Or at least laying my tired behind down.
But no, instead I’m here reading a Reuters article about the lastest medical research discovery- HIV can now be transferred to previously healthy babies though pre-chewed food. (PS, in case you’re curious-that to your left is an image of an electron micrograph of the HIV virus.)
“In developing countries, some mothers pre-chew food for babies. These women may lack access to packaged baby food or may not have a way to blend baby food. This practice is thought to be very rare in the United States or other wealthy nations.” (Clearly, these medical researchers haven’t been around busy black mothers recently.)
“The researchers, who presented their findings at a scientific meeting in Boston, said the infected women’s saliva itself did not transmit the virus to the child, but rather it appears blood present in the saliva caused the infection… HIV transmission appears to have occurred when the children ingested pre-chewed food that contained blood from the bleeding gums of HIV-infected women, and this entered the children’s bloodstreams through a cut, sore or inflammation of the mouth or digestive tract. (Not sure about you but I personally got queasy at the bleeding gums part.)
“They said they ruled out other possible means of infection such as breast-feeding or blood transfusion.” (I’m confused. If minute samples of blood in the saliva is enough, why wouldn’t a transfusion from this same individual be a problem? As a person very likely to need another tranfusion at some point before I kick the can; this blatant contradiction concerns me. But I digress…)
“The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said it had identified three cases — two in Miami and one in Memphis, Tennessee — in which a child was infected in this way between 1993 and 2004. The mother was involved in two of the cases and a relative who acted as a caregiver was involved in the third.” (For a second I was going to talk about the insinuation that Miami and Memphis have folks living there that behave like they’re in a developing country but it’s late; so I’ll just save the smart talk for another time…)
Okay, I’m done. Forreal, forreal, folks are stop acting like HIV isn’t still killing us every which way you turn.
Check out the entire article if you have the time:
