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Crocodile's Immune System Kills HIV
ASEville writes "In an ongoing effort to stop the spread of HIV, scientists in Australia have discovered that crocodiles can fight off HIV and kill the virus. This is a major boon to medicine because the crocodile serum can also fight things that are penicillin resistant such as staphylococcus aureus."
Was carried out by Professor Wilkins in addition to HIV research he also is responsible for tractor mainentance.
Unpretentious Sydney reviews by unqualified Sydney reviewers
Sweet! Now Steve Irwin, The Crocodile Hunter, will be even more popular.
Now all we have to do is kill off all the crocodiles for the serum we need.
Good karma sticks to me like velcro on a piece of plexiglass.
Move along, citizen.
...How many animals they tested before they found crocodile fought off HIV?
Scientist: Perhaps pigs can fend off HIV?
*Lab_Assistant injects Porky with HIV
*Porky leaves channel (AIDS)
Scientist: Nope! Time to try eagle next!
Just a guy with an opinion
HIV kills crocodiles!!
"If you take a test tube of HIV and add crocodile serum it will have a greater effect than human serum. It can kill a much greater number of HIV viral organisms,"
/. editors don't read the articles submitted all the way to the end, so here's a bit towards the end that really matters:
Ummm.... So? The same thing can be said of chlorine bleach.
There are lots of known chemicals that kill HIV. The trick is finding one that leaves the patient alive. I know the
"However, the crocodile's immune system may be too powerful for humans and may need to be synthesized for human consumption."
There is nothing in the article to suggest that they have isolated the specific component that kills HIV, let alone determined that it is safe for human injection.
-Chris
-- This sig is only a test. If this were a real sig it would say something witty. --
Since I don't plan of fucking a Crocodile, I'm not sure how this effects me.
Invest in crocodiles!
"If you are a dreamer, a wisher, a liar, A hope-er, a pray-er, a magic bean buyer
Antibiotics kill living bacteria. There isn't a single antibiotic that can disable a virus (like HIV), which isn't even alive.
The scientists probably hope to use modified crocodile immunoglobulin the same way we use animal-developed immunoglobulin as a tetanus antitoxin for patients who haven't been immunized... kind of a booster shot for patients fighting an HIV infection. The problem with animal-developed antibodies is that the human body recognizes them as foreign, and soon starts to mount an immune response against them as well.
Light a fire for a man and he'll be warm for a day. Light a man on fire and he'll be warm for the rest of his life.
Now there's going to be ten posts about welcoming our crocodile-human hybrid overloards.
We prefer to be addressed as "Republicans".
"CRIKEY MATE, wouldnt want a take a hit from one of those!"
"See what the HIV does is just go, nene ne ne nene ne all about looking for its food. ne nene ne ne nene all day long BANG! fucken huge croc grabs him, drags him under, death roll. CHOMP CHOMP CHOMP end of story."
If I wasnt married.
serenity now!
The human immune system is fully capable of killing HIV. However (dumbed down enough for Reuters readers) HIV infects T4 Lymphocytes, so killing the virus means killing your own immune system, and you die of obscure diseases.
The antibacterial angle sounds promising, though.
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
Ich bin Schnappie, das kleine HIV-curing krokodil?
Wonder how soon we'll see a real life version of Doctor Connors AKA The Lizard. He's a lizard of course, but that's close enough to a crocodile. Hopefully we won't become evil when fused with crocodile DNA.
It's like putting a gun to the head of the bacteria and pulling the trigger
Of course, they first make the bacteria an offer they can't refuse.
There are 11 types of people. Those who understand binary, those who don't and those who are sick of this lame joke.
I think you should start using a tinfoil condom.
Help poke pirates in the eyepatch, arr.
I know the /. commentor's don't read the articles submitted all the way to the end, so here's a bit towards the end that really matters:
There are a lot of other real nasty sexually transmitted diseases - fungus for one, you don't want see illustrations of that.
