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Researchers Discover Gene That Blocks HIV
stemceller writes to tell us that a team of researchers at the University of Alberta claims to have discovered a gene capable of blocking HIV thereby preventing the onset of full blown AIDS. "Stephen Barr, a molecular virologist in the Department of Medical Microbiology and Immunology, says his team has identified a gene called TRIM22 that can block HIV infection in a cell culture by preventing the assembly of the virus. 'When we put this gene in cells, it prevents the assembly of the HIV virus," said Barr, a postdoctoral fellow. "This means the virus cannot get out of the cells to infect other cells, thereby blocking the spread of the virus.'"
Does anyone know if gene therapy has progressed far enough to actually apply this to cell DNA? Is this actually a real cure for AIDS?
Assuming that this is a real cure for AIDS, will it be patented away and made prohibitively expensive, or will it be made available at low cost to those who need it?
Does it block the replication, transcription, or the protein assembly proteins? Or is it something that bonds to one of the cell entry viral proteins?
Request your free CD of my piano music.
There are a lot of things that block HIV in cell culture.
Yet after literally hundreds of millions in financing, there isn't yet any real curative treatment. Why? Because HIV is a retrovirus with one of the worst polymerases known. It's just so bad at copying itself, that any treatment applied in-vivo acts only as a selective pressure.
Same is the case for HIV vaccines - even though there ARE conserved regions of the virus, they aren't very good targets, and the ones that are good targets are too antigenically fluid to be targeted.
In the end, my opinion as a virologist is that stopping the spread of HIV, and continuing to develop a larger palette of inhibitors are the proper solutions to the HIV problem. If we treat the people who have been infected, and don't infect any more... HIV will not be a problem after 2 generations.
How much do you want to bet that the fundies will try their hardest to outlaw this research because in their view HIV is God's punishment for homosexual behavior?
This research is being conducted in Canada. The religious kooks have far less power there than they do down south in JesusLand.
Trolling is a art,
You have aids Yes you have aids I hate to tell you boy that you have aids You've got the aids You may have caught it when you stuck that filthy needle in here Or maybe all that unprotected sex in the rear It isn't clear But what we're searching for is you have aids Yes you have aids Not H.I.V. but full blown aids... Be sure that you see That this is not H.I.V. But really full blown aids... Not H.I.V. but really Full blown aids I'm sorry I wish it was something less serious....... FULL BLOWN AIDS.. You've got the aiiiiiiiiii----iiiids..
Yeah, my karma sucks....but so do the mods.
Won't stop 'em from trying.
Look at what they've done to the border, at least partly because of US interference.
For linux tips: http://www.linuxtipsblog.com
(It's just a fucking joke. I can understand the value of this discovery.)
This space available.
Ironically, Alberta is Canada's Jesusland -- or the closest thing to it anyway.
___
If you think big enough, you'll never have to do it.
People who survived the Plague in Europe either did not encounter it or almost universally had a genetic anomaly commonly referred to as the delta-32 marker. Their ancestors survive other diseases because of this causing what amounts to an odd protein binding issue on the cellular level. Those people are also naturally immune to HIV.
Read more:
wikipedia
pbs
I bet no one will take that bet. Oo, a metabet. I certainly won't take that bet, considering that the fundies are already working to stop the HPV vaccine.
"We make our world significant by the courage of our questions and by the depth of our answers." Carl Sagan
No radicals screaming "If we vaccinate everyone now, everyone will feel free to go and have promiscuous sex!"? I'm disappointed.
'cause I hadn't watched it in a long time, but Ian says something interesting: Life will always find a way. Meaning, there will always be a tension between our genes trying to evolve out of disease, and the disease out-evolving our adaptations by employing its own. I hate to sound cynical, but even if this were a cure, HIV will find another way or be supplanted by another disease more powerful.
We're all hypocrites. We all have hidden parts, it's the contrast between them that make us more a hypocrite than others
As the article says, the researchers are going to find out why this gene isn't already stopping HIV infection. I.e. back to square one. This is not a cure, it's an interesting in vitro study. HIV is hard to fix because it evolves so quickly in an individual, in response to the immune system and anti-retrovirals. It appears already to have evolved around this gene's activity in vivo. Not sure why this is a headline.
Obviously our bodies makes TRIM22 to fight against retroviruses already, and it's not good enough. I know that interferon, which activates TRIM22, was an early drug in the fight against HIV.
