An HIV-positive man in Britain has become the second known adult worldwide to be cleared of the AIDS virus. At a conference in Seattle, the U.N. agency leading the global effort to end AIDS said the agency is greatly encouraged by the possibility of an HIV-positive man being cured, but there is still a long way to go.

Scientists have been searching for a cure for HIV/AIDS for close to 40 years. The director of UNAIDS called news that a man in London has been functionally cured of HIV a “breakthrough.” Stephane Dujarric, a spokesman for the U.N. secretary-general, made the announcement.

“The breakthrough gives us great hope for the future, but also shows how far we are from the point of ending AIDS with science, as well as the absolute importance to continue to focus on HIV prevention and treatment efforts,” he said.

The London man is HIV-free after receiving a stem cell transplant from a donor with a rare genetic mutation that made him resistant to HIV. His cancer has also gone into remission.

Professor Ravindra Gupta at University College London said the man is now off anti-AIDS medication.

“We waited 16 months before stopping in the post-transplant period just to make sure that the cancer was in remission, the patient was well and that the measures we had of the HIV reservoir in the body showed that there was very, very little virus there, if any at all,” he said.

Gupta hesitates to call it a cure, but this is the second patient to show no signs of the HIV virus after a similar stem cell transplant. The first man was an American treated in Berlin 12 years ago. Dr. Rowena Johnston, director of research at amfAR, the Foundation for AIDS Research, says this second success is significant.

“We now have reason to believe that the Berlin patient was not a one-off case… meaning it is possible to nearly, or even completely, eliminate HIV from an infected person,” he said.

Just like the Berlin patient, Gupta says the British man who is being called the “London patient,” also received stem cells from a donor with a rare mutated gene called CCR5.

“If you transplant those cells into someone who already has HIV, you may protect those new cells from infection,” he said.

Some 37 million people across the globe have HIV. But stem cell treatment is not a practical cure. First, a donor has to be tissue matched. Plus, the donor has to have the mutated gene. And then there’s the procedure itself, which is painful and risky.

Dr. Sarah Fidler, a professor in HIV medicine at Imperial College London, says a bone marrow transplant would be too dangerous for patients who are healthy and taking a daily pill to treat HIV.

“Having a bone marrow transplantation is a very complicated process,” she said. “It requires an entirely new set of cells to be taken into the person who’s having treatment and that again is a process where whilst those cells are embedding, you’re very at risk of getting infections and potentially dying.”

Both patients were being treated for cancer and had no option but to try the risky procedure. Scientists will continue to search for other ways to cure HIV, but now they know it can be cured.

 
…

your ads here!

An HIV-positive man in Britain has become the second known adult worldwide to be cleared of the AIDS virus. At a conference in Seattle, the U.N. agency leading the global effort to end AIDS said the agency is greatly encouraged by the possibility of an HIV-positive man being cured, but there is still a long way to go.

Scientists have been searching for a cure for HIV/AIDS for close to 40 years. The director of UNAIDS called news that a man in London has been functionally cured of HIV a “breakthrough.” Stephane Dujarric, a spokesman for the U.N. secretary-general, made the announcement.

“The breakthrough gives us great hope for the future, but also shows how far we are from the point of ending AIDS with science, as well as the absolute importance to continue to focus on HIV prevention and treatment efforts,” he said.

The London man is HIV-free after receiving a stem cell transplant from a donor with a rare genetic mutation that made him resistant to HIV. His cancer has also gone into remission.

Professor Ravindra Gupta at University College London said the man is now off anti-AIDS medication.

“We waited 16 months before stopping in the post-transplant period just to make sure that the cancer was in remission, the patient was well and that the measures we had of the HIV reservoir in the body showed that there was very, very little virus there, if any at all,” he said.

Gupta hesitates to call it a cure, but this is the second patient to show no signs of the HIV virus after a similar stem cell transplant. The first man was an American treated in Berlin 12 years ago. Dr. Rowena Johnston, director of research at amfAR, the Foundation for AIDS Research, says this second success is significant.

“We now have reason to believe that the Berlin patient was not a one-off case… meaning it is possible to nearly, or even completely, eliminate HIV from an infected person,” he said.

