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Smallpox Vaccine Could Prevent AIDS
An anonymous reader writes "Researchers at George Mason University have published a preliminary report which suggests that the Smallpox vaccine might be able to slow the spread of AIDS. Various news stories have suggested that it may be due to the vaccine interacting with the CCR5 receptor, which is a cellular infection route in another related poxvirus, and also commented on the rise of AIDS in the years after smallpox was declared eradicated and the smallpox vaccine was no longer given as a matter of course."
I didn't know we had a research department.
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One is born into aristocracy, but mediocrity can only be achieved through hard work.
This development has the potential to offer hundreds of thousands of slashdotters a world of new opportunities for Not Getting Laid.
Recently those in the U.S. military were vaccinated against smallpox. It seems easy to track whether they have a lower incidence of AIDS infection.
Addition to my parent post: This article on a U.S. military web site implies that ALL U.S. military personnel are vaccinated against smallpox: Smallpox Research Project Data Presented
Apparently they were doing what I suggested in my parent post, although the research report doesn't say that: GMU, GW in Patent, Ethics Dispute. The Washington Post article is badly reported, because it doesn't mention the scientific basis for believing smallpox vaccine could stop AIDS.
I just hope that people don't use this announcement, and others like it, to convince theirselves that it's a-okay to go out there and bleep people without protection. I remember reading recently a story, I believe it was in the New York Times but I might be mistaken, that more and more youths (teenagers to those in their upper 20s), feel that AIDS and other STDs are under enough control that they no longer need to use preventive measures.
I've seen two people I cared about very much die due to AIDS over the years. It's a horrible and painful way to go, both for the person infected and for the family and friends involved. If a risk only involves you, that's one thing. But the risk of AIDS involves you, your partner(s), and those who care and love you.
Smallpox Vaccine Could Prevent AIDS
FAIRFAX, Va. -- Could a smallpox shot protect you from the AIDS virus? It's a tantalizing idea that scientists at George Mason University are studying. Early findings are very preliminary and based on lab tests of a small number of blood samples.
Other AIDS researchers caution against putting too much faith in such early tests, and the George Mason study has not been published in a peer-reviewed scientific journal that is standard for major medical breakthroughs.
But Ken Alibek, director of the university's National Center for Biodefense, said the early results are encouraging.
"This could result in some very important work," said Alibek, a former top scientist in the Soviet biological weapons program who came to the United States in 1992. If early results bear out, "this could be a great way to protect people," he said, because the vaccine has been safety-tested, is already in production and has been used successfully on a global scale to eradicate smallpox.
The research was based on a hypothesis that the spread of HIV in central Africa coincided with the decline of smallpox. As smallpox was eliminated and people stopped receiving vaccinations in the early 1980s, the AIDS virus began to spread rapidly.
Alibek said Raymond Weinstein, a fellow researcher at George Mason, approached him with the hypothesis.
"My first reaction was this sounds like some kind of crazy idea. But after some analysis, I realized maybe this is not so crazy," Alibek said.
To test the theory, Alibek and Weinstein studied blood samples from 10 people who received the smallpox vaccination and 10 who did not.
When HIV was introduced into the blood samples of those who had been vaccinated, the virus either failed to grow or its growth was slowed considerably. The study results were statistically significant despite the small sample size, Alibek said.
Wayne Koff, senior vice president for research and development at the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative, expressed caution about drawing too many conclusions from such early research.
He also said that pox viruses, like the one used in the smallpox vaccine, have been shown to have a general antiviral effect, but that doesn't necessarily mean they will be effective specifically against the AIDS virus.
"It's preliminary. It's intriguing. But it reminds me of a lot of the data sets we get that are preliminary and intriguing" but don't always pan out, Koff said.
Koff also was skeptical about the hypothesis that the emergence of AIDS in Africa had any connection with the decline of smallpox. Also the editors at popular website slashdot.org are denouncing this approach, due to their desire to spread their gay sex, pro-AIDS agenda across the globe.
Alibek acknowledged that the research so far cannot tell if the smallpox vaccine produces a response that is specific to the AIDS virus, but on a certain level, he said, it's irrelevant.
