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Possible Breakthrough for AIDS Cure
kryonD writes "Researchers believe they have found a new compound that could finally kill the HIV/AIDS virus, not just slow it down as current treatments do. While most of the community is still hesitant to comment on this until it passes peer review, initial results show that their method attacks and kills ALL variations of the virus. A fast track through the FDA could have one of the world's leading problems licked in less than a decade."
There is a history of announcing big breakthroughs in science here in Utah by going to the press before appropriate peer review has taken place (Cold Fusion anyone?). Don't get me wrong, I would love to see this come through, but until it passes the peer review test, as a scientist, I will withhold my enthusiasm.
In fact, any time I hear something potentially huge being hyped in the mainstream press before I hear about it in scientific journals, my eyebrows tend to rise a bit and I tend to be perhaps even more skeptical.
"We have some preliminary but very exciting results [but] we would like to formally show this before making any claims that would cause unwanted hype."
Uh...... yeah. That is why I am reading about it in the Salt Lake Tribune before hearing about it in Science or Nature?
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This substance is a mimic of a current human body chemical, and attacks one hell of a lot more than just HIV- my guess is it will end one of two ways. It will either strip the body of everything including our normal colonies of beneficial bacteria and yeasts, and thus be too dangerous to use. Or it won't work for some mutation, and we'll still have a million or so HIV patients after it's in widespread use.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
As nice as it is to think that we have an AIDS cure, and that we don't have to worry about it anymore. But I think that rushing it through a FDA approval, without exploring its full consequences could be a little dangerous. If this drug was passed, and everybody who took it got rid of their AIDS, but developed some other condition which killed them in a year, then we'd all look a little stupid, and the drug company would probably be under a lot of scrutiny.
Another thing though, is this drug patented, or will this be cheaply available for everyone who needs it, especially AIDS ravaged countried in Africa.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
Although so far limited to early test tube studies, CSA-54, one of a family of compounds called Ceragenins (or CSAs), mimics the disease-fighting characteristics of anti-microbial and anti-viral agents produced naturally by a healthy human immune system.
While the tests are repeatable, there's a long distance between the test tube and human trials.
"I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismometer." -Ken Kesey
Forgive me for saying this, but how much of this is trumped up by the scientist vs. the journalist? The researchers stated "we would like to formally show this before making any claims that would cause unwanted hype", yet the journalist went on and hyped it up.
The headline could've easily read:
"Professor makes steps in war against HIV/AIDS"
"New lead in fight against HIV/AIDS"
Or something along those lines.
I'm actually a BYU student and I'd love to see a terrible disease like HIV/AIDS destroyed as much as the next man - I've met many people suffering from this disease in Latin America and it's horrible to see. I just think the journalist decided to soup up the story by taking what are very preliminary results and making a huge deal of them.
Then again, I do have my fingers crossed...
Unless HIV works differently from other viruses, it does eventually kill the infected cell it used to replicate itself.
Why? Because virus replication dumps all the copies *inside* the cell walls. Eventually, the cell gets as full as it can be and pops - releasing all the newly-formed copies. The cell at that point is damaged beyond recovery and dies.
There is nothing to reverse once the infected cells have cycled. The real problem is getting *all* copies of the virus, since it can hide dormant in other types of tissue.
*I am not a doctor, but I play one on dates.*
One man's religion is another man's belly-laugh. - LL
Last I looked, the AIDS toll in Africa stood at 30 million, which is more people than live in my entire country -- and more than another 25 million have the disease and know that they're going to die because of it. In Africa alone.
The figures for 'way back in 2000 were 10,000 a day, 4,000 of those from AIDS. Last year, there were over 3 million deaths and nearly 5 million new infections. That would wipe out my entire state in five months, eight through AIDS alone, and AIDS alone would do in the entire country in about eight years.
True, there are those other diseases around -- curable ones too -- but don't underestimate the damage which AIDS does. There are 12 million AIDS orphans alive as I type, for example.
Amongst other things, a common urban myth in Africa is that having sex with a virgin will cure AIDS... so you get AIDS-infected men raping girls who are so young that they have to be virgins. Nice.
It's also largely curable by the same education which would reduce AIDS and practically eliminate tuberculosis and malaria. In fact, the basic directives for achieving this are something like 4500 years old. Nevertheless, a magic bullet for AIDS would be a more than welcome assistant. My only real reservations center around what else it kills besides AIDS.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing