German Doctor Cures an HIV Patient With a Bone Marrow Transplant

reporter writes "HIV is the virus that causes Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS). Until now, HIV has no cure and has led to the deaths of over 25 million people. However, a possible cure has appeared. Dr. Gero Hutter, a brilliant physician in Germany, replaced the bone marrow of an HIV patient with the bone marrow of a donor who has natural immunity to HIV. The new bone marrow in the patient then produced immune-system cells that are immune to HIV. Being unable to hijack any immune cell, the HIV has simply disappeared. The patient has been free of HIV for about 2 years. Some physicians at UCLA have developed a similar therapy and plan to commercialize it."

Comments

Like to see this replicated

[Geoffrey.landis]

I'll be really interested to see if this result can be replicated.

Re:Like to see this replicated

[Anonymous Coward]

I'll be really interested to see if this result can be replicated.

I'll be really interested to see if this DONOR can be replicated.

Re:Like to see this replicated

[ScrewMaster]

I'll be really interested to see if this result can be replicated.

I'll be really interested to see if this DONOR can be replicated.

I've been expecting something like this ever since the discovery of HIV-immune individuals. So yes, the donor can be replicated.

Re:Like to see this replicated

[MSTCrow5429]

With the severely limited number of people with known immunity to HIV, and the pain of removing bone marrow, I'm wondering if more than a mere handful of people can be treated via this method.

Re:Like to see this replicated

[Chaos Incarnate]

Couldn't the recipients, who will generate the new bone marrow, then be used as donors?

Re:Like to see this replicated

[symbolset]

Yes, in time.

Re:Like to see this replicated

[eln]

Right now, there's a ban on selling organs for donation in this country. However, bone marrow transplants are expensive. If the recipient could later be used as a donor, the ability to pay them for their marrow (thus allowing them to more easily pay for the original transplant) could really help move this thing along. Even if a marrow recipient is reluctant to donate his own marrow, if he had a very large medical bill and was offered money to donate, he would be much more likely to do so.

Of course, given the limited number of naturally HIV-immune people in existence today, it would drive up the price of a transplant in the short term as they demand high prices for their marrow, but in the long run it would even out as we create more HIV-immune people.

Re:Like to see this replicated

[blair1q]

I.e., "commercialized" means "the hundred or so that we will ever be able to do will cost a $billion each."

Re:Like to see this replicated

[DebateG]

I think the end goal is to use this method for autologous stem cell transplant (when the donor is the same as the recipient) rather than allogeneic (when the donor is different). Currently, there are technologies such as small interfering RNA (siRNA) that let you suppress a specific gene through genetic engineering. They are widely used in research, although there are many hurdles before they make the transition to clinical use. It would go something like this:

1. Draw out someone's own stem cells
2. Permanently express the CCR5 siRNA in their stem cells by culturing them with a virus
3. Wipe the person's bone marrow out by total body irradiation
4. Reinfuse the altered stem cells

The advantage of this method is that, since the stem cells are coming from your own body, there is no graft vs host disease (which is essentially like standard organ rejection, but instead the organ rejected is your entire body being rejected by the graft... you can imagine that this is very bad). Of course, you still have the problem of developing leukemia later from the total body irradiation and viral integration into an important gene. You also have a high risk of death upfront when you spend several weeks without a functional immune system when the transplant is taking. But nevertheless, it's exciting.

Re:Like to see this replicated

[MSTCrow5429]

Better a hundred people at a billion each than zero for free.

Re:Like to see this replicated

[LockeOnLogic]

This is less important as a potential cure through transplant than a proof of concept that if you can alter genetically alter the production of immune cells at the level of bone marrow you can suppress HIV indefinitely without drugs.

Re:Like to see this replicated

[Cyberax]

On the contrary, bone marrow transplants are the cheapest transplants.

In essence, bone marrow transplantation is just an intravenous injection.

Re:Like to see this replicated

[Hubbell]

This is common sense to anyone with an ounce of common knowledge. There are communities and individuals all over Europe that are naturally immune ot HIV due to a mutation of the receptor on white blood cells that HIV latches onto. Common sense would tell you that hey! remove the infected patient's bone marrow, and give him bone marrow from a person who is immune to HIV. This isn't a discovery at all, it's merely the application of a common procedure in a very sensible way.

Re:Like to see this replicated

[jcr]

One thing I've been wondering about is whether it would be possible to fight infection just by making a protein that binds to CCR5 and does nothing else. I'm presuming that HIV can't attach to the receptor if there's something in the way.

Would any molecular biologist reading this please tell me if this works or not?

-jcr

Re:Like to see this replicated

[TheoMurpse]

I seem to recall a lecturer visiting my hometown's community college and giving a genetics lecture. During the lecture he claimed that the plague caused a lot of people with the CCR5 receptor that HIV attacks to die off (the plague also attacks CCR5, allegedly), thus creating a non-trivial population of northwestern Europeans who are immune to HIV.

What's the current status of this theory? Google returns quite a few hits, but as I'm not a geneticist, and technically haven't taken a biology class in 13 years, I'm not that qualified to filter out bunk.

Re:Like to see this replicated

[cHALiTO]

Even better is a billion for free.

Re:Like to see this replicated

[blair1q]

After the hundred, there will be zero.

What will you say then? "I got mine!"?

Re:Like to see this replicated

[geckipede]

That's how some of the new drug treatments for HIV work. The article mentions them. Are you suggesting a form of genetic treatment where you don't remove the surface protein from existing cells but add more cells that produce blocking drugs?

Re:Like to see this replicated

[jopsen]

Yes, cause using medical bills to force people to donate organs is a real great idea...

Personally I don't get your medical system, it sure isn't ethically responsible. Makes me glade to be a European...

Re:Like to see this replicated

[$random_var]

A hundred people at a billion each when most of that billion will be publicly funded (with universities handing off the final stages of research to corporations, thus allowing them to get the patents) is unimportant. I know these aren't real numbers here, but there are opportunity costs - we could save many more people with that money.

HOWEVER, if treating the first hundred people in an encumbered and exorbitantly expensive corporate and regulatory framework later allows us to make the operation cheap and widely available - then bravo! The true genius of capitalism is when we are able to bridge a huge gulf by using the promise of high short-term profits. Too often corporations, which have different incentives, choose to bridge the gulf as slowly as possible and attempt to extract monopoly or cartel profits.

I do have a question though - I'm no physician, but I know that bone marrow transplants have been around for a long time. I think we know the basic idea of how to make them work by now. Is this really going to be something that requires all *that* much effort and money to perfect?

Re:Like to see this replicated

[jcr]

I wasn't suggesting any particular way of administering the blocking proteins, just wondering whether it was a viable strategy.

-jcr

Re:Like to see this replicated

[ginotech]

He's not saying that the medical bills would be increased simply to encourage donation, he's saying that they would already be expensive anyway due to the nature of the procedure...cool your jets.

Re:Like to see this replicated

[Anpheus]

Can you throw a little House into that? Like, say autoimmune a few times, maybe "at least it isn't lupus" or something? Amyloidosis?

Re:Like to see this replicated

[Pax681]

IIRC i watched a TV doc about HIV immunity and how it was found. there is a link to the black death here too.

AS it was discovered that the very same genes that help immunity from the black death are same for HIV.

if you have none of this gene pair "switched on" then you are gonna get ill quick and die......

if you have one of the pair on then you will go on for a few weeks THEN come down with symptoms.

However with BOTH genes switched on you are immune but carry the black death/HIV virus. Was on the discovery channel....

It was also apparently found that is was only ethnic Europeans who had this gene switched on... this led to some conspiracy theories about HIV/AIDS being created to be targeted at non whites.

NEVER let it be said that a late night spliff to chill out whilst Discovery is on is a waste of your chill time!

Re:Like to see this replicated

[Carewolf]

Depends on whether there is difference between HIV resistance and HIV immunity. Around 25% of Europeans are resistant to HIV. This is one of many reason the disease has had much more limited impact among caucasians

Re:Like to see this replicated

[jopsen]

No, but suggesting that people should be allowed to make money from such transplants... What next can I get a transplant in advance, just be safe, and then make money off it? :)

Offtopic: I think slashdot eat my sacrasm tags around the first line :)

Re:Like to see this replicated

[k_187]

Yeah, or at least give the screen a blank stare before running out of Wilson's office.

Re:Like to see this replicated

[JoeGee]

The homozygous CCR5 Delta 32 mutation is believed to occur in one in one hundred individuals of northern European descent. I am one of those individuals. Unfortunately for me, I rolled snake-eyes when it comes to lipid regulation, so hyperlipidemia seems to be poised to do to me (now in my mid 40's) what smallpox, bubonic plague, and HIV cannot.

Several companies offer tests for this allele. Possessing it is not an excuse to be irresponsible. There are variants of HIV that can infect T4 cells using the CCR4 coreceptor, as well as all of the other lovely diseases that can be acquired through unsafe practices.

-Joe

Re:Like to see this replicated

[Geoffrey.landis]

"common sense" is indeed rare and valuable.

However, replication of results is the essence of science.

Re:Like to see this replicated

[aproposofwhat]

It's true - 14% descendants of the inhabitants of the plague village of Eyam in Derbyshire, England have the mutation.

It's a beautiful little village with an excellent church and museum, if you ever get a chance to visit.

Re:Like to see this replicated

[SlashBugs]

Background for non-biologists: HIV typically gains entry to cells by binding two molecules on the healthy cell surface. These are CXCR4 and CCR5. About 1% of white males (other genders/races vary slightly) don't have CCR5; they seem completely healthy and their cells are highly resistant to HIV infection. So blocking the activity of CCR5 seems like an easy way to stop viral infection with no exprected side effects. Tricky to do, but probably worth the effort.

Anyway, the answer is "yes", sort of. Several antibodies and small peptides are in trials to block the CCR5 receptor; some are showing promise in animal trials.

The most famous is Maraviroc, a small molecule that binds CCR5 and stops is from binding HIV. It's sold by Pfizer and currently in use as an anti-HIV drug.

Another interesting possibility is gene therapy. Another group has recently made CD4 T cells (one of the cell types that HIV infects) express a small molecule to block their own CCR5 receptors, which works very well. I haven't seen a paper on it, but you should also be able to use similar techniques to completely shut down CCR5 production (using virus- or plasmid-borne shRNA, for example).

