Participants: Allan Handysides, Don Mackintosh
Series Code: HFAL
Program Code: HFAL000097
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00:47 Hello, and welcome to Health For a Lifetime.
00:48 I am your host Don Mackintosh, we're glad you are 00:51 with us today and we are glad that Dr. Alan Handysides is 00:54 with us today. Welcome! Thank you very much! 00:56 I think I said that right, Dr. Alan Handysides, right? 00:59 That's right! And your specialty through the years has been 01:03 dealing with mothers, and with kids, and maternal health, 01:06 Obstetrics, Gynecology, and Pediatrics, isn't that right? 01:10 That's right! But now you are more involved 01:12 in a global health ministry, you are working in 01:14 many countries around the world. 01:16 I'm very privileged actually to be General Conference 01:20 Health Ministries Director for the Seventh Day Adventist 01:22 Church Worldwide, yes. 01:24 Alright, now one of the concerns, 01:25 many times on Health For a Lifetime we have dealt with 01:28 I guess we would call them the diseases of affluence, 01:31 Western society, that type of thing where we have 01:35 stores, we have things around us that we can easily access. 01:39 But one of the huge things we want to talk about today is 01:42 AIDS, and what exactly does AIDS stand for, 01:46 what does it mean, and when did it start? 01:47 Well, AIDS stands for Acquired Immuno Deficiency Syndrome. 01:54 Which means is simple language that you don't have the ability 01:59 to fight infections. 02:01 You've lost your defense system and it's caused by a virus 02:08 called the Human Immuno Virus, HIV, of which there are 02:13 two types, One and Type 2. 02:15 Type 1 is far more prevalent than Type 2. 02:19 Now how long has this been around? 02:21 When I was growing up I didn't hear much about this, 02:24 how long have we known about this? 02:26 Well, neither did I hear much about it, 02:27 but of course I'm older than you so it was actually on 02:30 June 5, 1981 that it was first reported in the 02:36 Center of Disease Control Bulletin 02:38 which they put out every week. 02:40 Five cases of Pneumocystis Carinii infections which are 02:44 very rare pneumonia, or was a very rare pneumonia 02:47 in five young homosexual young men. 02:51 The writer had also identified that they had lost their 02:55 usual immunity, so this was not something that they 02:58 were born with. So when was this again? 03:00 In 1981, so this is the 20th anniversary of the recognition 03:06 of AIDS. Ok, so about 20 years ago 03:08 this happened. Twenty years ago. 03:10 Where was this, was this in this country? 03:12 In San Francisco! Okay! 03:15 In this country, North America. 03:16 So AIDS was not around before 1981? 03:19 Oh, it was around, but it was not recognized. 03:21 Okay! In fact it was very interesting 03:24 it took about 3 or 4 years before they 03:28 identified the virus. I remember them talking about 03:30 whether it was caused by Cytomegalovirus or 03:33 all kinds of strange and wonderful theories as to how it 03:37 was coming about, but then finally the organism was 03:40 identified and then antibody tests were developed 03:46 against that virus that showed that there 03:49 was a response against it. 03:50 Then by looking at stored serum samples 03:54 they were able to identify as far back as 1959. 03:58 So stored blood samples you mean by that. 04:00 Stored blood samples from mysterious diseases, 04:02 deaths from unknown causes. 04:04 All the way back to 1959. 04:07 Amazing, so where exactly did this get introduced to the 04:12 human system? Well the geneticists who have 04:16 looked at this now using DNA techniques and so forth. 04:20 The geneticists have said that it probably was somewhere 04:25 in the fifty to seventy year spectrum, so maybe going back 04:29 to the 1920's, 1930's when it first came among humans. 04:34 But the thought that this is a mutation of a virus from 04:38 Chimpanzees that gained access to the humans. 04:41 So some people ate some Chimpanzees or what have they, 04:44 got bitten by a Chimpanzee? Maybe bitten by a Chimpanzee 04:47 or... and the virus that particular virus 04:52 happened to have this ability to exist in humans. 04:56 What is here in the United States, what are we 05:01 dealing with here in the United States than maybe 05:03 around the world, but what's the new case infection rate here 05:07 in the United States? 05:08 Well, actually it that's falling which is good, 05:11 the new cases are falling in the United States. 05:13 The virus is the same, the mode of transmission varies 05:17 from place to place. About 47% of AIDS or 05:23 new HIV cases in North America are homosexually transmitted, 05:27 that's men having sex with men. 05:29 Only 47%, that's a large percentage but some people 05:34 think 100% from that. Not at all. 05:35 Probably 28%, 29% is transmitted by the sharing of needles among 05:42 by the drug culture. Okay. 05:45 Probably 12% is transmitted by heterosexual activity, 05:51 and the remainder is from blood products, 05:55 contaminated instruments, needles, and so forth. 06:00 That's different from Africa, in Africa it's about 06:04 95% heterosexual transmission. 06:06 Ninety five percent heterosexual, 06:09 in other words a man and a woman. 06:12 Okay, many times people will attach a lifestyle or a certain 06:19 stigma because... They say well if they have AIDS, 06:22 they must be doing this or that, but what you are telling me 06:25 is not necessarily. 06:26 No, not necessarily at all. In fact heterosexual transmission 06:31 in Africa...you know one could acquire it from a 06:38 blood transfusion and transmit it in a marital situation 06:41 without understanding that it is even being there without 06:45 any marital infidelity, without any of these usual 06:49 "stigma" that we try to place on people. 06:54 Then what about children that, you know... 06:56 Vertical transmission you know, a mother who has HIV 07:01 when she comes to deliver her baby 07:03 she had about untreated 24%, 25% chance of transmitting that 07:10 to her baby. With new medications that can be reduced 07:15 to probably less than 7%. But of course there is 07:19 medication not available in Africa. 07:21 Talk to me a little bit more about Africa, 07:23 I mean I want to get a sense of the global perspective here 07:26 and you know we have to keep in mind that there are folks 07:30 in all of these countries that may be watching this program. 07:33 So when you visit those countries, what are you seeing 07:38 there, what is your impression of the situation there? 07:41 Well, I'll tell you, it is not a pretty picture. 07:44 The continent of Africa is probably the place that 07:50 you see the most devastation. 07:51 We are losing 5,500 people A DAY. -A DAY! 07:59 Just imagine that 5,500... funerals EVERY DAY, 08:04 Day in! Week in, week out, month in, month out, 08:08 that's been going on... All from AIDS! 08:10 All from AIDS! So when we have a plane go down, 08:12 we have a big accident here say in the western countries 08:17 sometimes back at Gettysburg, talking about the history of 08:23 America, you lost about 7,000 folks, you have a huge monument 08:28 and all kinds of things, people wrote songs about it. 08:30 But every day... -Every day. You loose that many people. 08:33 You know I was at the hospital, one of our 08:35 Adventist Mission Hospitals in the country of Zambia 08:38 to the east side of Chipata and there they have 150 beds 08:43 I asked them how many of the patients here have HIV or 08:47 are HIV positive or have AIDS? Seventy five percent! 08:51 That day they tested every blood sample that came 08:54 to the lab and it was 100%. - One hundred percent! 08:59 One hundred percent positive! Just devastating! 09:02 It's unbelievable. Is there any hope? 09:04 Are they developing any vaccines, 09:07 are they developing any medications to give some hope? 09:12 Well there is hope and there is a tremendous amount of resources 09:16 have been deployed to look at this, 09:19 and I would think of single conditions. 09:21 Probably there isn't a single condition that's ever had 09:24 as much tension as has HIV and AIDS. 09:27 It's not been available yet that there is a cure 09:32 vaccines just recently have been used on monkeys 09:37 and they have had some positive reports, some good reports. 09:40 Actually just in the New England Journal of Medicine 09:45 they reported that infection with hepatitis virus may 09:51 confer a degree of protection against HIV, 09:55 so there is interesting new work that is coming together. 09:58 So you get hepatitis and have some protection. 10:00 If it is the right type of hepatitis, so that sort of 10:03 work is coming to light. 10:05 The biggest step forward I would say has been in 10:09 highly active anti-retroviral therapy which has been able 10:14 to reduce the number of virus particles in the blood 10:17 and prolong life, probably up to four or five years 10:21 for the HIV infected person. 10:24 Let me unpack that a little bit for maybe some folks that 10:27 are not so medical. We talked about two different 10:29 things you mentioned, one was a vaccine, what is a vaccine 10:32 in just layman's terms, and then the next big words 10:36 you used on... for us? Ok, well if we were to look at 10:38 a vaccine, a vaccine would be... you say this virus causes the 10:46 body to develop a response against it because it's wearing 10:50 a blue coat. So let's take the blue coat and inject the 10:54 blue coat into the individual and they will start making 10:58 protection against the blue coat which it turn will kill 11:01 the virus, so that's the vaccine. Okay. 11:03 Infection with another virus, obviously that virus is 11:09 somehow competing with the HIV and in that way is slowing down 11:15 the HIV, so you've got a war- fare going on, a competition 11:20 between two viruses and so that is how the one virus is 11:24 working against the other. 