POZ Community Forums
HIV Prevention and Testing => Do I Have HIV? => Topic started by: Moron on August 11, 2006, 07:11:39 am
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I had couple of incidents last month. A lounge hostess and I were involved in French kissing for less than a minute. I was consuming alcohol in between. (does alcohol help as a disinfectant in the mouth?) It's possible she has been kissing other hosts as well. Then I also felt her private parts for a while with my finger inside and immediately washed my fingers with undiluted whisky.
On another occasion I have felt the vagina of a street hookerl as she masterbated me. I did wash my fingers after that. These are the contacts I had and absolutely no penetration or any other form of intimacy involved. I suffer from anxiety disorder and you can imagine my angst now. I have no past history to declare. Do I need to take a test? Thank you very much
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None of the things you mentioned have ever been identified as transmitting HIV.
If you are sexually active, getting a twice-yearly STD panel, including an HIV test, is simply the responsible thing to do. Of course, wearing condoms for penetrative vaginal/anal sex prevents HIV and severely curtails the chance of acquiring other STDs.
But testing over this incident? Not necessary.
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Moron,
As Jonathan has said, NONE of the things you write about are risks for hiv transmission. Please read and follow the links in the Welcome Thread (http://forums.poz.com/index.php?topic=220.0) for more in-depth information on hiv transmission and how to prevent it.
You need to be using condoms for anal or vaginal intercourse, every time, no exceptions until such time as you are in a securely monogamous relationship where you have both tested for ALL STIs together. To agree to have unprotected intercourse is to consent to the possibility of being infected with a sexually transmitted infection.
Have a look through the condom and lube links in my signature line so you can use condoms with confidence.
Although you do NOT need to test over anything you have brought ot us, anyone who is sexually active should be having a full sexual health care check-up, including but not limited to hiv testing, at least once a year and more often if unprotected intercourse occurs.
If you aren't already having regular, routine check-ups, now is the time to start. As long as you make sure condoms are being used for intercourse, you can fully expect your routine hiv tests to return with negative results. Don't forget to always get checked for all the other sexually transmitted infections as well, because they are MUCH easier to transmit than hiv.
Use condoms for anal or vaginal intercourse and you will avoid hiv infection. It really is that simple!
Ann
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Thanks wonderful people. I am not sexually active in that sense. married and this sort of thing happens once in 5 years, i guess. even then am hypochondriachal. so no vaginal sex with anybody except wife. and anal, i have never tried, becos my wife doesn't like it.
conservative sites make you worried with expressions like "fingering carries minimal risk if there are cuts on the skin etc". same with deep kissing "if both parties have wounds".
so we anxious souls come to you. Dr Bob, Dr K and Dr HH are the other people who offer the solace amid the govt-linked abstinence paranoia. I am from India by the way.
Long Live you people.
cheers
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This keeps getting confused. what's the actual window period pls?
see the answer from Body.com
If you become infected with HIV, it usually takes between three weeks and two months for your immune system to produce antibodies to HIV. If you think you were exposed to HIV, you should wait for two months before being tested. You can also test right away and then again after two or three months. During this "window period" an antibody test may give a negative result, but you can transmit the virus to others if you are infected.
About 5% of people take longer than two months to produce antibodies. There is one documented case of a person exposed to HIV and hepatitis C at the same time. Antibodies to HIV were not detected until one year after exposure. Testing at 3 and 6 months after possible exposure will detect almost all HIV infections. However, there are no guarantees as to when an individual will produce enough antibodies to be detected by an HIV test. If you have any unexplained symptoms, talk with your health care provider and consider re-testing for HIV.
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There is a "window period" which is the time it takes the body to produce antibodies after HIV infection has begun. For the vast majority of those who will test positive, antibodies to HIV will develop within 4-6 weeks after exposure. Some will take a little longer to develop antibodies. To make certain that you receive a reliable test result, it's necessary to wait at least three months (13 weeks) after your last possible exposure to the virus before being tested.
Please take the time to read the "Welcome Thread" and follow the links.