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6WXR-4KCGHS0-3&_user=18704&_rdoc=1&_fmt=&_orig=search&_sort=d&view=c&_acct=C000002018&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=18704&md5=f922f45405809276e69864f01d98ef4c
According to this study, TRIM22 is one of most ineffectual TRIM proteins.
Can I just remind you all of the hundreds of thousands of people in third world countries over the last 10 years who have DIED from CURED DISEASES. Sure, a vaccine sounds great, but I wont be convinced untill I see people in Africa actually routinely get access to these medical facilities and not just from small time (relative) aid charities. We need a bigger change than just finding cures to more diseases.
And it always mutates.
Veramocor
I also want to point out that it would be near impossible to make anything but a vaccine out of this discovery.
That's nonsense. If you knew anything about vaccines, you'd know that it's pretty much impossible to make a vaccine out of this discovery. But it might lead to a treatment.
You're using her as bait, Master!
Well, I think you've hit the nail on the head. But consider this - your argument essentially boils down to saying that healthcare is a human right. And for those who are about to spew bile at me for saying that, please read the rest of the post.
Let's compare healthcare to food, for instance. In the civilized world, it's a nearly universal agreement, that people should have enough food to survive. Hence, the different forms of welfare programs, food stamps, etc... We provide people who are poor, with enough money or money equivalents, to obtain sufficient sustenance. We don't, however, provide them with 5-course chef-prepared meals every night.
The problem is, however, that people who flame the government and "corporations" for not providing medication for everyone, are essentially suggesting that we provide full healthcare for everyone... which equates to giving out filet mignon welfare, given the costs of many cutting edge drugs and treatments. Now I don't have a problem with the concept of this "filet mignon welfare"... except that I cannot personally afford it... and neither can you.
So as a society, we will at some point have to face the realization that we cannot provide the highest quality healthcare to every member of our society, no matter how hard we try. I wish I had the solution to this problem, but I do not. If I come up with one, I promise to share it with the world, as there is nothing more I'd like to see, than a world where the only diseases people die of, are ones for which cures and treatments haven't been discovered yet. But that's not a world of today, nor do I envision such a world in the near future.
How much do you want to bet that the fundies will try their hardest to outlaw this research because in their view HIV is God's punishment for homosexual behavior?
So lesbians are god's chosen people, then?
I'm always suspicious whenever I see ostensibly "high-impact" summaries that link to press releases of work that is either unpublished or published in low impact journals. In this case, I haven't looked up the impact factor of the journal PLoS pathogens (article), but I do biophysics research on HIV and I've never heard of this journal. As a useful general rule, science articles shouldn't appear on here (and waste everyone's time) unless they've been submitted through a peer-reviewed journal (not the case here), and I think they should hit high-impact journals like Science, Nature, Cell, PNAS, ...
Let the pan-world orgy begin!
I dislike GWB as much (if not more) than the next person, but which is better?
A larger but weaker campaign? (Bush)
A smaller but stronger campaign? (Clinton)
Of course the answer is "C" - a larger and unhandicapped campaign - and hopefully in twelve months we'll see one.
And *all* vaccines have a risk. The Polio vaccine carried a risk, but diseases like polio, smallpox, or flu are easily spread just by day to day contact, so it made sense to make it mandatory. That is why polio vaccine is no longer given in many places - because the risk of contracting polio from the vaccine (very low but non zero) has begun to exceed the risk of contracting polio in the wild.
In an episode of Family Guy, an example of Peter Griffin's skill at breaking bad news is shown.
But it's not a treatment! It's just a couple of pieces of data.
It's a in-vitro study of one tiny aspect of one pathway that MAY be helpful in TRYING to create a treatment.
If a cure is a 20-layer cake, these people have created a recipe for the syrup for the cream, for one of the layers. According to you, that negates the need to buy ingredients, find out the recipes for the other layers, hire the chef, or actually make the cake!
A question, and this is a terrible thing to say.
If we treat Aids this way don't we make sure it spreads rather than it contained ?
We make sure the host lives longer and has more opportunities
to spread to the uninfacted therefore doing it's work.