11:25 So then the medication type thing slows down 11:29 the process from another angle. 11:30 Yes, you see the HIV is what we call and RNA, 11:36 that's Ribonucleic Acid Virus as opposed to a 11:42 Deoxyribonucleic. That Ribonucleic Acid virus 11:46 is a retrovirus in that it has to be converted back to DNA. 11:51 RNA and DNA are kind of mirror images of each other and so 11:56 the reflection into the DNA is made by an enzyme 12:00 reverse transcriptase. It goes into the nucleus 12:03 the nucleus then starts forming more RNA, it produces rolls 12:08 if you want to think of large toilet rolls of RNA. 12:12 Then in order for the virus particles to be broken 12:15 off the roll, like we take a slice of toilet paper, 12:19 there has to be an enzyme called a Protease enzyme 12:22 so if two enzymes are key, reverse transcriptase 12:26 - that gets it back into DNA, and the Protease is chopping 12:31 it off and the biochemist and the researchers in these 12:35 big companies have produced inhibitors, 12:39 Reverse Transcriptase Inhibitors and Protease 12:43 Inhibitors and they have slowed the process down. 12:46 - Ok! But they haven't been able to stop it. 12:48 So what they have done, HIV just very simply comes 12:52 into the body from whatever way and then tries to get 12:55 inside your cell, is that what you are saying? 12:57 - Yeah, what it does... Then it slows that process down 12:59 then it slows the process coming out of the cell and being 13:03 spread out like seeds if you will. -That's right. 13:05 So the virus comes along and attaches to specific cells 13:09 CD4 cells, it then pops inside the cell, its reverted back 13:17 to the DNA, switches the cell machinery, the DNA starts 13:20 pouring that, and as it comes out it got this chop, chop, chop 13:23 chop, a chop, a chop, little pieces coming out then it 13:26 goes down the sides. Do you know one virus particle 13:28 in four hours can replicate itself two thousand times, 13:33 do the arithmetic on that. 13:35 So that's exponential after. Oh, 36 hours you've got billions 13:40 upon billions of these virus particles 13:42 in an individual's body. 13:43 But at this point what we are saying is the only thing we have 13:45 mathematically is to slow this process down and to slow 13:49 this process of coming out and getting chopped up... 13:52 There's no real ultimate treatment but we've been 13:55 able to slow it down, in a sense. 13:58 There is a treatment you know. PREVENTION! 14:01 Right, but once you have it. Okay, let me talk about this 14:05 a little bit because lots of people are very frightened 14:07 when they hear that someone has AIDS or is HIV positive. 14:12 How is it transmitted practically and what should we 14:18 be watching for just before we go to our break? 14:21 The virus HIV is a very fragile virus, very fragile. 14:29 In fact bacteria or germs or anything that is sexually 14:33 transmitted are usually fragile, you put them on a dry surface 14:35 they die, they're done for. 14:37 They require the intimacy, the moisture, the warmth, 14:40 of the sexual encounter to transmit it, because they only 14:44 live in human body fluids. OK! 14:47 So the transfer is of human body fluids, if we take whole 14:51 human body fluids as a blood transfusion, or serum, 14:56 or plasma, where that... What about saliva? 14:58 It's possible through saliva but it hasn't been documented, 15:03 perhaps one case has been there where they think 15:05 it might be from saliva. 15:06 Then you need a broken surface so that it can get across 15:11 and that is why abhorrent sexual practices sometimes 15:14 help it to come across. So like a bleeding or something, 15:17 bleeding, or cuts. That's where healthcare workers 15:20 who have cuts should wear gloves so that there is no 15:22 broken hangnails or it can get in through the skin 15:26 and that is how it is transmitted. 15:28 As I said earlier it's 95% it's heterosexual transmission 15:33 intercourse in Africa, here of course it depends because 15:38 of the relative proportions being different, but it is still 15:42 transmitted sexually by in large for the most part. 15:46 We're talking with Dr. Alan Handysides, he is the actually 15:50 Medical Director, Health and Temperance Director for the 15:52 Seventh-day Adventist Church, we're talking about AIDS 15:57 and when we come back we are going to look at some 15:58 pictures and we are going to talk about some hope 16:01 at the end of our program. We hope that you can join us. 16:09 Have you found yourself wishing that you could 16:11 shed a few pounds? 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It's absolutely free of charge 17:06 so call or write today. 17:11 Welcome back, we have been talking with Dr. Alan Handysides 17:14 from the General Conference of Seventh-day Adventists. 