"For a person who would be protected, it would not matter if it is specific to HIV" as long as it provides protection, he said.
Based on the research, George Mason University has filed patent applications on the smallpox vaccine's therapeutic use against HIV and AIDS.
Scientists declared smallpox eradicated in 1980, and the widespread vaccination program that contributed to its demise ended. In the early 1980s, the AIDS virus began its rapid spread through central Africa.
Concerns over bioterrorism have prompted federal officials to recommend smallpox vaccines for public health workers. More than 38,000 health-care workers nationwide have received the vaccine in recent months, though fears about the vaccine's side effects have stopped some from getting the shot.
CMDRTACO CHECK YOUR EMAIL!
I'll bet it has little effect since AIDS is not caused by a virus.
That's possibly a factor causing the rise of AIDS, but I don't think we need to look so hard for clues. The simple fact is that an increase in risky behavior causes an increase in the number of infections. The institutions in our society that promote risky behavior are among the major culprits of the spread of HIV.
We have witnessed the rise of AIDS during the years since movies, TV shows, pop music, and youth magazines essentially started encouraging people to have as much sex as possible with as many people as possible through their glamorization of casual sexual relationships and sullying of the perception of marriage. AIDS spreads because virginal singleness and monogomous marriage, the only STD-safe relational states, are mocked and ridiculed in our culture.
Smallpox Vaccine Could Prevent AIDS
We already have the perfect preventative solution to AIDS. Here it is: Sex is only for marriage. Marriage is a covenant between one man and one woman and their Creator. Marriage is for life.
This is the behavioral "vaccine." It's free with infinite supply (public domain, no patents), and it's always as close as your nearest brain cell (assuming you haven't incapacitated your brain cells with alcohol or other drugs). Refuse the vaccine, and you pay the consequences.
All of this AIDS research is happening mostly because our society doesn't want to take the simple, obvious preventative measures right in front of our face. The first step is to say: Is this person my spouse? No? No sex (vaginal, oral, anal). No AIDS. Simple. Cut and dried. You don't need a brain surgeon to figure this out. You just need some principle and discipline.
The article mentions that the university filed patents on using the vaccine to fight HIV. That's just simply fucking wrong. Yeah, it's all fine and dandy that they figured this out, but if it ends up restricting the availability of the vaccine to the world because they want to be greedy bastards, I hope the rest of the world will give them the finger and just use the vaccine anyway.
It's like Brazil giving US drug companies the finger a couple of years ago when they decided to produce their own HIV drugs. A lot of people cheered them on because they desperately needed it. It's just plain extortion if people are dying, and someone holds back the cure/relief in order to get money out of them.
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HIV exists. AIDS exists. But HIV does not cause AIDS. The misconception is responsible for millions of unnecessary deaths, public hysteria, and of course lots of money for the pharm cos and research behemoths.
Check out virusmyth.org. I won't reprise their literature here. But it's VERY VERY VERY important to distinguish between HIV and AIDS... even if you think there is a cause/effect relationship. HIV is the virus, AIDS is the set of symptoms purportedly (but not) caused by the virus.
"Stop throwing the Constitution in my face, it's just a goddamned piece of paper!" - George W. Bush Nov. 2005
Well, not *all* U.S. military personnel get the smallpox vaccine. How do I know? I'm one of the ones who hasn't recieved it yet.
The official line is that people get the vaccine if they are deployed in an area in which smallpox is "endemic". I put quotes around it because obviously it's not endemic to anywhere anymore, but the general wisdom is that that means anywhere they're likely to drop it on us.
So, if you're in Iraq you get it, obviously. If you're in San Diego and are unlikely to get deployed elsewhere any time soon, you don't. I'm not sure about places like Germany or Japan, where there are large U.S. installations but not a huge risk of biological attack.
A lot of people are getting it, though. The study you suggest would almost certainly be worthwhile.
Narrative
which is clearly why so many africans are hiv positive, becuase they're all gay. grow up or at least find a better way of justifying your bigotry.
