There’s a Morning-After Drug to Prevent HIV Infection
The treatment is called post-exposure prophylaxis. So why do so few medical groups in Houston know about it?
By Todd Spivak
Published on June 05, 2008

At 9:30 p.m. on Friday, April 18, Michelle Lee (not her real name) left a swimming pool party at an apartment complex in The Woodlands, strolled a couple blocks to her SUV wearing only flip-flops and a two-piece bathing suit with a towel wrapped around it and opened the driver’s side door when a strange man suddenly gripped her throat from behind, told her to shut the fuck up, shoved her inside the car onto her stomach and raped her with the door left open.
[snip]

As the night wore on, Michelle became increasingly panicked that she might have contracted HIV or some other sexually transmitted disease. She typed “HIV test” into Google on her home computer in Humble and stumbled upon a San ­Francisco-based Web site that described a month-long antiretroviral drug treatment called post-exposure prophylaxis.
PEP, she learned, is an emergency medical treatment commonly used to protect people exposed to the human immunodeficiency virus by preventing the infection from taking hold in the body. The three-drug combination includes the same toxic medication given to people with AIDS.

But the drug regimen must be initiated right away, the Web site warned. It’s not effective in aborting HIV if begun more than 72 hours after the incident.
[url=http://www.houstonpress.com/2008-06-05/news/there-s-a-morning-after-drug-to-prevent-hiv-infection/1]COMPLETE ARTICLE[/url]

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HHS Moves to Define Contraception as Abortion
Cristina Page Tue Jul 15, 9:07 PM ET

In a spectacular act of complicity with the religious right, the Department of Health and Human Services Monday released a proposal that allows any federal grant recipient to obstruct a woman’s access to contraception. In order to do this, the Department is attempting to redefine many forms of contraception, the birth control 40% of Americans use, as abortion. Doing so protects extremists under the Weldon and Church amendments. Those laws prohibit federal grant recipients from requiring employees to help provide or refer for abortion services. In the “Definitions” section of the HHS proposal it states,
“Abortion: An abortion is the termination of a pregnancy. There are two commonly held views on the question of when a pregnancy begins. Some consider a pregnancy to begin at conception (that is, the fertilization of the egg by the sperm), while others consider it to begin with implantation (when the embryo implants in the lining of the uterus). A 2001 Zogby International American Values poll revealed that 49% of Americans believe that human life begins at conception. Presumably many who hold this belief think that any action that destroys human life after conception is the termination of a pregnancy, and so would be included in their definition of the term “abortion.” Those who believe pregnancy begins at implantation believe the term “abortion” only includes the destruction of a human being after it has implanted in the lining of the uterus.”
SOURCE

I hate to admit it but I had to actually do research to see who the Secretary of HHS is. It didn’t take long to find all I really needed to know:
Michael Okerlund Leavitt (born February 11, 1951 in Cedar City, Utah) is an American politician, and is currently the Secretary of Health and Human Services.

A US Republican, Leavitt was the 14th Governor of the State of Utah.

Mr. Leavitt has described the avian influenza virus as the most serious threat to American security.Source

It’s time to show Mr. Leavitt some love:
Mailing Address and Telephone Number

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services
200 Independence Avenue, S.W.
Washington, D.C. 20201
Telephone: 202-619-0257
Toll Free: 1-877-696-6775

I ask all of you to voice your displeasure with this act of lunacy. And while we’re at it maybe we should ask Mr. Leavitt how that avian flu thing worked out.