V
m
As for retroviruses:
http://www.virusmyth.net/aids/index.htm
http://www.virusmyth.net/aids/tour/step11.htm
http://www.truthbeknown.com/aidslinks.htm
http://www.harmonikireland.com/print.php?topic=HI
http://curezone.com/dis/1.asp?C0=24
http://www.virusmyth.net/aids/data/bginterview.ht
the sun is god
Actually penicillin has NEVER been effective against TB!
To put it very simply.
HIV is a retrovirus which attacks and weakens the immune system immensely , AIDS is a syndrome resulting from an acquired deficiency of the immune system.
The only things certain in war are Propaganda and Death. You can never be sure which is which though
Spammers are already promoting a product called "The Antidote" supposedly produced from crocodile blood. With these news I think it will get worse.
Here is the FDA's warning.
The worst thing about it is to realize that some desperate people are actually falling for this scam.
Stop worrying about the risks of nuclear power and start worrying about the risks of not using nuclear power.
The hypothesis that aids is not caused by hiv has been very thoroughly disproven AFAIK. The (probable) reason one 'scientist' kept claiming that was because it made him 'famous'. Other parties that wanted to deny AIDS for political resons kept supporting this guy or held on to his theories. I can't remember his name.
As for funding: Would you give funding to 'scientists' that claimed the earth was flat or created in 7 days with no evolution? Lunatics don't get money because they are lunatics, not because their ideas need to be suppresed by gouvernment.
There are more countries in the world doing AIDS research than the US, so any errors caused by your strange funding policy would be quickly corrected in the rest of the world. The first breaktrough successes were made in Europe(france) IIRC.
As for the causes of death with AIDS: that is what you get when AIDS takes out your immune system: you die of the first petty illness that comes along.
So this 'AIDS is not caused by HIV' meme is nothing but FUD, please don't spread it any further.
This space is intentionally staring blankly at you
How many large academic institutions do you think would be happy to have crocodiles running around? Or perhaps the research centre is backed by a large (unnamed) academic institution!
Don't be so quick to assume that things must be wrong because they seem unusual to you.
cheap labor conservatives - they want to keep you hungry enough to be thankful for minimum wage.
! SITUATION! Your mom works as a paramedic saving people's lives. One night she rolls up on a multiple vehicle accident. A young girl, who is infected is trapped, your own mother, who is trying to help, cuts her arm while the blood of the girl is everywhere, so your mom gets infected, I guess with your attitude your mom just deserved it. Who is to blame though your mom or the INNOCENT girl's mom? You have a very perturbed view of this subject and should keep your mouth shut... and this is a very possible situation that could and probably has happened.
Those who like to have unprotected sex can restrict themselves to crocodiles with some assurance of safety. Crocs are unlikely to have AIDS or to contract it.
Loose lips lose spit.
AFAIK no one claims that drinking wine makes you better educated.
When I worked in this area (Approx 18 years ago), there was good statistical evidence that you needed HIV and some other second factor to get AIDS. However, the HIV gives you AIDS explanaiton was simpler, so there was no funding to investigate the real mechanism. AFAIK, it has not been properly investigated because of political correctness in the funding bodies.
You are one of many people standing in the way of good science leading to a solution to a very serious problem.
Sent from my ASR33 using ASCII
Why aren't we all HIV positive yet? The disease is still very confined. Back in the 1980s AIDS was going to break out "real soon now". 20 years on the only time AIDS deaths increase is when a new disease is reclassified as AIDS related & we start looking for HIV in conjunction with it...
Education, Condoms, Blood testing. One of the reasons that AIDS hasn't exploded in the West is that people headed the warnings and started using Condoms. There are programmes with drug addicts to ensure they get clean needles, education of teenagers in using condoms etc etc
Why is the disease profile so very different in third world countries?
First culprit has to be the wonderful folks in the Vatican who forbid the use of Condoms and have a large degree of control in the 3rd World. The US Goverment is beginning to match the Vatican by trying to promote celibacy as a primary driver rather than tackling the problem in situ with a piece of latex.
