Anti-HIV Virus Developed

liam193 writes "Wired News is reporting that Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory may have developed a virus that fights the HIV virus. According to the article, 'It took Adam Arkin and David Schaffer just $200,000 and a grad student to develop a potential treatment for AIDS. And that scares them.'"

Comments

Irresponsible

[pogle]

'It's also possible that HIV and the therapeutic virus could mutate around each other and recombine to make an altogether new virus.

"I can't say now it won't make it worse," Arkin said.'

I really cant think of a more irresponsible statement, scientifically. There is no way he can know what would arise in the wild from potential mutations, and *definitely* no way he can make a blanket statement that it won't be more harmful than HIV. Those kind of generalities are just not beneficial to science, and mislead people to a great degree.

Re:All this...

[cft_128]

... and people still won't accept the easiest (and in fact only certain) way to prevent the spread of AIDS:
Don't have promiscuious sex.

Sure, maybe we should stop doing research on high blood pressure and heart disease too, after all a good diet and exercise can cure both of those.

Maybe we should also ban all religions - after all that is the root cause of terrorism.

But you'd have a hard time getting a message like that past PC liberals who seem to have taken up key positions of authority, and those tribes in Africa who believe the best way to cure aids is to have sex with a virgin. I wonder who told them that.

Ohh, nice, I really like the way you subtly linked those PC liberals with HIV infected people that have sex with virgins, really shows class and tact on your part.

AID a population control

[uodeltasig]

Now this is a divergence of the topic slightly, but I think its an important thing to look at. Several people have joked about how now we can have open, unprotected sex... but that's just it. If the counter virus was really successful then what would be the main motivation behind having protective sex... You can't die from it really, and the only other thing you risk are the other STD's out there... and hell if they got AIDS, maybe it's just a couple more years till they cure anything that you might catch. Now I don't have anybody that is in my circle of family or friends that has contracted HIV/AIDS so I am biased. However with this disease being the " now the world's deadliest infectious disease" Satistics and given the fact that it would be advantageous to sleep with people, unproductively with this counter-virus... hello millions of new unwanted pregnancies and also millions of more humans living longer. Hopefully a Grad student can invent a spaceship and a living environment to take us to other planets to populate there as well. Slashdot posting

Re:Is this a cure?

[glitch23]

The results of calling such a treatment a cure would probably be an increased spread of AIDS.

Just like handing out condoms to kids in schools doesn't already increase the probability of the spread of HIV since it gives them the go ahead to have sex since its "safer"?