Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

AIDS Can Fight AIDS

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the numbers-games dept.

dptalia writes "Scientists at the University of Pennsylvania have announced that they have engineered a strain of the AIDS virus that fights AIDS. This strain of AIDS works like a vaccine and improved the immune system of the test subjects. After three years on this new therapy, no side effects have been observed."

5 of 276 comments (clear)

  1. A lot more is necessary... by Infonaut · · Score: 4, Insightful

    ... for this to turn into something big, but I think it's a hopeful start. A lot of people are laboring under the mistaken belief that the drug cocktails available now will somehow stop AIDS. But even if somehow made available inexpensively worldwide (which ain't gonna happen any time soon), it still wouldn't be enough. We need radically better treatment. It needs to be inexpensive, easy to administer, and something that only needs to be administered once.

    --
    Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
    1. Re:A lot more is necessary... by foreverdisillusioned · · Score: 4, Insightful

      If a man cuts his finger off while slicing salami at work, he sues the restaurant. If you smoke three packs a day for 40 years and die of lung cancer, your family sues the tobacco company. If your neighbor crashes into a tree while driving home drunk, he sues the bartender. If your grandchildren are brats without manners, you sue producers of a video games. If your friend is shot by a deranged madman, you sue the gun manufacturer.

      It really irks me when people talk about sue-happy America and pretend that the problem is all about individuals suing corporations. Yes, all of these lawsuits have likely occurred at one point in time, but in the VAST majority of these type cases they end up losing or they win, but only because the situation is significantly more complicated. For example, take the woman who sued McDonald's for spilling hot coffee on herself. On the face of it, as a quick little soundbite it sounds absurd and the perfect example of everything that's wrong about this country... but the details of the lawsuit changes everything. The McDonald's in question was running a "unlimited coffee" promotion, and they realized that by serving the coffee extremely hot (190+ degrees F, as I recall) people would wind up drinking less because they had to wait for it to cool off. They had health inspectors come by--the inspectors measured the temperature of the coffee, told them it was DANGEROUSLY hot and needed to be served at a lower temperature. They might have even warned them multiple times about it, I don't recall. The McDonald's management chose NOT to lower the temperature of the coffee. Then, an elderly woman spilled some on her lap. If the coffee was served at a reasonable temp, she would have been fine; maybe some slight irritation (mild first-degree burns.) But, because the coffee was so damn hot, she suffered THIRD DEGREE BURNS across her pelvic area, including her vulva. She required skin grafts and was in tremendous pain for quite some time. Imagine for a second spilling some hot coffee on your lap and getting third degree burns all over your genitals, then finding out that the restaurant was specifically warned by health inspectors that their coffee was dangerously hot and yet they decided to keep their coffee hot anyway because it was more profitable?

      I don't recall how many millions of dollars she won, but I'd say that in this case, the "poor corporation" clearly deserved it. From what I've seen, most of the time when they lose, they do deserve it. Let's take your examples--the tobacco company ACTIVELY HID their own research that showed their product caused cancer. Maybe 30+ years ago people knew they weren't super-healthy, but they know that they increased their chances of getting lung cancer by (to pull a number out of my ass here) 10,000%? Big tobacco did, but they destroyed the research and hid the truth. Until that truth finally came to light (decades later, I think), most people didn't know that heavy, long-term smoking was a virtual death sentence. Big tobacco deserved to be hit with those billions of dollars' worth of punitive damages.

      And let's say that salami slicer was missing a vital safety guard, but the owner was too cheap to replace it. Sorry, but he too deserves what he gets. Employers being motivated to take cheap, basic precautions to keep their employees safe can only be a good thing.

      The bartender is a little more iffy--you have a link to the a *successful* lawsuit? I agree that he shouldn't be responsible for his patrons, but in very specific circumstances (like, if he somehow KNEW the guy was going to be driving home) you could make a case for reckless endangerment.

      The video game thing has happened a few times, but I'm not aware of a single successful lawsuit (of this type) brought against a video game. Stupid lawsuits *generally* aren't successful, and corporations can almost always afford to defend themselves vs. an individual.

      Contrast that with a corporation suing an individual. E

  2. Re:They put in more T cells than they took out... by SnowZero · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Um, that's like adding dry wooden supports to a house that's on fire... not going to work.

    You need some way of blocking the virus from exploiting the new T-cells as "fuel". This new virus is kind of like a fire ring; Burn/infect it first in a controlled way to stop the real fire/infection from spreading further.

  3. Re:More by caseih · · Score: 3, Insightful

    In countries where education is available, and methods of protection are cheaply available, yes HIV and AIDS are controllable. But in the place where HIV and AIDS first orginated, the virus and the disease are widespread. Drugs are not widely available, and education in the disease and safe practices are lacking. Hence HIV is spreading at a fast rate and is affecting many many women and children in particular, because of the willful ignorance of husbands and men in their society. Witness the South African government minister who said that showering an encounter protected him from HIV. That attitude combined with the general attitudes toward women in that part of the world make HIV and AIDS a lot harder to combat and control. Judging by the rest of the world's inability to really care about Africa (millions have died from war and disease in the last 10 years), this problem--no this epidemic--will be with us for some time. This new AIDS virus-attacking-virus, if it can be cheap enough, will certainly go a long ways to help. But my point is that while we in the west have the means to attack the problem and prevent it in the future, there's a lot of work to be done in Africa and other places in order to change attitudes about HIV and AIDS, and protect people from them.

  4. Re:More by delinear · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I think the moral question is more that quarantine assumes that someone with the virus would knowingly infect others. It's quite possible for someone with the virus to go about a relatively normal life and the means of transmission are few and very well defined - by segregating that person from the rest of society you are raising some serious moral issues; essentially you're saying they can't be trusted not to commit acts which might spread the virus. That being the case, why stop at HIV? You could then go on to make a case for segregating sufferers of lots of other illnesses. Carry on down that route and you end up with a society where the sick are a sub-class.