Word: loaded
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...chose 20 volunteers whose T cells had dropped from a normal level of about 1,000 cells per ml of blood to fewer than 500. The newest PCR tests showed that the viral load of these patients was holding steady at about 100,000 copies per ml of blood. Ho started treating his subjects with one of the new protease inhibitors being developed by Abbott Laboratories. As expected, the amount of virus that could be measured in the patients' blood practically disappeared. The treadmill had been stopped. But no one was ready for what happened next...
...once in the history of HIV, a strategy that ought to work seemed in fact to succeed. Within weeks of starting combination therapy, 7 out of 10 men and women with AIDS begin to get better. Blood tests show that in many of them, the viral load has dropped below detectable levels. Relieved of the burden of fighting HIV, their long-suffering immune systems can finally tackle the deadly fungal and bacterial infections that have taken hold in their lungs, intestines and brains. Fevers break; lesions disappear; energy returns...
...center the AIDS patient who bounces back on the three-drug cocktail. Over the past year--like a character plucked from a drama and dropped into what, exactly?-- Schwartz moved from one story to the other. His T cells are back above 500. His viral load, meaning the presence of the HIV virus in his blood, has dropped to--the magic words--undetectable levels...
People who work with the epidemic fear that upbeat news coverage is playing havoc with a decade of AIDS education. Doctors complain about patients who think that because their viral load is undetectable, the virus must be gone from their bodies. Wrong. AIDS counselors talk about teens who think that science has discovered a morning-after pill to undo last night's unsafe doings. It hasn't. And everybody is concerned that a false message will go out that AIDS has been defeated. With that, they figure, will come a return to the '70s, the whole goatish and unbuckled funfest...
AIDS has increased gay visibility and even gay acceptance; AIDS is the Chorus Line of epidemics. The new drug treatments and those still in the pipeline are tremendously promising, although the catchphrase "reduced viral load" somehow sounds like a favorite band of Beavis and Butt-head. A generation has been all but erased. AIDS has paradoxically proved that gay lives matter, that the days when President Reagan refused even to say "AIDS" in public are past. Perhaps the post-plague years will soon begin and all those quilt panels and ribbons and T shirts will become relics or even flea...