This week we talk about HIV, AIDS, and ART. We also discuss HAART, the Berlin Patient, and potential future cures. Recommended Book: Allergic by Theresa MacPhail Show Notes * https://www.unaids.org/en/resources/fact-sheet * https://hivinfo.nih.gov/understanding-hiv/fact-sheets/hiv-treatment-basics * https://clinicalinfo.hiv.gov/en/glossary/antiretroviral-therapy-art * https://www.paho.org/en/topics/antiretroviral-therapy * https://journals.lww.com/jaids/fulltext/2010/01010/declines_in_mortality_rates_and_changes_in_causes.13.aspx * https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s13181-013-0325-8 * https://academic.oup.com/jac/article/73/11/3148/5055837?login=false * https://journals.lww.com/jaids/fulltext/2016/09010/narrowing_the_gap_in_life_expectancy_between.6.aspx * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tenofovir_disoproxil * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Management_of_HIV/AIDS * https://www.verywellhealth.com/cart-hiv-combination-antiretroviral-therapy-48921 * https://www.cdc.gov/hiv/risk/art/index.html * https://www.freethink.com/health/cured-of-hiv * https://www.jstor.org/stable/3397566?origin=crossref * https://www.nytimes.com/1982/05/11/science/new-homosexual-disorder-worries-health-officials.html * https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/23444290/ * https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/diseases/4251-hiv-aids * https://web.archive.org/web/20080527201701/http://data.unaids.org/pub/EPISlides/2007/2007_epiupdate_en.pdf * https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanhiv/article/PIIS2352-3018(23)00028-0/fulltext Transcript In mid-May of 1981, the queer community-focused newspaper, the New York Native, published what would become the first-ever article on a strange disease that seemed to be afflicting community members in the city. What eventually became known as AIDS, but which was at the time discussed by medical professionals primarily in terms of its associated diseases, was clinically reported upon for the first time less than a month later, five official cases having been documented in an interconnected group of gay men and users of injectable drugs, who came to the attention of doctors for not being inherently immunocompromised, but still somehow contracting a rare type of pneumonia that only really impacted folks with severely impaired immune systems. In subsequent years, doctors started using a range of different terms for HIV and AIDS, calling them at different times and in different contexts the lymphotophic retrovirus, Kaposi's sarcoma and opportunistic infections, and the 4H disease, referring to heroine users, hemophiliacs, homosexuals, and Haitians, the four groups that seemed to make up almost all of the confirmed afflicted patients. The acronym GRID, for gay-related immune deficiency was also used for a time, but that one was fairly rapidly phased out when it became clear that this condition wasn't limited to the gay community—though those earlier assumptions and the terminology associated with them did manage to lock that bias into mainstream conversation and understanding of AIDS and HIV for a long time, and in some cases and in some locations, to this day. By the mid-80s, two research groups had identified different viruses that seemed to be associated with or responsible for cases of this mysterious condition, and it was eventually determined (in 1986) that they were actually the same virus, and that virus was designated HIV. HIV, short for Human Immunodeficiency Virus, is a retrovirus that, if left untreated, leads to Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome, or AIDS, in about 50% of patients within ten years of infection. So HIV is the virus, AIDS is a condition someone with HIV can develop after their immune system is severely damaged by the infection, and there are a bunch of diagnostic differentiations that determine when someone has transitioned from one category to the other, but in general folks with HIV will experience moderate flu- or mono-like symptoms, alongside swollen lymph nodes and rashes and throat problems and sor