Second up of course is plain poverty and lack of education.
An Eye for an Eye will make the whole world blind - Gandhi
Regardless of whether a learned behviour has no genetic component, it follows that it is still Darwinism when a lethal force acts to remove it from the population. As Dawkins has so ably decribed, memetic effects have an equal, if not greater effect on species fitness (partciularly in complex organisms like humans). For example, take a group of Calahari bushmen and a group of New Yorkers. Both groups are, genetically speaking, practically identical. But transpose their environments, and I can guarantee the New Yorkers would be in dire straits within days. How the Bushmen would fare in the Apple is another matter. The only real differences between them are those of culture, making their memetics paramount to their survival. Memetic traits can be passed regardless of genetic lineage (everyone reading Slashdot right now is exchanging memes).
A study in 2000 proved that 3 South African prostitutes were resistant to HIV strains from the region. They also found a significant group of kenyan prostitutes with relative immunities to small doses of HIV virii. Interestingly as soon as the women started getting money from the researchers for co-operation with the studies, they lost their immunity.
Should it come as a surprise that the Human immunodeficency virus is killed by something in crocodile serum ?. There are things in the human blood stream which can kill off HIV, but most of us lack these mutated T-cells (which are killed off by the normal cells) in sufficent quantity to beat the infection completely.Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum videtur
HIV is a peculiar strand of virii not taking one specific form but that of multiple forms that are ever changing..
You are correct. This retrovirus depends on an enzyme called reverse transcriptase to convert its RNA to DNA, which is then used by our cells to make more copies of the virus. Unfortunately this enzyme is not at all efficient and makes very poor copies. This means there is an extremely high mutation rate. The good side of this being HIV becomes a very slow infection and doesn't kill you in a matter of days wiping out your entire immune system. The bad side is that the mutation rate is phenomenal over time, and strains of HIV with drug resistant reverse transcriptase are becoming more and more common.
Part of the problem with the actual AIDS illness is that the patient not only has a compromised immune system due to a low CD4 T-cell count, but the little bit of immune system s/he has left is busy making thousands of useless antibodies to all the different mutated proteins the virus made over the years. It gets you both coming AND going...
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
What do you mean? The croc is probably the closest thing to a dinosaur still alive today. (Birds, though descended from dinosaurs, have grown feathers and stuff.) That's less evolution, isn't it?
it is better to let nature take its course.
I will remember this when you come into my emergency room, shall I? You are mortal too. You just haven't realized it yet.
What about the dead haemophiliacs? What about the medical staff that have an accidental needle stick? And of course what about the children born into this world with HIV?
If we follow your argument then we all deserve to die because everyone is guilty of something. Even you. When you have your heart attack I will just hold the tPA (aka "clot buster") in my hand and remind you how harsh the world is, and let you die, shall I?
We have a duty to do everything we can to improve the lot of our fellow man - because one day we are the ones who will need all the help we can get. You reap what you sow.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
I guess with your attitude your mom just deserved it.
Not only that, but even in the case of IV drug use or promiscuity, no one deserves to die for making one stupid mistake and thinking it wasn't going to happen to them, if that death can be prevented in any way. And nowadays it CAN be prevented.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
Huh? yuppie flu is just a fancy name for Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. Following your google search link, the first real site it found was wrongdiagnosis.com and this is what it has to say about CFS. It then goes on to advise taking steps to treat the symptoms of CFS as a way of improving life.
Acyclovir (brand name Zovirax) is used to treat herpes infections.
So you're trying to tell us that you were cured of a disease that as no known effective treatment by a herpes cream? Perhaps your GP just recognized that a regular dose of "placebo effect" can be very effective when treating psychosomatic based illnesses.
"Oh my god nooooo, run for your life!! It's got a microphone"
"Look at my teeth so clean and white, you other fools bet'ah get out'ah my sight
Yeah you bet'ah run before I break you fools metatarsals, Oh yeah, I got more rapping than a game of 'Pass the parcel'.
