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Man Cures Himself of HIV?
IZ Reloaded writes "A 25 yr old British man could be the first person in the world to have cured himself of the deadly HIV virus. He was diagnosed HIV positive in 2002. After another test done the following year, he stunned doctors when his test results turned negative. He is now a wanted man after researchers and doctors want him to come back for further testing but he has so far refused. Experts think he could have something in his immune system that may help in producing vaccines against HIV."
Maybe he doesn't want to for the rest of his life be studied by some scientists. I would love to help people but I sure as hell wouldn't want to spend the rest of my life in front of doctors if I was in his position, I would rather continue a "normal" life (you know, normal, /. reading computer geek)
If this guy was low enough, he could probably make a fair bit of money. Theres a lot of money in sucking in the desperate, which a lot of fraudulant 'doctors' cash in with in their so called cures for cancer etc.
With his story to back up his claims, he could rake in some dough teaching people how to defeat it, even if he doesn't really know himself, or doesn't actually cure anyone.
As TFA said; he became depressed and suicidal when he got diagnosis. Then, he learns that it has gone away. I suspect that he's afraid that the next test he takes will be positive; probably not able to cope with that.
It's always a possibility the first, or second test was erroneous.
"He sought compensation but has apparently been told there is no case to answer because there was no fault with the testing procedure."
Seriously, this guy doesn't sound like the nice type at all: he won't cooperate to find out if he holds the key to cure a horific disease and tries to get compensation when it turns out he's healthy!
For example, what kind of test did he use? Most of the HIV tests actually test for antibodies, not the HIV virus itself. It is completely possible, and does happen on occaision, that the body will produce antibodies that are similiar to HIV antibodies but there is no HIV in the body. The antibodies don't do anything, but they do confirm the presence of the virus. The body then could have later stopped producing the antibodies.
Monstar L
Occam's Razor suggests that the original tests were wrong
The simplest solution is not always the correct one. In this case, since the potential benefits are so great, it seems worth looking into the possibility that he beat the disease.
Most likely, if he agreed to testing, they'd only need a blood sample now and then. Take a pint. Instant research material, fresh from the cooler, for ages.
It's not an editorial error, it's an inconsistancy in the behaviour of the allegedly cured man. He says he wants to help the scientists, but he's not willing to go through the tests. It seems likely that he's an attention whore.
J.D. Shapely???
All is fair in love and war...
Actually, knowing a bit about the mechanisms both the Yersinia pestis bacteria and HIV use to cause illness, it's not surprising that developing a resistance to one causes resistance to the other. Both attack the same T cells in the immune system, and both even bind to the same CD4 receptor of the T cells. Thus, mutations in the CD4 receptor that are still functional to the organism but disallow the binding by the pathogen would create a form of immunity.
Certainly, not every form of plague immunity would translate to HIV immunity, but because of the similarities between the two pathogens, some types do transfer.
Occam's Razor simply indicates which possibility is the *most likely* to be correct. It could have a probability of 1.5% when the next most likely outcome, which is more complicated, is at 1.49%. Further, it assumes that *everything else is equal*. If there were multiple tests, what percentage accuracy do you want across those tests before something else occurring becomes a more probable solution?
Yes, there is a chance that the original test was wrong, but there's also a chance of a true remission. Without more information than what was contained in the article, its hard to tell which is which, and it certainly warrants further tests.
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Without further testing, there is no reason to believe this story. There is no precedent for this. The prostitutes from Africa supposedly remained free of HIV infection in spite of exposure, while they are saying this man had been infected, but was cured spontaneously. It's one of those stories we would all like to believe to be true, and therefore deserves the greatest amount of skepticism.
You're confused -- HIV is already a slow killer, and that is why it's scary. Death by HIV generally takes years, and it can go undetected for much of that time. Its speed-of-mortality is not what is stopping HIV from becoming epidemic, the fact that it is not yet airborne is what's stopping it. See comments in the Bird Flu Pandemic article for more on this, but to summarize, a disease that kills its host before it has a chance to spread will become milder until it has a better chance to spread, just by natural germ selection. Even _if_ HIV's mortality is higher than ideal, the long lifespan of the infected means that there is no strong / fast reason for it to evolve weaker.
--Brandon
I know that it is not funny... It is like in many sci-fi... I liked the quote from Jonny Mnemonic - I don't remember it exactly, but the gist was: "The issue is not to heal people completly, the issue is to treat them and earn money".
But if we speak about funny ideas - the man seems to be willing to contribute to the research - so maybe he should state that all the results will be widely available (OpenSource license or something like that???)
