Life Magazine - July issue, has a very moving feature article (10 pages)- "The Way we Live: Aaron's Angel, about a father, Daniel Collado, and his six year old son, Aaron. Both have AIDS. Aaron's mother died of AIDS five years ago. Father, Daniel, says "I have made a lot of really messed up decisions in my life. But the medical decisions I've made have all been sound." Father has been on protease inhibitor since last fall, and they are working wonders for him. The more protease inhibitors did for him, the more it tormented him Aaron couldn't get them. Aaron's T-cell count was only 105, compared to 1000 in a healthy child.
So Daniel, with the help of Agouron, the company that makes Viracept, spent weeks pleading and negotiating with the institutional review board of a New Jersy hospital. And they got it for Aaron.
After one month on Viracept,the number of t-cells in Aaron's blood, although still low, rose by 30%. Says Dr. Lamacchia, "I've been seeing Aaron for two years and tried several different regimens for him, but his viral load has been going up and his T-cell count has been declining. This is the first time in a long time there's been a change in the trend."
"It's hard to reconcile the former hoodlum with the sophisticated authority on AIDS he has become. Daniel's talent for self-education and his relentless prusuit of treatment have made him into both an activist and a leader. Daniel is on the national executive committee of Pediatric AIDS Clinical Trials Group, which decides what AIDS medications will be tested by the National Institutes of Health. He is also vice chair of a group that disburses millions of dollars to help AIDS sufferers in his community. He spends most of his waking hours reading, writing, meeting, searching for new contacts, new information, new treatments."
"It is Aaron's great misfortune that he had AIDS," says his doctor.
"It's his fortune that he has his father."
Hats off to Daniel and Aaron and all they have to go through.
The article is worth reading.
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