17:16 We've been talking about AIDS, A World Wide Epidemic 17:19 we learned about first as to what it was here in America 17:22 but you have shared some hope with us that the process of 17:26 AIDS can be slowed down but the bad news is once you have it 17:30 there is actually really no known cure and as we were 17:33 talking last you said look there are certain ways 17:36 that it is transmitted that would lend us to really want 17:39 to listen when there is a message that says prevent 17:41 this rather than catch it. 17:43 We have a couple of pictures that come to us courtesy of the 17:47 Adventist Development Relief Agency, ADRA, and 17:51 we want to look at those right now and maybe we can 17:53 talk about them a bit. The first one here is a picture of 17:59 actually a person that has AIDS, what do we see in that picture 18:03 They are a little emaciated, they look like they have 18:08 thinned down, is this the typical look for someone 18:10 that this particular situation? 18:13 Yes, I think that this is a rather good illustration 18:17 actually, it is a woman who is probably about 32 years old, 18:21 she is in the prime of life she has children, her husband 18:27 will have died, she will be HIV positive, we can surmise 18:33 she caught it from her husband or she may have given it to him, 18:35 that's really irrelevant to the discussion. 18:38 She probably is going to die and leave her children as 18:43 orphans. Will they have HIV? 18:46 Depending on when she acquired it some of them may, 18:50 she may have lost some children from HIV because 25% 18:54 of the babies born to HIV infected mothers, 18:59 I'm using that as a ball park figure will be positive for 19:03 HIV themselves. Now does that come as a result 19:06 of them having breast milk from the mother? 19:09 Well about 22% of them will acquire it in the birth process, 19:16 that's why medication is really required to be given to 19:20 pregnant women during pregnancy and during childbirth. 19:24 If we could do this, we could lower this 22% down to about 19:28 seven or eight percent. 19:29 Now when you say medication that's the same kind of 19:31 medication they use to treat it. 19:32 That is the same sort of medications that they use 19:35 to treat it although not for as long a period of time 19:38 usually not in such combinations as heart therapy, highly active 19:44 therapy and there are very reasonable medications available 19:49 to do that, so that is something that needs to be looked at 19:56 very closely. Then the breast feeding is the other 19:59 tragedy. Years ago a woman who did not breast feed her baby 20:05 had a one in five chance that her child would survive 20:08 the first two years of life. 20:10 Now if you take that backdrop and then you say what 20:14 percentage of these mothers are going to have their babies 20:17 infected and it is going to be somewhat of the magnitude 20:20 of maybe 25 again, 30% of them will be infected if they 20:25 continue breast feeding. It's an awful dilemma. 20:28 Because they don't really have any other way probably 20:29 in these countries to feed the child. 20:31 To feed the children, so here we're... this is one of the 20:34 real tragedies, how do we feed the children, how do we avoid 20:40 them getting AIDS, it's just a dreadful, dreadful scenario. 20:46 We want to look at another picture here as well 20:49 what exactly is it that we are looking at here? 20:52 We're looking at a field hospital set-up, a health worker 20:57 is trying to take care of the dead and the dying. 21:04 Comfort the dying. Comfort the dying. 21:05 Which is always a terminal illness ultimately. 21:09 Once they get to late stages it is terminal. 21:12 It's absolutely devastating to watch these people die, 21:19 I remember seeing a 22 year old with cryptococcal meningitis 21:23 and I actually went to give spiritual care, 21:27 I wanted to pray with the person and I found that 21:30 she was beyond prayer because she was just so mentally 21:35 confused and disabled, unable to do that, 21:40 which to me is a very important lesson, we need to show our 21:44 compassion and caring while these people are 21:47 still able to receive it. 21:49 Because once again what you were saying if I understand it 21:52 correctly is that ok many times we will stigmatize people 21:57 because we think that, well if they have that disease 21:59 they must have been involved in this or that behavior 22:02 but especially when we are talking about these countries. 22:05 What was it 95% contracted this through normal sexual activity 22:12 that was not abhorrent or something like that, 22:14 so they really can't be held accountable to that 22:19 particular standard or that particular 22:21 way of looking at things. 22:23 Yes. I think we have to be like Jesus, when that woman 22:28 came to Jesus, they said this woman caught in adultery 22:31 you know, all the finger pointing clerics, 22:36 and Jesus said... there was no question about the guilt or 22:40 otherwise, but there was the compassion. 22:42 Woman, where are thine accusers, neither do I condemn thee 22:46 go and sin no more. I think we have to relate 22:49 to people where they are, the past is not our business. 