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Concerned,
Can I ask why you are using different usernames while posting to our forums? Thus far, you have also used Moron (http://forums.poz.com/index.php?topic=2789.msg31644#msg31644)
I realise that you changed your email on your Moron account (doing that will disable your account), but that is no excuse and you made no mention of your difficulty in your new thread. I've reactivated your Moron account - use it and not this new one. I will merge your threads when you've gone back to Moron.
Please realize that this kind of activity is disrespectful of other forum members, as well as our moderators. People spend a considerable amount of time helping others in these forums. Using multiple accounts is at the very least annoying, if not deceiving and disrespectful of others. It is also against our Terms of Membership (http://forums.poz.com/Terms.htm) which you agreed to when you became a member. This information is also contained within the Welcome Thread (http://forums.poz.com/index.php?topic=220.0), which you should have read by now. So really, you have no excuse.
You must realize that the answers won't change, no matter how many names you post under.
I would appreciate a reply to this message, and I hope you will commit to using just one account - preferably your original one. If not, you will be banned from further access to the forums.
Ann
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Sorry the name change was not intentional. someone who should not be seeing my message happened to read it. i panicked becos i notice my email id is visible in the profile. it was a privacy issue.
sorry for the inconvenience.
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Moron,
You can make your email invisible in your profile. You will see it, but others won't. If it is written in italics, others can't see it. (mods can see it but we're sworn to secrecy)
Don't forget, you did NOT have a risk in what you brought to this forum. The window period is really irrelevant to you at this point, but what Rodney said is absolutely correct.
Ann
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Thanks for the reassurance. i hope to get tested at 6 weeks for peace of mind. Then again the OCD will haunt me and possibly another test at 3 months. Sigh! cheers people keep up your excellent work.
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People, i thought u wud be inetrested in this.
MONEY AND POLITICS SPUR BIO RESEARCH IN SINGAPORE By WAYNE ARNOLD==
(ART ADV: Photo is being sent to NYT photo clients. Nonsubscribers can purchase one-time
rights by calling: 1-888-603-1036 or 1-888-346-9867.)
c.2006 New York Times News Service@=
SINGAPORE … You can't buy Wrigley's Spearmint gum in Singapore. But human embryonic stem
cells? That's a different matter.
Last month, a local company, ES Cell International, claimed to be the first company to
commercially produce human embryonic stem cell lines in a way that makes them suitable for
clinical trials. Researchers can buy vials of stem cells from ES Cell over the Internet for
$6,000.
Singapore, notably conservative on most social issues … including a ban on most types of
chewing gum … is emerging as a hotbed for stem cell research, thanks to liberal laws in that
field and equally liberal government financing.
Lately, the tiny island-state's ambition of joining the ranks of Boston and the Bay Area as
a biotech hub has been getting a hand from an unexpected quarter: the White House. Bush
administration policies that restrict federal money for stem cell research have prompted an
increasing number of top scientists to pack their bags and head for this equatorial city.
Two of America's most prominent cancer researchers, Neal G. Copeland and Nancy A. Jenkins,
are planning to arrive here next month to take posts at the Institute of Molecular and Cell
Biology. The husband-and-wife team, who worked for 20 years at the National Cancer Institute,
in Maryland, said politics and budget cuts had left financing in the United States too hard to
come by.
""We wanted to be in a place where they are excited by science and things are moving
upward,'' said Copeland, who said he and his wife had already rented a condominium near
Singapore's shopping district and had joined the local American Club.
Scientists say President Bush's veto last month of legislation to raise limits on federal
financing for stem cell research was the latest in a series of setbacks, which they say are
stifling the research environment and eroding the edge in basic medical science that the
United States has held since World War II.
Shrinking research grants, a greater corporate emphasis on quick profits, and the political
firestorm over stem cells have left many American scientists frustrated and discouraged.
Waiting in the wings with encouragement and cash is authoritarian Singapore, which has begun
to earn a reputation as a haven for biomedical freedom.
The motive is economic. Faced with declining returns in electronics, the industry that
vaulted Singapore into the ranks of the world's richest nations, Singapore in 2000 began an
initiative to become a leader in biotechnology.