Just like the Berlin patient, Gupta says the British man who is being called the “London patient,” also received stem cells from a donor with a rare mutated gene called CCR5.

“If you transplant those cells into someone who already has HIV, you may protect those new cells from infection,” he said.

Some 37 million people across the globe have HIV. But stem cell treatment is not a practical cure. First, a donor has to be tissue matched. Plus, the donor has to have the mutated gene. And then there’s the procedure itself, which is painful and risky.

Dr. Sarah Fidler, a professor in HIV medicine at Imperial College London, says a bone marrow transplant would be too dangerous for patients who are healthy and taking a daily pill to treat HIV.

“Having a bone marrow transplantation is a very complicated process,” she said. “It requires an entirely new set of cells to be taken into the person who’s having treatment and that again is a process where whilst those cells are embedding, you’re very at risk of getting infections and potentially dying.”

Both patients were being treated for cancer and had no option but to try the risky procedure. Scientists will continue to search for other ways to cure HIV, but now they know it can be cured.

 
…

your ads here!

An HIV-positive man in Britain has become the second known adult worldwide to be cleared of the AIDS virus. At a conference in Seattle, the U.N. agency leading the global effort to end AIDS said it was greatly encouraged by the news. VOA’s Carol Pearson reports.
…

your ads here!

An HIV-positive man in Britain has become the second known adult worldwide to be cleared of the AIDS virus. At a conference in Seattle, the U.N. agency leading the global effort to end AIDS said it was greatly encouraged by the news. VOA’s Carol Pearson reports.
…

your ads here!

For months, school students in various countries have been protesting against the climate policies of their respective governments. In Australia, Belgium, France, Germany, Britain and more, they attend weekly rallies to call out politicians who, in the student’s minds, are doing too little to combat climate change.

What’s controversial about it: The rallies take place while the kids should be in school.

The numbers are steadily increasing. Every week, tens of thousands of teenagers and young adults skip class, mostly on Fridays  their so-called “Fridays for Future.” The protests are expected to hit even more countries on March 15, making it the biggest international school strike yet. 

The Guardian published an open letter by the “global coordination group” of the strikes, announcing protests on every continent. While there have been some participants in the United States, on March 15, American students are expected to join in the movement in a big way.

Small steps for a big movement

What has become a global phenomenon started with one teenage girl in Sweden, now-famous activist Greta Thunberg. Originally, she skipped her Friday classes to protest in front of the Swedish parliament because of upcoming elections, but she decided to keep going until significant progress on the issue is made. 

Documenting the strikes on her Twitter page, Thunberg gained international recognition and was invited to speak at the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Katowice, Poland, in December 2018. The world watched as a 15-year-old girl accused  world leaders of not being “mature enough to tell it like it is. Even that burden you leave to us children.” Thunberg has been the spearhead of the youth movement ever since, regularly attending Friday strikes in different European countries.

Reactions internationally have been mixed: While most politicians acknowledge the importance of their cause, some have taken issue with the students’ flagrant violation of mandatory school attendance. 

A spokesperson for British Prime Minister Theresa May said that skipping school means wasting lesson time that teachers have carefully prepared – time that would be crucial for education which will help solve the climate issue in the long run.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel sparked controversy when she suggested that the strikes are possibly being initiated by outside influences. Later, she backed down, clarifying that she very much welcomes the student strikes, partially going against her own, conservative party.

EU Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker has endorsed the strikes as well, saying that he has often regretted that today’s youth seemed to be politically uninvolved.

Former Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton has pointed out that young women are leading the movement in most countries. The inner team behind “Youth Climate Strike US,” the biggest American participant in organizing the global school strike in March, consists exclusively of girls in their teens and younger, according to their website. 

Scientific support

Still, commentators ask if politicians would be equally supportive of the students’ political involvement if their cause were more controversial, say, open borders or gay rights. But as it stands, a large community has gathered to back the school strikes.

In mid-February, the Guardian released an open letter by more than 200 scientists who claimed to be inspired that children are making their voices heard. The German Tagesspiegel exclusively reports on another statement from more than 700 scientists pledging their full support of the school strikes, which is to be released on March 12  three days before the global strike day.

The movement is now global.

It is still run by young people, but highly professionalized and coordinated quite a change from the individual protest Greta Thunberg started in the summer of 2018. 

