From WebMD and Science Express

July 9, 2010 — National Institutes of Health (NIH) scientists now have “proof” that the search for an AIDS vaccine can succeed.

In the blood of an HIV infected person, the researchers discovered two powerful antibodies that neutralize 91% of HIV strains.

“The discoveries we have made may overcome the limitations that have long stymied antibody-based HIV vaccine design,” Peter D. Kwong, PhD, chief of structural biology at the NIH Vaccine Research Center, says in a news release.

The finding has implications far beyond HIV and AIDS. The new techniques used to find the anti-HIV antibodies can be used to spur research into vaccines against other diseases that have long stymied researchers.

It’s major news that humans are capable of making antibodies that neutralize the AIDS virus. But finding antibodies — even such powerful antibodies as these — is not the same as finding a vaccine capable of eliciting the antibodies. It will be years, at least, before the discovery leads to a vaccine that can be tested in people.

Even so, the discovery of the antibodies was a major scientific feat. The researchers, led by Kwong, Vaccine Research Center Director Gary J. Nabel, MD, PhD, and Vaccine Research Center Deputy Director John R. Mascola, MD, used newly developed molecular techniques to build “resurfaced” protein probes to trap the antibodies.

It seems surprising that a person with HIV infection can carry powerful anti-HIV antibodies and not be cured. But other recent studies suggest that as many as one in four people with HIV infection may carry such antibodies.

The problem is that the antibodies appear naturally only long after HIV has established a death grip on the body. Because the virus replicates often and mutates quickly, people don’t just carry a single strain of HIV — their blood swarms with a vast number of HIV “quasi-species.” By the time a person develops neutralizing antibodies, the virus has had time to evolve escape variants.

But if a vaccine were able to elicit neutralizing antibodies before a person was exposed to HIV, it’s very likely the antibodies would keep the virus from taking root.

That’s the hope, anyway. And because of the new findings — announced just before the 18th International AIDS Conference — there’s a lot more of that hope than there was before.

The study findings are reported in the July 8 online issue of Science Express.

From the Black AIDS Institute

Concurrency. Outside of social science circles, this wonky word doesn’t have much meaning. But increasingly, scientists are taking a hard look at the connection between concurrent relationships and the spread of HIV (and other sexually transmitted infections) as they seek to understand rising HIV rates among Black Americans.

In plain English, partnership concurrency means having more than one relationship at the same time. Studies show that, for a number of reasons, including lower marriage rates, African Americans are more likely than people of other races to engage in overlapping liaisons.

In many cases, partnership concurrency looks like infidelity. Concurrency is Jesse James sleeping with his tattooed mistress while married to Sandra Bullock, or the married John Edwards getting his lover, Rielle Hunter, pregnant.

But concurrent relationships aren’t always cheating. In his new study, University of Iowa professor Anthony Paik, Ph.D., looked at nonexclusive relationships like hookups and “friends with benefits.” He found that one-third of sexual relationships in his Chicago study were not monogamous, and that people who were hooking up or having casual sex were more likely to have overlapping partnerships than those who were dating one person.

“Concurrency might be a person who is having sex with a friend multiple times but also has another sexual partnership,” says Dr. Paik, whose study has sparked headlines like “The Downside of F Buddy.”

“These partnerships can speed the spread of sexually transmitted diseases,” Dr. Paik says. “With sequential partnerships, the disease has to wait before it can spread. Between relationships, for example, a bacterial infection can be treated. With overlapping relationships, the disease doesn’t have to wait.”

Concurrent relationships can also look like a very long breakup in which other sexual partners are involved. According to research by University of Chicago sociologist Edward O. Laumann, Ph.D.–co-author, with Dr. Paik and several others, of the 2004 book The Sexual Organization of the City–African American couples, when they break up, have a longer-than-average period of overlapping relationships. For Whites, Dr. Paik has said, the interval lasts just over a week; for Blacks it’s months and months longer. A lot can happen during that period of breaking up and getting back together, or never really breaking up and yet sleeping with new people.