""It was part of the overall strategy of diversifying the base of our economy and, more
specifically, adding on a research-intensive sector,'' said Beh Swan Gin, who heads the
Biomedical Sciences Group at the Economic Development Board in Singapore.
Biotech joins a widening portfolio of industries that Singapore is promoting to provide new
sources of growth. The nation is rapidly becoming a major center for private banking, for
example, and it plans to build two of the world's most expensive casino resorts in a bid to
rev up its tourism industry.
Using the same combination of tax holidays and incentives that made it a base for the
world's biggest electronics makers, Singapore has already managed to lure big drug companies.
Factories pumping out pharmaceuticals for the likes of Merck, Pfizer, and Schering-Plough now
generate roughly 18 billion Singapore dollars ($11.4 billion) in annual revenue, and account
for 5 percent of Singapore's economy.
But Singapore wants companies to do more than make drugs here. To persuade them to conduct
basic drug research and development as well, Singapore offered to pay up to 30 percent of
their building costs. At least 30 companies have responded, including the Swiss drug giant
Novartis, which has opened an institute here to develop drugs to fight tuberculosis and the
tropical dengue virus. (STORY CAN END HERE. OPTIONAL MATERIAL FOLLOWS.) The centerpiece
of Singapore's biotechnology effort is the Biopolis, a seven-building biomedical hive that
opened in late 2003 at a cost of 500 million Singapore dollars. It is outfitted with the
latest high-tech equipment and features a bar, a day care center, and an underground facility
made to house a quarter-million laboratory mice.
Authorities are now building a stem cell bank at Biopolis, which will be able to count on
some of the world's most liberal laws on human embryonic cell usage.
Researchers hope that stem cells, the all-purpose building blocks that eventually turn into
specific tissue like bone, muscle, or nerves, can be harnessed and used to treat injuries or
medical defects. Scientists have found that stem cells from embryos, unlike those in adults,
have a greater flexibility and shelf life.
Bush administration opposition to stem cell research is based on the argument that it
requires destroying embryos, each potentially representing a human life. Singapore allows stem
cells to be taken from aborted fetuses or discarded embryos, and these embryos can be cloned
and kept for up to 14 days to produce stem cells.
Singapore officials say they have spent 1.5 billion Singapore dollars ($949 million) on
biotechnology since 2000 and have budgeted another 1.44 billion Singapore dollars more over
the next five years to finance development of new therapies and drugs.
That is not much compared with the approximately $27 billion the National Institutes of
Health spends each year. But it is spread among a much smaller crowd. While scientists working
for government research institutions here say they are warned not to talk about money, they
readily acknowledge that Singapore's salaries exceed those they can earn in the United States.
Lavish salaries and lofty titles have helped Singapore staff Biopolis with a roster of
foreign luminaries. In 2001, the same year Bush first imposed limits on financing of stem cell
research, Singapore snagged the National Cancer Institute researcher Edison Liu Tak-Bun.
Liu said he had felt hemmed in by outdated academic structures and the biotechnology
industry's preoccupation with financial survival.
""Singapore, however, welcomed new ideas and, because of its newness, provided degrees of
organizational freedom necessary for me to succeed,'' Liu said in an e-mail interview. He now
works at Biopolis as head of the Genome Institute.
In 2003, Singapore lured Jackie Y. Ying from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology,
where she had become its youngest tenured professor ever, to head up its Institute of
Bioengineering and Nanotechnology at Biopolis.
Earlier this year, Singapore scored another pair of Americans, the dean of the University
of California, San Diego's school of medicine, Edward W. Holmes, and his wife, Judith L.
Swain. Swain was the school's dean of translational medicine … the specialty of turning
laboratory discoveries into practical drugs or therapies.
Although they will continue to work part of the time at the University of California, San
Diego, Holmes gave up his $450,000 dean's salary to become an executive deputy chairman at the
Biomedical Research Council in Singapore. Swain will become executive director of a new
organization, the Institute for Clinical Sciences.
Singapore has not limited its poaching to the United States. The same year that Liu came to
Singapore, the Institute of Molecular and Cell Biology imported the cancer researcher Yoshiaki
Ito, who at the age of 63 was facing forced retirement from Kyoto University in Japan.