You think this shit comes from a whack immune system? If you believe that then you be lacking wisdom."
"Nooo, it's too late, it's so awful"
True, the only way to directly prove that HIV causes AIDS would be to infect someone with HIV and find them developing AIDS later. To make that statistically significant (and account for the long incubation period) you would need to do that test on a lot of people, are you willing to volunteer?
No sane doctor or gouvernment will allow such a dangerous test. But you can do something less certain but quite similar with cohort studies. Take a (very) large group of people you suspect are at risk of getting AIDS and test them regularly for HIV and other viral infections. The pattern you see from such studies is HIV-infection with flu-like symptoms and several years later they develop AIDS. No one in the cohort develops AIDS withou the previous HIV infection but some people will never develop AIDS (very long gestation period). That is indeed not 100% proof, but in biology/medicine you never have 100%. If 99% is not good enough for you, then please remember that thousands of people are dying daily from AIDS and resources are finite. There is no room to make odd chance gambles.
The scientific process works via concensus (peer review). That may be not a good model as it can be very hard for breaktrough discoveries to get accepted, but it is like democracy: it may not be very good, but it is the best we have.
18 years! HIV had just been discovered back then. You could drown in all the HIV/AIDS articles that have been published since then. If that hypothesis had any merit it would have been accepted. It is not.
You mistake scientific correctness for political correctness. I believe it is called Ochams razor that states that, when you have two explanations for a phenomenon of equal merit, you go for the simpler one.
And why would that be? I am not a scientist (anymore). Is my opinon standing in the way of your 'good science'? Why would the science that is conducted now be not good enough. Sure it has not found a cure yet, but with current drugs, AIDS detoriation can be stopped or reversed. With those drugs it has become a chronic disease instead of a terminal disease. I'd say that is pretty good.
As for you and all the other dissidents: It is human nature to be attracted to odd chances and underdogs. But this is not literature or fiction, and in the real world no sane person goes for a chance of 1 in a million. Science is not a religion. You are allowed to think or believe whatever you want, and if you can make a coherent point people might actually listen to you. But don't expect funding just because you are so very different. If most people think you are wrong, then you don't get the money of most people.
This space is intentionally staring blankly at you
Ho, never thought I'd be the subject of a Slashdot news report.
Time to clarify things.
TFA contains a number of errors. First the statement I made about HIV is true, but as others have pointed out it does not mean we've found the cure for AIDS. It simply means that we've compared alligator serum and human serum and found the former significantly more effective at killing the HIV virus than human serum. It was intended to illustrate the overall efficacy of the crocodile / alligator immune system, that was all.
Second, these are not antibodies. Croc immune system works primarily through the innate or complement system, which does not involve antibodies. It's a simpler and more primitive immune response than the adaptive immune system that is key for mammals, but the advantage is that it's very direct and hence difficult for bacteria etc to evolve resistance to. It's "primitive" nature may be behind its effectiveness.
The main finding here is that the alligator / crocodile immune system is far more effective at killing a wider range of bacteria (gram +ve and gram -ve), viruses and fungi than our own immune system. When you've evolved over 235 million years, and your daily social behaviour involves biting limbs off other crocs, you need a good immune system! It clearly has potential medical implications down the line, but that's a long way off yet. First we have to fully understand what makes croc immunity tick. We are still trying to purify a protein which we believe is an antimicrobial peptide, but hopefully that will happen very soon after this recent work.
Eventually if anything does come of this, and we can isolate a "factor" that has human medical implications (and is safe for humans, unlike the far more effective chlorine bleach) it would indeed be synthesised. Adam Britton
These defensins have been found in many different organisms, from fish to plants to humans. I think this article is actually talking about an innate immune response, since adaptive immunity requires previous exposure to a pathogen, leading to production of specific antibodies. Defensins have a fairly broad anti-microbial activity, and some have already been isolated and shown to be effective against gram-positive and -negative bacteria, fungi, viruses and insects (no one defensin acts against all these, though)
Sick of WoW? Try the thinking man's MMORPG: EVE Online
Er, why is research only valid if it comes from an academic institution? Crocodylus Park (the name for the facility run by Wildlife Management International, of which I am an employee) is run by professional biologists who just happen to also run a tourism faclitity to get science across to the public. The fact that we're private doesn't have anything to do with the quality of our research - we still publish in peer-reviewed journals so it's open to international scrutiny like any other research.
We're also collaborating with McNeese State University in Louisiana for this project.
Adam Britton
Psychosomatic illnesses are related to the interaction of body and mind and are caused or aggravated by mental factors such as internal conflict or stress.
If your brothers girlfriend was treated using uppers and downers, which change the way the mind functions by changing brain chemistry, then isn't that by definition a psychosomatic illness? Sounds like it to me.
The answer to your lack of understanding is going to school and learning how things actually work. Not constructing theories about it because you watched a program on the Discovery channel. I mean this in a constructive way, because what you are saying is not related to reality at all and that is worrying. "Some kind of internal problem" means you are not really qualified to speak on the subject in an authoritative manner, really. There is nothing wrong in admitting you don't know something. There's a vast amount of stuff I don't know. Disease is something I am an expert on, though. It goes with the job, really.
First, it's asbestos, not azbestos. Second, asbestos has been linked to mesothelioma, not lung cancer. Asbestosis in the lung is no fun at all, but you don't get lung cancer. The mesothelioma is a cancer of the pleura, a membrane that is next to the lung, not the lung itself. Third, asbetos is an irritant that your lung cannot get rid of. This constant source of irritation causes the release of chemicals by nearby cells called growth factors. The constant local exposure to growth factors is one of the things that "takes off the brakes" in the cell cycle, and this, combined with mutations, causes the start of the cancer. Not everyone exposed to asbestos will get cancer from it. You need to have the initiation step (the mutation) as well as the promotion step (the exposure to growth factors). Fourth, this has absolutely nothing to do with HIV and AIDS.
Now to address the other part of your argument.
The HIV virus is an RNA virus. This RNA is changed to DNA by an enzyme called reverse transcriptase, that comes with the virus. This DNA can and IS merged with our own DNA. It becomes a fundamental part of you. When it's like this, there is no way I can get rid of it without killing the cell.
Some infected cells start to produce copies of the virus, and they eventually die. Other "healthy" cells are infected with the virus DNA, but those genes are not currently expressed. We're still not sure what causes a cell to suddenly switch the virus production switch to "on", and when we know this we will be one step closer to curing this disease. Still other cells (the macrophages) are capable of being infected by the HIV virus, and producing a limited amount of copies of this virus. The macrophages are not normally wiped out by this, but all you need is one copy of the virus to re-infect the whole T helper cell colony again.
So we have: 1) cells that die quickly 2) cells that take a long time to get sick and die and 3) cells than never die from the disease, but are capable of re-infecting you at any time.
This explains why HIV is a chronic infection, unlike the common cold, or viruses that cause diarrhoea which are SO aggressive they basically kill ALL the cells within days, and run out of hosts. With HIV, you create new, healthy hosts a lot quicker than the infection can kill them. But these hosts are getting constantly infected. Eventually the amount of infected cells and virus production is so great that cells are infected and die the moment they are produced or become active. This is when you get AIDS because the immune system is now collapsing.
You may not know how HIV works, but we certainly do. Billions of dollars of research money were NOT wasted. In the 1980's we knew almost nothing about how any virus worked. But with HIV there's not much that can be done about it BECAUSE of the way it works. Maybe one day we will find a better way of attacking the virus directly before it gets into the cells. We're not there yet though.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
I've read a fair bit of Peter Deusberg's theories.
To start off with, he's not a nutcase. He's done some important work with oncogenic viruses, and was the recipient of an outstanding investigator grant.