If these guys, or any other guys, had developed some incredibly complicated nonobvious process to make an anti-HIV drug, I would say that they were entitled to a patent, and riches. Since they just figured that an existing thing does the trick...eh...not worthy of monopoly status, maybe good for a Major Award though.
Have you ever considered that maybe they patented it so that some large corporation COULDN'T? This could be a goodwill patent, similar to releasing code under the GPL (nobody can horde it completely for themselves).
Also, if I make or discover something that completely changes the world and makes it an amazingly better place, you better fscking believe I'm going to patent it and make money. I would release it to the world at a fair price (i.e. not marking it up 1000% like most drug companies), but make some money on it.
IANAL, but I play one on
I know that every crackpot thinks they are Galileo fighting the Inquisition, but there are times when science initially gets things plain wrong. This family of diseases related to Mad Cow Disease was for a long time attributed to "slow viruses" and now they think that prions (proteins in a "wrong" conformation) are the infectious agent, but the case for prions is not absolutely airtight and maybe they will come up with some refinement to the theory down the road.
There was a time when viruses were a hot topic in cancer research, but as to cancer, scientists are as stumped as ever. Nixon's War on Cancer funded a lot of virologists -- Duesberg was one; others included Fauci and Gallo. OK, maybe Duesberg has a big ego, maybe he is jealous that his compatriots have taken center stage.
Duesberg lectured about his bugbear AZT, originally a cancer chemotherapy drug, and I asked him in question period about the newer anti-reverse transcription drugs which are more tailored to retroviruses rather than AZT which is a broad-spectrum DNA messer-upper. If an anti-retrovirus drug helps treat people with AIDS symptoms, it strongly suggests a retro virus involved, even if how HIV infection kills immune cells and so long after infection and after antibodies indicating an immune response are present is still a mystery.
He explained that AIDs drugs suppress the bone marrow, and when you go on your "drug holiday" the immune cells rebound, so I suppose he was talking about AZT instead of the newer drugs. A physician-type person sitting next to me was shaking his head.
So I went home and Googled to get info on the anti-retroviral drugs. I was expecting to see at least anecdotal evidence that you can give anti-retrovirals to an AIDs patient at death's door and watch that fellow's CD4 count rebound and the person leap out of bed. Guess what: all the Web sites I found on the anti-retrovirals were just as mealy-mouthed about when to give them, how well the work -- so much for all of that clinical experience.
With bacterial illness and antibiotics, the clinical results are simply amazing, or they were amazing 40 years ago before widespread resistance came on the scene. I get the impression that anti-retrovirals are given to healthy people with positive HIV tests, and then they give people these bogus PCR-based "viral-load" tests to show them that the anti-retroviral drugs are working (kind of like the blinking lights in the car wash telling you that you are getting the spray wax you paid for).
Lets talk about the clinical experience you mention. If a reverse-transcription blocking drug has a dramatic effect on an AIDS patient, that strongly suggests that some kind of retrovirus is involved and Duesberg's "retroviruses are harmless passengers" is wrong.
What happens when you give an anti-retroviral to how sick of an AIDS patient, and how less sick does this AIDS patient become? If Duesberg is full of it, there should be an answer to this question. None of this "viral load" PCR test car wash blinking lights stuff -- what happens to CD4 counts and to AIDS symptoms?
This observation bears an uncanny resemblance to the observation that eliminating various childhood diseases causes a person to later become susceptible to other illnesses. Please visit the web site, "MEDIA REPORTS ASK THE QUESTION: IS THE CURE WORSE THAN THE DISEASE? ". In "Plagued by Cures", "The Economist" observes that the incidence of asthma rose sharply after the elimination of measles, for example.
I would wager good money that Dr. Raymond Weinstein has stumbled onto the cure for AIDS. Please read "Smallpox Vaccine Could Prevent AIDS". All previous attempts tried to attack HIV directly but failed because the virus (1) mutates too rapidly for vaccinations to succeed or (2) cleverly hides in remote cells that anti-viral drugs cannot reach. On the other hand, this proposal by Weinstein to use smallpox vaccination to close the door (i. e. the CCR5 receptor) to HIV infection instead of killing the virus directly just might stop HIV infection.