G
1. CCR5 delta 32 is not super common, with a gene frequency of about .1 across Europe as a whole and maxing at about .23 in Ashkenaz jews. Evidence indicates that the black plague ceased to be common because of human resistance to it; which means that a gene frequency of .1 would not protect a whole population, which means it can't be the sole cause of surviving black plague.
.1 x .1 = .01 , so about 1% of European are immune to HIV as a result of CCR5 delta 32. In the context of 'today', this is almost completely insignificant.
2. You need two copies of CCR5 delta 32 for it to truly protect someone,
3. There is evidencethat bubonic plague could not produce the selective pressure necessary to spread CCR5 delta 32 widely, and smallpox is implicated instead.
OK, so ...
1) we are all told [FN1] that Homosexuality is something you are born with.
2) This gene is something you are born with
3) The majority of HIV/AIDs patients are homosexuals (remember when they first discovered it AIDs used to be called GRIDS Gay Related Immune Deficiency)
So, is this gene related to being heterosexual?
[FN1]
We are told that homosexuality is something you are born with. However, we are not actually allowed to research that conclusion. Every time any science study touches on that assertion, the political community shuts the research down. We are told because they are afraid that gay kids will be aborted (but abortion is good right, or is that only for male babies) or concentration camp testing. In reality it would be used to by homosexual couples to make homosexual children; just like deaf couples are now using IV to make deaf children. I suspect the real reason the research is banned is because the homosexual community fears the assertion may be wrong.
I don't know the cause of homosexuality, nor do I really care. I just don't like the fact that science has become so politicized and certain questions are Verboten.
...are there none? yoooooouve got...aiiiiiiiiiids... /sorry //got nothin'
"If for any reason you're not satisfied with our service, I hate you."
I'm a 'conservative'. Not Far right, but a little right. I'm also a non practicing evangelical.
I personally believe all sickness is a punishment on mankind for original sin, for we were immortal and perfect in the beginning. Just my belief, you may have your own.
To suggest that a human would try to block the research of a cure/vaccine for HIV because they believe it is punishment on homosexuals is absurd. That person isn't a fundamentalist, they are retarded.
Given unlimited time, human intelligence would reach GOD-like proportions. Just read the first couple chapters of Genesis. Satan told Eve just enough truth to get her to believe a lie. If we don't nuke ourselves off the map first, we will eventually cure/stop HIV.
However, history/evolution/biblical teaching all suggest that if and when we do so, another sickness will eventually arrive on the scene that is just as deadly or worse.
eeewwwww, that's not fudge you shitpacker!
Far be it from me to "forget" this point, but would you care to present some statistics to back up your claim?
Why not? In the 1960s-1970s we effectively eradicated smallpox from the face of the earth.
Surely this likewise calls for a massive police state? Then again, I suppose you consider this a more effective approach because it does not require the police state to be free of corruption?
Well, whatever. Great thoughts here, pal! You've got my vote.
Breakfast served all day!
So again mice can have sex without a condom without fear. A great day for mousehood.
1. It is not the "sole cause of surviving" the plague. It is in fact a reason a certain percentage survived it.
2. Yes this is true. Never stated a frequency ratio.
3. Bubonic plague did not, in it's relatively short lifespan, produce any significant selection process. It did, however, help facilitate certain factors. One of which is the proliferation of the Delta 32 marker. Without the plague there would be even less numbers of people with that marker today.
...that the best way to stop HIV is to get some of the right TRIMM ?
The problem with quotes on the internet, is that nobody bothers to check their veracity. -- Abraham Lincoln
I wouldn't put healthcare as a right anymore than I would put food or water as a right.
HOWEVER, nobody should have exclusive rights to natural resources such as water (including Oil, land.) It really is like fleas arguing over patches of a dog. Society borrows and future generations get it next. The prevalent mentality of today is of near total ownership (there are some limitations: can't abuse pets, kids, yard..)
Further down this fundamentally different perspective one could move to place responsibility of society sized problems on the society itself. Welfare, health care, security, and public resource management are society scale problems. "Rights" do not have to be even mentioned.
Multiple perspectives can address these issues without trying to tie in unalienable god-given "rights." It is similar "playing the race card" in order to preempt rational thought. Once it is mislabeled as a "right", then it gains power in the argument while also undermining legitimate rights-- its not logical but its how things work.
One can see the quality of life of different societies and make some comparisons; its subjective but not too difficult (except for argumentative types; PR, lawyers, politicians.)
