Three-Dimensional Structure of HIV Revealed

Mutatis Mutandis writes "The BBC is reporting that a team of scientists from Oxford, Heidelberg and Munich has created the first accurate three-dimensional images of the HIV virus. The virus was found to have an average diameter of 125 nanometers, well below the wavelength of visible light. In the past the structure of viruses with a regular structure has been produced by 3D reconstruction techniques that work on a set of electron microscopy images of different viruses, but the irregular structure of HIV does not allow this. Scientists have now used a tomography technique that employs a series of images taken from a single virus, somewhat similar to the better known X-Ray CAT scan, but on a quite different scale." Structure also has a video of the 3-d rendering available for download. Relatedly an anonymous reader writes "A research team at Brown University has genetically modified bacteria found in yogurt so that the bugs produce a protein proven to block HIV infection in monkeys. The results offer hope for a microbicide that can prevent the spread of HIV, which now affects about 40 million people."

Comments

Does HIV Really Cause Aids?

[putko]

I remember hearing this fringy-sounding stuff that HIV hadn't been proven to cause AIDS, and that a Nobel prize winner -- the guy who invented PCR -- was in agreement.

One of the complaints was that nobody had bothered to isolate HIV, infect creatures, make sure they got AIDS, and so on -- the sort of things that scientists do to prove that something "causes" something.

Among other things, there was the complaint that some people have HIV, but don't get AIDS. And others have AIDS, but no HIV.

Does anyone know why they didn't bother to follow the normal procedures before deciding that HIV was the culprit? That just seems odd.

Re:Does HIV Really Cause Aids?

[ebrandsberg]

May I point out that none of these is newer than 2000? There can be two reasons though:

1) Anybody making any argument against this simply gets ridiculed out of the medical field
2) Nobody is convinced that HIV doesn't cause it.

The scary part is that there is/was a fair amount of evidence that HIV may not the sole cause of AIDS, as in many countries, the determination of who had AIDS wasn't based on the presense of HIV, but of the immune effects itself. There could be many other causes of "AIDS" as determined by symptoms, and if the international medical community isn't paying attention to this, we could be curing the wrong thing for a vast majority of people.

Re:Does HIV Really Cause Aids?

[flyingsquid]

The NIH (ahref=http://www.niaid.nih.gov/factsheets/evidhiv .htmrel=url2html-6476http://www.niaid.nih.gov/fact sheets/evidhiv.htm>) has a pretty good overview. In short, the "HIV does not cause AIDS" camp sounds pretty flaky. HIV has been isolated and introduced to chimps and shown to cause AIDS in them, for instance.

True, sometimes in science you do have the radicals and visionaries who nobody will listen to, like the continental drift people before seafloor spreading was discovered. On the other hand, you have the dead-enders and lunatic fringe, people who refuse to accept an hypothesis even when confronted with a mountain of evidence. So how do you tell the difference between a minority camp with a legitimate hypothesis, and a minority camp that's completely out to lunch? What I've noticed is that the dead-enders tend to have one thing in common, which is that they have an anti-hypothesis, rather than a hypothesis. They will give you a million reasons why X can't be true, but they can't provide you with a reasonable alternative hypothesis.

For instance, there are still paleontologists who forcefully argue that the Yucatan asteroid/comet impact did not wipe out the dinosaurs... but they can't provide you a decent explanation for what did kill them. There are some ornithologists who refuse to believe that dinosaurs evolved from birds (feathered dinosaur fossils notwithstanding), but they can't tell you what birds did evolve from. Likewise, the Intelligent Design people argue that evolution couldn't cause the diversity of life on earth, but they can't tell you what did. But it's not enough to poke holes in a well-established theory to have it overturned- you've got to provide an alternative that better explains and predicts the facts.

Our understanding of the AIDS epidemic is hardly complete, but without a good alternative hypothesis, these guys sound a lot like lunatic fringe. In general, dissent is healthy, but in this case I think these guys are just spreading dangerous misinformation when millions of lives are on the line.

All these 'almost there' cures announcements...

[Rxke]

I live in Belgium, a country that takes pride in its high quality of education. But just yesterday a survey showed that about 70% of the youth doesn't have a clue how you can contract HIV, and a very high percentage takes no protective measures at all. Staggering numbers for a developed country. One of the people that was involved in organising the survey said this was partly to blame to the false sense of security. Rumors about new cures, tales about how good the HIV treatments work. Youth these days seems to think it isn't that deadly after all, at least not deadly enough to be very wary... Sensibilisation campaigns seemed to be inadequate to change this view.

Re:All these 'almost there' cures announcements...

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, I live in Brazil and here things are a bit different, at least in the past.

Past government was "aggressive" in its campaign. No false morals, church displeased - but it worked quite well, considering what were their inital expectations.

Funny, isn't it? And in fully developed countries we see all this misinformation.

Ok, I'm gonna tell a personal (true) tale. It happened to me around 1996/1997, I was then 23 year old. At that time I was spending a year England. Once, while living there, I met a swedish girl. We got together and, you know, after dating her two weekends we finally reached the point to have sex.

At the "D", actually, already at about the start of the "action", I told her: "a second, I'm getting a condom". Her answer? A somewhat "surprise"/"displeased" question: "Why a condom, I'm no prostitute?!". Detail, she was not the "most virginal" girl in the neighbourhood, if you understand me.

I replied: "Yep, I know, but I don't know with whom you've been before, and you don't know with whom I've been before, either. It is protection for you, too". And we had our good moments, with protection.