Finally, another group has managed to make rabbits produce antibodies against CCR5 receptors (Vaccine
Volume 26, Issue 45, 23 October 2008, Pages 5752-5759). Those antibodies are able to bind to CCR5 and completely block HIV infection, which is great. Stimulating an immune response against the patient's own immune cells sound a bit dodgey to me, but my immunology isn't great: maybe there's a well-established way around this problem that I just don't know about.

Re:Like to see this replicated

[Azarael]

The risk of cancer and the strain on your body from going through radiation is a pretty big downside. Unless there is a way to more selectively kill bone marrow, I don't know how many people would want to go for this.

Re:Like to see this replicated

[geckipede]

Most of the drug treatments seemed like a viable strategy at one point. HIV mutates extremely rapidly though, and it seems able to bypass almost anything we can throw at it. If the new types of drugs can reduce the virus's ability to replicate effectively enough that it doesn't get an opportunity evolve a way round then in theory it could work. The problem with that is that you would need to administer the drug reliably on schedule for every infected person all the time and that doesn't happen. The treatments are expensive, and even worse, enough people see HIV/AIDS as some sort of punishment for promiscuity that some people are denied treatments intermittently because people don't feel comfortable giving it to them.

Re:Like to see this replicated

[Hubbell]

Yes I understand this, but such a result is easily seen due to the empirical evidence of what occurs after a bone marrow transplant in cancer patients. Their entire immune system is rebuilt in the image of the donor's immune system, and if that person has the mutation in HCR5 (wrong?) receptor then voila, the person receiving said donation is now immune to HIV.

Re:Like to see this replicated

[arth1]

Because this trait appears to be genetically inheritable, unless well-meaning doctors interfere by transplanting bone marrow, the donors will be replicated. Natural selection will favour those resistant to HIV infections, and within a few generations, people with this survival trait will have produced noticeably more offspring. Of course, this is of little value to those who would develop AIDS or other HIV-related diseases in the mean time...

Transplanting bone marrow to a HIV-infected individual should, IMO, be followed by a mandatory sterilisation. Else, we will be working against natural selection, and will in the long run assist HIV in surviving by increasing the number of non-resistant individuals in future populations.

(Note to moderators: There is no -1 Controversial. If you disagree, be man enough to answer.)

Re:Like to see this replicated

[Hugonz]

Put some money into it. How much would you be willing to pay to a bone marrow donor to heal you of your HIV? No, the fact that it's illegal is completely irrelevant.

Re:Like to see this replicated

[pcolaman]

The problem with that is that you would need to administer the drug reliably on schedule for every infected person all the time and that doesn't happen. The treatments are expensive

Agree with you here, the drugs are expensive and therefore access is not widely available around the globe to these drugs.

and even worse, enough people see HIV/AIDS as some sort of punishment for promiscuity that some people are denied treatments intermittently because people don't feel comfortable giving it to them.

This is where you lost me and likely others in your argument. Show me proof that people are denied drugs based on moral grounds, or don't spout such bullshit. What you are trying to say here is people hate whores and gays, and you are trying to hide that statement in a carefully worded post. Good try but you'd have an easier time trying to convince people that JFK went into hiding and that the guy who was shot was a double. I'm not saying there aren't those people who think this way, but there's no evidence that any HIV or AIDS treatment drug that's being withheld on moral grounds. Most of the problems with getting this stuff to everyone is that, A) Most of the drugs widely available are very experimental and most of it simply doesn't work well yet or we don't know enough about how well it works, or B) It's all costly and most people cannot afford the treatments. Now if you had claimed that it's class warfare and that only the rich have easy access to that, then I'd probably be more understanding of your argument.

Re:Like to see this replicated

[Lershac]

whats it feel like to have so much in common with hitler?

Re:Like to see this replicated

[Lershac]

TFA states that there was no need to do radiation. The new bone marrow just naturally took over as it was healthier

Re:Like to see this replicated

[pcolaman]

Scientifically speaking what you say makes sense, but morally speaking is it right to subject people to mandatory sterilization? I'd think it would be better to provide the people considering this procedure with all of the education to make a sound judgement themselves, and some might volunteer for the sterilization, while others obviously would not. Either way, I think making it mandatory would just cause more unsanctioned procedures (i.e.- Go to someone working out of their garage who provides illegal bone marrow transplants) which in turn would cause more complications in these procedures and would end up providing more work for Hospitals who have to treat people who have infections from bad transplants, etc.

Re:Like to see this replicated

[SlashBugs]

Malaria kills far more people per year than AIDS, and seems likely to keep that up for the forseeable future.

I assume that you don't have the sickle-cell anemia that gives partial protection against the malarial parasite?

OK then, I've got the bolt-cutters ready. Call my secretary and make an appointment for your sterilisation.

Re:Like to see this replicated

[pcolaman]

High taxation is such a quaint European concept.

Re:Like to see this replicated

[Thiez]

> Because this trait appears to be genetically inheritable, unless well-meaning doctors interfere by transplanting bone marrow, the donors will be replicated. Natural selection will favour those resistant to HIV infections, and within a few generations, people with this survival trait will have produced noticeably more offspring. Of course, this is of little value to those who would develop AIDS or other HIV-related diseases in the mean time...

I don't think so. Selection for the HIV-immunity gene is very weak, since very few people have HIV. Now if we were to stop using drugs against HIV and all have unprotected sex, then natural selection would kick in properly and the gene would spread. Then again, having this gene may not be that great. Maybe having it increases chances of getting some other, even more vicious disease (although it wouldn't be the first time useless genes/organs/bones/whatever are found, so maybe there are no downsides to having the HIV-immunity gene).

> Transplanting bone marrow to a HIV-infected individual should, IMO, be followed by a mandatory sterilisation. Else, we will be working against natural selection, and will in the long run assist HIV in surviving by increasing the number of non-resistant individuals in future populations.

Ah, but where to stop? I guess we should also sterilise blind people, deaf people, people with diabetes, etc. While removing people with bad genes from the gene pool would fix many genetic defects for generations to come (obviously), most people would agree it may not be the right thing to do.

Re:Like to see this replicated

[Thiez]

Just because Hitler did something doesn't make it bad. I'm sure Hitler ate and drank, but does that make you a nazi when you have breakfast?

Re:Like to see this replicated

[Lord Apathy]

Cloning. If we can clone a sheep surely we can clone cells.

Yes, I know entirely different processes but I need to say more than one line. That an tossing a reference to a sheep seem to fit there.

Re:Like to see this replicated

[Lershac]

Weellll specifically ole Hitlers attempts to genetically purify mankind by removing classes of people are what is most hated about him... and thats what arth1 is proposing...

Re:Like to see this replicated

[k33l0r]

Using that logic it would be best if we didn't use any medication whatsoever. Vaccines should be outlawed too, or anybody who receives one should be sterilized.

Or you can go even further and argue against water purification, after all it's best if only the strongest survive, right?

Actually using any sort of technology is downright questionable, as it improves your life in a way not intended by nature.

Re:Like to see this replicated

[des09]

Individuals and co-operating groups trying to find ways to survive and breed IS natural selection. A sterilization program is a far bigger deviation from natural selection than a bone marrow transplant, or any other treatment, with the exception of gene therapy approaches.

Besides, when did natural selection become some divine force not to be interfered with?

Furthermore, the infectious organism in a pandemic is also in a natural selection process, in this case, HIV is a very fast-mutating virus, and is almost certain to evolve a non-CCR5 binding variant before CCR5 expressive humans are selected out.

At first read I though you were just trolling, then I looked at some of your other posts, including http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1021887&cid=25678799, c'mon man, you are smarter than this?

Re:Like to see this replicated

[Anonymous Coward]

"Medical bills are such a quaint American concept."

Thinking that "free" services provided by the government are actually free is such a quaint European concept.

Re:Like to see this replicated

[Moleculor]

Of course, the same genes that offer resistance or immunity to one disease often come with a vulnerability to another. It's why I'm so wary of globally applied gene therapy or Hitler-esque sterilization of populations due to so-called genetic inferiority. They might be 'inferior' now, but when another disease comes along and they're healthy while you're not, the shoe'll be on the other foot.

Re:Like to see this replicated

[hydrofix]

The thing is, that we don't really know how many people are immune to HIV. Should you be immune, chances are, you will never know it. Maybe if you have a serious reason to doubt you should have been infected by HIV, but manage to "stay negative" time after time.

My biology teacher in high school would tell us, that - for example - many committed couples continue having unprotected sex even if the other partner is found HIV positive, but many cases are knwon where the other partner still never gets the virus for some reason. Many people could be actually HIV resistant, but most will never know it. Maybe in the future you can make a few month's wage by getting yourself tested for HIV-resistance and, if lucky, donating your bone marrow.

Re:Like to see this replicated

[amorsen]

Transplanting bone marrow to a HIV-infected individual should, IMO, be followed by a mandatory sterilisation.

The exact same argument can be made about any other deadly disease with a cure. We should obviously be sterilising everyone who gets antiobiotics to cure pneumonia.

Re:Like to see this replicated

[SlashBugs]

Depends how you choose to express the siRNA.

Plasmids are generally pretty safe, if you pick one with decent copy-number control. Something like Epstein Barr virus' dormant plasmid would be pretty good, as it automatically keeps itself to just a few copies of itself per cell and constantly expresses a couple of RNA molecules. Just remove the viral genes and throw your shRNA in there under the same promoter... should work like a charm.

There are also some viruses that always integrate into a specific, safe part of the genome. Adeno-associated virus, for example, always slots itself into the same site (somewhere on chromosome 19 IIRC?) and lies dormant. It has a tiny capacity for payload genes so is often ignored, but if you just want to express a few shRNAs it's be ideal.

But yes, the radiation will still be a bitch. I've seen several patients going through it, who all agree that the treatment is better than the disease, but only just.

Re:Like to see this replicated

[Moleculor]

You mean hobbling out of Wilson's office.

Re:Like to see this replicated

[Znork]

The same argument can be made for any medical treatment at all, ranging from flu to cancer. In fact, it can be made for most civilizational aspects, agriculture, housing, etc.

Like it or not, natural selection has been largely bypassed in civilized culture and it may not even be particularly relevant in the situation you mention, as infection rate is miniscule in many countries leading to such immunity being extremely unlikely to be a deciding factor, and certainly not a useful method for eradicating HIV.