One can use the cost argument and claim privatized societies are stupid; of which there is ample evidence. A counter argument is also possible (but I've not heard any good ones.)
One could claim a moral society takes care of the poor huddled masses; which might work on legitimate christian nations...
Rights don't need to enter into the argument unless you are restricting rights (too much or too little.)
Example 1:
Government shouldn't have the right to restrict what you put in your body. Recommend, thats a different matter; but outlawing smoking, poison or drugs is just foolish. This position can be supported from many angles including the restricting of society's rights.
Example 2:
Corporations do not have any rights other than the few explicitly given by society (the non-profit org that manages the society is known as government.) Unfortunately, corporations have been given equal rights with citizens; a form of legal personhood. People run them, but a group is not the same and does not act the same as an individual-- should be obvious especially with all the science on group dynamics and what horrible things group dynamics have done thruout in history.
OK, whatever proteins or regulating this gene codes to do, one effect is that it stops HIV from replicating in infected cells which also contain the gene.
But what else does it do? I mean, "hot water" cleans my hands and prevents infection, but it can also burn me or drown me.
Where's the research into side effects of inserting or activating TRIM22 into cells where it wasn't naturally active before? Why isn't it functioning against the HIV in some cells where it could save the cell and the organism?
Messing with the immune system is what makes HIV itself so dangerous. Some people with HIV might have little to lose by trying it early, and there's other ways to investigate. I hope we get the research, and don't just skip it because "a cure for AIDS" would be so immediately profitable. Side effects are always important, and genes are the most complex chemicals in their effects we know.
--
make install -not war
The good part is that HIV attacks the white blood cells, i.e.: cells that aren't fixed in an organ, but that freely mobile in the blood stream and are produced by the bone marrow (which can also be injected freely in the blood stream and will home on its own to the bones).
So one possibility would be to :
- get some progenitor cells from the marrow
- do the recombination under laboratory controlled conditions using whatever methodology seems to be the best (not forced to use viruses that can still replicate other methods could be acceptable)
- select those progenitor cells where the recombination happened in the most optimal way (the new gene did got indeed inserted, and got inserted at a correct place where it won't cause cancer or otherwise disturb the function of gene that were present before the recombination)
- inject those modified cells into the patient bloodstream and let them go back to the bone marrow
- those celles produce a new generation of HIV-resistant lymphocytes.
As we are not forced to use virus inside a patient but can do the transformation under controlled conditions, and as we have a lot more knowledge about human genome, we might manage to diminish the risk of the transposons continuing to jump around and damage important genes (compared for example to what was found with Monsanto's GM corn).
Risks of rejection may be lowered compared to what happens with Cystic-fibrosis gene therapy, because :
- no virus inside the patient body and less foreign material : less likely to trigger a immune response.
- cells are only modified using the new gene, no other virus-cycle replicating proteins : less likely to be recognized as 'foreign'
- patient with an active AIDS are immuno-compromised anyway so the risk of immunological reject are lowered anyway.
Also, unlike other gene therapies, the effect of that one are very likely to be permanent because we have access to the progenitor cells that produce the lymphocytes. Whereas with CF gene therapy, the virus is inhaled and affects cells on the surface of the respiratory tract : mostly differentiated cells that won't divide anymore, once they are dead a new exposition to the virus is necessary to produce a new crop of modified cells, hence the risk of rejection increase with each exposition. In CF, the progenitor cells aren't easily available.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
Ok, so starvation is obviously preventable. It is also cheap to prevent, so not many people quibble about it. It seems my wife is always buying a flock of chickens for some village, giving food to some shelter, etc. OK, fine. Vaccines? Ok, they're cheap too. In principal, I suppose you could extend this to "basic health care", but that's it.
But where do you draw the line?
How about this? Basic ER stuff repair cuts, broken bones, etc. Need a liver transplant? Sorry, you have to pay, if you can. Need an antibiotic shot and some bandages? Fine. Have cancer? Too bad, you are gonna die sometime...
What is a life worth? What is a baby worth? How about a 40 year old, or a 60, 80, 90 or year old? Should people that are already over the "average life expectancy" even bother consuming health care resources? I mean, they've already had a "full" life, and money spent on them could save hundreds or thousands of others (see cheap food, vaccines, etc...)