The question remains: How big will the impact be in the end?

In the U.S., student protests have made headlines, and occasionally, led to policy change. 

Last year’s “March For Our Lives” for stricter gun policies after the Parkland, Florida, school shooting helped inspire Thunberg to start her strikes. And with discussion about the Democrat’s “Green New Deal” bringing climate change into the center of the public’s attention, the March 15 Global school strike will come at an interesting time.
…

your ads here!

For months, school students in various countries have been protesting against the climate policies of their respective governments. In Australia, Belgium, France, Germany, Britain and more, they attend weekly rallies to call out politicians who, in the student’s minds, are doing too little to combat climate change.

What’s controversial about it: The rallies take place while the kids should be in school.

The numbers are steadily increasing. Every week, tens of thousands of teenagers and young adults skip class, mostly on Fridays  their so-called “Fridays for Future.” The protests are expected to hit even more countries on March 15, making it the biggest international school strike yet. 

The Guardian published an open letter by the “global coordination group” of the strikes, announcing protests on every continent. While there have been some participants in the United States, on March 15, American students are expected to join in the movement in a big way.

Small steps for a big movement

What has become a global phenomenon started with one teenage girl in Sweden, now-famous activist Greta Thunberg. Originally, she skipped her Friday classes to protest in front of the Swedish parliament because of upcoming elections, but she decided to keep going until significant progress on the issue is made. 

Documenting the strikes on her Twitter page, Thunberg gained international recognition and was invited to speak at the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Katowice, Poland, in December 2018. The world watched as a 15-year-old girl accused  world leaders of not being “mature enough to tell it like it is. Even that burden you leave to us children.” Thunberg has been the spearhead of the youth movement ever since, regularly attending Friday strikes in different European countries.

Reactions internationally have been mixed: While most politicians acknowledge the importance of their cause, some have taken issue with the students’ flagrant violation of mandatory school attendance. 

A spokesperson for British Prime Minister Theresa May said that skipping school means wasting lesson time that teachers have carefully prepared – time that would be crucial for education which will help solve the climate issue in the long run.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel sparked controversy when she suggested that the strikes are possibly being initiated by outside influences. Later, she backed down, clarifying that she very much welcomes the student strikes, partially going against her own, conservative party.

EU Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker has endorsed the strikes as well, saying that he has often regretted that today’s youth seemed to be politically uninvolved.

Former Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton has pointed out that young women are leading the movement in most countries. The inner team behind “Youth Climate Strike US,” the biggest American participant in organizing the global school strike in March, consists exclusively of girls in their teens and younger, according to their website. 

Scientific support

Still, commentators ask if politicians would be equally supportive of the students’ political involvement if their cause were more controversial, say, open borders or gay rights. But as it stands, a large community has gathered to back the school strikes.

In mid-February, the Guardian released an open letter by more than 200 scientists who claimed to be inspired that children are making their voices heard. The German Tagesspiegel exclusively reports on another statement from more than 700 scientists pledging their full support of the school strikes, which is to be released on March 12  three days before the global strike day.

The movement is now global.

It is still run by young people, but highly professionalized and coordinated quite a change from the individual protest Greta Thunberg started in the summer of 2018. 

The question remains: How big will the impact be in the end?

In the U.S., student protests have made headlines, and occasionally, led to policy change. 

Last year’s “March For Our Lives” for stricter gun policies after the Parkland, Florida, school shooting helped inspire Thunberg to start her strikes. And with discussion about the Democrat’s “Green New Deal” bringing climate change into the center of the public’s attention, the March 15 Global school strike will come at an interesting time.
…

your ads here!

Perhaps none of the communist legacies shared by Vietnam and North Korea highlighted during Kim Jong Un’s “goodwill visit” to Hanoi is stranger than the embalmed leaders on display in their capital cities, and the secretive team of Russian technicians that keeps the aging bodies looking ageless.

Kim laid a wreath outside Ho Chi Minh’s mausoleum in the Vietnamese capital on Saturday, after the conclusion of his shortened summit with U.S. President Donald Trump.

Inside the dark interior of the mausoleum, the embalmed corpse of Vietnam’s founding father lies displayed in a glass coffin for a steady stream of tourists who silently shuffle by.