..and I eat well every day and am finicky about food when children are starving all over the world. Oh no, the horror.
But you don't have the ability to end world hunger. This guy could potentially advance our knowledge of the AIDS virus. Instead of doing that, though, he cries to himself about the "emotional trauma" of his experience, sues someone, and totally ignores the fact that millions of people are affected by this disease. Moreover, those millions of people weren't infected because of a choice they made, but because of a choice their parents made! But those million's suffering apparently pales in insignificance next to this guy's trauma....
My point wasn't addressing the inherent inequality in our reality, it was addressing this guy's selfish and stupid behavior. Nevermind the fact that he does nothing, it's that he does nothing and sues someone! He knows first hand the trauma of this disease, but he's so self centered that he can't look out at the world and see all the good he could do with a little self sacrifice.
maybe it's because english isn't my native language, but when you say "man cures himself of HIV", i rather get the impression of some guy finding a treatment to get rid of the hiv virus, rather than the actual story, of how someone's immune system actually managed to defeat hiv...
is it just that my english is poor or does that title suggest the guy activily(/consiously) did things to get rid of his hiv infection?
Better yet, they screwed up the first test, he never had HIV to begin with, and they reckon they can avoid a malpractice suit and get lots of juicy research money by claiming the tests were accurate.
Maybe I'm just getting cynical in my old age. Working in a university will do that to you.
I don't quite understand how one can have HIV, and then appear to be "cured." Correct me if I'm wrong, but the two ways of testing for HIV are a) testing for antibodies that you develop when you get the virus, or b) testing for the virus.
I've heard it's possible to have a viral count that is so low that it is undetectable. But what about antibodies? Do they disappear once a virus leaves the system?
Isn't it possible that this guy still has HIV, yet they can't detect it?
any biology geeks here?
"Things are more moderner than before- bigger, and yet smaller- it's computers-- San Dimas High School football RULES!"
First of all, nobody as far as I have seen has claimed he actually sued someone, only that he "sought compensation", which may very well include nothing more than writing a letter to the appropriate authorities stating his case and asking for it to be considered.
Second, have you personally verified that that is even accurate reporting?
Third, do you know his reason was "emotional trauma" and not for instance real economic impacts caused by the original diagnosis (such as cashing in his pension and spending money left and right because he had good reason to believe he didn't need it - for what you know he could have given his entire pension to charity)? The article also mentions him becoming suicidal and depressed, which may very well have affected his work and had economic impacts.
You're making unsubstantiated claims about this guys motivations which you have no basis for.
My point wasn't addressing the inherent inequality in our reality, it was addressing this guy's selfish and stupid behavior. Nevermind the fact that he does nothing, it's that he does nothing and sues someone! He knows first hand the trauma of this disease, but he's so self centered that he can't look out at the world and see all the good he could do with a little self sacrifice.
Quote from the article: "He has told the papers he would do anything he could to help find a cure."
So how exactly is it you know that he is doing nothing? You are again assuming one part of the article is true without any corroborating evidence while ignoring another part of the article and assuming the worst.
I'm not saying you can't be right, merely that you are jumping to an awful lot of conclusions with essentially no evidence.
News just in, he's *still* going to die...
This isn't remotely funny - it's a belief that is responsible for untold numbers of child rapes each year, especially in sub-Saharan Africa.
--- Hot Shot City is particularly good.
I'm not at all certain he should get the choice not to.
Oh I agree. The second the sick become cured they should have their liberties and freedom to make choices about what they do with their body be taken away. Perhaps it should start with having to be tested indefinitely, and progress to having to donate their non-necessary organs.
Are you saying that if you could help scientists to cure a disease that's killing hundreds of thousands of people every year by devoting a big chunk of your time, you WOULDNT do it?
I would (up to a point), but I want the freedom to choose to do so.
The key difference is, I believe, that this man definately had HIV (assuming we can believe the insistence of the people who did the tests that they were correct) but now no longer does. By contrast, these women are people who by all rights should have got HIV through everyday exposure, but have not. It is not known whether they have got the disease and been 'cured' like this man, or if they simply never became infected in the first place - and since these women never tested positive for HIV before the study started, we can't confirm which of these was the case.
To be honest, with the 5 to 20 year dormancy, HIV is rather well suited for a host with a reproductive cycle that starts at in the early to mid teens.
Except that babies are usually infected by their mothers. And then die well before reproductive age.