“Sometimes it’s hard for people to untie themselves from another person, and having a new partner makes it easier,” explains Dr. Paik. “While one relationship is ending, another is starting. That counts as concurrency, especially from a disease perspective. The disease doesn’t care who’s breaking up with whom. What’s happening provides a pathway for it to spread from one person to another person.”

Conditions in Black America provide the ideal incubator for HIV, since our high infection rate intersects with large numbers of concurrent relationships, along with condom usage too inconsistent to offer sufficient protection, given the widespread prevalence of the disease. That combination makes any unprotected sexual encounter for us particularly risky, even one–say, with a good friend–that may seem especially safe.

This collision of factors has produced a perfect storm in Washington, D.C. According to a much-discussed survey (PDF) released last year, 4 percent of Black District residents and 7 percent of Black men there have tested HIV-positive–a higher rate than in many parts of Africa. The majority of newly infected D.C. residents contracted the disease through heterosexual sex.

Concurrency has clearly contributed to the spread of HIV in the District. Nearly 50 percent of people surveyed in its hardest-hit areas reported having overlapping sexual partners in the last 12 months. Most were not aware of either their own HIV status or that of their partner, and the vast majority said that they did not use a condom the last time they had sex with their main partner, even though they were aware that the relationship might not be monogamous. ?

This deadly mix explains why a Black woman, for example, who doesn’t “sleep around” might contract HIV, while someone else engaged in frequent episodes of unprotected sex might not become infected.

“In some areas of Chicago, she would be very likely to come into contact with someone who is infected,” Dr. Paik says. “It’s not about promiscuity; it’s how the disease has percolated in her cluster of sexual contacts. Someone in rural Iowa could be engaging in frequent unprotected hookups, but the risk is lower, because there’s not a lot of disease in that population.”

Dr. Paik says he tries to look at HIV/AIDS and other STDs through the lens of science without placing blame or making value judgments. The more experts and the rest of us understand these diseases and how they are spread, the better we can all combat them.

“People make their own decisions,” he says. “But we encourage them to be aware of the potential for sexual concurrency and take appropriate precautions to avoid sexually transmitted infections.”

From the Black Aids Institute site, written by: Linda Villarosa is program director of the journalism department at the City College of New York and is contributing to a documentary about HIV/AIDS in Black America.

Atlanta Ads on Black Abortions May Go National

By Diane Loupe

WeNews correspondent

Wednesday, March 24, 2010

A billboard campaign in Atlanta sends an incendiary message connection abortion to genocide. If the outreach tactic to black communities is considered a success in Georgia, pro-choice groups believe it will be replicated across the country.

ATLANTA (WOMENSENEWS)–”Black Children Are an Endangered Species.”

That statement hangs in the air here, with the image of a frightened black child, on 80 billboards of various sizes in the African American neighborhoods of metro Atlanta.

The signs started appearing in late January and are expected to start coming down at the end of March.

In late February The New York Times drew national attention by running a story on the billboards. Following that, on March 9, the pro-choice web site RH Reality Check held a telephone news conference to refute the charges that abortion clinics were targeting black women.

Since then reproductive rights groups have been sending warning cries that anti-choice activists are distorting and exploiting statistics to make inroads into the African American community.

Dr. Vanessa Cullins, vice-president for medical affairs at Planned Parenthood Federation of America, says the people behind the campaign are out to destroy Planned Parenthoods within the African American community. If they succeed in Georgia, says Cullins, they’ll use the same tactic nationwide.

Ryan Bomberger of the Radiance Foundation, which designed and coordinates the billboards, says pro-life activists in 10 other states and the District of Columbia want to sponsor the billboards.

The stark statistic at the center of the controversy: black women are four to five times as likely to have an abortion as white women.