In 2004, the British cancer expert David P. Lane, renowned for his discovery of the p53
tumor-suppressing gene and for his warnings that financing shortages would lead to a British
brain drain, announced that he, too, would move to Biopolis. He is now the executive director
of Biopolis' cell biology institute.
Probably the best known of Singapore's imports was also one of its first … Alan Colman, who
helped clone Dolly the sheep in 1996. Unable to find backers willing to wait for his research
on diabetes to pay off, he found a ready investor in the Economic Development Board in
Singapore, which helped finance ES Cell with a group of Australian investors.
""In Singapore, they want a return on investment in the long term,'' said Colman, now ES
Cell's chief executive. ""That's why I came: I could get hold of the money to do the work in a
commercial environment that I couldn't do in the U.S. or the U.K.''
ES Cell is hoping sales of its $6,000-a-vial cell lines can help pay for the company's own
research into finding stem cell treatments for diabetes and heart disease.
There is other evidence that Singapore's efforts to bolster home-grown discoveries are
yielding results. It was Singapore doctors, for example, who in 2001 first succeeded in curing
a young boy's congenital anemia by using stem cells from the umbilical cord of an unrelated
child.
Last year, local scientists here demonstrated in experiments with mice that stem cells
could enter the brain via the bloodstream rather than be introduced directly through an
invasive procedure.
Researchers at Biopolis also recently published new findings on just how stem cells gain
their ability to transform into other types of cells, a discovery that could help researchers
better steer stem cells into specific treatments.
Not every foreign move into Singapore works out. A joint venture at Biopolis between Johns
Hopkins University and Singapore's top scientific agency is closing down after the agency said
Johns Hopkins was falling short of its recruitment goals.
But scientists say the addition of Copeland and Jenkins is a particular coup for Singapore
… and an equally severe blow to the American research community.
""This is a sad, and I think for U.S. cancer patients, a tragic loss,'' said Irving
Weissman, director of the Institute for Stem Cell Biology and Regenerative Medicine at the
Stanford School of Medicine in California.
Weissman's institute, along with the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York,
had been ardently recruiting the two scientists, who were looking to find more secure
financing for their work, which involves using mice to model human cancers.
""We have the biggest mouse colony in the United States,'' said Copeland, ""and it takes a
lot of money to run that.''
The two were favoring Stanford, which stood to benefit from California Proposition 71 … the
program meant to unleash $3 billion in state financing for stem cell research. But legal
challenges have kept that money in limbo.
Faced with the prospect of scraping for dwindling grants in an uncertain legal environment,
the two scientists decided to follow the advice of their former National Cancer Institute
colleagues, Liu and Ito, and move to Biopolis.
Now, Copeland said, his biggest concern is not money for his mice, but how to get his
cellar full of vintage wines halfway around the world from Maryland to tropical Singapore.
AP-NY-08-16-06 2130EDT
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Hi wonderful people,
after a low risk exposure - fingering, deep kissing and masterbation with a couple of sex workers (no penetrartive acts at all), i tested negative through the abbot lab's quick test after 6 and half weeks. can I move on now?
thanks for your enormous patience with all scared people here, who are suffering basically from General Anxiety Disorder, and who can get help from a mental health provider. ( a few weeks of mild anti-depressants under doctor's supervision really helps to tide over the window period). or at least it helped me.)
cheers people and have a wonderful day.
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Moron,
I've merged your new thread into your original thread - where you should post all your additional thoughts or questions. It helps us to help you when you keep all your additional thoughts or questions in one thread.
If you need help finding your thread when you come here, click on the "Show own posts" link under your name in the left-hand column of any forum page.
Please also read through the Welcome Thread (http://forums.poz.com/index.php?topic=220.0) so you can familiarize yourself with our Forum Posting Guidelines. Thank you for your cooperation.
You did NOT have a "low" risk, you had NO risk. You can take your negative result to be absolutely conclusive. You do NOT need further testing and you didn't need to test in the first place.
You are hiv negative and it's time for you to move on.
Use condoms for anal or vaginal intercourse and you will avoid hiv infection. It really is that simple.
Ann
Ann