My Karma: ran over your Dogma
StrawberryFrog
Yes, exacltly! Finally, someone gets it!
Okay, so don't force him to submit for tests. But look at the bright side. Maybe karma will get him, even if HIV (turned AIDS) won't.
Either way, at this point, he's ranking very high on the piece of shit-o-meter.
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Why? because he doesn't want to be a lab rat? Because he doesn't want some drug company patenting his genes? Because he doesn't want anybody turning a profit on his immune system?
Reinvent the wheel only at either a lower cost, greater effectiveness, or your own personal enrichment and satisfaction.
Anyone else noticing the irony of the first person who may be immune to a deadly disease being gay and thus probably not reproducing?
--trb
> Immediate reaction: Sue the moron who screwed up your test
You must be from the USA.
Perhaps I'm reading it incorrectly, but anyone who is cured might want to help humanity instead of first aiming their crosshairs at the company who tested him and looking to sue. Perhaps he'll change his tune soon, in which case, the world (most noticeably the gay community, of which he is a member) might truly be better off because of him. But at this point, he's a piece of shit. Holding on to the possible genetic KEY to stopping this disease is among the most selfish things I've ever heard. Why is he so afraid of helping out? Being in the history books as the person whose immune system helped solved HIV wouldn't be the worst thing in the world. Instead, he's out there thinking he's Darva Conger.
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Unfortunately once you add in other facts, Occam becomes a little tougher because you have to add far more assumptions:
1. the tests have been checked and re-checked (as part of litigation from the subject) and concluded that both sets of tests were accurate (and hence the clinic has no case to answer). You have to assume _all_ the tests/retests were faulty the same way, or a medical establishment conspiracy / cover-up.
2. since the first positive, the subject claims to have been having unprotected sex with his positive partner. So now you also have to assume that he is either really lucky, or he is lying also (part of the above conspiracy?)
Personally I think the simplest theory is that this guy's immune system can kick out the virus.
Because HIV leads to AIDS. AIDS has killed millions of people (idk the figure), this person is (presumed to be) the first to actually be cured of it, and he chooses to deny modern medical science the opportunity of even attempting to help others. the are huge huge tracts of land of human beings dying with this disease, and he does nothing to even try and help. he is a shithead. there aren't enough cursewords for a selfish person like that. if i recognized him on the street, i'd piss in his eye.
I wish that I was a catfish.
That has got to be one of the most selfish things i've ever heard. You have the chance to possibly cure the world of aids, and you'd rather sit in front of your computer reading?
Perhaps you can quote a few examples of good journalism, no.. scratch that, make it just a few examples of journalism, in the News of the World. Although I'm making the great leap of faith that you, as a possible NotW reader actually knows what journlism is.
No but, yeah but, no but...
HIV has been known to hide throughout the body in places other than the blood stream. This means the person is still infected with HIV but in taking a blood test, will test negative. One of the places it can hide is in the lymph nodes of the body. Later on, the virus can come back in full force and even develop into full blown AIDS. The anti retroviral drugs available today are incredibly powerful and capable of controlling it.
g hts/011025_ccr5.shtml
I think the real research should be done on the descendents of people from the plague and their lower risk of acquiring the desease.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/sci_tech/highli
It's really to everybody attacking you that I will point out that it's well within mattspammail's rights to feel the guy is "a piece of shit", and even to voice that opinion. He's judging the man on his actions... you know, the legitimate and proper way to judge someone? I don't think you'll find some trick of logic to convince him otherwise. It's a fairly strightforward judgement that somebody who turns their back on entire continents worth of infected people has made a terrible decision.
You can judge a person as being horrible due to their actions and still understand that it's their right to be so.
--
Evan
"$30 for the One True Ring. $10 each additional ring!" -- JRR "Bob" Tolkien
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Knowing the real value of such a cure and if they really think there are good chances to find it, I'd say "no" too until I saw some good 10-digit figures in my bank account.
The Liberties of One outweigh the needs of the many.
Period.
Hear hear! When Occam's Razor comes up in discussion like this, I usually point out that nearly every scientific discovery has been a counter-case for the notion that Occam's Razor actually indicates anything. As we gain more information from observations, theories often require revision, often becoming more complex. It is, as you say, a rule of thumb. A sensible work ethic.
Music speeds up when you yawn, but does not change pitch.
Right, like all of those young girls in South Africa who were raped by men with AIDS. Those little irresponsible bitches -- ruining it for the rest of us!
