HIV Positive Baby Cured With New Medical Regimen

On Sunday March 3, 2013 Medical researchers announced that a baby in Mississippi was 'functionally cured' or HIV. There is no doubt in my mind that this fantastic news will be trumpeted from the rooftops -- as well it should -- of the community that I follow. This is yet one more step on the road to progress that I have seen in my life.

I was in high school when the AIDS crisis was first known to appear in the United States. All around me were people that were using their religion to say that AIDS was a punishment from their god for being homosexual. It was then that I realized just how petty and dangerous religion could be. It also means that the AIDS/HIV problem has carried a special interest to me.

When no one knew the cause of AIDS, the religious people would tell anyone that would listen that AIDS was caused directly by the hand of their god. God had finally had enough with those evil gays thumbing their noses at him. Later, when HIV was found to be the cause of AIDS, the Christians still claimed that AIDS was the work of their god. HIV was just the mechanism that he used to cause AIDS. Since humans couldn't cure a virus, it didn't matter that their god used a virus to punish people that he had condemned. It was also very effective since the only way to get AIDS was to do that icky homosexual stuff. It didn't matter that heterosexuals were also being affected, as long as it continued to be perceived as a gay disease.

Now a HIV/AIDS infection seems to have been cured twice: once with a functional cure, and once with a possible 'sterilizing cure'.

CNN reports:

Dr. Katherine Luzuriaga, an immunologist at the University of Massachusetts who worked closely with [pediatric HIV specialist Dr. Hannah] Gay, called the developments fascinating, including the fact that the toddler was found to have no virus in her blood even after her mother stopped giving her treatment for eight to 10 months. 

"This is the very first case in which we've conclusively been able to document that the baby was infected and then after a period of treatment has been able to go off treatment without viral rebound," Luzuriaga told CNN.

This is yet another case where Christianity originally showed the strong prejudices it holds only to be surpassed by scientific knowledge and genuine human compassion. Yes, there is no doubt in my mind that a hundred years from now the Christians of that time will be able to look back, see the horrors that were committed in the name of their god, and try to distance themselves from it. It has happened before with every inhumane stance that religious people have taken. It has happened with out of wedlock mothers, mental disorders, physical ailments, and virtually every disease that had an unknown origin. That is what makes Christianity dangerous as it has been practiced: instead of being a force of good, it usually starts as cover for bigotry and prejudice. It is only after the rest of society leaves them behind that they begin to come around and act like decent, caring, respectable human beings.