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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
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.
"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. --
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?
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:
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
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.
restrict themselves to crocodiles with some assurance of safety.
/. moderators, really...
I would strongly advise against oral sex though. Crocs tend to have a poor sense of humor. Kind of like
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
"Word up mofo, I'm going to fuckin' snap at yo ass"
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.
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
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
Correct, this is what we're talking about primarily. The news article was wildly inaccurate and embarrassing to read quite frankly!
We don't talk about defensins because we're not sure yet that defensins are involved. We suspect they are, but until we purify and sequence the proteins we're looking at we can't be sure. Hopefully this is only weeks away.
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.
"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).
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.
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?
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.