Carol J. Rowland Hogue is a professor of epidemiology at Emory University in DeKalb county, near Atlanta, and the director of the Women’s and Children’s Center at Emory’s Rollins School of Public Health.

Hogue says the reason that black women have higher abortion rates is their much higher rate of unintended pregnancies. For every 1,000 black women in the United States between 15 and 44, there are 98 unplanned pregnancies. For white women the comparable figure is 35; for Hispanic women, 78.

Unintended Pregnancies

“If black women had the same unintended pregnancy rate as white women have–but maintained the same likelihood of aborting an unintended pregnancy as they currently have–their abortion rate would decline 64 percent,” says Hogue.

Catherine Davis is director of minority outreach for Georgia Right to Life, a predominantly white group that, according to the Radiance Foundation’s Bomberger, spent $20,000 to sponsor the billboards in Atlanta’s predominantly black neighborhoods.

Planned Parenthood and other abortion providers are targeting the black community for abortions, Davis says.

Abortion, her group contends, accomplishes what the Ku Klux Klan could only dream about–exterminating black people.

Georgia Right to Life–which has a mailing address in Lawrenceville, a suburb of Atlanta in Gwinnett County–and other anti-abortion activists are pushing a bill in the state legislature that would prohibit abortion providers from targeting black communities or performing abortions based on a child’s race or sex.

At a legislative hearing, a young white woman testified that her parents had forced her to abort the baby she was carrying because the father was black.

Loretta J. Ross is national coordinator of SisterSong, Women of Color Reproductive Justice Collective in Atlanta, a pro-choice group. She says she’s skeptical of the testimony, which seemed to point out the flaws in states laws requiring parental consent for abortions among minors.

Abortion providers wouldn’t force a girl to have an abortion, Ross says.

Ross is lobbying hard to stop the bill. She’s also battling the perception that black women in Atlanta are lining up behind the bill.

“It is very hard to persuade African American women in the city of Atlanta that this legislation–headlined by rural white Republicans–is aimed at saving black families,” says Ross.

Lawmakers Fought Against Similar Efforts

The lawmakers who are arguing for the bill are the same ones who have fought efforts to get guns off the streets, funding for schools and other measures to improve the quality of life of black Georgians, says Ross. “These are not people who care about children of color once they’re here.”

Ross calls it part of a strategy to build a base of support for right-wing causes in communities of color and “not so incidentally, to set the women’s movement back several decades.”

In response to anti-abortion activists’ contentions that abortion providers are concentrated in black neighborhoods, Ross says four of the state’s 15 abortion providers are in majority black neighborhoods and two of those four are in Atlanta.

But Davis’ anti-abortion message resonates with some influential women here, including Alveda King, the niece of Dr. Martin Luther King.

King says abortion is more dangerous than childbirth, causing women to become sterile and causing more maternal deaths than childbirth. She favors the rhythm method of birth control, because other methods put potentially harmful drugs into a woman’s body.

“Abortion should be unthinkable,” says King. “Women need love and not abortion.”

Both King and Davis say their anti-abortion campaign is winning support. Many black women have contacted the Radiance’s Bomberger to say the campaign persuaded them not to have an abortion.

“We’re ecstatic that people are getting to know our little group,” says Bomberger. He’s talking to people interested in paying to put the billboards up in Washington, D.C., California, Florida, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Tennessee.

Ross says the same, that she’s been flooded with calls from black women outraged at “this attempt to make them feel ashamed.”

Not a Racial Matter

Taqiyya Campbell, a freshman at Clark Atlanta University, has seen one of the billboards in Atlanta’s West End. It appears next to a brick building housing Pink Foxx’s Exotic Salon. Campbell thinks the message is being put out in the wrong way. “I don’t think they should target one race,” says Campbell.

Betty Wright hadn’t noticed the billboard a few blocks from her home until it was pointed out to her. She was suspicious of the statistics, saying she thinks black women tend to keep their babies, while white girls tend to get abortions.