For long-term protection against biological extinction events it's probably better to bypass natural selection on this scale anyway and keep as wide and diverse a genepool as possible. Variants that create immunity for one, treatable, disease may be susceptible to some future more dangerous plague, or vice-versa. (For example, ccr5 mediated HIV resistance has indications that it lowers resistance to other diseases such as west nile).

So it's not so much that your idea is controversial, it's just that it's not particularly, eh, useful.

Now please report to the nearest sterilization clinic and volunteer to join the fight against bad ideas. ;)

Re:Like to see this replicated

[SnowZero]

No, but suggesting that people should be allowed to make money from such transplants... What next can I get a transplant in advance, just be safe, and then make money off it? :)

Ok then, how do *you* propose encouraging people to donate? If this treatment really works[1], then we're at the early part of an exponential curve, and anything you can use to speed up the first part is huge down the line. Waiting for people to donate out of the goodness of their own hearts would add years or decades to the process, since only a few would choose to do so. The only other method of speedup would be forcing donation, which is hardly ethical. While I don't *like* the idea of selling transplants, a viable alternative would be needed that didn't involve great additional harm to the world population.

Offtopic: I think slashdot eat my sacrasm tags around the first line :)

It didn't eat it, you have to escape it. If it were otherwise, how would <quote> tags work? If you write network facing software, now would be a good time to go back and check it.

[1] Always take Slashdot stories about medical breakthroughs with a grain of salt, and doubly so if it's from Roland.

Re:Like to see this replicated

[FrkyD]

true, just like the quaint idea that medical care shouldn't bankrupt you.
Speaking as an American that's lived on both sides of the pond, with a mother in the states being nearly bankrupted by her cancer treatment and a mother-in-law in europe who had the same level of care with no added costs, I know which system I prefer.

Re:Like to see this replicated

[TheLink]

But if you have full blown AIDS, would your immune system be strong enough survive HIV and kill off a donor's marrow and its "alien" immune system at the same time?

Maybe your immune system would just get wiped out eventually and be replaced by the donor's immune system.

Re:Like to see this replicated

[andot]

Bone marrow removing is not very painful. It basically chemotherapy and all needed cells are collected from blood not from bones. I have been bone marrow donor for myself. Read about it http://rarediseases.about.com/od/rarediseasesb/a/bmt05.htm

Re:Like to see this replicated

[Anonymous Coward]

Damn, the guys who are HIV immune must be ecstatic!
They are instantly the most popular people in the bar!

"Yo baby, i have HIV immunity"

Re:Like to see this replicated

[SlashBugs]

If it makes you feel better, I'm at the end of a PhD in the field. So I know more about HIV and AIDS than most of the population and, indeed, am one of the "phoney researchers" who generates the same data that I am, apparrantly, ignoring.

Tell us - what's your Ph.D. in?

Try getting your science from reputable schools or journals rather than mass-market paperbacks.

Re:Like to see this replicated

[RobertM1968]

No, I believe arth1 is just stating a scientific fact/theory that in such epidemics, that can often be the normal course of things. That doesn't in any way indicate whether he thinks it a viable solution to the problem, a happy one a moral one or whatever.

Haven't you ever watched Star Trek (TOS)? Just imagine Spock stating a logical conclusion to a given scenario. You dont have to like it, but it doesnt mean he agrees that it is the best solution - it's just a statement of the outcome as it would occur under a set of given circumstances.

I have yet to comprehend why when people dont like a (true) answer, that they need to pick apart the semantics and try to apply implications to the words that were not there. Evolution and many aspects of life, as they happen, even without human interference; are rarely concerned with the morality of the outcome. People who state such are not necessarily amoral, wrong or bad.

Robert

Re:Like to see this replicated

[mechsoph]

Transplanting bone marrow to a HIV-infected individual should, IMO, be followed by a mandatory sterilisation.

That is insane. Do we sterilize people after we give them antibiotics? After they undergo surgery?

Also, your natural selection claim may not be really valid. People with AIDS do still have children.

Re:Like to see this replicated

[mechsoph]

Somebody has to pay for it one way or another...

Re:Like to see this replicated

[thebjorn]

> Natural selection will favour ...

Your view of evolution is quite naive. Any selective pressure the hiv virus would exert vs. the CCR5 mutation is very small because (a) the mutation exists among a population (northern-European) that already has superlative access to treatment, and (b) in this same population hiv infection has historically been identified with non-procreating individuals.

Human evolution is also closely tied to our intelligence, so if you feel that strongly about our species survival, it's hopefully not too late for your own sterilization -- let some smarter genes get a better chance...

If that doesn't convince you, consider how many times you've taken anti-biotics, gotten vaccines, or otherwise tampered with the biologically pure master bloodline. According to your own arguments that would qualify for sterilization.

Bjorn (gay, northern European, and hiv+ since '95)

Re:Like to see this replicated

[philspear]

Common sense would tell you that hey! remove the infected patient's bone marrow, and give him bone marrow from a person who is immune to HIV.

Common sense also tells you that this is not a viable way to cure the millions of people living with HIV.

Re:Like to see this replicated

[ultranova]

Transplanting bone marrow to a HIV-infected individual should, IMO, be followed by a mandatory sterilisation. Else, we will be working against natural selection, and will in the long run assist HIV in surviving by increasing the number of non-resistant individuals in future populations.

This is not only stupid but also logically absurd, for reasons outlined below.

First of all, HIV-immune people appear to compose some 1 percent of the population, at maximum. That means that you'd be culling 99% of genetic variations from humanity, leaving the remainder much more genetically uniform and thus vulnerable for the next pandemic. And let's not forget that "immunity to HIV" is not like a feat in a role-playing game; it is a result of the particulars of your biochemistry, and likely has side effects, such as extra vulnerability to some other disease.

Secondly, if bone marrow transplantation makes you immune, then having no inherent, natural immunity isn't significant - everyone who gets infected gets cured and HIV will run out of hosts and die out. Being vulnerable to a treatable illness is hardly rational grounds for sterilization.

Thirdly, why treat HIV specially ? There are lots of deadly diseases out there. Should we sterilize everyone who is not immune to any one of them - which, I'd hazard to guess, would mean sterilizing everyone ?

Finally, it is impossible to interfere with natural selection. Natural selection means that the fittest have most descendants, and fitness is defined as having lots of descendants. "Survival of the fittest" is a tautology, you can't alter it. The only thing you can do is alter the environment, which then alter which characteristics make you fit.

Frankly, I'm beginning to see the merit in removing evolution from school curriculum and replacing it with creationism or whatever. We've seen crap like this since when the theory was first introduced; while some of it was purposeful, at least some had to have been caused by honest stupidity. Only teaching it on university level might act as a filter to keep it away from people who'll figure it means they should start an eugenics program.

Re:Like to see this replicated

[tehdaemon]

Of course. There was already something other than radiation killing immune cells in the body. HIV. Those cells that are immune survive, the others... don't.

T

Re:Like to see this replicated

[iluvcapra]

You sure forced sterilization, particularly by the State, isn't extreme? The thing about natural selection is just that, it's natural; our genotype is able to maximize survival criterion quite well without our rather blunt meddeling. If you're sterilizing HIV suceptibles, why not people with Down's syndrome, or sickle-cell anemia? These also are diseases that cost society; it's very difficult to justify your proposal in principle without justifying a host of other sterilization criteria. The whole point of medicine is to maximize quantity and quality of life, not to kick people and genotypes off the boat when they get to be too costly.

I dare say it, but I think all of liberal western politics and culture since WW2 is based on the belief that any person of good will, no matter their frailties, can, may, and will contribute more than any cost they lay upon the rest of us.

Re:Like to see this replicated

[Thiez]

> But if you have full blown AIDS, would your immune system be strong enough survive HIV and kill off a donor's marrow and its "alien" immune system at the same time?

Technically, HIV is not that hard to survive. HIV does not kill you, it just weakens your immune system and then you get killed by something else. If you have full blown AIDS, I doubt you could succesfully reject other peoples bone marrow. On the downside, full blown AIDS means you are already suffering from all kinds of diseases because your immune system is broken, so would never survive the transplant.

Re:Like to see this replicated

[timeOday]

even worse, enough people see HIV/AIDS as some sort of punishment for promiscuity that some people are denied treatments intermittently because people don't feel comfortable giving it to them.

What do you mean? Like doctors giving placebos to make AIDS patients sicker because they think they deserve it? I've never heard of that. I am aware that AIDS treatment rate is low compared to its terrible effects in poor countries, but is it not equally so for all other serious illness from diabetes to cancer?

Re:Like to see this replicated

[Anonymous Coward]

Well the GP of this post is not completely off. What they may be referring to is the fact that one prominent researcher's study came to the conclusion that HIV was not highly correlated to AIDS which suggested that HIV was not the causing the AIDS. Immediately he was kicked out of the scientific community as they stated that he should be jailed for life for trying to disprove a current hypothesis (which is the point of being scientific).

However they are definatley wrong when they suggest that HIV and AIDS don't exist. They just may be related in a confounding sort of way ;)

Re:Like to see this replicated

[blitziod]

first off most of the men with HIV in the west(US) are gay so they are not likely to reproduce very much. Gay men with HIV are almost never sperm donors. secondly you assume that resistance to HIV/black death is the only trait that genetic marker carries. The article states that resistance comes at a price of increased death from west nile( much easier to catch than HIV it is airborne) and maybe a host of other diseases.

Re:Like to see this replicated

[Marrow]

yes, they could be donors theoretically. But I suspect that past HIV positive status would make things complicated.
AIDS is not currently considered "fatal". It is considered "manageable".

So they would be considering the -unknown- risks of exposing someone to a potentially new strain of AIDs.

Re:Like to see this replicated

[blitziod]

godwins law anyone? All current genetic counseling does the same thing. In fact so does every woman at a singles bar when she selects the guy she fucks that night. The difference is in the science and more importantly the methods.

Re:Like to see this replicated

[timeOday]

Did you actually read arth1's whole comment? The first part was an objective prediction about evolutionary dynamics. The second part was this: "Transplanting bone marrow to a HIV-infected individual should, IMO, be followed by a mandatory sterilisation."

Re:Like to see this replicated

[Khyber]

Black Death is not a virus. It is a bacterium. Yersinia pestis.