This grant was revoked because of purely political reasons, which is blatantly unethical.
My genetics professor for my senior year in college (2000) confirmed this when I talked to him about Deusberg, saying that Deusberg had been treated unfairly.
Of course, neither I nor my college professor agree with Deusberg's hypothesis, but the criticism of HIV research done by Deusberg and others has suffered a lot of political suppresion, particularly when HIV was first being discovered and people were in panic mode. Deusberg has not been treated fairly, and the political suppresion has had the effect that unjust censorship often does. If you want shoddy science, frankly, Fauci's early HIV research contains more than enough of it to go around. And the scanning electron microscope pictures of HIV attacking CD4 cells deserved to be questioned, since SEM photos are easily biased (take 100 photos and pick the one you want.)
AZT was approved for HIV treatment quicker than almost any drug in FDA history because it was rushed through. There's still no valid scientific study that I'm aware of that proves AZT extends lifespan, and the Concord Study was horribly flawed, with people in the experimental group sharing their medication with those in the control group to try and "help" them - a criticism of Deusberg's which is relevant to the current debate. As of 3-4 years ago, AZT was still a component in antiviral cocktails with scientists unwilling to do a controlled study for "ethical reasons" comparing it to the tuskeege institute study, etc. ( not sure about presently)
AZT is a highly toxic DNA chain terminator and was used some time ago as chemotherapy against cancer. Ironically, it's capable of simulating the effects of AIDS (i.e. immune suppression.) If you take AZT, you will get chemotheraputically induced immune suppression that mimics AIDS.
Further, almost none of the "AIDS" cases in Africa (possibly excluding S. Africa) are confirmed via western methods - i.e. either an ELISA test or PCR. If you have a disease associated with immune suppresion, you're assumed to have HIV. Starvation combined with other stressors can also cause immune suppression.
The grandparent poster was correct in that HIV almost never infects a person by itself - there's almost always some other co-infection, in part because HIV is such a weak virus. Deusberg's claim was that HIV was a marker virus, which remains an accurate description even if HIV does cause AIDS. HIV is almost always an indicator of other infections. Even people who have been subjected to HIV contaminated needlesticks are unlikely to actually get HIV. HIV is often an opportunistic infection itself, that takes advantage of a strained immune system or a break in the body's defenses.
As for this article, it seems a bit overblown to me. Scientists have been searching for an animal model for HIV for a while. I haven't kept up in the research recently, so what I'm saying is about 3 years behind the times or so, but frankly I'd be more impressed if human HIV was found to replicate inside crocodiles and cause illness rather than the opposite. There are plenty of animals which are not harmed by the HIV virus and the lack of effective animal models was a longtime problem in HIV research. Nothing new here.
I'm not so interested in crocodile antibodies, which I doubt would help humans. But if crocs have an interferon-like component to their blood, perhaps that could be useful.
___
It's the end of my comment as I know it and I feel fine.
If you put your human penis in the crocodile cloaca, just know you are in the pink AND the stink at the same time!
Blar.
"why is research only valid if it comes from an academic institution?"
I am not sure either how this thought process became so prevalent in the US. It seems that unless you are backed by or hold some sort of certificate of authority from an academic institution, you don't get a chance or the work you do is dismissed as untrustworthy. That is true these days on so many levels, it's scary. Even when you have a hard and fast track record of out-performing academically backed or educated institutions or individuals, the performance is dismissed by many. Is it because those who are 'attached' are threatened in some way? Is it so hard to believe that people and institutions can succeed and think and prosper without the assistance or help of academia? We as a society are severely hobbling our progress by doing this. Many of our greatest thinkers and inventors and scientists in this country (and the world) were actually non-degreed or had immense difficulty and or failures with the academic systems. An academic education or academic backing is simply there to provide an extra step toward success, nothing more. Lack of it is not an indicator of not having the ability to be successful at all. Far, far too many people seem to look at it in the reverse light that it was never intended to be viewed.
