A Cure For HIV/AIDS?

The pandemic that has killed over 25 million people and another 33 million live with that includes members of the trans community in the HIV virus, if trials performed in Berlin hold up under upcoming scientific scrutiny, may finally have found a cure for it..

In the wake on another World AIDS Day observance, it was nice to read the article that suggests that a cure for the disease may have been found using stem cell transplants.

According to the Huff Po article, Timothy Ray Brown, AKA the 'Berlin Patient' underwent a 2007 stem cell transplant as part of a long treatment regimen to combat leukemia     His doctors published a report in the medical journal Blood that suggests Brown has no trace of the HIV virus after extensive testing and a cure for the virus may have been achieved.  

While much testing remains to be done and the research continues in nations around the globe to fund that elusive cure, it nevertheless is wonderful news and a beacon of hope for people who are living with HIV/AIDS.

And it makes it even more important that we get universal health care in this country.
 

Say A Little Prayer For The Queen Of Soul

Was distressed to hear the announcement earlier this week about Aretha Franklin being diagnosed with pancreatic cancer.  

While that particular form of cancer is deadly, as is evidenced by two of my fellow Houstonians succumbing to it such as our crusading consumer news reporter Marvin Zindler and Patrick Swayze, there have been people such as Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Apple CEO Steve Jobs who have beaten the odds.

It's also a prevalent form of cancer among African Americans.   If it is caught early ebough, people diagnosed with it have a 15-18% survival rate with surgical intervention.


In the meantime, as you say prayers for the sick and shut in at church today, say one for the Queen of Soul as well.

Dr. Marci's Moved

I wrote a few months ago about Dr. Marci Bowers being  '98% certain' that she was moving her world famous SRS practice from Trinidad, CO to the San Francisco Bay area.    

Well, it's official, she's done so.   Peep this announcement..

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Dr. Joel Beck, a renowned  San Francisco plastic surgeon of Bay Area Aesthetic Surgery, is thrilled to welcome Dr. Marci Bowers, one of the world's most prestigious genital reassignment surgeons, to his practice in San Mateo, California.

Drs. Beck and Bowers are highly skilled transgender surgeons who have joined forces to make the Bay Area Aesthetic Surgery facility an international hub for feminization and masculinization surgery.

On November 8, 2010, the two surgeons made history as they successfully performed their first sex reassignment surgery together.

By combining their unique surgical talents, years of experience and genital reassignment surgery expertise, Drs. Beck and Bowers are at the forefront of holistic care for transgender patients. They have assembled a top-notch medical team to create a unique program and ancillary services that encompass all aspects of gender transformation. In addition to performing procedures, they offer referrals for gender therapy, hormone therapy, femininity coaching, nutritional counseling, voice coaching, laser services, and anti-aging and beauty services.

Follow the links to read the rest of it.  

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For all the haters in Trinidad who wanted her gone, you got your wish.   Hope you enjoy your now two hour drives up and down I-25 to get medical care.   

Trinidad's loss is the Bay Area's gain.

Why The Trans Community Hates Dr. Paul McHugh

"The post-surgical subjects struck me as caricatures of women. They wore high heels, copious makeup, and flamboyant clothing; they spoke about how they found themselves able to give vent to their natural inclinations for peace, domesticity, and gentleness—but their large hands, prominent Adam’s apples, and thick facial features were incongruous (and would become more so as they aged)...." Dr. Paul McHugh 2004 Surgical Sex.

If you've noticed the spike in anti-trans rhetoric coming from the Catholic Church that has resulted in an increase in transphobia and hate violence crimes directed at transpeople in Latin America and other heavily Catholic spots on the planet, you have this man to thank for it.

You also have this man to thank for the 'transsexuality is a choice' meme that we have had to constantly fight as well.

But there is one group that he zealously defends. Catholic priests facing sex abuse charges.

Dr. Paul McHugh is another one of our longtime enemies of the trans community who first got the attention of our community in 1979. As then chair of the Johns Hopkins Psychiatry Department from 1975-2001 he shut down the Gender Program based on that infamous 1977 John Meyer study he ordered that claimed there was no real benefit to these services.

As a longtime critic of trans issues, McHugh has ties to neoconservative Catholic groups, was a member of the GW Bush Administration's President's Council on Bioethics, and is frequently quoted by anti-transgender groups such as NARTH and the Concerned Women for America.

McHugh claims responsibility for helping get J. Michael Bailey's anti-trans character assassination waste of trees The Man Who Would Be Queen published through the National Academy of Sciences.

He was tapped as the Vatican Advisor on trans issues and set the table for the current 'hate on transpeople' attitudes now prevalent in the Vatican since 2003 and now spreading like a cancer through the Roman Catholic Church.

Paul McHugh is also a supporter and proponent of Ray Blanchard's dubious autogynephelia theory that he created in 1989.

The "transgender" activists (now often allied with gay liberation movements) still argue that their members are entitled to whatever surgery they want, and they still claim that their sexual dysphoria represents a true conception of their sexual identity. They have made some protests against the diagnosis of autogynephilia as a mechanism to generate demands for sex-change operations, but they have offered little evidence to refute the diagnosis. Psychiatrists are taking better sexual histories from those requesting sex-change surgery and are discovering more examples of this strange male exhibitionist proclivity

McHugh not only leads the attacks on transpeople with a fanatical zeal, he did so against the late Dr. George Tiller to the point that in 2007 he was ordered by Kansas Attorney General Paul Morrison to cease and desist. The anti-Tiller public statements by him and others in the conservative movement led to Tiller's death.

McHugh has the blood of our brothers and sisters around the world on his hands as well, and is deserving of the antipathy heaped upon him in our community.

Helena Bushong-Interview

HIV-AIDS affects almost 50% of the African-American population. Out of that portion of the African-American population living with HIV-AIDS, about a quarter of it is older than age 50.

And there's the African-American trans community.

28% of the African-American trans community is affected by HIV-AIDS.

Here's a link to a video interview of a woman who hits all three categories, Helena Bushong.

Helena in addition to being the head of the Illinois Gender Advocates also has the distinction of being the first African American transwoman ever to visit the White House.


TransGriot Update:  Helena recently e-mailed me to advise me she's no longer the head of Illinois Gender Advocates