Re:Like to see this replicated

[lysergic.acid]

or you could do a little research yourself before running your mouth off.

in the U.S. there are also conscience clauses in several states that allow pharmacists to refuse to fill a patent's prescription based on religious grounds. this was primarily introduced to to deny women emergency contraceptive pills, but it also opens the door for denying patients other types of medical treatment based on religious prejudices.

Re:Like to see this replicated

[joocemann]

HIV is not the cause of AIDS...
AIDS has failed to move out of the 'high risk' groups, in over 25 years...
The number of 'HIV positive' CASES in Western countries has failed to increase year upon year...
(Obviously the TOTAL of so-called 'HIV positive' people has increased each year, because the cases are counted CUMULATIVELY, unlike every other disease. Cancer for example...)
STD cases are rising every year (NON-CUMULATIVE figures, of course), yet where are all the teenagers dying from 'AIDS'?
Up to one third of people who are 'HIV positive' don't KNOW they are 'HIV positive', and therefore cannot be taking any of the so-called 'medications', which allegedly keep 'HIV positive' people alive. Why aren't they dropping like flies? This is hundreds of thousands of people in the U.S. alone. Why aren't they spreading the 'deadly virus' like wildfire, since they don't know they have it, and other STDs are spreading like wildfire?

Read the book 'Science sold out'.

HIV and AIDS 'research' are the biggest example of modern scientific fraud ever perpetrated on the people of this planet by the pharmaceutical companies and phoney 'researchers'...

Cue pathetic responses from Slashdotters who know sod all about HIV and AIDS, ignore the real world evidence that proves there is no such thing as 'HIV', and that AIDS is not sexually transmitted...

You are full of shit.

Re:Like to see this replicated

[Thiez]

You sure forced sterilization, particularly by the State, isn't extreme?

I'm not saying it isn't bad (I think it is bad and we shouldn't do it), I'm just saying that just because Hitler did X does not automatically make X bad, which was what Lershac seemed to imply.

You made me wonder though, what did you mean by 'particulary by the State'? Do you think forced sterilization would be less extreme if it came from some other organization?

Re:Like to see this replicated

[Khyber]

Fuck you very much.

From all the people who've contracted HIV through no fucking fault of their own (blood transfusions come to mind.)

Mandatory Sterilization. You came up with the idea, I suggest YOU contract HIV and then go promptly get yourself sterilized FIRST.

Re:Like to see this replicated

[Coleco]

It's disturbing to to see people with little bits of knowledge promoting evil social agendas in the name of out-dated science they clearly don't even understand.

Thanks for you idiotic opinion. We that actually know what we're talking about hope to god that people like you never get into a position to create policy.

P.S.

IAAMB (I Am A Molecular Biologist)

Re:Like to see this replicated

[mpeskett]

everyone who gets infected gets cured and HIV will run out of hosts and die out.

Not necessarily - you can only easily eradicate illnesses that only humans can catch (smallpox being the prime example) Other illnesses can continue to exist in an animal reservoir and re-infect the human population even if you cure every human.

If I remember rightly, HIV came to us from some variety of monkey or ape. If it did that once, it can do so again in the future, so we'd also have to do bone marrow transplants on all the HIV+ apes to actually remove the disease from the planet.

Re:Like to see this replicated

[Hooya]

> It was also apparently found that is was only ethnic Europeans who had this gene switched on... this led to some conspiracy theories about HIV/AIDS being created to be targeted at non whites.

I think I saw that show on Discovery. I don't think it was only the ethnic Europeans that had it. It was, as I recall, a favorable trait during the plague that allowed those with it to survive - and therefore the surviving population, naturally, were the only ones left to pass on the genes. Since the plague mostly hit Europe, the Europeans without the trait (Delta-32, I believe) parished and therefore didn't get to pass along their genes without the trait. Leaving us with this trait being in higher concentration in Europeans.

I suspect that Delta-32 will be in similar concentration in Africa after the AIDS epidemic is over.

Re:Like to see this replicated

[Lershac]

no, the difference is taking the choice away from the chooser, and "HIV-infected individual should, IMO, be followed by a mandatory sterilisation"

truly a hitler like decision, godwin be damned

Re:Like to see this replicated

[blitziod]

dude bone marrow is collected then cultured. you take a little from a donor then grow it. you really only need a few donors to produce a lot over time.

Re:Like to see this replicated

[radtea]

Why bother wiping out the existing bone marrow?

This isn't like leukemia, where we want to kill all the abnormal cells. The patient's existing marrow is perfectly healthy, and its presence or absence will have no effect on the ability of the donor cells to colonized the liver or where-ever it is that they typically wind up.

So the patient shouldn't need any radiation at all. Their unmodified marrow will still produce T cells that are susceptible to the virus, but that's no big deal because the T cells from the modified marrow will be able to handle it.

Maybe I'm missing something, but it seems at least possible that one could do this with a "marrow plant" rather than a "marrow transplant".

Re:Like to see this replicated

[pcolaman]

Both of those sources have nothing to do with your argument. They are mainly discussing the relation between drug users and HIV resources. And personally, if you are a drug abuser, I'm all for someone else getting the HIV treatments over you. Someone who got HIV because they slept with the wrong person trumps someone who got HIV because they were shooting up crack, IMO. And there is precedent here. Someone who is a high risk patient (like someone who does serious drugs, etc) is unlikely to get an organ transplant over someone who is not a drug user. You are comparing apples and oranges.

Re:Like to see this replicated

[Lershac]

um doofus, thats what AIDS does... takes down the immune system and you die from something that infects you that you cannot fight. The GP is talking about blocking the method that AIDS uses to infect you.

Re:Like to see this replicated

[swillden]

On the contrary, bone marrow transplants are the cheapest transplants.

In essence, bone marrow transplantation is just an intravenous injection.

This is accurate, but misleading. Bone marrow transplants are cheap as transplants go, but they're still very expensive. The IV injection of the transplant is no big deal, but before it can be done the recipient's own marrow must be destroyed by chemotherapy or radiation treatments, and after the transplant the patient has to be on immunosuppresives and receive regular transfusions until the new bone marrow can establish itself. During that time, the patient also has no immune system, and must be in a hospital or other sterile environment.

The whole process takes 1-2 months, and is far from cheap.

Re:Like to see this replicated

[iluvcapra]

The more consensual the organization, the less extreme it gets. Putting aside sterilization, many religions have very specific views about medical care, and no one claims that say, Christian Scientists are forcing their members not to get flu shots-- the children are an interesting case, and it always turns into a huge mess when the state tries to force the child of a CS family to take insulin for diabetes. OTOH, many religions also perform genital mutilations on children such as circumcision, and this is considered quite acceptable, whereas it would be an outrage if state power were involved.

Sterilization is interesting because it is so extreme, and I can't think of any religious groups that prescribe sterilization, but there are many cases where the government will not act while a family member acts for another member that lacks agency, such as children or the mentally unfit. The State shouldn't sterilize the retarded, but should it stop a family from having a retarded family member sterilized? They may have good reasons to their mind, like the retarded family member has been promiscuous and cannot be controlled, and though we all may not understand, who are we to pass judgement on the decisions of this family for on of their kin? There is a line there, and I'm not saying I'm calling it on exactly the right side, but it's a complex problem and you can't just look at it through the lens of foundational government-protected rights like those to life and property and integrity of ones body, because those only really apply to atomized actors in a a body politic, and within institutions like religions and families your "freedoms" are very different.

Re:Like to see this replicated

[Cyberax]

Not quite.

Bone marrow transplant by itself doesn't require destruction of recipient's immune system.

Suppression of host's immune system is usually required because it is used to treat the underlying disease and bone marrow transplant only allows to survive that.

Re:Like to see this replicated

[jcr]

I'm curious. Is pouring out sarcasm on someone asking a question a typical mode of conversation for you? How does this behavior work out in your personal relationships?

-jcr

Re:Like to see this replicated

[ScrewMaster]

What they may be referring to is the fact that one prominent researcher's study came to the conclusion that HIV was not highly correlated to AIDS which suggested that HIV was not the causing the AIDS. Immediately he was kicked out of the scientific community as they stated that he should be jailed for life for trying to disprove a current hypothesis (which is the point of being scientific).

Are you talking about Peter Duesberg, by any chance?

Re:Like to see this replicated

[Hooya]

Today it's Delta-32. What if tomorrow bring a new disease that is stoppable with another mutation only present in this person with the state forced sterilization? I guess the solution then would be sterilize the rest of the population. We can't have the disease survive in the rest of humanity now can we?

About natural selection:
We started fucking around with natural selection a long time ago. Now, I take the position that because nature gave us the (questionable) cranium capacity to do so, it's inherently part of the natural selection that we realize it as such and can't help but fuck around with it. My point is this - if you're worried about messing with natural selection, stop taking all medication and just let nature take it's course. Otherwise, stop with the "oh, we're working against natural selection" bullshit. Why is it not ok to let people to procreate (working against natural selection - as you put it) but ok to save his life - which, as I tried to argue, is against natural selection as well?

Working against natural selection isn't bad. And who's to say that using our cranium capacity traits (as opposed to physical traits) isn't part of what makes us the fittest in the natural selection? And using my logic above about future helpful mutations that might be present in Delta-32 deficient people, it'd be smart for us to preserve as much genetic diversity as we can as a species if we intend to survive.

Re:Like to see this replicated

[ScrewMaster]

Just because Hitler did something doesn't make it bad. I'm sure Hitler ate and drank, but does that make you a nazi when you have breakfast?

Yes, yes it does.

Re:Like to see this replicated

[ultranova]

Maybe your immune system would just get wiped out eventually and be replaced by the donor's immune system.

Which will then proceed to attack every cell in your body since it recognizes them as "alien".

Re:Like to see this replicated

[ScrewMaster]

Can you throw a little House into that? Like, say autoimmune a few times, maybe "at least it isn't lupus" or something? Amyloidosis?

And don't forget a couple of "your people" comments to Foreman, and an oblique reference to 13's presumed bisexuality.

Re:Like to see this replicated

[sgladfelter]

Obviously your argument is valid only if AIDs is the only disease that kills people. This is, of course, not the case. Therefore maintaining genetic diversity within the population is the most preferred course to managing overall risk to the system.