Perhaps, just for a second, you should step off of your high horse. Maybe some day you'll appreciate someone not looking down their nose at you when you're in a very bad position. It's always someone else's mess until someone you love is affected. It's clear that you've never seen someone close to you wither away and die from this horrible disease. Perhaps when it does happen, you should mention to that person that you're not going to waste any tears for them, since it was (most likely) a result of their irresponsible behavior.
-Turkey
Let me ask you this: Do you have any disposable income? And, is there any poverty stricken, homeless, or sick people in the city where you live? If so, why don't YOU donate all your disposable time and money to help them? Maybe people should send tons of threatening mail to you and bang on your door in an attempt to force you to "do the right thing".
/., you could be out in the real world helping people. Put your money where your mouth is. If you are not willing to do that, then S.T.F.U.
If you have the money and the time to surf the net and post on
Well, maybe he first is waiting to get his gene's copyrighted and pattened. This will then ensure that he profits from any cures that come from his cooperation in studies.
Otherwise...he probably won't make much. Medical research grants don't generally have a lot of funds targeted at paying the patients in the study...
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
I told him "walk it off".
If that hadn't worked, I was prepared to recommend "cowboy up", but looks like it won't be necessary.
Perhaps I'm reading it incorrectly, but anyone who is cured might want to help humanity instead of first aiming their crosshairs at the company who tested him and looking to sue.
Given the odds of a botched test vs the odds of fighting off the AIDS virus, he can easily enough be forgiven for assuming the first test was screwed up and so needlessly left him in fear for the rest of his life for a period of over a year.
It's not quite the same thing. Now if he was the *only* person in the world with disposable time and money, you might have a point.
I wasn't intending to be funny, actually, I was musing that perhaps that's exactly what he is doing.
More to the point, he may be afraid that if he goes in for more tests that's what *they* will do. If I were in the situation I would be working to make sure that nobody could be stealing this "opportunity" in this way, rather that it become available to everyone without such encumbrances.
The easiest way to do that is to pursue the patent yourself (after all, you should own your own genes, one might think) and donate the patent.
Uh, if he owns the patent, it means he can control the destiny of the patent with his conscience, singularly and directly.
Even if some people in the pharmaceutical industry WANTED to act with their conscience, they cannot. They have to act in ways that benefits the shareholders... in ways geared to profits. To act any other way would likely end their careers. But as an individual owning patents on significant drugs, he can act in any way he wants. Further, just because they study his genes and body chemistry, there is no guarantee they would be able to come up with a solution that will work for all humans... but if he had a bunch of money from them trying, again, he could do anything for anyone he pleases.
My angle was using the opportunity to take back from the pharmaceutical industry... to give them a bit of what they've been giving the world.
Even if this guy wanted to share his genetic information with the rest of us, is he legally entitled to do so? What if the relevant genes are among those already patented by certain corporations?
Btw, this is a classic acid test of the true meaning of liberty. Too many people are all for freedom to say things everyone agrees with, do what everyone else does, and pursue popularity by any and all means. Freedom of speech means freedom to say things that other people *hate*, and freedom of choice means freedom to withhold cooperation from life-saving medical research. By all means maintain that this guy is obliged to cooperate - but if so, don't imagine that you believe in liberty, or that he could be forced to cooperate in a free country.
OTOH, I believe you are entirely free to call him a shit to your heart's content (if it helps).
I am sure that there are many other solipsists out there.
I wouldn't do it unless there was an explicit royalty agreement that any drugs made from a "cure" in my blood would give me 20% of profits.
Drug companies are the real pieces of shit. 50-80% of the budgets are marketing, most of the development costs are assumed by public-sector universities.
Hey, I'm just your average shit and piss factory.
Rape is still irresponsible behavior. It's just one of many that happens to not adversely affect the irresponsible party. Much like problems of gun control and drunk driving, a culture must adress the question of who bears the responsibility... perhaps not for each instance, but for the problem as a whole.
Both AIDS and rape are problems to be addressed by everyone, not just rapists/victims or HIV+ people. Often times, the responsibility supercedes those who are to blame.
"No fair, you changed the outcome by measuring it!" - Professor Hubert J. Farnsworth
The summary is very misleading. The man has now said, in two national newspapers, that he will help research in any way he can.
He did earlier refuse to help, but that was at the point where he was still considering suing the doctors because of the initial positive test - obviously you don't expect a second test to come up negative because AIDS generally doesn't just go away, so when it did he naturally thought the first test had been wrong and was pissed off with the doctors. However, later his health authority confirmed that there had been no mistake with either test and he changed his mind and now wishes to help by undergoing further tests.