BTW- If you think this is a rant by a non-degreed individual, non-post graduate individual, you are wrong. I do hold a degree(s), in the field in which I work, and I feel that it has little or no bearing on my ability to perform my tasks successfully. I work with people every day who have a higher level of education or the same level from a more prestigious institution than I, and I find many of them, well, quite frankly, stupid. I also find many of the people who have succeeded, without the help or backing of academic institutions have a greater demonstrated ability to harness the information presented to them and make efficient use of it. They had to get where they are.
Really, is there any other way.
I'm sorry. The economy you are dialing cannot be reached. Please hang up and try again. If you need help, dial "G" for Google.
-Adam
Excuse me?! MARKET?
If you find the fucking cure for AIDS you'd best not be trying to fucking profit from it.
Right. You better run and go tell the pharmaceutical companies and all the scientist pouring millions of dollars are years of research into this quickly. I am sure they would hate to spend millions of dollars and years of their lives only be told fuck you when they finally develop a cure. If your asinine knee jerk opinion ruled policy, research into new medicines would grind to a halt as scientist and investors go find something better to do with their time.
So, here is an alternative idea. Instead of complaining when someone develops something useful and doesn't give away years of their life's work and millions of dollars of investments away, how about you quit bitching, open your wallet, and donate to a charity that will buy the drug for people who can't afford it.
If you don't like it, get your own PhD and millions of dollars and go find a cure yourself.
"People who are foolish enough to have unprotected sex... [deserve to die]"
The argument makes little sense. If it wasn't for STDs, it wouldn't be 'foolish' to have unprotected sex in the first place (assuming some form of oral contraception is used).
Lefty: Hey Zeke, it's your turn to go down to the pit and get some more croc serum.
The scientists may answer with 100,000, but the marketers (or should that be 'marketeers'?) would answer, "We don't want to cure anyone - we want to treat the symptoms for life." There's a lot more money in life-long dependence on drugs than any cure. Sad, but true.
Tiller's Rule: Never use a word in written form that you've only heard and never read. You will end up looking foolish.
If something from a Crocodile can teach us how to cure AIDS in humans, what about all the endangered or extinct species? Maybe this will bring some more attention to the fact that we NEED other species around to learn from and co-habitate with. It would really suck if we killed off some kind of plant that was going to hold the key to solving a horrible disease of the future.
It matters. When you inject a foreign protein (or most anything for that matter) in your body you mount a defense to it. This can lead to flu-like symptoms and flat out rejection of the treatment. Even when you have HIV your immune system is still kicking around albeit in a weaker state. The last thing you need is to deal with HIV and some foreign protein.
What will probably happen with this knowledge, assume it's viable, is the generation of chimeric antibodies, i.e. those with human and non-human components. What happens is you take the active bits of the non-human anbtibodies, find the gene, and then insert that into a human antibody gene. This gene is then expressed in some eukaryotic critter, e.g. yeast. The end result is that you can largely bypass the problems of the body mounting a defense against the antibody because it mostly looks natural. Pretty cool, eh?
In case you're wondering, yes this approach could work. HIV attacks the part of your immune system that mounts a defense (the cells that say "Hey, I remember this. This is how we fixed the problem last time" -- the exact cell name escapes me at this point in time), not the antibodies themselves.
HIV - HUMAN Immunodeficiency Virus
There are a number of forms of *IV - Most of them have major trouble jumping species. Good immune system or not, a virus that affects humans is going to have serious troubles infecting another species, especially a reptile. Many such virii have trouble even jumping between closely related species. (HIV vs. SIV)
This holds true for a number of other virii - Take Ebola Reston for example. Deadly to primates, but can't infect humans. Same for SIV (Simian Immunodeficiency Virus). Most of the time SIV can't take hold in a human. (Although once or twice it has, and HIV evolved from there.)
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
I have always hoped that should a real cure for AIDs be developed that the United States government would sieze the intellectual property and put it into the public domain.
