Cure for AIDS???

[CLAY]

An American man who suffered from AIDS appears to have been cured of the disease 20 months after receiving a targeted bone marrow transplant normally used to fight leukemia, his doctors said Wednesday. While researchers — and the doctors themselves — caution that the case might be no more than a fluke, others say it may inspire a greater interest in gene therapy to fight the disease that claims 2 million lives each year. The virus has infected 33 million people worldwide.

Doctors say marrow transplant may have cured AIDS - Yahoo! News


That and about $180,000 shot directly into the bloodstream.

[krozar]

He actually suffered from AIDS and wasn't just HIV positive?

[likoftw!]

If this were true can you imagine how many more people would have unprotected sex it would increase. In a way it seems like great news, but than you can conclude pregency test going up and the condom being considered useless and other things.

[superbob]

apparently from the article he's had AIDS for over a decade

[krozar]

Be nice to see if it works but sounds like it may be a crap shoot and probably can't cure everyone just as HIV treatments don't help everyone. Some get lucky like Magic and some don't. HIV is not static and it mutates. It's difficult to isolate.

In addition it can't help most people in the world:

Originally Posted by article

[...]some people carry a genetic mutation that seems to make them resistant to HIV infection. If the mutation, called Delta 32, is inherited from both parents, it prevents HIV from attaching itself to cells by blocking CCR5, a receptor that acts as a kind of gateway.

[...]

Roughly one in 1,000 Europeans and Americans have inherited the mutation from both parents.

Not a very large supply of this marrow out there. If this does prove to completely eradicate the virus in all patients it will only affect a very select number of people in wealthy countries.

BUT it could lead to further research into Delta 32 and whether it really is effective or not and the level of effectiveness it has. Not much of the marrow out there but there is enough for a respectable sized experimental sample.

[Hanukkah Harry]

A cure for AIDS. Seems to good to be true, for now at least. If it's true, then badass.

[Martzu]

However, Dr. Andrew Badley, director of the HIV and immunology research lab at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., said those tests have probably not been extensive enough.

"A lot more scrutiny from a lot of different biological samples would be required to say it's not present," Badley said.

I think, based on Badley's comment, it is too early to say this patient have been cured for sure.

[Cane_The9lives]

Im sceptical of this.

I do know that they have created a treatment that will nuetralize HIV, to where you can live with it without it developing into aids, but i would need to see some literature on this before i buy into it.

[krozar]

Originally Posted by Cane_The9lives

Im sceptical of this.

I do know that they have created a treatment that will nuetralize HIV, to where you can live with it without it developing into aids, but i would need to see some literature on this before i buy into it.

It works well on some people. However, antiretrovirals may only increase the life expectancy by a few years on others. Depends on a number of factors such as HIV-1 or HIV-2 (HIV-2 is confined to Africa, far less virulent), HIV subtype, person's own genetics, and how early it was caught.

If someone doesn't realize the infection until AIDS is diagnosed, then the prognosis is pretty bad:

Even after HIV has progressed to diagnosable AIDS, the average survival time with antiretroviral therapy (as of 2005) is estimated to be more than 5 years.[9] Without antiretroviral therapy, death normally occurs within a year.[10] It is hoped that current and future treatments may allow HIV-infected individuals to achieve a life expectancy approaching that of the general public.

Another problem is in many areas where AIDS is pandemic, the political situation may not be very stable. This prevents people from having access to antiretrovirals and even then, they may not be quality (and expensive) antiretrovirals.

