Interesting slant

AIDS Study Finds Drug-Resistant Strain

About 10 percent of Europeans infected with HIV contract a strain of the virus that is resistant to at least one AIDS drug, according to the first large-scale study of the problem.

Scientists have known that HIV can become resistant to drugs and that resistant strains can be spread, but the extent of the transmission has not been clear.

Resistance, which is mainly caused by patients not taking medications properly, is a problem because it makes the disease more difficult to treat.

[...] [Dr. Peter] Piot, who was not involved with the research, said the extent of resistance was not surprising, but it serves as a warning that the delivery of drugs in poor countries needs to be done carefully.

"It reminds us that when we introduce antiretroviral therapy we've got to do it well," he said, adding that a universally followed standard prescription for initial treatment should be part of the strategy.

Kevin Frost, director of Treat Asia, a program of the American Foundation for AIDS Research, said the results show the world is at a crucial point with AIDS treatment.

"We are in a somewhat volatile period right now and the therapeutic anarchy that is going on — we have to get a handle on it," Frost said.

"Doctors have the freedom, especially in the West, to prescribe whatever they want. There are 19 drugs approved in the United States now with 21 or 22 formulations ... It means there are hundreds, if not thousands, of potential combinations," he said.

proof that the sexual impulse comes from God?

Masturbation Lowers Prostrate Cancer Risk--Study

Frequent masturbation, particularly in the 20s, helps prevent prostate cancer later in life, according to new research.

Australian scientists have shown that the more men masturbate between the ages of 20 and 50, the less likely they are to develop the disease that kills more than half a million men each year.

They suspect that frequent ejaculation has a protective effect against the cancer because it prevents dangerous carcinogens from building up in the gland.

"The more you flush the ducts out, the less there is to hang around and damage the cells that line them," Graham Giles, of the Cancer Council Victoria in Melbourne, told New Scientist magazine on Wednesday.

In a survey of 1,079 prostate cancer patients and 1,259 healthy men, Giles and his team discovered that men who ejaculated more than five times a week in their 20s were a third less likely to develop an aggressive form of the disease.

The findings contradict previous studies which suggested that having a variety of partners or frequent sexual activity could increase the risk of prostate cancer by 40 percent.

But Giles said the earlier research concentrated on intercourse, whereas his study focused on masturbation. Infections caused by sexual activity could account for the different findings.

"Men have many ways of using their prostate which don't involve women or other men," he added.