So ease off the guy, okay? It's the guy who didn't research the story properly before writing the summary that's the asshole here, not the cured-of-AIDS guy.
"'I pass the test,' she said. 'I will diminish, and go into the West, and remain Galadriel.'"
- JRR Tolkien.
No
Well.
The President, the VP, Attorney General Gonzalez and a cooperative bunch at the Pentagon and the various intelligence services have decided to kidnap people and imprison them around the world, with various flavors of continual torture and mind breaking, because they believe national security trumps "human rights" and established law.
What's the moral difference between that, and grabbing "Patient Omega" in the name of finding an immunity factor for a disease killing millions? To up the stakes "24" style, what if HIV mutates and finds an easier vector? How about then?
As a libertarian, small "l", I believe that patient Omega here has the right to refuse to cooperate. However, we've collectively flushed human rights away for the sake of "security", in exchange for which we've got a lot of dreamed-up terrorist plots from men under the knife. In the case of Omega, we could actually stop a superepidemic.
Kidnapping is moral for the sake of fear, but not for saving millions or billions of lives? This is not an idle question in philosophy class. This is real and it is now. We've decided collectively that abduction and torture for an individual's lifetime is okay if we're afraid. Given that, what's the problem with putting Omega under the microscope, even against his will?
Under disaster conditions in Louisiana, people are being blocked by the armed forces and some private killers hired by the U.S. from returning to their homes. Force? Yup. No one cares.
Bush has straightforwardly declared he wants martial law and dictator powers if avian flu hits the U.S. Soldiers will grab people and lock them away, people will be shot if a soldier believes they warrant death. How is it okay to remove EVERYONE'S human rights if a bird flu epidemic hits, but not okay to drag one guy in for testing if the epidemic is HIV? Remember, HIV has killed millions. It's just not a quick as avian flu. HIV hits people doing naughty things, in the view of moralists, so it's not a priority?
"Ethics" is about more than fetuses and stem cells. Ethics is what we decide to care about, and we have to decide every day. Who gets shot, who gets their knees broken, who loses their freedom if we decide it should be so?
The world according to SComps
Here, in Canada, if someone died because you refused to help him, you'll go to jail...
I think we should be forced to donate body parts when you die. You're fucking dead, why should you care? In the meantime, someone or several someones might live because of it.
I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
It has nothing to do with the fact that _I_ haven't done any of these things (which isn't true, but nice assumption).
I am not the one with the Golden Ticket. I am not the one holding the key to MILLIONS of peoples lives in the palm of my hands. This guy does, and is possibly capable of helping people on a level that no one has probably ever known. If I held what he had...I would do it in a heartbeat.
I understand that it could possibly disrupt his life for the entirety of it. I understand that things will never be the same for this guy, and to a degree it could be a bad thing, but if he were to approach this from the right angle, and make the right choices, his life, while busy...would be completely set.
He would never want for another thing in his entire life. The people that say that they wouldn't release their blood/whatever to the world unless they were guaranteed X% of profits make me sick as well. The right thing to do would be to make sure that you made it very publicly known that you were releasing your blood for analysis and that you don't want any one company to be able to take this and prosper, possibly strangling a market or making it in any shape, form, or fashion, difficult for people who need this, to obtain it. The companies would still make their normal money, they just wouldn't be able to charge a massive premium since they held the cure.
The other things that this guy would be wise to do, would be to make sure that all of the decisions he makes are "without evil". I think that there can definitely be a happy medium between him making himself available for testing, and then being able to take time out for himself. This could become his job from now on.
He holds the ticket, so he could call the shots...its just a matter of how he decides to play the game. As a human, or an asshole...
Maybe, Aids is in fact the largest mistake in medical history.
What about the odds of the second test being botched?
I'd guess a layman would still consider those odds to be better than the odds of fighting off AIDS. Lets face it, assuming a paper is presented on this, it WILL cause controversy and require extraordinary proof (including likely re-re testing of the original samples if still available) before it will be accepted by experts in the field. Here we have a medical layman who probably has no specialized knowledge of testing procedures and how they can and cannot go wrong who has just discovered that 14 months of wondering how few years he has left and how sick he will be for those years was all unnecessary (apparently) and you expect him to draw appropriate scientific conclusions?
In addition, it may be a very good thing he did initially bring suit since that's what caused them to go back and look again, ultimatly concluding that he is the one known case of a spontaineous cure for AIDS. Had he just celebrated quietly and said nothing more, we might have never known.