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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."
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.
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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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
dr. duesburg has impressive credentials, but he's making an assumption that correlation implies a cause and effect relationship when this is not true. if you can show results in peer reviewed journals like nature, science, etc. that support his conclusions, then i'd be much more inclined to believe you; unfortunately, right now, he's one voice saying "no" in a choir singing "yes".
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.
I havn't read the Dr Duesburg site. But I remember being young and reading text files about legel drugs. I distinctly remember there being therories that it was caused by Amyl-Nitrate and that the government keeping it legel was a plot to kill gays. Their evidence was that anti-biotics treated it well (duh, the problems with AIDS are the illnesses you get) and that it was prodominently in gays (this was a while ago) . So the AIDS not caused by a virus camp is nothing new.
Wow, sent an e-mail as suggested when clicking on "use classic" banner, and got a fast response that addressed my msg
Reading the site, his theory appears to be along the lines that AIDS results from recreational drug use triggering latent genetic sequences that are alraady in our DNA. Interesting theories, but it is hard to believe that there is an international conspiracy to get millions of people to use expensive drugs that actually make you worse ... but I guess if you're into this "every corporation is out to get you" thing, then you're probably going to believe this one too.
If it spreads like a virus and divides like a virus, it's probably a virus. Human Immunideficiency Virus to be exact.
Duesberg is yet another example of a brilliant innovator who began to believe in his own infallability.
He has turned into the troll of the HIV world simply because his ego will not allow him to back down from an initial hypothesis that has long ago been abandoned in the face of research and clinical experience.
It's his choice to sit on the sidelines with the conspiracy theorists. If his research was shown to have any shred of value you can bet he'd have all the funding and all the media atttention he feels he deserves.
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.
I don't know what to think about this. But there are apparently a lot of "authorities" who say this.
If it's a hoax, they've pulled the wool pretty well. Not only the population, but every medical journal too.
A programmer is a machine for converting coffee into code.
All right, we're heading off-topic, so let's do it right.
HIV is the name given to a very real, and very harmless retrovirus. It does multiply and spread, but it spreads with a 50% chance from mother to child and a one in a thousand chance via sex. That's a retrovirus for you.
AIDS is not spreading like a virus. In fact, it's spreading with the the same rate that, oddly, the drug AZT is being spread. And it's spreading one to three years behind the prescription.
There are books upon books by Duesberg and others that talk about this. It was a virologist's misdiagnosis in the beginning and since it was the NIH that did it, well, they can't turn back now. There's so much more going on than can be explained here, but it's not "every corporation is out to get you" but, rather, specialization is the root of all scientific evil.
The short of it is that one egocentric and famous researcher at the NIH said it was "HIV" that caused it and everyone followed his lead.
Duesberg follows another mishap like this (yes! It's happened before!) in Japan where an anti-diarrheal drug was causing, yep, diarrhea! Thirty years later they figured it out. Why? They were looking for a viral cause and not a chemical one. They kept prescribing the drug to people with the symptoms and scratched their heads as they got worse and died. AIDS and AZT prelude.
Scientific specialization is the root of all scientific evils, and this is one more reason why.
And since the top poster was modded down, I'll link to virusmyth.net again. Great site, and it's what started me on the long road to a violent wake up.
Interesting theory, but I'm curious how it explains the concurrent explosion of AIDS cases in Africa, where they certainly don't have a lot of AZT being handed out.
If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.
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.
It's scary to see this get modded up.
You link to reviews of TC Fry's book. And what do the reviews say? That western medicine / modern medicine are all "quacks". That doctors and medical industries have been in a conspiracy with the "news media" for a hundred and fifty years to "fool everyone with their 'germ theory' and 'virus theory'". Anyone who disputes that bacteria and viruses cause infection and disease is a fruitloop.
The author of the book, TC Fry was nothing but a diet quack. His pet diet claims you can cure all illnesses by eating a 100% fruit diet. This guy evenutally wound up killing himself with his "Miracle diet". Other sources report "He [TC Fry] failed to eat sufficient protein for his body type and lifestyle. Because of the basic long-lasting enervation and toxemia, all biological and physiological functions were impaired and, in Mr. Fry's case, resulted in anemia."
If you Google "T.C. Fry" and hit "I'm feeling lucky" you'll find the following rather amusing logic dissmissing Fry's illness and death:
There were many details regarding T.C. Fry's death, but in perspective the cause was stress and overwork
and
he did not completely adhere to his teachings
Chuckle. His "miracle cure" failed, but the only reason any miracle cure ever fails is because you failed to properly follow the rules of the miracle cure. He didn't die because he got sick, he died from "stress".
