International AIDS conference: New HIV foundation, study on youth and risky ... - Washington Post

Some updates from this year’s International AIDS Conference in Washington, D.C.

Tara Bahrampour reports on Timothy Ray Brown, the “Berlin Patient” whose HIV was apparently eradicated after he got leukemia and received bone marrow transplants from an HIV-resistant donor.

Brown announced Tuesday that he is starting a foundation to fund research to find a cure for the virus.

“I am the first, and I believe the first of many people who will be cured of the AIDS virus,” said Brown, looking frail in a charcoal gray suit, at a news conference at the Westin Hotel on M street. “My body is proof of the concept that HIV can be cured.”

Refuting reports that his HIV had returned, Brown said that any virus still remaining in his body was dead. “There is undoubtedly a certain amount of skepticism, but that is the way science progresses,” he said.

Brown, who lives in San Francisco, said he will work in partnership with the Washington-based World AIDS Institute to raise money for research.

Reporter Lena Sun is also at the conference, reporting that risky sexual behavior is way down among black high school students.

The number of African-American high school students engaging in sexual behavior that puts them at risk for contracting HIV has dropped significantly in the past 20 years, according to a new analysis released Tuesday by the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The findings were presented at the conference. The disparities between such risky behavior between black and white youths still persists, but the new data shows the gap narrowed dramatically between 1991 and 2001.

Among students overall, however, behavior change has stalled in the last 10 years.

The conference, through July 27, is a gathering of policymakers, scientists, delegates, advocates, persons living with HIV/AIDS and others working to eradicate the disease.