Of course, any siezure of property has to be (1) in the public interest, and (2) fairly compensated. I know I'd happily support a politician who advocated such an action, regardless of how much money it might cost.
The other interesting scenario would be an ultra-rich executive or even a company who wanted to secure their place in history. Could a private individual purchase the rights to such a thing? Would a company think the forgone profits were worth the enormous PR boost? Wishful thinking perhaps.
What's the alternative? Have the same pharmacuitical industry complex distribute the drug? I mean we have drugs that cure malaria and all sorts of other things, and we still can't/won't get it to the people who need it. I'm not a naive bleeding heart -- I know the distribution and other problems in Africa (in particular), but we have to at least try, right?
The research for the CURRENT aids cocktail has been done. And the money being made from that product is paying for future development on better cocktails and cures.
This is basic business. Current product pays for future development.
As for finding a cure, it would be a great humaitarian achievement that would be massively hyped. It would also make a lot of money as there are MANY people who aren't getting the cocktail now. Someone would pay, possibly even Bill Gates.
"Psychosomatic" is often a term thrown around by doctors unwilling to admit that they can't figure out why the patient is sick. As far as uppers and downers only changing brain chemistry, that's only viewing the direct effects. Brain controls body. Anyone who's ever used speed can tell you that, while the drug only affects the mind, the mind definitely affects the body. Really, the distinction between brain and body can't be made very easily, as the two are highly interdependent.
If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.
It would really suck if we killed off some kind of plant that was going to hold the key to solving a horrible disease of the future.
Conversely, it would really suck if a new mutation of a plant appeared in the future that could cure a horrible disease...and was subsequently overwhelmed by plants that we'd saved.
It's a two-way street. If species don't die off, new ones can't flourish. Don't pretend that you can comprehend what's best for a system as large as the earth.
Anyway, it's not as if it would be catastrophic if say, an entire species of crocodiles died tomorrow - there are hundreds of species of crocodile, and most are very similar in characteristics. The article doesn't mention a specific species of crocodile because it's probably not important.
Same goes for any other species.
Man is the animal that laughs.
And occasionally whores for Karma.
It's a two-way street. If species don't die off, new ones can't flourish. Don't pretend that you can comprehend what's best for a system as large as the earth.
That's not what's been happening - we've been eradicating species left and right for a good 200 years, and new ones usually don't pop back up in their place because we're there.
"We returned the General to El Salvador, or maybe Guatemala, it's difficult to tell from 10,000 feet"
Modern research is showing that most dinosaurs which left sufficiently detailed fossils were feathered. So it could be a serious problem. They'd look like vultures with teeth.
-aiabx
Just this guy, you know?
There's no sense of "deserving" in the theory of evolution man.
I agree entirely. However we are human beings, with brains, capable of rational thought and able to make decisions about our future. Shall we ignore all of this equipment we evolved with, cast medicine aside, and subject ourselves blindly to evolutionary forces?
I am a physician. I admit that my job consists of working AGAINST evolution. I admit that in the long term my work will increase the amount of disease in the human population simply be ensuring the survival of people who otherwise would have died before mating. Inefficient, defective genes are being passed on because of me.
But on the other hand there is compassion. I am sworn to first, do no harm to you, and second - try to benefit you if I can. No I don't think you should die if you want to live and I have it in my power to help you. Life is short enough as it is! If you don't understand how important compassion is to us humans, well: when it's your turn to get sick, I will show you.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
Animals can be disease vectors (see Asian flu scares) or sources for cures or vaccines for certain diseases (e.g. smallpox vaccine using cowpox virus).
For e.g. we kill rats to stop the spreading of plague, and mosquitoes to stop the spreading of malaria.
Yeah, like that'll ever happen - may as well try to kill all the roaches. Most of the species we eradicate live in isolated habitats, which we then bulldoze for whatever reason.
"We returned the General to El Salvador, or maybe Guatemala, it's difficult to tell from 10,000 feet"
Lawyers?
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