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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.'"
They're afraid of what someone who doesn't have benevolent intentions might be able to do with this approach.
http://alternatives.rzero.com/
Ebola is spread as easily as the common cold. What sort of properties would an Ebola/rhinovirus combination have that you're afraid of?
The reason Ebola doesn't spread very far is because it has a short incubation period, and kills very quickly. The infected don't have much of a chance to transmit it outside of the local populace---an outbreak can be identified and contained.
Contrast this with HIV, which has a tremendous incubation period, meaning that even though it's very difficult to transmit, it's spread terribly.
--grendel drago
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
Since you did not bother reading the article, I'll tell you why they said that it's unfortunate that it could be done so cheaply.
It's not what's been done, it's that it could be done at all, with so much ease and so cheaply.
Now imagine what would happen if someone decides to come up with a virus that is made out of common cold, that does something that it's not supposed to.
How does contracting Hepatitis through common cold sound?
That's exactly the reason they are scared -- if this becomes commonplace, anyone can come up with cheap ways of messing around with genetics.
Now, the article also mentions how the effects are usually not known and sometimes ineffective, so we may not know for quite a while what ELSE this virus does, and what else such cures may do in the future.
It's like making a pact with the enemy's enemy -- sure, you are saved for the day. But what about down the road?
It's just a scary precedent -- I refrain from using the word bad, because we do not yet know what is going to happen. But it's always helpful to think of the worst possible scenarios, too. Especially in sensitive areas like bio-tech.
What works in a dish of cells is often an entirely different story in an entire organism. It will be exciting when their virus manages to, say, keep an SIV-infected monkey alive for five years post-infection.
Seven years ago, a custom rhabdovirus (rabies) for selectively killing HIV-infected cells had my biotechnolgy professor all excited, but nobody's heard from them for a while since it didn't work in whole organisms.
(Why yes, I _am_ a molecular biologist....)
"I never really used Joe either but a stupid editor is a stupid editor." -D. Reed.
I am a bio major....
HIV is a double stranded DNA virus. Very different and it uses the cells own DNA polimerase to replicate itself and create teh proteins for the new virus. Very different.
If you were a bio major, you would know that HIV is a retrovirus, which carries its genome in RNA, and uses reverse transcriptase to copy itself into DNA.
"They redundantly repeated themselves over and over again incessantly without end ad infinitum" -- ibid.
WRONG! Actually, everyone should know that HIV is a retrovirus. It has a single stranded RNA genome which is replicated through a double stranded DNA intermediate. At this point, the viral DNA is integrated into the host cell's genome. Kiss my phd.
Eh, no.
The virus that they have invented can only survive if the HIV virus is present in the body. If you have no HIV in your body the "good" virus will simply die out.
"Hey baby, I have HIV, but don't worry, I also have the good virus." ... Somehow I don't think that line will get you laid.
Just a minor correction to my own post. HIV packages two positive-strand RNA molecules (positive-strand diploid, as pointed out by someone else), not negative strand. That'll teach me to post quickly while heating up dinner.
Norman Spinrad's 1995 novella, Journal of the Plague Years, describes this very thing. I wonder if the researchers were inspired by it?
I'm curious, do you mean American English? Because according to the dictionary defining American English, you are wrong. You are also wrong according to Dictionary.com. You are also wrong according to Wikipedia. The correct plural of virus, in American English (I don't have a copy of the official Oxford English Dictionary, which defines British English), is viruses. The use of the term virii originated in the 90s on warez sites/forums.
Except that there is no basis for virii being the plural of virus in Latin whatsoever. The plural of murus (wall) is muri. The plural of filius (son) is filii. Apparently someone thought virus should have a plural ending in -ii because they saw the plural of filius and other second declension nouns ending in -ius and thought that all nouns ending in -us ended in -ii.
The confusion doesn't end there though. There is no example of the word virus being pluralized in any classical works. This wouldn't be a problem except that virus is an irregular noun. It's a neuter noun that is declined like a masculine second declension noun (except the accusative case which is also virus). In Latin (and Greek as well) neuter nouns have plurals that end in -a. Do not pass go. Do not collect $200. This is one of the most reliable rules in Latin (and in Latin most rules have very few exceptions in the first place). As such viri can't be the plural of virus either.
Then there are some people who upon hearing that virus is neuter mistake it for a third declension neuter noun and say that the plural of virus should be virora just as the plural of corpus is corpora. However, this cannot be the case since virus is known to have the genitive singular form viri and if it were a third declension noun it would have the form viroris.
Then there are other people who say that virus is a fourth declension noun but this doesn't make much sense since the genitive form doesn't match what would be expected for a fourth declension noun and as for as I know all fourth declension neuter nouns end in -u and not -us.
My best guess is that the plural of virus would be virus since this follows the pattern of other second declension neuter nouns with gender confusion issues. However, it's probably best to avoid all of this confusion and just pluralize it as viruses.
And now you know. And knowing is half the battle.
My only political goal is to see to it that no political party achieves its goals.
The heterosexual epidemic never materialized? What the hell do you call the AIDS crisis in Africa? Oh, right, they're not all white American christians and therefore don't count.
_nfotxn
I work in the Arkin group, and Leor is a friend of mine.
Here is the reference and the PDF of the actual article that the research featured in the Wired report is based off of:
PDF: http://tinyurl.com/yu5ur
Leor S. Weinberger, David V. Schaffer, Adam P. Arkin. "Theoretical Design of a Gene Therapy To Prevent AIDS but Not Human Immunodeficiency Virus Type 1 Infection". 2003. Journal of Virology. 77(18). 10028-10036.
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~taltman
I think some people don't understand that AIDS is a syndrome, while HIV is the actual virus that causes it. AIDS means the immune system has reached a certain point of ineffectiveness due to HIV. That's why it can take years to be diagnosed with AIDS--HIV is destroying the immune system during that time. The period of time after HIV infection causes AIDS varies with each case.
> The tissue destined to make up the labia minor,
labia major, and vaginal canal on a woman becomes, on a man, the shaft of the penis.
The homologous (i.e same) tissue as the labia majora of females becomes the scrotal sac in males. Remember back when you were a young kid and you had a big ridge going down the mid-line of your sac? That was the fusion line of the two "lips".