TC Fry is nothing but a diet nut. The undisputable fact is that there are TENS OF MILLIONS of HIV/AIDS cases in Africa. And it is silly to blame that on poor diet or enviornmental pollutants. The fact is that there has always been poor diet in Africa, and there has been no signifigant change in pollutants in Africa. Those factors cannot possibly be responsible for NEW explosion of disease and death.
As for the the "HIV/AIDS myth", the fact is that people with AIDS invariably have massive levels of HIV in their blood. People who have low levels of HIV in their blood almost invariably develop AIDS within X-years. People who do not have any HIV in their blood don't develop AIDS without concrete exposure to the virus. It is a classical infection and works exactly the same way as the common cold. The difference is that HIV is just far slower and far less infectious than the cold virus.
Sure there is some "conflicting" medical research on the subject. OLD research. That is the normal scientific method. There is always uncertainty and conflict while something is first getting figured out. Everything gets questioned and the arguments against it are supposed to be as strong and as persuasive as possible. Those arguments have been thoughly analized by the scientific community and rejected because they have all been properly answered or properly rejected for containing flaws.
Most infections have an incubation period of days or weeks. The fact that an HIV infection has a an incubation period of years obviously made it harder to concretely PROVE cause and effect. All tests and studies took far longer than usual to reach a proper conclusion. This delay was naturally filled with uncertainty, confict, doubt, and many many papers questioning it.
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- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
That's because there are *no* tests for HIV in Africa. They are using the WHO's concept of what AIDS is. There's a very amusing (as amusing as this gets) description of this in Duesberg's book:
Any of 30 diseases - HIV = Any of 30 diseases
Any of 30 diseases + HIV = AIDS
So, in Africa, they are looking for "any of 30 diseases," assuming HIV, and calling it AIDS. Then "treating" them to death. It's a whole other sham over there.
In short: there is no AIDS crisis in Africa. People are dying of everyday diseases and need everyday medicine, not AIDS drugs.
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
How does it explain AIDS being prodominently African American in America at first?
What about the deaths before treaqtment? Where those all people using poppers?
Perhaps AZT is more deadly then HIV. That does not mean the HIV does not cause problems, just that it is less toxic then AZT.
AIDS isn't just any number of diseases it is a state where your immube system stops functioning properly. It is being susceptible to deseases that should be easily faught off. It is not every day deseases, it is rare forms of everyday deseases.
If there is truly no correlation between HIV and AIDS besides medicine I have full faith in the academic community to say so with more then just one of its members. And I certainly don't want to read about it in one of his books, but in peer reviewed journals.
Wow, sent an e-mail as suggested when clicking on "use classic" banner, and got a fast response that addressed my msg
All right. As you say, lets get into it.
Back in 1981, I worked at CDC/Ft. Collins. We were busy doing our thing, but watching this new disease taking off. In fact, my boss was the first person asked to research it (turned it down due to politics). This was long before AZT ( a common compound).
I would like to see the evidence about AZT leading to death, while lack thereof living, and the medical community still pushing the drug.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
How does it explain AIDS being prodominently African American in America at first?
It wasn't. It was predominate in the gay community. period. All through out and apparently without preference.
It wasn't until it moved over to hetrosexual and/or drug users that you saw the change in profile.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
OK, replace at first with at second.
Was treatment with AZT shifting from prodominently gay to prodominently black?
Was the use of nitrates fallowing that shift?
Wow, sent an e-mail as suggested when clicking on "use classic" banner, and got a fast response that addressed my msg
Peer-reviewed journals? That's all you want?
Enjoy.
(The journal each article was in is at the top of each article's page.)
Rather than ask questions, there's a whole site dedicated to this. There are literally hundreds of papers there and links to even more books about the topic. It's not just Duesberg, though he's the loudest. It's dozens of well-respected scientists and biologists.
And this is all explained in one paper by Duesberg: Can Epidemiology Determine Whether Drugs or HIV Cause AIDS? (which was published in a peer-reviewed journal)
You probably want to read this, then.
But, then, here's the article I've been looking for all day. This has more than enough information that a specific example is not needed: The AIDS Dilemma.
Yes, I read it. It dealt with 1986 on. It did not deal with what we were seeing in 1981 (which were infections from the 70's). If you are going to knock the science world for disregarding evidence, then you should not do the same.
BTW, part of the reason why I got out of genetics was the crap logic that I saw going on. Many ppl were willing to ignore facts and/or logic that destroyed their case. The biology world does it routinely. However, I saw more than enough evidence to accept that most likely HIV => AIDS.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
I'm not disregarding evidence. That's where the second article came into play.
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).