16. Zambian Infant #1157... the cure for depression

Everybody occasionally feels depressed. Relationships... school... work... family... there is a plethora of reasons. You may be overwhelmed with more tasks than you have time for... or you may be struggling with a core belief in your basic life philosophy... or you may be upset because no way exists for you to get 7 hours of sleep tonight.

So what do you do? Well, every single time I feel that life has been treating me unfairly... I promptly see a picture of Zambian Infant #1157.

I worked with a sample from Zambian Infant #1157 when I was doing HIV resesarch at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. The sample was modified and a strain (known as SHIV1157) was produced... and whenever anybody talked about SHIV1157 or its derivatives, they thought of a virus. I'm not sure if anybody knew where the virus came from or why it was numbered as it was... I imagine that there were 2000 infants in a study and the 1157th one had an interesting viral strain.

Zambian Infant #1157, last time I checked, was 6 or 7 years old and still alive, battling HIV. He is one of the few infants born with HIV who manages to survive beyond a year or two. And his parents probably consider themselves lucky because he gets good medical care because he has such a unique viral strain.

Zambian Infant #1157, an impoverished child who was born with HIV, is lucky. He is still alive at age 7 and his viral strain is used wordlwide in HIV research.

So what is unlucky in Zambia? And who am I to be upset about my bad stroke of luck?

I look to the right at the PowerBook that I recently convinced my boss to upgrade to a MacBook Pro, I look to the left at the Ford Taurus that I hate because it is one of the few cars that succeeds in mixing bad power with bad gas mileage, and I look above my head at the projector that I complain about because I don't have cable and can't watch the Cardinals play 162 times every year.

Until the day that I can't afford to eat and my son is born with HIV, I am in no place to complain.