Be honest, if your 80 year old father had a million dollars in the bank, and no insurance, would you rather he spent it on a double lung transplant for himself so he could live to age 81 or die now and leave it to you? How about if he left it to your favorite charity? What if he were to spend it on some experimental procedure that may or may not prolong his life, but advanced medical knowledge in some narrow field of disorder?
In my opinion, the best method for allocating resources so far, is to let those who can afford it to buy it. Even if it is healthcare. If you can't afford it, too bad, them's the breaks.
I might accept an argument for tax-payer provided health coverage to a point, but not for ANYTHING THAT MIGHT COME UP. Set a limit somewhere. And don't keep moving the limit.
The irony I see is that a lot of the same people who bemoan the fact that society doesn't spend enough money saving lives are the same folks who say there are too damn many people on the planet using up precious resources...
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
I also take you up on the first bet for one dollar, thus winning the metabet.
In hell, you will find a mountain of broken, feces-covered typewriters and a stack of copies of the First Folio.
1 & 2. Okay, sure. Quantifying the "certain percentage" that survived the plague due to having a specific allele would be very difficult. Except that, as stated in the article I sited,
"The smallpox virus also has more biological similarities to HIV-1 than does bubonic plague, the authors point out. Plague is a bacterial disease, and there is no evidence that the bacterium, Yersinia pestis, uses the CCR5 receptor in infection. The bacteria actually reproduce outside immune cells.
CCR5 is a coreceptor on our cell's surface that facilitates entry to our cells. This is obviously important to HIV, since HIV reproduces within our cells - deny it entry, it's in trouble. Smallpox also has this weakness. Bubonic plague, in comparison, is not linked to CCR5. Do you have a reference that refutes this?
3. Whaaa? Facilitate certain factors?
Proliferation of the delta 32 marker (by which I presume you mean the CCR5 delta 32 allele) is the same as saying evolution occurred. As far as I can tell, you're hypothesizing that differential survival by people with the marker resulted in the increased gene frequency. There's another scientific term for this: natural selection. Let's look at the sciencedaily article I linked above:
"Our population genetic model finds that genetic selection from plague wouldn't have been sufficient to drive the frequency of this genetic mutation to its current level," said Alison P. Galvani, a Miller Postdoctoral Fellow at UC Berkeley. "It was sufficient for smallpox."
Bubonic plague hasn't been a major source of death in Europe or elsewhere for the last 250 years, while smallpox was only eradicated in 1978, at the same time AIDS (acquired immune deficiency syndrome) appeared. The survival advantage this genetic mutation provided against smallpox has thus been transferred to AIDS, the authors noted.
Following a 1998 paper that linked the gene deletion with bubonic plague, "bubonic plague had been cited as a classical example of a historical selection pressure acting on a clinically important locus," she said. That classic example now changes, with smallpox replacing the plague. "
To sum up, the claim that bubonic plague has had an effect on CCR5 delta 32 frequency has been a popular story that's been bandied about for years; but there is no evidence for this, and smallpox is a more more plausible explanation. Cheers, Paltin
This just in: crazy people do crazy things, whether atheist or religious. More on this breaking news at 10!
"16MB (fuck off, MiB fascists)" - The Mighty Buzzard
Someone has a bruised ego.
Because HIV is almost exclusively transmitted by heterosexual contact in Africa, but in the West homosexual behavior is more tolerated and intravenous drug use is more common.
How is it that all REAL STDs are rising year upon year, and are rife, yet we don't see any teenagers dying of 'AIDS'?
Because most people get HIV in their 20s and 30s, and it usually takes a decade to turn into AIDS.
Indicator disease + HIV = AIDS : Indicator disease - HIV = Indicator disease : Circular definition. Therefore useless.
No more so than Tumor + Metastasization = Cancer.
Hard to believe...
Yes, it is.
Oh, don't worry. AIDS will be a good excuse until a cure/vaccine is widespread. I don't know what will come after it, but as long as people need to rationalize their cultures' practices, they'll find a new 'reason'.
People who survived the Plague in Europe either did not encounter it or almost universally had a genetic anomaly commonly referred to as the delta-32 marker. Their ancestors survive other diseases because of this causing what amounts to an odd protein binding issue on the cellular level. Those people are also naturally immune to HIV.
Your claims are not proved. In the words of the Wikipedia article, "it has been hypothesized that this allele was favored by natural selection during the Black Death".