Without treatment, about 9 out of every 10 persons with HIV will progress to AIDS after 10-15 years. Many progress much sooner.[8]

Without treatment, 90% will get AIDS


Treatment stats:

HAART neither cures the patient nor does it uniformly remove all symptoms; high levels of HIV-1, often HAART resistant, return if treatment is stopped.[104][105] Moreover, it would take more than a lifetime for HIV infection to be cleared using HAART.[106]morbidity and mortality in the developed world.[101][107][108][109] In the absence of HAART, progression from HIV infection to AIDS has been observed to occur at a median of between nine to ten years and the median survival time after developing AIDS is only 9.2 months.[10] However, HAART sometimes achieves far less than optimal results, in some circumstances being effective in less than fifty percent of patients

Despite this, many HIV-infected individuals have experienced remarkable improvements in their general health and quality of life, which has led to a large reduction in HIV-associated One study suggests the average life expectancy of an HIV infected individual is 32 years from the time of infection if treatment is started when the CD4 count is 350/µL.

It will get you, but if it works and you continue to stay on it religiously and never lapse on the treatment, then you will increase life expectancy x3.

[PurpleSheep]

Originally Posted by likoftw!

If this were true can you imagine how many more people would have unprotected sex it would increase. In a way it seems like great news, but than you can conclude pregency test going up and the condom being considered useless and other things.

This will never happen like at all, the disease cans till be contracted and you could die while waiting an operation.

The operation costs a large amount of money, there are also a shit ton of other STD's you can contract that I'm not sure anyone would like to risk.

Then you have not wanting to impregnate someone and have a child.

[Yedi]

Pure bullocs in my opinion. Well yeahe bone marrow replaces the production of antibodies but what should that give? just more stuff for the virus to infect. Hiv is blood bounded and doesn't stay in specific cell types for some time, therefore it is hard to catch.

[{Pebbles}]

There is no cure for Aids.


Bullshit.

[Marlie]

How many cure for AIDS/cancer reports do we get a year. A shitload but we never see the light of day for any of these procedures. They'll never be a cure for either as long as the goverment/pharmasuticals are involved.

[{Pebbles}]

Originally Posted by Marlie

How many cure for AIDS/cancer reports do we get a year. A shitload but we never see the light of day for any of these procedures. They'll never be a cure for either as long as the goverment/pharmasuticals are involved.

Where's the "Thank You" button when you need it.

[Rafcio]

A pharmaceutical company and the country government responsible for the invention of the cure for AIDS could benefit more from the prestige itself (set aside the insane profits) than from sales of the current alternatives. Every pharmaceutical company in the world would desire nothing more than to be known as the inventor of AIDS cure.

And the reason why all the cures we hear have no follow up, is because of pathetic sensationalist journalism. Journalists just want the story, and don't do any research. You will NOT find a "Cure of AIDS" in a medical journal.

[Keerua]

^Except the cure for aids isn't like a cough medicine, it would be deemed as something that belongs to the whole human race and given to everyone for free (I benefit if you don't have aids), imagine the political unrest if a country cannot afford the medicine when the marginal cost is ~~0. There is also the fact that given no other options if there is a medicine that I need to take regulary that will prevent me from dying it is infinitely worth it to me, ie they can earn much more if they dump mediocre medcine that you need to take everyday than they would on an aids cure. Prestige isn't worth more than profit, in the short term.

And yes journalists rarely know wtf they are talking about.




Not that I support the conspiracy theory, no scientist would ever do that.

[San Goku]

Just give out the cure already, I know its out there

[krozar]

Problem:

1. Drug companies don't want to release this secret cure because of lack of profit to be made from it.

2. What is a profit? Total return less expenses. Expenses would be R&D

Solution:

1. Will be loss from sitting on a cure which would be more disadvantageous than not introducing the cure.

2. But even a introduced cure will cause losses because the R&D costs must have exceeded costs gained from introducing the cure.

3. Don't spend money on R&D to create cure.

4. No loss from R&D is taken.

PR Caution:

1. Make sure that the hundreds of researchers involve never speak of the issue.

2. Hold families hostage

-or-

1a. Avoid R&D and avoid PR risk

Conclusion

No fucking cure so STFU because you don't know what the fuck is going on. Proof is the burden on those who make wild claims.

[Keerua]

Haha Krozar, everything is not social science