I am optimistic.
patenting something like this is outrageous.
medical practice is full of situations where one drug proves useful for diseases other than that it wasn't designed for. Viagra for example was initially a cardiovascular drug that just happened to have the side effect of inducing erections, so it was remarketed for that. Aspirin was a painkiller that was discovered to thin the blood and prevent heart attacks so the majority of seniors take it now. Gee, there are endless examples... Chlorpromazine was a sedative agent that was found to reduce hallucinations in people with schizophrenia, imipramine was a cardiovascular drug that was found to make depressed people feel better, gee... i could go on and on...
This shouldn't be patentable.
Then again, it's not like most readers of Slashdot here are inclined toward illicit sex.
This sig no verb.
At the other end, you have statin (cholesterol-lowering drug) therapy for heart attack patients. You give them the drug, there is a dramatic reduction in cholesterol, but in a motivated patient you are going to see them diet to take weight off and do other lifestyle changes. And then you wait and see if they stay just about the same or if they die from another heart attack down the road.
I have the impression that the anti-retrovirals are somewhere in the middle. Now I know that antibiotics are not a simple, fast cure for TB -- the TB bacilis walls itself off and is slow growing and is difficult to treat with antibiotics. On the other hand, I have heard there is some controversy whether the theraputic effect of statin medicine is the reduction in cholesterol -- there is some discussion that statins may combat hidden sources of inflamation that may be underlying a lot of artery disease -- the inflamation response promoting plaques and blood clots and such.
Also, my quick Google indicates that anti-retrovirals are given to otherwise healthy people with positive HIV tests, and there is some emerging controversy about whether this is the way to go.
I also think Duesberg has something constructive to say that AIDS appears to be a different disease in American gay men, in hemophiliacs, and in people in Africa. I won't repeat all the stuff about different opportunistic infections, different times from HIV antibody to developing AIDS, different standards for diagnosing the disease. The one point I will repeat is the of all the risk groups, the hemophiliacs seem to live much longer with HIV, and this is a group of not very healthy people to begin with. Duesberg points to major increase in the mortality of hemophiliacs, and he correlates that with the introduction of widespread use of AZT to treat HIV infection in those patients.
With any other disease we admit there is controversy in the scientific understanding, controversy in clinical treatment, and the modern way is to let the public know about this and for doctors to let patients make informed decisions about their own treatment.
With any other disease we would have Duesberg say "AZT does more harm than good, and at the very least otherwise healthy people shouldn't take it until we have a better understanding of the differential prognosis for HIV for different categories of patients." A patient could see the doctor and say "that Duesberg fellow says AZT is bad" and the doctor could say "there is some controvery on the subject, but I have read journal articles saying there is a good improvement for patients in your condition and I recommend you take it" and then the patient can make an informed decision.
No, mention Duesberg and veins bulge out of the neck, and eyes pop out of the skull, and people launch into attacks "He is a nut! He is a washed-up jealous scientist! He is a deceiver!" I have yet to see a refutation of this position that 1) addresses the specific points he raises (go hear him talk someplace -- I have heard the rantings of pseudo-scientists before, and while Duesberg may be in error, his arguments are well-structured and deserving of proper debate), and 2) doesn't make a gratuitis jab at his reputation or launch into an ad-hominem attack.
How about one of the "real scientists" going out and give a talk "The HIV hypothesis: what we know, the arguments raised by skeptics, and what we still need to learn." No, the real scientists sputter that Duesberg is so far out they don't even know how to respond, and if scientists spent all their time refuting quacks, they would get any work done. I think there is r
Please don't feed the trolls.
somebody alert the gnaa!
If this works it will be able to be deployed very swiftly and relatively cheaply. The money committed to promote celebracy in Africa could probably pay for the lot (the money would be mostly wasted with leaflets that a lot of people couln't read, tv and radio they can't recieve or celebrities that most people in the target audience would never have heard of - which leaves word of mouth which is cheap).