As I've been given to understand (I myself don't know tha much about this), this hypothesis has been put forward because the coalescence dates for the CCR5-32 mutation in Europe go back to about 1300, which seems to fit with the Black Death, but no clear link between CCR5-32 has been shown.
Interestingly, the CCR5-32/Black Death theory has also been used to argue that the Black Death was not caused by bubonic plague at all, but a different and separate pathogen, possibly a filovirus, like Marburg virus or ebola.
Does that mean that they are genetically more apt to survive? are they the next evolutionary step? Is Chuck Norris delta-32? (anomalous)
Seriously, be a prude all you want but don't spread FUD. The odds are 1 in 50 million if you're in a low risk group. This statistic has probably dropped as HIV spread, though not by much. And there's a good reason why:
If you know your partner has HIV, the odds of getting HIV with a condom is 1 in 5000 sexual acts.
These are real statistics from the JAMA and widely quoted by the CDC which fields thousands of calls about OMG A CONDOM BROKE WITH MY ONE NIGHT STAND. ODDS: ~1 in 1000 for high risk groups.
And for the record: 1 time unprotected sex with an HIV+ partner is 1 in 500 odds.
Of course, more accurate risk analysis would point out that women and receptors of anal sex are more likely to contract HIV.
And finally, with consistent condom use there is a 2 percent chance of a couple getting pregnant in a year's time.
missing tag. AIDS is a master of the virus's trick of the trade, rapid mutation. To block something thoroughly and reliably requires blocking a key step in a way that is not trivial to circumvent, because mutation adapts to very simple blocks very rapidly.
I don't see anything here that even remotely sounds like this was a well-thought-out fix. These sorts of discoveries are usually by chance, try this, try that, and observe results. If it only takes one very minor change in the viruse's DNA (RNA?) to get around this, it won't take any time to work it out.
The more well-thought-out methods are more likely to succeed or at least to hold up longer. Now while Jurassic Park did find a way around it, the concept of stopping reproduction by making the entire population female, in theory is a very well thought out measure and is not trivial to bypass. You'd put a lot more stock in that than if they had say, injected the dinos with something that sterilized them. This looks more like a random attack with results that are not even remotely understood.
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
Assume I can afford this tech.
That almost certainly means I'm not living in central Africa, so AIDS is pretty damn unlikely. It also probably means that I'm well-off even for a person in my own country, reducing the risk of AIDS even more. A zillion other things are more likely to doom my child. (assasination, kidnapping, extreme sports, crashed Ferrari, crashed yacht, etc.)
Now, what would I like...
Let's add a set of hormone-triggered genes to give the boys big muscles and a few inches extra height, while giving the girls great big tits. (must be hormone-triggered because it gets passed on) Let's add a few brain-related genes to make the kids smart. I want the average IQ to be 180. Don't forget the part of the brain that relates to social ability, because I want my kid to have a chance at political office and corporate ladder climbing. Let me choose attractive noses.
All of that is worth more to my child.
Zombie apocalypse....
1) don't stick needles into yourself unless they've been sterilized.
2) don't have casual sex
3) form a longstanding bond with someone to the point where you actually get to know them and what kind of person they are before interpenetrating genetalia with them.
4) treat your sexual partner with love, respect, and faithfulness so they are unlikely to want to seek satisfaction elsewhere. This may actually require you to: do things that you don't want, just because they enjoy them; think of the feelings of another before and as superior to your own in importance; and generally stop being a selfish, hedonistic individual.
I know some of those seem nearly impossible, but trust me, they are doable.
There, pretty much all AIDS is prevented.
Now, can we quit shilly-shallying with a 'disease' that's almost entirely self-inflicted, and move on to diseases that are worth curing?
-Styopa
thx e
If the virus can no longer reproduce then a combination of other drug therapies and natural immunity will eventually wipe it out.
The pursuit of absolute tolerance leads to the most rigorous and ludicrous intolerance. - REX MURPHY
I guess that in theory, you could track down some guy out of that 1%, set them up as sperm donors to kickstart an ADIS-resistant population where HIV is the most rampant. But evolution works on such massive timescales that the current civilization and political setting will either have been completely changed or collapsed entirely before you'd get an AIDS-resistant population so it's not realyl practical.
I lost my sig.
