almost a diary, self-referential

Moving (towards 2005)

As this year is slowly approaching its final hours, you should be grateful that I have decided to spare you yet another “bottom line of 2004” post. Not that there would be much to sum up with respect to “almost a diary” anyway.

But I wanted to tell you that at some point in the near future, this blog will be offline for a while due to a provider change. Of course, you will not be able to read this while the blog is offline, but in case you read this before… don’t be scared: I will be back.

And before I forget it – a happy new year to all faithful and occasional readers!

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health, Science

Hopeful PR?

Let’s hope this is not just PR well timed for this week’s world HIV/AIDS awareness week, but indeed a promising sign:

“Paris – French doctors have issued a highly encouraging report about a test treatment which slashed levels of the Aids virus among a small group of HIV-infected volunteers.

…

The treatment was delivered in three injections, each a fortnight apart. There were no side effects.

Four months after the first dose, the viral load – the quantity of HIV in the blood – had fallen on average by 80 percent.

A year after the jabs, eight out of the 18 patients still showed viral loads that had diminished by more than 90 percent.

Four of them had a viral load of less than 1 000 particles per millilitre, “which, in theory, means they are not infective”, chief researcher Jean-Marie Andrieu, a cancer professor at the Saint-Peres Biomedical Centre in Paris said.”

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