Plus, your eugenics bullshit went out of fashion last century. Today we understand that just because someone is different from us, it doesn't make them inferior.

Re:Like to see this replicated

[Boronx]

We're about to cleanly clear a natural selection hurdle in a way that preserves diversity (i.e. evolutionary strength of the species), and you assholes would have us pull up, go back around, lower our heads and run straight at the hurdle. Brilliant.

Re:Like to see this replicated

[tsotha]

I'm not sure a form to submit complaints really buttresses your argument. I've never heard of an instance in the US where someone was denied medication for HIV for any reason. Not even money. I'm sure it's happened, just because with a large enough sample group you'll get any behavior you can imagine. But it's a small enough chance as to be functionally zero. In most places a pharmacist who refused to provide a lifesaving drug for pretty much anything would be run out of town even before the government started in on him.

Re:Like to see this replicated

[TrekkieTechie]

Yannow, it's pretty out in the open now...

Re:Like to see this replicated

[Sobieski]

Actually, Hitler ate chocolate and Zwieback for breakfast. That specific combination is the formula for nazism.

Re:Like to see this replicated

[TornCityVenz]

If this method actually turns out to work..the recipient of the therapy should be REQUIRED as a condition of receiving the treatment to be a donator.

Re:Like to see this replicated

[jtgd]

I've been expecting something like this ever since the discovery of HIV-immune individuals. So yes, the donor can be replicated.

How large of a sample of people do you need to do a genome comparison and locate the gene that provides the immunity? Can gene therapy be utilized here?

Re:Like to see this replicated

[Anonymous Coward]

You seem confident. Now would you have unprotected sex with an HIV+ person multiple times a week over the course of a year to prove your hypothesis?

I doubt it...

Re:Like to see this replicated

[Anonymous Coward]

I can't comment on the relative cost of a BMT to other types of transplants, but to say that a BMT is just an intravenous injection is completely misleading.

An (allogeneic) BMT is essentially the replacement of a recipient's immune system with the immune system of a donor. Before implanting the donor's immune system (which literally is an IV infusion of hemapoetic stem cells) the recipient's own immune system has to be destroyed. This is done with high-dose, whole-body radiation and high-dose chemotherapy, which have numerous, serious side effects. Once the recipient's immune system is destroyed (the treatment's intended effect) they are at extremely high risk of contracting potentially-fatal infections, and for this reason they are hospitalized in special 'clean' BMT units with extremely close monitoring for an extended period of time. It takes many weeks before the transplant (hopefully) engrafts, and then many more months before the new immune system is fully functioning. Once engraftment occurs there is high-probability of acquiring graft-versus-host (GVH) disease (potentially fatal) and this is managed through the use of immunosupressants and close monitoring as an outpatient for many months after the transplant. The good news here is that the immune system usually becomes tolerant of the recipient's body (the graft sees all of the host's tissue as foreign) and the immunosuppressants are eventually not needed, unlike the case for organ transplants.

So is a BMT just an intravenous injection? I think not.

I'm speaking from personal experience; my daughter recently underwent a BMT. The cost? approaching $1M.

Re:Like to see this replicated

[lysergic.acid]

cherry pick all you want. AIDS/HIV sufferers being denied treatment because of societal prejudices is well-documented. whether it's drug users, prostitutes, rape victims, or just ordinary women with HIV, people are being denied AIDS/HIV treatment because of the social stigma around these populations and their perceived lifestyles.

it's ignorant attitudes like yours that cause these prejudices to dictate public policy at the expense of public health. even if you don't care whether IV drug users live or die, giving them access to medical treatment in the name of harm-reduction is the beneficial to society at large. any rational person can see that eliminating potential disease vectors is a good thing.

denying prostitutes & drug users adequate access to medical treatment in order to punish them for their lifestyles is just cutting off the nose to spite the face. that kind of attitude has prevented the adoption of needle exchange programs in many areas despite studies showing that such harm-reduction programs save cities tax-payers millions of dollars each year by preventing the spread of disease--which inevitably affects non-drug users as well.

Re:Like to see this replicated

[fredmosby]

First you post demanding proof that people are denied treatments based on moral judgements. Then when someone provides proof you say that it doesn't count because they are moral judgements that you agree with.

Just because someone 'shot up' at one point in their life doesn't make them a 'drug abuser'.

Re:Like to see this replicated

[supernova_hq]

I believe that HIV immune people simply do not experience symptoms from the virus and that they can indeed still be life-long carriers.

In fact, "going" with an HIV immune person is probably MORE dangerous because a non-HIV immune person has a chance of dieing from it. This means HIV immune people are most likely carriers.

So, unless that person offers you a bone-marrow transplant, it's probably still a good idea to use a rubber...

Re:Like to see this replicated

[ScrewMaster]

Yannow, it's pretty out in the open now...

All we know for certain is that she likes girls, and might just be your garden-variety lesbian. Of course, given that House's character analyses are usually accurate, odds are her door swings both ways but haven't seen that side of her. Not yet ... it's pretty obvious the writers aren't through with her.

Re:Like to see this replicated

[supernova_hq]

As much as I agree with you, pneumonia is simply fluid in the lungs. It is not even a disease, let alone genetic.

Pneumonia is more of a symptom than anything else. It can be brought on by anything from incurable deadly diseases and birth defects to close-encounter drowning victims and people who move to a weird climate!

Saying everyone who gets pneumonia should be sterilized (even though you used it as a counter-example) is like saying everyone who gets a fever should be sterilized.

Re:Like to see this replicated

[ScrewMaster]

You seem confident. Now would you have unprotected sex with an HIV+ person multiple times a week over the course of a year to prove your hypothesis?

I doubt it...

I dunno ... is she really hot?

Re:Like to see this replicated

[kchrist]

While I agree wholeheartedly that pharmacists do not have the authority nor the right to refuse to fill valid prescriptions, that doesn't change the fact that it's a well-documented problem. One pharmacy in Virginia even advertises the fact.

Re:Like to see this replicated

[ScrewMaster]

I've been expecting something like this ever since the discovery of HIV-immune individuals. So yes, the donor can be replicated.

How large of a sample of people do you need to do a genome comparison and locate the gene that provides the immunity? Can gene therapy be utilized here?

Beats me. I'm just a software engineer. Maybe SlashBugs can help you out there.

Re:Like to see this replicated

[supernova_hq]

Wait, isn't the fact that the immune system has already been suppressed the reason they are getting said transplant?!?

Sir, we are ready to give you back your leg you lost in Vietnam, but first we must cut off your leg!

Re:Like to see this replicated

[allcoolnameswheretak]

Humans "detach" themselves from natural selection all the time. Should we let a mother and her baby die instead of performing a C-section? Should we let all cancer patients die instead of trying to heal them with operations and antibiotics? Should we let people die of diseases X, Y and Z instead of providing vaccines? After all, these people "should" have died if it wasn't for our modern medicine. So what you are addressing is actually much bigger in scope. But I get your drift. I'm definitively no Nazi... but if you think about it logically, you have to wonder if humanity is not weakening itself in the long run by "dragging along" all those people that are weaker and would have died off some disease or disorder early in their lives.

Re:Like to see this replicated

[rrohbeck]

With the severely limited number of people with known immunity to HIV, and the pain of removing bone marrow, I'm wondering if more than a mere handful of people can be treated via this method.

It says in TFA there is a 30% mortality for bone marrow transplants, so it will never be the therapy of choice. This case is just one more piece of data indicating that the CCR5 receptor is *the* Achilles heel that makes us vulnerable to HIV, so disabling it may be the cure.

Re:Like to see this replicated

[Metasquares]

From Wikipedia:

Individuals with the Delta 32 allele of CCR5 are healthy, suggesting that CCR5 is largely dispensable. However, CCR5 apparently plays a role in mediating resistance to West Nile virus infection in humans, as CCR5-Delta 32 individuals have shown to be disproportionately at higher risk of West Nile virus in studies,[5] indicating that not all of the functions of CCR5 may be compensated by other receptors.

Preventing this receptor from functioning does not appear to disable the immune system, though it may raise the risk of contracting certain specific diseases. This is probably an acceptable tradeoff for the limited period of time a patient with HIV would be required to take such a drug. If you're going to be a jerk, at least make sure you get your information right before you flame.

Re:Like to see this replicated

[Anonymous Coward]

Just because Hitler did something doesn't make it bad. I'm sure Hitler ate and drank, but does that make you a nazi when you have breakfast?

Only if I'm having Luftwaffles!

Re:Like to see this replicated

[JonDorian88]

What purpose would sterilization serve? Just because they can't make babies doesn't mean that they can't catch and spread another STD; if anything that would encourage unprotected sex.

Re:Like to see this replicated

[Anonymous Coward]

As someone who takes 100mg Azathioprine a day, I can verify that my skin is indeed not on fire..

Re:Like to see this replicated

[JonDorian88]

Yes, because we all know that gay peopel come from gay parents.

Re:Like to see this replicated

[lysergic.acid]

in many states you still need a prescription to get "Plan B"/"morning after pill"-type emergency contraceptives. which is dumb because there's a limited window of effectiveness for those type of drugs.

though there is a growing movement in the U.S. to make these drugs available over the counter. according to Wikipedia a nonprescription behind-the-counter preparation of Plan B is available in California to women 18 years or older. this was supposed to have been put into effect in 2006, but i haven't heard much about it. i just know that about 2-3 years ago my gf at the time had to get her prescriptions from a rapid-approval website, and (i think) it took about 6 hours between filling out the online and actually getting the prescription filled at a local pharmacy.

and if you don't like the idea of the conscience clause you're not alone. unfortunately, freedom of religion in the U.S. has turned into freedom to subject others to your religion. that's what happens when separation of church and state is flouted by a society. it starts with relatively innocuous things like adding "in god we trust" to our currency and injecting theocratic sentiments into the pledge of allegiance, but then quickly spreads to more insidious things, like encroaching on the rights of patients.

Re:Like to see this replicated

[Pax681]

moot point, it's the way it attacks the system that helped make the link. more to the point i never said it was! what id did do was lump them together at one point "black death/HIV" and taken in that contexy is fine and funky....