In Pyongyang, Kim Jong Un’s grandfather and father are on similar display in the loftily named Kumsusan Palace of the Sun, a monument to the cult of personality that surrounds North Korea’s ruling family.

All three leaders were originally preserved by a team of specialists from the so-called “Lenin Lab” in Moscow, which first embalmed and displayed Vladimir Lenin’s body in 1924.

The Soviet Union may have collapsed, and socialism in both Vietnam and North Korea has taken on forms barely recognizable to the ideology’s first thinkers, but that same lab still performs annual maintenance on Ho, and according to at least one researcher, still helps North Korea keep the Kims looking fresh.

“The original embalming and the regular re-embalmings have always been conducted by the scientists of the Moscow lab,” said Alexei Yurchak, a professor of anthropology at the University of California, Berkeley, who is writing a book about the embalmed communist leaders. “Over the years they trained local scientists in some techniques, but not all, maintaining the core of the know-how secret.”

Body work

Unlike earlier preservation processes such as mummification, the permanent embalming pioneered by Soviet scientists kept the bodies flexible, with unblemished skin and a lifelike, if rather waxy, pallor.

With North Vietnam under regular attack by American warplanes at the time of Ho’s death in 1969, the Soviet Union airlifted chemicals and equipment to a cave outside Hanoi, which the Soviet experts turned into a sterile lab, Yurchak said.

When the Soviet Union collapsed in the 1990s, the government lab faced a funding crisis, leading it to rely more heavily on offering services to foreign clients, Yurchak said.

Among those customers was North Korea, where Russian specialists embalmed both Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il at a laboratory built into the mausoleum in Pyongyang.

The original embalming takes several months, and the bodies need regular upkeep.

“Every one-and-a-half to two years, these bodies are re-embalmed by the Moscow scientists,” Yurchak said, citing interviews he conducted with lab scientists and his own field research.

The website for the committee that manages Ho’s mausoleum says Russia started charging for the chemicals after the Soviet Union collapsed, prompting Hanoi to ask that the supplies be produced in Vietnam. Vietnam has also sent technicians to study in Russia and can now handle the operations of the mausoleum by itself, the website says.

A source with committee, however confirmed the monument is closed every year for two months and that Russian technicians help with annual maintenance of the body.

When contacted by Reuters, the mausoleum lab in Moscow, which since 1992 has been known as the Center for Scientific Research and Teaching Methods in Biochemical Technologies, declined to comment on any aspect of its work.

The North Korean delegation at the United Nations did not respond to a request for comment.

Researcher Tom Fowdy, who founded a group promoting tourism and cultural engagements in North Korea, said he has seen the Kumsusan Palace closed for unexplained “renovations,” but maintenance of the bodies is a mystery.

“While it is obvious the methodology was derived from Russia, it will be a closely kept secret,” he said.

Some experts say China, which relied on its own scientists to embalmed Mao Zedong because of tension between Beijing and Moscow at the time, may have taught or helped North Korea.

Changing symbols

Visitors to Pyongyang’s Kumsusan Palace pass displays that include Kim Jong Il’s personal yacht and an Apple computer the dictator had once owned, before being required to bow three times to the bodies.

“The personality politics of the Kims exceeds all others,” Fowdy said, noting that maintaining the memorial will continue to “receive overwhelming priority” in North Korea’s government budgeting.

It’s not clear how much impoverished North Korea spends on maintaining the Kims’ bodies. When Moscow released preservation costs for the first time in 2016, it reported spending nearly $200,000 that year to maintain Lenin.

Originally the embalming was seen as a way of joining the various countries to international communism, as embodied in Lenin.

But as Vietnam and North Korea developed in their different political ways, so has the meaning attached to preserving the leaders’ bodies.

“Today this original meaning of these bodies has changed — in Vietnam the body of Ho today stands for anti-colonial struggles for independence and even for new nationalism, much more than for communism,” Yurchak said. “In North Korea the two Kims’ bodies stand for a self-sufficient country organized around one leader and existing in the face of the ‘imperialist surroundings.'”
…

your ads here!

Perhaps none of the communist legacies shared by Vietnam and North Korea highlighted during Kim Jong Un’s “goodwill visit” to Hanoi is stranger than the embalmed leaders on display in their capital cities, and the secretive team of Russian technicians that keeps the aging bodies looking ageless.

Kim laid a wreath outside Ho Chi Minh’s mausoleum in the Vietnamese capital on Saturday, after the conclusion of his shortened summit with U.S. President Donald Trump.

Inside the dark interior of the mausoleum, the embalmed corpse of Vietnam’s founding father lies displayed in a glass coffin for a steady stream of tourists who silently shuffle by.

In Pyongyang, Kim Jong Un’s grandfather and father are on similar display in the loftily named Kumsusan Palace of the Sun, a monument to the cult of personality that surrounds North Korea’s ruling family.

All three leaders were originally preserved by a team of specialists from the so-called “Lenin Lab” in Moscow, which first embalmed and displayed Vladimir Lenin’s body in 1924.

The Soviet Union may have collapsed, and socialism in both Vietnam and North Korea has taken on forms barely recognizable to the ideology’s first thinkers, but that same lab still performs annual maintenance on Ho, and according to at least one researcher, still helps North Korea keep the Kims looking fresh.

“The original embalming and the regular re-embalmings have always been conducted by the scientists of the Moscow lab,” said Alexei Yurchak, a professor of anthropology at the University of California, Berkeley, who is writing a book about the embalmed communist leaders. “Over the years they trained local scientists in some techniques, but not all, maintaining the core of the know-how secret.”

Body work

Unlike earlier preservation processes such as mummification, the permanent embalming pioneered by Soviet scientists kept the bodies flexible, with unblemished skin and a lifelike, if rather waxy, pallor.

With North Vietnam under regular attack by American warplanes at the time of Ho’s death in 1969, the Soviet Union airlifted chemicals and equipment to a cave outside Hanoi, which the Soviet experts turned into a sterile lab, Yurchak said.

When the Soviet Union collapsed in the 1990s, the government lab faced a funding crisis, leading it to rely more heavily on offering services to foreign clients, Yurchak said.

Among those customers was North Korea, where Russian specialists embalmed both Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il at a laboratory built into the mausoleum in Pyongyang.

The original embalming takes several months, and the bodies need regular upkeep.

“Every one-and-a-half to two years, these bodies are re-embalmed by the Moscow scientists,” Yurchak said, citing interviews he conducted with lab scientists and his own field research.

The website for the committee that manages Ho’s mausoleum says Russia started charging for the chemicals after the Soviet Union collapsed, prompting Hanoi to ask that the supplies be produced in Vietnam. Vietnam has also sent technicians to study in Russia and can now handle the operations of the mausoleum by itself, the website says.

A source with committee, however confirmed the monument is closed every year for two months and that Russian technicians help with annual maintenance of the body.

When contacted by Reuters, the mausoleum lab in Moscow, which since 1992 has been known as the Center for Scientific Research and Teaching Methods in Biochemical Technologies, declined to comment on any aspect of its work.

The North Korean delegation at the United Nations did not respond to a request for comment.

Researcher Tom Fowdy, who founded a group promoting tourism and cultural engagements in North Korea, said he has seen the Kumsusan Palace closed for unexplained “renovations,” but maintenance of the bodies is a mystery.

“While it is obvious the methodology was derived from Russia, it will be a closely kept secret,” he said.

Some experts say China, which relied on its own scientists to embalmed Mao Zedong because of tension between Beijing and Moscow at the time, may have taught or helped North Korea.

Changing symbols

Visitors to Pyongyang’s Kumsusan Palace pass displays that include Kim Jong Il’s personal yacht and an Apple computer the dictator had once owned, before being required to bow three times to the bodies.

“The personality politics of the Kims exceeds all others,” Fowdy said, noting that maintaining the memorial will continue to “receive overwhelming priority” in North Korea’s government budgeting.

It’s not clear how much impoverished North Korea spends on maintaining the Kims’ bodies. When Moscow released preservation costs for the first time in 2016, it reported spending nearly $200,000 that year to maintain Lenin.

Originally the embalming was seen as a way of joining the various countries to international communism, as embodied in Lenin.

But as Vietnam and North Korea developed in their different political ways, so has the meaning attached to preserving the leaders’ bodies.

