Another Cure for HIV! It had been a while...

The Flame Lily, National
Flower of Zimbabwe (Wikipedia)

I can not remember how many weeks it has been since the last HIV/AIDS cure was last announced.
This time, I learn about this breakthrough in HIV eradication via a video on Youtube originating from 'The best Zimbabwe news site on the world wide web'; the whole lot was posted on cruising website ladslads.com: three reputable sources of scientific information (and Zimbabwe, isn't that place in the news a lot lately?).

Being a bit of an old cynic? Prove me wrong, please, and I'll gladly eat my hat. If it turns out to be a cure, remember you read it here first!

Read the Ladslads.com post and comments
Read the article by newzimbabwe.com (scour their site for cures for candida, hepatitis, migraine, cancer, you never know
There is even more discussion
Watch the YouTube video

Treatment worse than HIV?

My mother died of cancer. Cancer made her hip swell inexplicably and caused her discomfort when she walked. Chemotherapy made her lose her hair, her sight, her dignity, her well-being, her job, any strength she had left.



I was reminded of this dilemma - let the disease or the cure kill you- while watching the AIDS Inc. trailer on YouTube. The video itself only features fragments of sentences which make it a little to sensational for me to be able to form an opinion about the movie. Does it hold any truth or new argument?



However, the CNN website has an article from 1998 about this particular dilemma, When The Cure Seems Worse Than the Disease. In a nutshell, disease is bad, treatment can be really bad but without a treatment the disease can get worse. Which leaves us with the same dilemma, really. How far down the line are we willing to stick with the treatment?



Faced with serious side-effects caused by the treatment, I wonder if I would have the courage to face the disease by itself - save my dignity and make the suffering shorter? Would I be aware enough to realise when the time was coming to take that step? Would I let medecine try everything it can on me, until my last breath, just in case?



Tell me what you would do.

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