Re:Like to see this replicated

[Pax681]

Delta-32... i had "is it maybe delta... and is it 22??! but i just could not remember and yes you are spot on in what you say. maybe if i hasn't been SO stoned i would have recalled much better..LOL

Re:Like to see this replicated

[arth1]

How many times must I say that I'm not for a sterilisation program of people susceptible to HIV, who has contracted HIV, or otherwise? I'm only for sterilisation of those who otherwise would have been removed from the gene pool if it wasn't for genetic intervention.
I.e. refuse to use transplants of genetic material to enable fertility. I think that is a reasonable safeguard, and I fail to see how people can call this trolling.

Re:Like to see this replicated

[arth1]

First of all, HIV-immune people appear to compose some 1 percent of the population, at maximum. That means that you'd be culling 99% of genetic variations from humanity
Um, no, that doesn't follow at all. Or did you fail to see that the sterilisation would only be for those who (a) carry the HIV virus and (b) have received a bone marrow transplant giving them artificial immunity? Sterilising these individuals would not cause culling of genetic variations at all -- compared to not giving them the bone marrow transplant in the first place, it's a zero sum. And even if you're opposed to restoring that equilibrium (fair enough), you're still not "culling 99% of genetic variations from humanity" by sterlising a small fraction of a percent of the human race.

Re:Like to see this replicated

[PCM2]

Well the GP of this post is not completely off. What they may be referring to is the fact that one prominent researcher's study came to the conclusion that HIV was not highly correlated to AIDS which suggested that HIV was not the causing the AIDS. Immediately he was kicked out of the scientific community as they stated that he should be jailed for life for trying to disprove a current hypothesis (which is the point of being scientific).

Part of your claim is mostly true. A prominent researcher (Peter Duesberg) did assert that HIV was not the cause of AIDS. His claims were not based on correlation between AIDS and HIV, however, because all prominent studies show an extremely high correlation -- people with AIDS invariably have HIV. Duesberg's argument was that correlation did not equal causation.

The second part of your claim is inflammatory and inaccurate. It is possible that some individuals expressed the sentiment that Duesberg should be jailed; this would be their own personal opinions. But Duesberg was not "drummed out of the scientific community" by any means. To this day he remains a professor of biochemistry and molecular biology at UC Berkeley.

Re:Like to see this replicated

[redcaboodle]

They can't be vectors because the viruses have no chance to multiply in their bodies and die fast.

Same thing as with other viral diseases like measles, flu oder German measles. If you get the inoculation ratio high enough you have herd immunity. It's how smallpox was eradicated. Measles are supposed to go next. Flu has too many varieties for this to work but I hear a new vaccine is under development that works with all strains.

Re:Like to see this replicated

[RobertM1968]

Arguing for natural selection, it is the logical course of things. I did not say I agreed. I said that it is logical, and the way things should go to further such, as he outlined.

In fact, I happen to disagree with it as a method I would endorse - but that makes it no less of a viable method - and perhaps a more logical one. Hence my reference to Star Trek TOS.

In case you didnt get the references that abound in TOS, or aren't a big TOS fan... a scene from STIV:TVH touches on the difference:

BONES
Jim, you've got to let me go in there! Don't leave him in the hands of Twentieth Century medicine.

KIRK
What do you think, Spock?

SPOCK
Admiral, may I suggest that Dr. McCoy is correct. We must help Chekov.

KIRK
Is that the logical thing to do, Spock...?

SPOCK
No, Admiral... But is the human thing to do.

It would have been far more logical, with the fate of mankind in jeapardy, to leave Chekov. It would have been the "right" choice. It still would not have been a choice I made.

Military minds make such decisions often enough - and many of them choose the logical route for the preservation of more people. Are they wrong?

Re:Like to see this replicated

[CodeBuster]

The treatments are expensive, and even worse, enough people see HIV/AIDS as some sort of punishment for promiscuity that some people are denied treatments intermittently because people don't feel comfortable giving it to them.

They can indeed be expensive, but I have never heard of anyone with money being turned away or denied treatment. Money talks and if you have it and want treatment then someone will be happy to provide it regardless of any misguided notions about punishment or qualms that other people might have about you receiving it. If money can buy illegal drugs then it can buy aids treatments too morals, rules, and ethics be damned.

Re:Like to see this replicated

[teklob]

I'm only an undergrad heading towards immunology, but from what I can tell from that paper you posted, the idea is not so much to stimulate an immune response in the patient, per se.

The immune 'response' is generated in another animal, in this case antibodies in a rabbit, to a protein resembling CCR5 receptor. This antibody is only injected back into the patient after numerous purification steps, to ensure as little cross reactivity as possible. The idea is that an antibody will bind very tightly to the exact molecule it's raised against, thereby blocking the entry of HIV. Any response to this new 'drug' antibody by the normal immune mechanisms is both unnecessary and unwanted.

The study looks promising but since they don't know exactly what CCR5 actually looks like, they are still trying to find out what the best blocker will be. Again I have very little experience with these matters, but once this is discovered I don't see why a monoclonal antibody could be grown that would be extremely specific and likely eliminate cross reactivity.

Any immunologists please feel free to correct me if I'm wrong.

Re:Like to see this replicated

[zoney_ie]

If everybody pays, then it's not such a big deal for "somebody" who could tomorrow be "anybody" including you, me, etc. If people have no problems paying health insurance (if they can afford it), then why is it such a problem to pay taxes to fund a proper health system?

The overall cost to society as a whole in the American model is a heck of a lot more than the cost to taxpayers in a state with universal health care.

There's no sense either in the concept of those who can pay out of their own pocket should do so (i.e. means-tested). Higher earners under just about any tax system used today, pay a lot more tax. So they should get just the same benefits of "free" services as anyone else. To do anything else is to have an unfair arbitrary cut-off.

Re:Like to see this replicated

[Mutatis Mutandis]

Excellent post, but I would just like to add a few more caveats. As you probably know, but most people certainly don't, HIV occurs in a wide range of variant strains, which use either CD4 and CXCR4 or CD4 and CCR5. This is a property called "tropism" and HIV strains are classified as X4 or R5 tropic.

But actually, from the data I have seen, few viruses exhibit a really pure tropism. There are a lot of dual-tropic X4R5 virus strains that have some flexibility to use CXCR4 or CCR5 as the opportunity offers itself; this is not surprising, as one variant must be capable of evolving into the other. Also, all patients carry diverse virus populations, because HIV is so sloppy in replicating itself, and a patient may well have 99.9% of R5-tropic viruses and 0.1% of X4-tropic viruses. (0.1% is about the limit of what can be detected with current, and very expensive, methods.)

This is cause for concern. A treatment that blocks the replication of R5-tropic viruses may well favour the replication of X4 strains. There already are indications that this happens in some patients on maraviroc treatment. Driving a virus population to become entirely X4 tropic would probably not be advisable, as there is reason to believe that these strains do more damage. The X4-tropic HIV strains are generally associated with the late stages of infection and the development of AIDS.

Therefore I doubt that anyone is going to advocated bone marrow transplants as a way to treat HIV. The risk is just too big, because this form of treatment is (almost) irreversible. Treatment with maravoric should always be preceded by tropism testing, and can be stopped if it doesn't work.

Finally, 2 years of undetectable viral load in absence of ARV treatment is an impressive result, but IMHO it is still too early to call the patient cured. He may well still have proviral DNA in his cells.

Re:Like to see this replicated

[CodeBuster]

There are no shortages of pharmacies here in the U.S. run by corporations that would be happy to fill whatever presecription you have provided that you can pay for it. Laws like that are quaint relics of a simpler time when pharmacies were privately owned businesses and not chains owned by corporations and pharmacists where upstanding and important members of the small town religious community. There is no reason for anyone to bother enforcing them (most laws are not enforced because nobody with political clout cares, there is no money in it for the police through asset forfeiture laws, and no public official wants to be accused of wasting taxpayer money enforcing silly laws). I am certain that if you have money and a prescription then you can find a pharmacy in your area willing to fill it or at the absolute worst you could have the prescription delivered mail order from one of the corporate chain pharmacies. One thing that you can be certain of however, is that a corporation will not allow the misguided morals of a few tedious sermonizers to stand in the way of a profit opportunity (yes, capitalsim does have some redeeming qualities after all).

Re:Like to see this replicated

[Lershac]

by removing choice from others, you are playing god you jackass.

What you are proposing would be akin to sterilising anyone who has undergone any sort of life-saving procedure. jackass. asshat. Hitler wanabe and cannot even stand up and proclaim it. weak.

Re:Like to see this replicated

[Anonymous Coward]

Maraviroc (and Vicriviroc etc) resistance also occurs. Then there is the matter of tropism and the
CXCR4 receptor. Chemokine Coreceptor 5 moleculer antagonists are not a panacea for HIV, neither
is BMT as the HIV exists in cells outside of the BM. Things are not as simple as this article
suggests.

http://hivinsite.ucsf.edu/InSite?page=ar-06-01#S1X

Re:Like to see this replicated

[Lershac]

Anyone proposing to reduce meddling by meddling more, should reduce the population by eating a kettle of boiling oil.

Re:Like to see this replicated

[Lershac]

what an apropos sig

Re:Like to see this replicated

[lysergic.acid]

if your religion prevents you from performing the responsibilities of a medical professional, then you probably shouldn't be a doctor/nurse/pharmacist/etc. and AFAIK, pharmacists can quit their jobs or switch to a different occupation any time they want. no one is forcing them to be a pharmacist.

if you think that your religious freedoms include the right to deny someone else the medication they've been prescribed by their physician, then you are part of the reason why the conscience clause exists. freedom/liberty doesn't mean you have the right to do whatever you want regardless of the consequences it has on others.

and by your definition of slavery, then anyone living in a society governed by the rule of law is a slave. drug/food manufacturers all have to obey by strict sanitation and food-safety regulations even though they may not want to, but that's what it takes to protect consumers and public health. occupations like law enforcement and medical professions have even greater social responsibilities due to the vital nature of their work. if an on duty police officer sees a crime in progress they have a legal responsibility to step in, otherwise it may be criminal negligence. likewise, medical professional have certain moral obligations when they are on duty.

Re:Like to see this replicated

[AmonTheMetalhead]

Why do you people tolerate laws like that?!

Re:Like to see this replicated

[Rary]

Ok, first of all, emergency contraceptive pills are not prescribed drugs. Anyone can go to a pharmacy and get them over the shelf!

