Friday ID Conference: "The Constitution and HIV/AIDS: the personal and the political" AND "Laboratory medicine can have tsunamis, too: the case for simple/rapid HIV RNA testing"

The 2011-2012 conference series kicks off with two back-to-back speakers

"The Constitution and HIV/AIDS: the personal and the political"

Edwin Cameron, Justice, Constitutional Court of South Africa

Edwin Cameron is a noted human rights activist and a sitting justice on South Africa’s Constitutional Court.  During apartheid, he was a leading human rights lawyer. President Mandela appointed him a judge in 1994. He was a powerful critic of President Mbeki’s AIDS-denialist policies and wrote a prize-winning memoir, Witness to AIDS, which has been published in five countries around the world.

AND

"Laboratory medicine can have tsunamis, too: the case for simple/rapid HIV RNA testing"

Robert Coombs, MD, PhD, Professor of Laboratory Medicine at the University of Washington

The focus of Dr. Coombs' research activity is on the pathogenesis of HIV-1 and the quantification of viral load in the setting of therapeutic clinical trials involving both adult and pediatric HIV-1 infected subjects.  Of particular interest is validation of HIV-1 DNA and unintegrated episomal2-LTR viral DNA as markers of infectivity when viral RNA levels are suppressed in the plasma with effective antiretroviral therapy.

​Refreshments will be served.

About Friday ID Conference

The Division of Infectious Diseases sponsors a weekly conference series which features distinguished clinicians and scientists from UNC, local universities and other national and international institutions. The topics are varied and appeal to not only infectious disease specialists, but also professionals in epidemiology, public health, microbiology, biostatistics and other global health-related disciplines. The conference takes place every Friday (September through June) from 8:30-9:30 a.m. in 1131 Bioinformatics (first floor auditorium) on the UNC campus. For more information, please contact the conference coordinator, Kathy James.

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