I work for a nuclear signalling laboratory at Monash University, and one of my collegues is working on an effective non-viral gene therapy approach. Essentially you can get histone like protiens to carry the DNA into cells easily, and into the nucleus even better by incorporating a nuclear localization sequence. This improves the efficiency several fold. It also means the genes don't insert themselves randomly in a genome as with viral vectors, but can be coaxed into become exosomes that replicate with the cell and form their own chromosome like body, i.e. it won't cause cancer.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2003/oct/09/aids
The problem with condoms are that they may break, and then they don't even block dick-sized items. And most other birth control allows free flow of budily fluids, meaning there is no HIV protection whatsoever.
I lost my sig.
Gene therapy typically employs a more benign retrovirus that will insert thier own RNA into a cell. This is exactly how HIV works and we have been able to do this both in vitro and in vivo. The problem is that this doesn't often work out the way we want it to. Just like HIV which is enacted upon by the immune system in some way, the new virus will be as well. Mutations in this new virus within the body are unpredictable. If you don't believe me look at what happened at the University of Pennsylvania back in 2000. HIV and AIDs are still very scary but with the release of the Protease Inhibitors in the 90s it has completely changed from a terminal to chronic disease and the regimens have gone from an extremely high pill burden to even 1 pill once a day (see: Atripla)
"Say you love us like i know you will and that our deaths won't be in vain or in the name of gasoline"
"the normal response of interferon, a protein that co-ordinates attacks against viral infections, became useless at blocking HIV infection."
That seems like a bad thing doesn't it?
"Crude and slow, clansman. Your attack was no better than that of a clumsy child."
Why? Because that one in the 500 odds could be happening sooner than ever. It's not even determined you'd be infected the 500th date.
...
.. crazy world ...
People base their lives too much based on numbers pulled out of their *ss. The same with statistics, the truth is, you'll have to be ONCE at the wrong place, wrong time and with the wrong girl or guy and you are infected. Screw the 1:500(0) ratio, we're talking human lives here. I've got friends who catched HIV by doing A LOT less than that. Where are you now with those statistics? If everything happens "according the book" statistics can be used to improve life, although we're talking about something which isn't even following any book at all!
Statistics might be good in some cases to determine factors, but in this, with people lives at stake, I find these statistics crazy, dumb, ignorant and hypocritical. You go screw 5000 people, although do keep in mind by screwing the third one without condom you could already be sentenced life-long HIV.
I'd say, f*ck statistics and start to act responsible towards eachother. They give false hope
Being ignorant doesn't mean it has to endanger the rest of the society.
heck, some people even believe they won't catch HIV because they believe in a superiour being
--- I am known for the ones who want to find me on the net. Is that a privacy risk or a privilege? One might wonder..
Don't stick your dick into everything that moves and you won't get HIV in the first place!!
Last time I checked, evolution was entirely orthogonal to being a killer.
The only thing that evolution says about me is that my chance of successfully forwarding my genes into the next generation is predicated on my genetically-predisposed ability to respond to the selective pressure of my environment, that my chance of forwarding them beyond the next generation will be predicated on my offspring's genetic predisposed ability as gained from the combination of my genes with those of my breeding partner, and so on and so forth.
Which part of that requires to become a killer, exactly? I'd really like to know, because if I missed it somewhere in there I'll hurry up and get myself booked into that firearms course I've occasionally thought of taking. I'd best get trained up quickly so I can get on with that killing you are implying I need to do to take part in evolution!
Is the solution for what you are looking for, namely maximizing coverage for something with low marginal costs. But I'd also like to point out that your idea of a coin flip as optimal scarce resource distributor is total bullshit. If you have to choose who to save, you choose the most productive members of society. Productivity, however, at least in the U.S., has a very strong correlation with wealth, and people don't like to hear that...
I'm not saying abandon the non-wealthy (I'm not wealthy). But really, we can help more people by doing better than a coin toss.
Relax I just want some peanuts.
*muttering under breath*
I decide who lives or dies!
I decide who lives or dies!
I decide who lives or dies!
I decide who lives or dies!
I decide who lives or dies!
I decide who lives or dies!
I decide who lives or dies!
*continues muttering*
I just want my own children to average to 180. As for the rest of you, please remain at a disadvantage.
Not that it is necessary to renormalize IQ as people change; that hides population changes.