Well, sort of. Many places still refuse to take them out from behind the counter, and they insist on putting the patient through an "interview" before allowing them to purchase the drug. I'm not sure if they'll actually deny them the drug if they're not happy with the answers to the questions.

Second, if I read your post right, the idea that a pharmacist has the authority to deny me drugs that a doctor prescribed, based soly on their religious beliefs is complete and utter bullshit!

It is absolutely bullshit. And yet it happens.

Re:Like to see this replicated

[lysergic.acid]

i think one of the "protections" given to pharmacists by the conscience clause is that employees cannot be fired or otherwise punished for refusing to fill a prescription based on religious grounds. from Wikipedia:

Conscience clauses are clauses in laws in some parts of the United States which permit pharmacists, physicians, and other providers of health care not to provide certain medical services for reasons of religion or conscience. Those who choose not to provide services may not be disciplined or discriminated against.
[...]
Corporate Policy

Some pharmacies in U.S. jurisdictions with conscience clauses, including CVS and Target, allow pharmacists to choose, without penalty, not to dispense birth control pills. Target requires the objecting pharmacist to recommend another Target location that will dispense the medication.

Re:Like to see this replicated

[Miseph]

It is very widely believed that the VERY slow response to the HIV/AIDS epidemic was inspired by the widespread belief that it is simply punishment for the sins of promiscuity, homosexuality and drug abuse. I don't know where you've been, but that's hardly an accusation from far left field.

There are also confirmed cases of nations refusing to take any action, or permit any treatment for HIV/AIDS on precisely those grounds. Not first world industrials, mind you, but even third world African dirt farms doing it is abhorrent.

Re:Like to see this replicated

[CodeBuster]

I have never heard of a single case where somebody was refused a prescription by an employee of a pharmacy citing this law, the news media would be all over it if it ever did happen. It is probably a non-factor.

Re:Like to see this replicated

[Anonymous Coward]

Haven't you ever watched Star Trek (TOS)? Just imagine Spock stating a logical conclusion to a given scenario. You dont have to like it, but it doesnt mean he agrees that it is the best solution - it's just a statement of the outcome as it would occur under a set of given circumstances. I have yet to comprehend why when people dont like a (true) answer.

Maybe it has to do with the fact that people are humans and not vulcans?

Re:Like to see this replicated

[Cosmic AC]

I agree with you that simply culling everyone who is not HIV resistant is a bad idea. However, you seem to be looking at disease resistance in a very small-picture way. Animals have complex immune systems that have evolved to fight pathogens and foreign substances (organic and inorganic). It is theoretically possible to breed an animal that has in general a superior resistance to a broad array of pathogens, though this comes at the cost of being metabolically expensive. You just need to properly work out the cost-benefit ratio. This is hard to do if you let your emotions get in the way.

Only teaching it on university level might act as a filter to keep it away from people who'll figure it means they should start an eugenics program.

Some people still cling to the idea that humans are divinely set apart from animals. We can breed animals to good effect. So too can we breed (and we have bred) humans to more efficiently function in society.

Re:Like to see this replicated

[ShakaUVM]

>>Black Death is not a virus. It is a bacterium. Yersinia pestis.

Maybe.

Yersina is actually just our best guess, but the modern version of it doesn't match symptoms of the black death from back in the day, so it could be something else entirely.

Re:Like to see this replicated

[firmamentalfalcon]

The dehumanizing actions that Hitler took is what people characterize as Hitler. When GP made his post, he was telling GGP that his idea is inhumane.

Sterilizing humans is not bad because Hitler had the idea. Instead, it is bad because it is similar to the ideas that made Hitler so hated.

When people say Hitler, they don't talk about the Hitler that eats and drink. They are talking about the evil archetype Hitler that represent everything evil.

In this case, GP's usage of Hitler was correct.

An incorrect usage would be your example, which incorrectly uses the Hitler name to refer to the person that he is.

Re:Like to see this replicated

[moosesocks]

However, finding a match is notoriously difficult. It's nowhere remotely as simple as finding a blood donor.

Many times, a donor can be found within the recipient's immediate family. However, when this is not possible, the odds of finding a match quickly diminish (particularly for minorities). A minority donor without a match in his/her immediate family has a 1 in 1,000,000 chance of finding a match.

I might as well take this opportunity to plug the National Marrow Registry, which you should totally join as a service to humanity.

Re:Like to see this replicated

[PCM2]

Words fail me. The DEFINITION of AIDS REQUIRES the patient to be 'HIV positive' in order for them to be diagnosed with 'AIDS'... i.e. it's a circular argument, moron...

Well, that's Koch's Postulates for you. If an organism has a disease and you can isolate a pathogen from that organism and then culture that pathogen outside the organism, then introduce that pathogen to another organism and the new organism exhibits the same disease... well, if you can do that, then Koch might say you're onto something. (This HAS been done with HIV/AIDS, by the way.)

By your logic, if the definition of having the flu requires that the patient be infected with a strain of the influenza virus, then it's a circular argument to claim that influenza causes the flu. So long as influenza can be isolated from any organism that doesn't have sniffles, then influenza must not cause flu.

Or to put it even more simply for you retards: TB death - HIV = TB death TB death WITH HIV = 'AIDS'

It is you who are making the circular argument. It is entirely possible to die of tuberculosis without having a compromised immune system -- in fact, it happens all the time -- and these deaths would not be classified as AIDS. A tuberculosis patient who does not mount an immune response is an anomaly, and then doctors must investigate why there is no immune response. Tuberculosis is not caused by a virus, and does not attack immune system cells, therefore a low T-cell count is not considered a symptom of tuberculosis. HIV is a virus and HIV has been shown to attack immune cells, therefore when a patient with both tuberculosis and HIV dies of tuberculosis after having failed to mount an immune response, it seems only logical to suspect HIV. But you argue that HIV does not cause AIDS, and in fact HIV is a harmless virus, and therefore someone who dies of TB with a compromised immune system who also has HIV could not have failed to mount an immune response because of HIV. What, then is the reason for the lack of immune response?

All the scientific evidence proves, beyond ANY doubt, that 'AIDS' is not a sexually transmitted disease, that 'AIDS' 'medications' are what kill people in the West

How? How does it prove this? Please explain, because so far it doesn't seem as if you're adequately informed.

The article you cite is extremely easy to rebut. Like Duseberg's original claims, it does not cite any research later than 1997. HIV/AIDS research has come a long, long way since then. Furthermore, the article only focuses on research into AIDS cases in the U.S. Its hypothesis is that AIDS is caused by the use of AZT and other drugs, including recreational drugs. It furthermore claims that almost all AIDS is found in homosexual men and heterosexual drug abusers. The implication is that behaviors, including sex between men and drug use, are the cause of AIDS.

How does this article explain the AIDS epidemic in Africa, where AIDS is far, far more prevalent than in the U.S.? During the height of the African epidemic, Africans did not have access to AZT or similar drugs, nor did they use cocaine and amyl poppers in any great prevalence. Furthermore, in Africa the AIDS epidemic is primarily a disease of heterosexuals, including females.

How does a behavior-based cause of AIDS explain cases of AIDS in children and hemophiliacs?

How does this theory of AIDS explain why HIV+ patients have had longer lifespans since the beginning of the HAART (highly active antiretroviral therapy) era? If, as you claim, the cause of AIDS is in fact the drugs designed to cure it, then why does giving patients a combination of many such drugs make them live longer than they did when they had just one such drug (AZT)?

Of course, none of you will bother reading it, because you might have to THINK, and you would literally rather DIE, wouldn't you?

I have read it. It is you who are not thinking. In f

Re:Like to see this replicated

[des09]

Say it as many times as you want to. I still think you have a poorly thought out position, I simply fail to see how preventing procreation improves the natural selection process, and, don't think "natural selection" is something that can be bypassed, or therefor needs to safeguarded.

Re:Like to see this replicated

[DamnStupidElf]

It's not "subjecting others to your religion". It's denial, and it's an important part of voluntary human relations. It simply doesn't matter if religion is behind it. Forcing doctors to perform procedures against their will is slavery.

A license to become a doctor or pharmacist implies putting the patient's interests first and following well established medical guidelines. If abortion, birth control, or euthanasia is what the patient wants, the *licensed* professions had better do their job or lose their license.

Would you license an engineer who wouldn't walk under ladders or go to the 13th floor to perform inspections, or who insisted the best way to keep a bridge standing was by throwing salt over his shoulder every day? Licensed professionals denying birth control is just as silly.

Re:Like to see this replicated

[flickwipe]

Sooo...
We mince up the population of Eyam and drink the soup and have immunity from HIV yes?
Brb, bowl.

Re:Like to see this replicated

[RobertM1968]

I'm aware of that. I would not choose such a route either. But then again, my choice would be both (a) illogical and (b) the incorrect choice if this epidemic really started spreading and I was trying to save humanity.

I wasnt agreeing with his ideas - I was saying that logically they may be "wise" (depending on the circumstances). Thus though he may be correct in that fashion...

Well, hopefully you get the point.

Though I think he mis-worded the last sentence... it would be unwise to sterilize those who could pass on the immunity (as he indicated in the first paragraph).

Re:Like to see this replicated

[lord_sarpedon]

I can see it now.

"Hi there gorgeous, I'm HIV-immune. You _must_ have sex with me! It's to save humanity, after all!"

Re:Like to see this replicated

[RobinH]

Wouldn't something like a "pay it forward" scheme work better? Like by signing up for this treatment, you agree to be a donor twice in the future...

Re:Like to see this replicated

[swillden]

In order to cure HIV with this method, it's necessary to destroy the recipient's bone marrow, because it produces T cells that are vulnerable to HIV.

In most other cases, autologous transplants are done precisely because some other treatment has destroyed the donor/recipient's bone marrow, and allogeneic transplants require supression of the immune system to reduce the risk of graft vs host disease.

Pretty much every BM transplant requires immunosuppression for one reason or another. You're right that the transplant itself doesn't necessarily require that, but it's a distinction without a difference.

Re:Like to see this replicated

[TrekkieTechie]

Touche. At least she has a name now -- though I kind of liked not knowing. Added to her mystery. She'll always be Thirteen to me...

Re:Like to see this replicated

[petermgreen]

It's hard to tell from the article but my understanding was this HIV treatment relied on destroying the immune system and then replacing it with one that was HIV immune.