But Wright, the mother of a grown son, thinks the decision to have an abortion isn’t a racial matter.

“A lot of black women prefer to have their children,” says Wright. “If you don’t want it, that’s your choice to have it if you want to have it. If you don’t, that should be your own choice. Nobody should be able to tell us about that decision.”

Black women’s relative lack of access to health services explains the higher rate of abortions, says Melissa Gilliam, an associate professor of obstetrics-gynecology and chief of pediatrics and family planning at the University of Chicago Medical Center.

Teen pregnancies among African Americans have dropped in the last decade, says Gilliam, but black women tend to have a harder time affording prescription birth control or other contraceptive methods with up-front costs.

Beyond the issue of abortion, Davis, at Georgia Right to Life, points to an issue of concern to anyone worried about black women’s reproductive health: high levels of unprotected sex.

“Regardless of all of the political dogma, it is absolutely alarming to me, it is just frightening to me that 18,901 African American women in Georgia had unprotected sex, when the leading cause of death for African American women is AIDS,” says Davis.

African American women were 22 times more likely to have an AIDS diagnosis compared to whites in 2007, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

From the Huffington Post Website

Abusive, derogatory and even racist behavior directed at House Democrats by Tea Party protesters on Saturday left several lawmakers in shock.

Preceding the president’s speech to a gathering of House Democrats, thousands of protesters descended around the Capitol to protest the passage of health care reform. The gathering quickly turned into abusive heckling, as members of Congress passing through Longworth House office building were subjected to epithets and even mild physical abuse.

A staffer for Rep. James Clyburn (D-S.C.) told reporters that Rep. Emanuel Cleaver (D-Mo.) had been spat on by a protestor. Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.), a hero of the civil rights movement, was called a ‘ni–er.’ And Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.) was called a “faggot,” as protestors shouted at him with deliberately lisp-y screams. Frank, approached in the halls after the president’s speech, shrugged off the incident.

But Clyburn was downright incredulous, saying he had not witnessed such treatment since he was leading civil rights protests in South Carolina in the 1960s.

“It was absolutely shocking to me,” Clyburn said, in response to a question from the Huffington Post. “Last Monday, this past Monday, I stayed home to meet on the campus of Claflin University where fifty years ago as of last Monday… I led the first demonstrations in South Carolina, the sit ins… And quite frankly I heard some things today I have not heard since that day. I heard people saying things that I have not heard since March 15, 1960 when I was marching to try and get off the back of the bus.”

“It doesn’t make me nervous as all,” the congressman said, when asked how the mob-like atmosphere made him feel. “In fact, as I said to one heckler, I am the hardest person in the world to intimidate, so they better go somewhere else.”

Asked if he wanted an apology from the group of Republican lawmakers who had addressed the crowd and, in many ways, played on their worst fears of health care legislation, the Democratic Party, and the president, Clyburn replied:

A lot of us have been saying for a long time that much of this, much of this is not about health care a all. And I think a lot of those people today demonstrated that this is not about health care… it is about trying to extend a basic fundamental right to people who are less powerful.”

UPDATE 6:55 PM ET: Rep. Emanuel Cleaver’s office released the following statement:

For many of the members of the CBC, like John Lewis and Emanuel Cleaver who worked in the civil rights movement, and for Mr. Frank who has struggled in the cause of equality, this is not the first time they have been spit on during turbulent times.
This afternoon, the Congressman was walking into the Capitol to vote, when one protester spat on him. The Congressman would like to thank the US Capitol Police officer who quickly escorted the others Members and him into the Capitol, and defused the tense situation with professionalism and care. After all the Members were safe, a full report was taken and the matter was handled by the US Capitol Police. The man who spat on the Congressman was arrested, but the Congressman has chosen not to press charges. He has left the matter with the Capitol Police.

