Universal testing for HIV? How does one do that? And if not universal, at least that reaches “virtually every adult in a community?” For the NY Times today former Washington Post physician-science writer Susan Okie provides the section leading piece, on “test and treat” campaigns planned as experiments of a sort, in neighborhoods of the Bronx and Washington DC. It does not quite say that people will be compelled to take a test – only that if necessary public health officials will track them down. It appears that persistent nagging and high-visibility screening pitches are the main tool. The story’s main point appears to be two-fold: 1) If nearly everybody with HIV gets retroviral treatment, plummeting viral loads will bring further infection to a near-halt and 2) The rates of treatment, and patient compliance, are now frighteningly low.

The section also inside a good example of the all-graphics story, one portion reproduced upper right  in low res. It takes The Tracker back to junior high school when I’d pore over rocketry diagrams in the LA Times for hours, imagining building such things in the giant basement laboratory I would’ve had if I were a superhero. It is credited to Frank O’Connell.

Other notable headlines:

• John Noble Wilford: At Ur, Ritual Deaths That Were Anything but Serene ; Or savagery among the powerful goes way back. This time, in Iraq.
• Gina Kolata: Cancers Can Vanish Without Treatment, but How? She cites a new study on spontaneous regression of tumors. But isn’t that a standard if mysterious observed phenomenon in medical literature? She reports several physicians who appear to be surprised to hear it.
• John Markoff: Old Trick Threatens the Newest Weapons ; The lead is on effort in the US to prevent foreign, or domestic too, makers of military electronics from inserting lurker software that can be used by adversaries to disable the Pentagon’s best stuff. But the meat of it, deeper in, is revelation who has already played this game. Mainly, it appears, the US and some of its allies.

As usual, lots more. Whole Section ;

- Charlie Petit

This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 27th, 2009 at 3:02 pm and is filed under Science Stories. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.