AIDS Awareness Campaign Focuses on 9 1/2 Minutes

By: Neomi Heroux

Published: Wednesday, 8 April 2009
Act vs AIDS


To many Americans the AIDS epidemic is winding down. That is far from true. A decade ago all news media had continual news about AIDS prevention. In recent years the focus has been more about the war against AIDS in the African nations, but the American public needs to be aware that AIDS is a global killer and still takes a terrible toll at home. The White House, the Department of Health and Human Services, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are taking steps to accentuate the need for AIDS awareness.

Studies have emphasized that the prevention messages are not reaching the people who need to hear them most, and this campaign is to try harder to reach the people most affected, starting with black men and women, and then focusing on Hispanics and other groups. The studies raise the question of traditional media reaching these groups, since they have a higher HIV infection rate than the general population.

The plan is to use video, audio, print, and online advertising at www.NineAndaHalfMinutes.org to encourage abstinence from sex or the use of condoms. Frank conversations with sexual partners about the risk of HIV are encouraged. The focus of the campaign is that an American becomes HIV infected every 9 1/2 minutes.

The AIDS Healthcare Foundation called the five-year $45 million campaign a disappointment and urged the government to instead spend $200 million on more testing for those who may already have HIV. According to Michael Weinstein, President of AIDS Healthcare Foundation, “A $45 million dollar communications plan, no matter how well intended, will do little to help identify those 300,000 infected individuals who may unknowingly be infecting others.”

Globally, 33 million are infected with the virus and 25 million have died. The CDC estimates that 56,000 Americans are newly infected each year, and 14,000 people die with it. Reducing the high percentage of black Americans with HIV is one of CDC’s top domestic HIV prevention priorities. According to a 2008 CDC study, black Americans become infected seven times more frequently than whites of the same population sample. To help reduce that number the White House intends to partner with leading African American groups like the NAACP, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, and the National Urban League to raise awareness of the need to prevent the disease.

HIV or Human immunodeficiency virus is the precursor of AIDS and there is no cure. The disease is transmitted sexually, or from mother to child during childbirth or from breast feeding. There are cocktails of antiretroviral drugs that can keep patients relatively healthy, but treatment is expensive and the drugs do have side effects. The virus continually mutates so older drugs may no longer be effective.

“Our goal is to remind Americans that HIV/AIDS continues to pose a serious health threat in the United States and encourage them to get the facts they need to take action for themselves and their communities.” Melody Barnes, director of the White House domestic policy council, said in a statement.

Recovery efforts not enough for critically endangered Asian vulture

ANN ARBOR, Mich.---Captive breeding colonies of a critically endangered vulture, whose numbers in the wild have dwindled from tens of millions to a few thousand, are too small to protect the species from extinction, a University of Michigan analysis shows.

Adding wild birds to the captive colonies, located in Pakistan and India, is crucial, but political and logistical barriers are hampering efforts, says lead author Jeff A. Johnson.

The study was published online August 15 in the journal Biological Conservation.

With a seven-foot wingspan, the oriental white-backed vulture (Gyps bengalensis) was an awesome presence in south Asia until the mid-1990s, when populations began to collapse. At first the cause was unclear, but researchers eventually zeroed in on an anti-inflammatory drug, diclofenac, that is used to alleviate arthritis-like symptoms in livestock but is toxic to vultures. Vultures that feed on carcasses of animals treated with the drug die of kidney failure within a day or two after eating the tainted meat. And although India, Nepal and Pakistan outlawed its manufacture in 2006, diclofenac is still available, and birds are still dying.

While the death of an unattractive bird that scavenges for a living may not sound like a great loss, vultures have important cultural and religious significance in south Asia. The ancient Parsi religion holds earth, fire and water sacred, and to avoid contaminating them, the Parsis dispose of their dead by placing them on "Towers of Silence," where vultures consume the remains. In addition, the vulture saint Jatayu is an important figure in Hindu religion. The absence of vultures poses a direct threat to public health as well, as uneaten livestock carcasses provide breeding grounds for bacteria and attract feral dogs, which may spread rabies and other diseases.

When any large population crashes, as the vultures have, the amount of genetic diversity in the population also is likely to dwindle. This is a concern, Johnson said, because a population's genetic diversity reflects its ability to adapt to environmental challenges such as changing climate or outbreaks of disease. Without the ability to adapt, populations and whole species may become extinct.

Johnson and coworkers used museum specimens collected before the decline began, along with recent feather and tissue samples from birds in Pakistan's last remaining wild breeding colony, to see how genetic diversity in the wild population has changed as the population has plummeted. Then, assuming captive populations of various sizes, they used computer simulations to determine how large captive populations must be to preserve genetic diversity.

The analysis showed that while there was still a fair amount of genetic diversity in the wild population two years ago when their last samples were obtained, current captive populations are not large enough to maintain that diversity if the wild populations are wiped out---a fate that seems inevitable if people keep using diclofenac. The simulation results also suggest that levels of genetic diversity in the wild may already be in decline.

"We know the problem, and we know the solution," said Johnson, who was an assistant research scientist at U-M when the research was done and recently accepted a position as an assistant professor at the University of North Texas in Denton. "We just need to get diclofenac out of the environment and more birds into protection before it is too late."

The Peregrine Fund, a organization that works to conserve birds of prey in nature, is trying to prevent the birds' extinction, but it's an effort that requires money and international cooperation, both of which can be problematic in the vultures' home countries.

"One of my goals with this paper," Johnson said, "is to raise awareness of the problem and to increase political will in India and Pakistan to get this matter resolved."

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Johnson's coauthors on the Biological Conservation paper are Martin Gilbert of the Wildlife Conservation Society, Munir Virani and Muhammad Asim of the Peregrine Fund, and former U-M professor of ecology and evolutionary biology David Mindell, now at the California Academy of Sciences. The researchers received funding from The Peregrine Fund.