This is not the first time the Congressman has been called the “n” word and certainly not the worst assault he has endured in his years fighting for equal rights for all Americans. That being said, he is disappointed that in the 21st century our national discourse has devolved to the point of name calling and spitting. He looks forward to taking a historic vote on health care reform legislation tomorrow, for the residents of the Fifth District of Missouri and for all Americans. He believes deeply that tomorrow’s vote is, in fact, a vote for equality and to secure health care as a right for all. Our nation has a history of struggling each time we expand rights. Today’s protests are no different, but the Congressman believes this is worth fighting for.

UPDATE 7:48 PM ET: The Buffalo News reports that Rep. Louise Slaughter’s district office in Pine View, New York, was vandalized on Saturday.

Sometime early this morning, someone threw a brick through the front window of her Pine Avenue office.
The damage was discovered about 12:30 a.m., city police said.

The brick put a hole in the outer-most window at the office at 1910 Pine Ave., but did not damage a second interior window, police reported. A piece of broken brick believed to have caused the damage was found at the scene.

Damage was estimated at $350.

UPDATE 8:57 PM ET: The Associated Press reports that Capitol Police arrested the man who spit on Cleaver, but the Congressman won’t press charges.

News Website THE WEEK says:

A Swiss company has begun selling extra-small condoms—called “Hotshots” — made for boys as young as 12, after a government study found that adolescents in Switzerland are not using proper protection when having sex. The Swiss Aids Federation and family planning groups pushed for the smaller condoms—which for now are only being sold in Switzerland—on the theory that teens would be more likely to wear Hotshots, which are 1.7 inches wide, than standard condoms, which are 2 inches wide. Will marketing condoms to 12 year olds keep them safe, or just encourage them to have sex?

Selling kids tiny starter condoms is ’so wrong’: This sends the “worst possible message” to boys, says Rachel Henwood. “Randy pint-sized” men already see sex everywhere, and think it’s cool. Tell 12-year-old boys that having sex is okay as long as you put on a Hotshot, and they’ll run out looking “for 12-year-old (or God forbid, younger) girls to test them out on.”

The idea of extra-small condoms is disturbing … but smart: “As much as the idea of a 12-year-old having sex makes me uncomfortable,” says Ronda Kaysen, “I think this is great. Kids are having sex whether we like it or not,” so making a condom they can actually use is a necessary part of any effort to protect them from sexually transmitted disease and unwanted pregnancy.

Technology isn’t the answer: Getting engineers to design a “training-wheel condoms” won’t solve the tween sex problem, says Rod Dreher. In fact, when you have enough sexually active 12-year-old boys to “economically justify the manufacture of training-wheel condoms,” your society’s troubles probably run “far deeper” than you think.
___

Aerial of The Black Intel says:

We have to teach safe sex somehow. Just because we are not talking to the kids doesn’t mean they aren’t doing it. How old were you when you first started having sex? Come on, be honest. Not the age you tell your aunt or your sex partner… the REAL number. Ok now subtract five years from that and that is the average age kids these days are having their first sexual encounter. Protecting THEM helps to protect US… think about it.

Since, I work and live in health, my first thought after watching this video was, well maybe that is some of the reason why HIV/AIDS is spreading through our community so rapidly….However this is not what this blog is going to be about. This blog is about careers in the new age of media.  College students, I know at 18, 19 and 20 most of you are not thinking about your future job interview at a fortune 500 or as a political figure, but maybe you should. I mean the whole point of college is to get a leg up in the world and well I don’t think doing amateur porn is going to help. Now I know this is from, daredorms.com, which gives college students I think $10,000 a submission, but lets break down that math a little more. From what I peeped, there was about 4-5 ladies in the video, and I think 4-5 brothas. So on the safe side lets say 9 people were involved. So give or take a couple of cents, they all got about 1100 each. Now, I don’t know how it goes down in Florida, but every place I’ve lived, 1100 is probably rent and some bill a couple of groceries if I’m lucky. Now lets look at what this cost, since there seemed to be quite a bit of alcohol involved, I’m going to say some was purchase. Will say the video camera someone already had or borrowed, but they had to purchase a tape. And well soda…which someone please remind me later to blog on sugar and health… and well…. places it should not go other than your mouth…. but I digress.