But her initial answer really shocked me. Later, talking with other friends - French, Italians, I discovered there was a kind of "awkward" understanding that you only needed protection when going with prostitutes, but not with the regular girl you meet (well, at least the German seemed a bit more informed).

I realized someone really screwed up in their information campaigns, because you indeed need protection in *either* case, especially these days. People look healthy, but they may not be...

Here in Brazil the campaing was much more direct in these aspects. Unfortunately, Lula's government failed to continue the good work of the previous government in this area.

So now, not only aids continue to be a problem, but we also have a problem of young teenagers (and we are talking about 12, 13, 14 years old girls) getting pragned.

Well done, president Lula!

Is the model available in std 3d formats?

[waferhead]

Anything one can load in Blender etc?

Professor Peter Deusberg

[PsiPsiStar]

The guy's name is professor Peter Duesberg. I did a speech based on his book "Infectious AIDS, Have We Been Misled" 7 years ago when I was in college.

To start out with, Deusberg was a good scientist, making important discoveries regarding oncogenic viruses, and was consequently recipient of the NIH's "Outstanding Investigator" grant. Whether his theory is correct or not, what is certain is that he has been the subject of career assassination for political rather than scientific reasons, for his views in the early days of the AIDS crisis. It was essentially argued that dissent from the HIV=AIDS model would cause confusion and interfere with efforts to prevent the spread of HIV\AIDS. Deusberg's university treated him as a paraiah and his NIH grant was rescinded. Science cannot operate properly if opposing views are silenced for political reasons.

The nobel laureate you refer to is Kerry Mullis. Despite inventing PCR the guy is a self described nut and LSD user. I wouldn't put too much weight in his testimony. Mullis argues that the Viral Load test, based on PCR, is far less precise than it is claimed to be. I don't know if this is true or not.

While I'm not agreeing with Deusberg's hypothesis, like any dissident his criticisms have focused on weaknesses in the HIV-AIDS theory over the years.

Deusberg has made a number of very good points regarding HIV, which are only now starting to be considered. Among them;

HIV is an opportunistic infection. People most often become HIV positive because they engaged in some other activity which damages the immune system such as the use of certain drugs (such as amyl nitrates or injected drugs) or hemopheliacs. Even before the AIDS crisis, hemopheliacs still had a dramatically shortened lifespan and increased suceptibility to disease. Deusberg claims (and I would tend to question, but don't have facts on hand to refute) that the death rate for hemopheliacs does not indicate their being hit by a lethal epidemic during the time of the early AIDS crisis and that their lifespan has steadily increased. The fact that HIV is an opportunistic infection suggested to Duesberg that it could be a marker for another condition or conditions which causes immune suppression. (Hemopheliacs, even without HIV, are immune suppressed.) While Deusberg gives a general notion of an immune system collapsing under excessive strain, it seems that Human Herpes Virus 8, common to AIDS victims, has been shown to also cause immune suppresion. HHV8 is transmissible via saliva and probably acts synergistically with HIV to dramatically speed up the progression of the disease. HHV8 is the virus responsible for Kaposi's Sarcoma, a symptom previously attributed to HIV.

Azidothymidine or AZT, which has been shown to reduce HIV viral load, has side effects that are essentially identical to AIDS including immune suppresion. AZT has never been proven to increase lifespan in a reliable, controlled study. The infamous Concord Study which attempted to prove the benefits of AZT, was hopelessly flawed. Subjects receiving the drug were aware of it and shared their medicine with the control group to help them. AZT was a chemotheraputic agent for cancer which was discontinued due to its severe side effects sometime before the late '60s. It's approval for use against HIV essentially circumvented the normal FDA approval process, due to the crisis of its introduction. It has been argued that AZT prevents seroconversion to HIV positivity and I think it's still used for this purpose.

Finally, unrelated to Deusberg, the CDC seems to be working off an outdated model for the evolution of infectious diseases (Burnette and White's model) which was based on analysis of airborne infection rather than fluid borne infection, which seems subject to different pressures. B&W's theory suggests (incorrectly) that all lethal diseases will, in time, evolve to benign co-existance with their host. This is generally true for airborne diseases. B&W's theory demands that HIV be a virus that was newly int

dumptrucks full of money?

[drgonzo59]

Speaking of dumptrucks full of money, I still don't understand why are so many resourses being poured into HIV/AIDS research? I would think all that money could go into educating people and focusing on prevention. AIDS seems to be a completely preventable disease -- all that needs to change is sexual behavior and blood transfusion methods. It is not a disease that someone gets from shaking hands or riding on a bus with others, or eating contaminated food, not even by being bitten by insects. In other words the individuals, except in very rare circumstances have control whether will get HIV/AIDS or not. I understand that the infants born with it have no choice -- but the mothers do. Educating the children or the mothers could help stop the spread.

The point is not that AIDS research should be completely stopped but that it should be proportional to how contageous it is and how much the individuals can prevent it. It seems that research should be more focused on Avian Flu, SARS, Malaria and such.

I would also argue that cancer and heart disease to a certain degree is preventable, if the invididuals care enough to lead a healthy life-style, but with these two it is not as clear cut and there might be a strong genetic component to them but there isn't a one-time event of infection that can be obviously avoided.

To put it another way, if I smoke, eat fried fatty foods and have sex with anyone without protection, knowing what that will do to me -- why should I be shocked if I get cancer, AIDS or die of a heart disease. And why should researchers spend years on end and millions of tax money to save my sorry ass if I clearly made my choice?