22:53 We're people of the future, of hope, and we need to take it 22:58 wherever we find people and to work with them and 23:00 bring them the promise of salvation from that point on. 23:03 Speaking of that, I mean we are thankful today for these 23:06 pictures from ADRA which is part of churches response 23:09 of this but what is the church, the Seventh-day Adventist Church 23:12 doing to address this global concern? 23:15 Well if we were to talk of ADRA, ADRA of course is 23:18 an arm of the church and has been involved in many many 23:22 projects in Africa and South East Asia, in Eastern Europe, 23:27 to the tune of millions of dollars worth of projects. 23:31 But this is sometimes not recognized as being the church 23:35 and as a church we have recently recognized there is a great need 23:41 for us to become cohesive in our approach and I'm glad 23:46 to say that the church is starting to rally itself 23:52 around this particular problem and identify it. 23:57 In fact there are three issues that the church identifies, 24:00 or three focal points that the church has identified. 24:04 The first is we believe that we really need to work with our 24:07 pastors and congregations to educate, educate, educate, 24:11 so that we understand the nature of this disease. 24:15 Secondly we want to focus on our education system. 24:21 We have a large network through out the world where we have 24:25 students in our own schools, and we know from studies 24:30 that are being carried out that our students in our own 24:33 schools are at risk by reason of their sexual behavior, 24:35 of their drug activities, we know this, they are better than 24:39 in the non Christian schools but they are not as good as 24:43 we would like to see. We need to put a tremendous 24:45 focus through our teachers, through our education systems 24:49 in our seminaries so our future generation of pastors will be 24:53 well educated in this. 24:54 And the third thing that we need to do is we need to 24:57 mount our network of hospitals, clinics, and health providing 25:02 agencies, be they self supporting, be they under the 25:05 auspices of the church. We need to unite ourselves 25:09 with a common thrust to educate, to care for, 25:13 and perhaps to select a few definite projects that we can 25:19 implement and by selecting them... because we can't... 25:22 there is no way that the church can address this problem 25:25 worldwide as though we can do it. 25:27 It's a multi-billion dollar... It's a multi-billion dollars 25:29 I mean... It was calculated that the United Nations when they 25:32 met just a couple of months... I can't remember exactly 25:35 how long ago at the United Nations though they had this big 25:38 meeting together. They estimated that it would 25:41 cost about three to four billion dollars per year to put teeth 25:46 into this. Now the United States very generously said we will 25:50 give two hundred million... Drop in the bucket. 25:53 but it's a drop in the bucket compared to the problem. 25:55 So people of faith, people of good will everywhere 26:00 we need to put our minds and our hearts together 26:03 to address this problem. 26:05 You know you are a Christian Physician and you are 26:09 a physician that helps physicians marshal physicians 26:12 and all these different things, you work as a part of a 26:16 global network to bring hope. 26:17 But you talked about that 22 year old, 26:20 you were at the bedside. What type of hope, help, and 26:23 spiritual thing do you bring to the bedside with someone 26:28 or a family that is already afflicted with this, 26:31 what can you tell us in our last minute here? 26:35 Christianity is a message of hope because we have a 26:40 Savior who's paid the price, it's all paid for, 26:43 and heaven is waiting with arms outstretched to 26:49 receive repentant sinners. 26:51 It doesn't matter how bad our sins or how lewd our actions 26:55 it doesn't matter what we have done, Jesus has paid the price 27:00 and He is willing to receive us and to take us home to Him. 27:04 If we could only catch a glimpse of that love because I believe 27:11 that whatever we do, whether we prophesy, whether we preach, 27:15 whether we make these programs. Whatever we do 27:18 the underlying thing is love, because love endures all things 27:23 and love never faileth, and the love of God is poured out 27:28 to us His erring children. 27:30 That is my hope and trust in the Risen Savior, Jesus Christ. 27:35 We've been talking with Dr. Alan Handysides 27:37 he is the head physician of The World Church 27:41 of Seventh-day Adventists. We hope that you have 27:43 enjoyed this program on AIDS and we hope that if you have 27:46 problems, know people that are suffering from this problem, 27:49 that you will contact your local church congregation and 27:53 that you will actually be involved in bringing 27:57 hope and healing. |
Revised 2014-12-17