We're all
47:38
Speaker 1: learning as we go. Yeah, we are. We're in this together.
47:41
Speaker 1: So but risk group wise. Uh. And of course it
47:45
Speaker 1: says MSM here right after we said all that. Uh.
47:48
Speaker 1: They represent about four percent of the male population is
47:51
Speaker 1: all in the United States in two thousand ten, they
47:53
Speaker 1: accounted for seventy eight of new HIV infections and of
47:58
Speaker 1: all people living with HIV UH in the United States.
48:02
Speaker 1: So and you know, we got to the reasons why
48:04
Speaker 1: that you know is happening earlier. Uh. And then the UM,
48:09
Speaker 1: let me see here, injection drug users represent eight percent
48:12
Speaker 1: of new infections in two thousand ten. Women accounted for
48:16
Speaker 1: twenty of estimated new infections in two thousand ten. And UM,
48:22
Speaker 1: what's scary there is there's been a rise UH in
48:25
Speaker 1: HIV infection and women increase from two thousand eight to
48:30
Speaker 1: two thousand ten. You know that's going in the wrong direction.
48:33
Speaker 1: I didn't see it in my research anywhere, but I
48:36
Speaker 1: didn't specifically look for it. UM, so take it with
48:38
Speaker 1: a grain of salt. But I remember hearing not too
48:40
Speaker 1: many years ago that UM HIV was on the rise
48:43
Speaker 1: among the elderly population really thanks to viagra. That there's
48:48
Speaker 1: been a far greater increase in sexual activity and retirement
48:52
Speaker 1: communities or nursing homes even sure because of viagra, and
48:56
Speaker 1: they're there, but they're just not taking precautions because they're like,
48:59
Speaker 1: I'm you know, I'm eighty. Yeah, that's fine, but apparently
49:03
Speaker 1: HIV is totally makes on the rise among that population.
49:06
Speaker 1: We need to do one on viagra. Actually looked at
49:08
Speaker 1: the article the other day to suggest it and it
49:10
Speaker 1: was hard. Oh was it? Yes, it was. It was
49:14
Speaker 1: dense and difficult, So yeah, bad, bad guy. UH. African
49:21
Speaker 1: Americans and minorities in general. UM Africa. African Americans represent
49:26
Speaker 1: twelve percent of the population but accounted fort of new
49:30
Speaker 1: infections in two thousands ten and I wish we had
49:33
Speaker 1: more recent stats, but we don't. Apparently that's the most
49:36
Speaker 1: most instantly available, which is surprising. And the same with
49:39
Speaker 1: Hispanic Latino UH a disproportionate affected by HIV compared to
49:45
Speaker 1: their population. So then I was like, well, why is
49:48
Speaker 1: this happening? UM. As far as African Americans and are concerned,
49:54
Speaker 1: there's a lot of debate on what's going on there. UM,
49:56
Speaker 1: but they have found more infections, a shorter survival period,
50:00
Speaker 1: an increased number of deaths, and the most leading theories
50:04
Speaker 1: are poverty, that they may be more likely to be
50:08
Speaker 1: uninsured and go to the doctor to begin with. UM,
50:13
Speaker 1: injection drug use. Uh, the increases increases the spread of HIV.
50:19
Speaker 1: And I guess what they're saying is there's less safe
50:22
Speaker 1: injection drug use in the African American community or less
50:26
Speaker 1: responsible like getting new you know, and stuff like that. Uh,
50:32
Speaker 1: there's like a heroin epidemic going on right now. I
50:34
Speaker 1: don't think just with the black community. As a matter
50:36
Speaker 1: of fact, it's even more popular among like white kids
50:39
Speaker 1: than Black kids right now. But I wonder how much
50:41
Speaker 1: of an effect that's having on the spread of HIV
50:43
Speaker 1: among everybody. Yeah, good point. Uh. And then the last
50:47
Speaker 1: couple of lack of information, Um, you may not you
50:51
Speaker 1: may be HIV positive and you don't even know it.
50:54
Speaker 1: And we I know, we talked before about the Tuskegee
50:57
Speaker 1: syphilis experiments and how they're that has led to a
51:01
Speaker 1: general distrust UM and some corners of the African American
51:05
Speaker 1: community against the medicine and doctors overall. And then finally
51:10
Speaker 1: a stigma. There's a stigma in the black community. UM
51:13
Speaker 1: that still is a gay, white disease. And that's why
51:18
Speaker 1: when Easy got AIDS it was such a big deal.
51:20
Speaker 1: It was the illuminati who injected him with it. Was
51:23
Speaker 1: that one of the theories. You're kidding? Uh yeah, I
51:27
Speaker 1: mean that was why he was a really big deal,
51:29
Speaker 1: because he put a face to a certain segment of
51:31
Speaker 1: the black population where they're like, wait a minute, you
51:34
Speaker 1: know it's easy can get it. Anybody can get it. Yeah,
51:36
Speaker 1: it's true. Uh so those are the reasons they think
51:39
Speaker 1: it's spreading more in the in the minority communities. Um,
51:44
Speaker 1: and are we done with part one? I think so? So.
51:47
Speaker 1: Do you remember um when they would do like a
51:49
Speaker 1: very serious two part different strokes at the end. Normally
51:54
Speaker 1: they would clap at the end, but at the end
51:55
Speaker 1: of part one, it would just like go quiet, Yeah,
51:58
Speaker 1: I got no listener mail for this. I think we
52:00
Speaker 1: should do that. Okay, So how do we set this up?
52:03
Speaker 1: I think we just stopped talking for more on this
52:11
Speaker 1: and thousands of other topics. Is it how stuff works?
52:14
Speaker 1: Dot Com