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The Cure for Cancer Might be: HIV
RGautier writes "Wired News has published that Scientists have successfully modified the AIDS-causing HIV in such a way that it can attack metasticized melanoma (cancer cells). The impact of genetic research on cancer research is in and of itself amazing. To mix this with the strategy of using one strong enemy against another is brilliance! Research will continue, obviously, but they are already reporting success on living creatures." Just think: between HIV and carrots we'll be all set.
You assume it isn't already. Remember what White Bloodcells do? Along with anti-biotics and vacines? All this is doing is adding in another weapon to the arsenal.
Fly me to the moon Let me sing among those stars Let me see what spring is like On jupiter and mars
Do we really want to turn our bodies into a battlefield for germ warfare?
Yes. You better believe it.
After seeing my mother die from cancer I would give anything to make sure no one else would ever have to go through what me and my sister did.
In short, hell yeah. Bring it on.
I don't really think it would make sense to downplay any involvement with HIV. Lets say they decide to call it something else and at a later point in time it's "revealed" that people are being strategically infected with HIV... even in a reduced state... don't you think people would be outraged that this information was withheld? I think the natural reaction from most of the public (through ignorance, of course) would be "why would they keep it from us... is there something they didn't want us to know?"
Best to be as open as possible right from the start to avoid any misconceptions. (Or media backlash.)
Working with HIV is actually a lot less dangerous than a lot of other infectious agents. HIV is fairly hard to contract, compared to airborne or contact-transmitted diseases. For example, it dies pretty quickly when exposed to plain old air. It's only HIV's incurability and eventual fatality that makes it so hazardous.
Memory tells me that nurses dealing with high-risk patients are prescribed AZT in order to prevent infection. Can anyone confirm my memory?
That seems pretty unlikely, because AZT is pretty damn toxic. You wouldn't want to take it just as a precaution. It is true that health care workers who've been exposed (e.g. needle prick from an HIV patient) go on a short-term drug cocktail intended to weaken the virus enough for their immune systems to handle it before it gains a foothold.
http://alternatives.rzero.com/
Well, that may be true for the dozens of pharmaceutical companies that made polio-reducing drugs, but Lederle, the company which marketed the (oral) polio vaccine made KILLING by selling 3 or 4 doses to all 6 billion people on the planet!
Same thing for an HIV cure/vaccine. Dozens of companies would no longer have a source of income, but the ONE company that creates (and patents) the vaccine will guarentee to sell 50 billion units over the next 40 years (assuming, like most vaccines, that it takes a few doses and booster shots to achieve the desired effect).
Plus, as a medical student, I happen to know for a FACT that people in my school are working on HIV vaccines. "They" aren't preventing this type of research.
That's what I thought, when I was working on Nuclear Magnetic Resonance ( NMR ) which was changed to Magnetic Resonance Imaging ( MRI ) because too many people were afraid of the word nuclear.