“Today this original meaning of these bodies has changed — in Vietnam the body of Ho today stands for anti-colonial struggles for independence and even for new nationalism, much more than for communism,” Yurchak said. “In North Korea the two Kims’ bodies stand for a self-sufficient country organized around one leader and existing in the face of the ‘imperialist surroundings.'”
…

your ads here!

An environmental movement is growing in Europe and looking to come to the U.S.: Kids and teenagers skipping class to protest and raise awareness of climate change issues. While their cause is mostly praised, their method is controversial. Should students go on school strikes for political issues? VOA’s Markus Meyer-Gehlen explains.
…

your ads here!

An environmental movement is growing in Europe and looking to come to the U.S.: Kids and teenagers skipping class to protest and raise awareness of climate change issues. While their cause is mostly praised, their method is controversial. Should students go on school strikes for political issues? VOA’s Markus Meyer-Gehlen explains.
…

your ads here!

A hospital in Jordan has given a victim of Yemen’s war new hope for the future, thanks to the cutting edge technology of 3D printed prosthetics.

Abdullah Ayed, 21, lost one arm and badly damaged the other when his home in Aden was hit by an explosive in 2017.

He spent weeks in a coma in a local hospital. When he woke, he learned one of his arms had to be amputated while the other was almost beyond repair.

“I wished for death, that would have been better than being like this,” said Ayed.  “It was embarrassing to go out with my hand amputated, especially still being young, I wanted to get married, I wanted a job. But I did not lose my faith in God.”

In August 2018, the international medical charity, Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF), sent Ayed to Amman for treatment and rehabilitation.

The MSF reconstructive surgery program was set up in 2006, and aims to help patients regain independence. Ayed was chosen to receive a 3D-printed prosthetic.

Project supervisor, Samar Ismail, said 3D-printed prosthetics are faster to produce and much cheaper. The price for a 3D limb is around 30$, while the more conventional limbs start at 200$ and can go up to thousands of dollars.

The lightweight is also a huge advantage, Ismail added, which enables patients to use them for longer.

So far, more than 20 limbs have been fitted to patients, from Gaza, Iraq, Syria and Yemen.

Ayed said his prosthetic is life-changing. Though difficult to use at first, therapy helped him regain skills such as tying his shoes or putting on a shirt.

“I had lost hope in life, but now after training my mental state is much better,” he said.

He is practicing motor-skills that would enable him to work at a laundromat. But his biggest dream is to be able to go back to Yemen, get married and start a family.

“That’s all I want, to go back home and for things to get better there.”
…

your ads here!

A hospital in Jordan has given a victim of Yemen’s war new hope for the future, thanks to the cutting edge technology of 3D printed prosthetics.

Abdullah Ayed, 21, lost one arm and badly damaged the other when his home in Aden was hit by an explosive in 2017.

He spent weeks in a coma in a local hospital. When he woke, he learned one of his arms had to be amputated while the other was almost beyond repair.

“I wished for death, that would have been better than being like this,” said Ayed.  “It was embarrassing to go out with my hand amputated, especially still being young, I wanted to get married, I wanted a job. But I did not lose my faith in God.”

In August 2018, the international medical charity, Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF), sent Ayed to Amman for treatment and rehabilitation.

The MSF reconstructive surgery program was set up in 2006, and aims to help patients regain independence. Ayed was chosen to receive a 3D-printed prosthetic.

Project supervisor, Samar Ismail, said 3D-printed prosthetics are faster to produce and much cheaper. The price for a 3D limb is around 30$, while the more conventional limbs start at 200$ and can go up to thousands of dollars.

The lightweight is also a huge advantage, Ismail added, which enables patients to use them for longer.

So far, more than 20 limbs have been fitted to patients, from Gaza, Iraq, Syria and Yemen.

Ayed said his prosthetic is life-changing. Though difficult to use at first, therapy helped him regain skills such as tying his shoes or putting on a shirt.

“I had lost hope in life, but now after training my mental state is much better,” he said.

He is practicing motor-skills that would enable him to work at a laundromat. But his biggest dream is to be able to go back to Yemen, get married and start a family.

“That’s all I want, to go back home and for things to get better there.”
…

your ads here!