A Breakthrough In HIV Transmission?

Here’s a fascinating new finding in HIV research:

Over 80% of HIV infections are acquired through sexual intercourse, primarily via semen from HIV-positive men. Pilcher says that researchers have been studying the role of semen in HIV transmission, but have focused primarily on the quantity and type of virus contained in semen. "We’ve looked at everything except the semen itself," he says.

Now researchers have found that peptides clustered together into long fibres may be more important for HIV transmission than viral load. “If that’s true, then we’ve been looking at the wrong thing for a long time,” says Pilcher.

This is potentially big news. If we can figure out a way to prevent HIV from binding to the fibres, we can make men with HIV much less infectious. Increasingly that’s the most feasible key to restraining the epidemic. It seems to me that as treatment renders HIV more and more manageable, fear of illness and death has inevitably become less salient as a means of prevention. Men will always want to have sex and will always take risks to get it. That’s simply human nature. You can alter this temporarily but not permanently. So the key to halting HIV is to make it harder to transmit. I’ve long believed that the search for a vaccine is futile, and we’ve just gotten more information on why. Reducing the viral loads of treated individuals through anti-retroviral therapy helps – but this new finding could really shift the balance. yes, much more work needs to be done to see if this pans out. But remember: just small downticks in infection rates can have a big impact in the course of an epidemic. The more we learn …

Hat tip: 3Q.

Huckabee And The War

There are many curious digressions, many incoherences, and some painful writing, as Dan points out:

For too long, we have been constrained because our dependence on imported oil has forced us to support repressive regimes and conduct our foreign policy with one hand tied behind our back. I will free that hand from its oil-soaked rope and reach out to moderates in the Arab and Muslim worlds with both.

But there’s also a real pitch here. Huckabee is clearly challenging neoconservatism directly, as Romney instantly grasped. His emphasis on stronger alliances, his refusal to engage in the maximalist terror war rhetoric of Giuliani, his critique of the troop levels in Iraq and the arrogance of the Bush administration: all of it is summed up on one key sentence:

Al Qaeda is a movement that must be destroyed, whereas Iran is a nation that just has to be contained.

Substantively, he offers nothing but incoherent bromides on that last point. But it seems to me an important moment when the Republican front-runner proposes containment of Iran – not regime change. Huckabee sounds closer to Obama and Paul than McCain and Giuliani. If the evangelical right moves back toward a non-interventionist foreign policy, which is where many of its adherents find themselves after Iraq, then the GOP’s mosaic shifts again. And neoconservatism’s future darkens.

The Torture Program

We’ve learned a lot this past week:

Now the process can be fully diagrammed, and the cast of characters is stunning. The torture system involves the operations division of the CIA on the implementation side. They rely heavily on contractors, it seems, in torturing people. And a special role is apparently played by a couple of psychologists. (Time used to be that healthcare professionals had an oath. It started “first, do no harm.” But, just like the Bible and the Constitution, that’s so pre-9/11.)

We know that the Justice Department is right in the thick of it. Who precisely? The answer is most likely the Office of Legal Counsel—which has now emerged as what George Orwell called the “Ministry of Love” (remember: the ministry that picked and approved torture practices). But it doesn’t end with the opinion lawyers. The National Security Division is also in the thick of things, apparently. And with Alberto Gonzales running the shop, the man who played station master for the initial series of torture memos, and who turns out to be deeply engaged in those that came subsequently, we now know that the Attorney General was fully in the loop in this process.

And finally the White House. David Addington, Dick Cheney, Condoleezza Rice and Stephen Hadley—all people we can now link directly to the torture system. Not just as a matter of theory. As a matter of practical application.

Just Paper

Jen02

The astonishing sculptures of Jen Stark:

I began making paper sculptures when I went to study in France for a semester. Since I could only take two suitcases with me for five months, I decided to purchase art supplies when I got there. The Euro was high and everything was pretty expensive, so I decided to get the cheapest but coolest looking thing in the art store – a stack of construction paper! I started experimenting with what paper could turn into and it took off from there.

Beware the paper cuts.

Kristol On Clintonism

A new meme from the right:

She might be easier to beat than Barack Obama or John Edwards. She might take positions that are a little less distant from this magazine’s views than Obama or Edwards. But the last few weeks have reminded us–and, we suspect, many other Americans–how little we should want the Clintons back on the center stage of American politics…

It will be good for the country to be able to move on, sooner rather than later, from the Clintons and their brand of politics. If the Democratic primary electorate brings this about, THE WEEKLY STANDARD will be first to say something we are not accustomed to saying to the Democratic party–thank you.

Mirengoff adds:

Until recently, I thought that the nomination of Hillary Clinton was virtually a done-deal. But her decision to attack Barack Obama’s character, as opposed to his lack of experience, has changed my view. The defining moment for me was the reference to Obama’s kindergarten "essay."

Clinton still has a pretty healthy lead over Obama in parts of the country where voters haven’t seen much of the candidates. But where voters have seen Hillary up-close, that level of familiarity has bred something like contempt.

Who hasn’t she ticked off this past week?