Now lets push this a little further and think about the future cost. Someone’s parents might see this and reevaluate why they are sending their child to college. A future organization might see this and wonder if they should hire you. Your fellow campus mate, including students and teachers might see the video and have a different opinion of you as a person. These are all things that were up for sale, that cost these young students, when they decided to participate in an orgy on film.  Black folks and friends, besides the obvious health risk to participating in this type of debauchery, there is a cost that in some cases could be much higher. In the days of the internet, email, photo texts, facebook and youtube,  things that your parents might of gotten away with you might not. Each action that you film, each crazy wild picture that you take, each TMI blog you put up, could be forever immortalize on the net. Just because the Obama’s are in the Whitehouse, doesn’t mean that Blacks tax doesn’t apply. College is a learning experience, so have fun and learn, but folks, be safe…and please be smart.

Click here to read the Bombshells’ blog on videos

If you didn’t catch it live, here is the health reform summit put up on by the white house. If you’re interested in health reform and where the parties are standing…this is a something you should watch…Hope you enjoy

According to the CDC ( Center for Disease Control) Over half (53%) of African American women are obese…. Are Black Women really that unhealthy or are BMI standards not culturally competent? What do you think?

By Angela Hughes

Within the past few years, American popular culture has become more environmentally conscious. From grocery stores banning the use of plastic bags, to celebrities becoming renascent with environmentalist groups, being “green” has origins beyond the love fest of the ‘70s.

Before the European invasion of the African coast and the thievery of our beloved Egypt,  our African ancestors had an awareness that hundreds of years later, we have abandoned. As our ancestors practiced Yoruba, Vodun and Khemetic religions, one commonality was that all of the religions believed that we are all one with not only the earth, but the entire universe and we should treat it as such. In Ancient Khemetic religion (Khemet is the original name for Egypt), there was a list of universal ethical principals known as The 42 Laws of Ma’at.

Ma’at, personified, was a goddess or deity that represented a connection to the entire existence of the universe. She understood how the world functioned, how it had been created, and that we all should seek the same understanding to keep perfect order and harmony with The Creator and the universe. These 42 laws were not stated as obligatory rules but declarative statements. Apart of understanding our connection with the universe, our ancestors particularly followed the 12th (“I will not lay waste to the land”) and 34th (“I will not waste water”) laws. The belief was the we, the plants, trees, animals, wind and water were one, and anything done to taint, harm or waste disrupted the divine order of the universe.

Centuries later, this sense of connection to the universe seems alien to our people. Despite popular culture’s impulsive adoption of the “green” trend, our people have become completely oblivious of their powerful contribution to maintaining harmony and balance in our world. Admittedly, some of our people realize the power of environmentalism and recycle plastic bottles or reuse printing paper, but many others in our community do not. While Mayor of San Francisco, Gavin Newsome, has created a “green initiative”, with hopes of becoming the “greenest city” in the United States, many other cities are not doing the same.

I recently attended a conference in Tennessee where I had the chance to meet brothas and sistas from all over the country, mainly the south. During my week, I noticed that people were throwing water bottles and paper into the trash. Instantly, my heart sank. Why are our own people, who come from an ancient lineage of environmentalists, not recycling? When asked, the reply was, “we never learned to recycle.”

Not matter what our respective religions and spiritual beliefs may be, there is no denying that our earth is a living being and that we must strive to keep it clean and free from harm as we would our own bodies. We are of this universe and through the study of the original environmentalists we can pass our knowledge on to other people in our community and once again successfully make our way back to not only healing the world, but to self-healing.