Since the cancer treatment required that anyway they got this aids cure essentially for free but I wonder if in cases with just aids and no cancer this will be a case of the cure being worse than the desiese.

Re:Like to see this replicated

[MindlessAutomata]

They seem to be through with the original spirit of the show, making it less "medical mystery" and more "hospital soap opera". :(

Re:Like to see this replicated

[petermgreen]

Just how much is the real income tax and sales tax rate in most parts of the US? From what I could gather it varies a lot but in many places it is pretty close to britan once you add all the levels at which tax is taken off.

Re:Like to see this replicated

[Kleen13]

You seem to know what you're talking about, so I'll ask you... How does one know that they are immune? It's not something that's commonly screened for, correct? That makes me wonder if there may be higher numbers of possible donors out there that the medical community is even aware of.

Re:Like to see this replicated

[jcr]

nobody should need to give an excuse (such as conflict with religion or conscience) to avoid litigation for refusing services.

I concur. This only arises as a public policy issue, because the government is already interfering our choices w/r/t drugs. If all medications were over-the-counter as they should be, this would be a non-issue.

-jcr

Re:Like to see this replicated

[dilvish_the_damned]

Most of the drug treatments seemed like a viable strategy at one point. HIV mutates extremely rapidly though, and it seems able to bypass almost anything we can throw at it. If the new types of drugs can reduce the virus's ability to replicate effectively enough that it doesn't get an opportunity evolve a way round then in theory it could work. The problem with that is that you would need to administer the drug reliably on schedule for every infected person all the time and that doesn't happen. The treatments are expensive, and even worse, enough people see HIV/AIDS as some sort of punishment for promiscuity that some people are denied treatments intermittently because people don't feel comfortable giving it to them.

Is this anything like how good advice is denied to dipshits because its too dangerous to give it to you?
I will risk it this time: You may want to find a credible source to cite for that kind of dipshit claim.

Re:Like to see this replicated

[DebateG]

A variation in the CCR5 gene, called CCR5 delta32, confers immunity if you have two copies of the gene (remember, you get one copy from each of your parents). It's been known for a while that this is associated with AIDS resistance, so there have been many large cross-sectional studies to look at the population frequency. Although it is possible that the gene is more widespread in certain populations, it's still rare (10% in white of European descent, 2% in Asians); remember you must have *both* copies of the gene to be resistant to AIDS only ~1% of Europeans have that. The only way you'd know is to have the test for that specific mutation, and as far as I know, it's not really widely used clinically. Like I said, the main problem is that the bone marrow registries are quite small, and you can't find suitable matches for people based on their MHC matching. The chance of finding one of those isn't particularly good. You have to multiple that times the probability of having the right CCR5 type and we're talking pretty rare.

Re:Like to see this replicated

[repapetilto]

I would think that the advantage of a strategy that basically amounts to knocking out CCR5 is that there is none of that receptor at all for the HIV to interact with, while using an antagonist is probably never going to saturate the receptor without raising the dose so high that you're going to get side effects somewhere, which leads me to a couple questions (my immunology is severely lacking). 1) Where are T-cells located (ie in the bloodstream, in connective tissue, etc)? What happens to HIV if it doesn't find a host cell and how long does this take (ie whats a single virons usual lifespan in a host, do they end up clogging up capillaries, do they somehow migrate out of the blood vessels)? I mean does it make sense to think a combination of a CCR5 antagonist and siRNA for CCR5 would result in few enough Virons being successful that they would get degraded in a reasonable time span after using up all available hosts?

Re:Like to see this replicated

[pcolaman]

Umm, this is the 1980's we're talking about. Come join us in the 21st century. I doubt you will find many that share that belief anymore. Of course, you will find some, there are nutjobs in any large group of people. However, I doubt you will find many that have a real position of authority. Most people in those sort of positions, even if they did hold such a viewpoint, would generally keep that viewpoint as much a secret as possible if they cared about their job. In this day and age, anything that anyone does gets scrutinized to the nth degree thanks to the age of internet reporting and the 24 hour cable news cycle.

Re:Like to see this replicated

[pcolaman]

Sales tax in much of America is under 10% of purchased goods, and most food stuffs are not taxed at all. You can generally go to the grocery store, buy nothing but food, and pay very little in taxes (some food stuffs are taxed depending on it, but generally none of your produce, meats, etc are). Also, most anything bought under WIC (Program to help families who are in need of assistance to help care for a child, mostly relates to formula, baby food, and diapers) is not taxed as well (most states do not tax formula, diapers, etc). So people who are poor can live without luxury items like MP3 players and Big Screen TVs, buy the stuff they really need, and get taxed hardly on any of it. So really, the whole sales tax debate is just one brought up to make it seem like Americans pay a lot more taxes than they do. The taxes I pay for buying a Playstation 3 or a diamond ring go to the state anyways, not the Federal Government. In the US, we believe in smaller Federal Government, more power by the states, Fed Government protects us from outside powers, keeps the states from breaking the US Constitution, and provides assistance where the states are not capable. Also provides for a means of arbitrating between states and providing law enforcement in areas where the states are not capable (such as interstate crime) and provides some social services in addition to what states already provide. So, in conclusion, yes, you can pay high taxes, but are not forced to. No one says you really have to have that MP3 player, and if you want it really bad but don't want to pay sales tax for it, you can just buy it online. In the US, anything bought online from out of state is not taxable unless your state (hardly any IIRC) imposes an internet sales tax. I know in Florida, if I buy something online, as long as that company does not have a brick and mortar presence in the state of Florida, I pay zero taxes on it.

Re:Like to see this replicated

[pcolaman]

He was making the argument that people disagreed with someone's sexual lifestyle and thought that because they were sinners, they deserved no treatment. The "proof" he provided had nothing to do with his argument. It was case study on the provision or lack thereof of HIV/AIDS drugs to active drug users. If you can show me a connection there, I'll give you a cookie.

Re:Like to see this replicated

[Cor-cor]

(Note to moderators: There is no -1 Controversial. If you disagree, be man enough to answer.)

From Wikipedia (with emphasis added):

An Internet troll, or simply troll in Internet slang, is someone who posts controversial, inflammatory, irrelevant or off-topic messages in an online community, such as an online discussion forum or chat room, with the intention of provoking other users into an emotional response[1] or to generally disrupt normal on-topic discussion.[2]

It's nice of you to make it so easy to moderate your post. Hopefully this gives those who don't understand the moderation system some idea of what the mods are looking at and why they don't like people who just try to piss others off.

Re:Like to see this replicated

[Dun Malg]

It's not "subjecting others to your religion". It's denial, and it's an important part of voluntary human relations.

It's not that simple. There are PLENTY of cases where denial of service isn't a protected right. Try denying filling prescriptions to (say) women, or "mexicans", or Methodists and claim it as a denial based on religious belief, and you'll find yourself staring down the barrel of a nasty legal proceeding.

Re:Like to see this replicated

[lwsimon]

"...quickly spreads to more insidious things..."

Really?

"In God We Trust" first appeared on US coinage in 1865.

http://www.ustreas.gov/education/fact-sheets/currency/in-god-we-trust.shtml

You seem to be confusing "freedom of religion" with "freedom from religion". The only thing the US federal government is prevented from doing is establishing a state religion or designating a single religion as state-sponsored.

I don't understand the huge emotion involved in purging religion from our history. I'm not a very religious person, and I'm not offended by this. Our laws are indeed based on the Ten Commandments, at least on their base level.

Finally, if you own a business, you should be able to refuse service for any reason, or no reason. A pharmacist does not owe you anything --- either pay for his services at the price they are offered (if they are offered), or go elsewhere.

Re:Like to see this replicated

[Foobar of Borg]

So, unless that person offers you a bone-marrow transplant, it's probably still a good idea to use a rubber...

Great! So now it's gone from "Will you respect me in the morning?" to "Will you give me a bone marrow transplant in the morning?" I swear! Some women are never satisfied.

Re:Like to see this replicated

[markass530]

actually hitler was a teetotaler, I know this becauee I use it as an argument against all the assholes that tell me I shouldn't drink

Re:Like to see this replicated

[Free the Cowards]

I'm about as un-religious as they come, and I think birth control is fine.

That said, your position seems awfully twisted. Pharmacists are not government employees. They are free individuals. How is it that letting pharmacists refuse to do certain types of business is "subjecting others to your religion", but forcing pharmacists to take actions that go against their religion is "freedom of religion"?

I think that all pharmacists should fill any prescription taken to them. But I also think that forcing pharmacists to fill prescriptions against their will is wrong. It's unfortunate if they do it, but the correct action is to take your business elsewhere, not get the government to force people to compromise their beliefs.

Re:Like to see this replicated

[Raffaello]

dude, you need to be wearing lederhosen for this to work - and singing deutschland uber alles.

Re:Like to see this replicated

[Lost Engineer]

So is the government supposed to produce a list of medications that pharmacies must stock now?

GP's definition of slavery is a bit off, but you're definition of freedom leaves even more to be desired.

Re:Like to see this replicated

[Midnight Thunder]

Transplanting bone marrow to a HIV-infected individual should, IMO, be followed by a mandatory sterilisation.

The exact same argument can be made about any other deadly disease with a cure. We should obviously be sterilising everyone who gets antiobiotics to cure pneumonia.

The other problem is that there is an assumption that HIV was caught through sexual activity. While a large percentage is probably due to this, there are other ways such as contaminated needles and infected blood. Also, making a person sterile is not really going prevent the spread of HIV due to sexual activity, since sterile or not there are still fluids acting as transport for the virus.

Re:Like to see this replicated

[pbaer]

I don't know how accurate this is, but I remember reading that 15% of Fins are HIV immune.

Re:Like to see this replicated

[Lost Engineer]

Which other disease discovered since the 2nd half of the 20th century were doctors so much quicker to isolate and attempt to cure that you can call the response to AIDS slow?

Re:Like to see this replicated

[mrmeval]

Will they get a fee for each copy? Will there be a Donor Association to enforce their copyright? If you don't pay they hack the organ out?

Re:Like to see this replicated

[onecheapgeek]

What about forcing a pharmacist to do their job and fill all valid prescriptions put before them? No one is talking about forcing doctors to perform procedures, this is about pharmacists deciding not to fill certain prescriptions because they don't like one of their uses.

Re:Like to see this replicated

[Lost Engineer]

I propose we dedicate 100% of GDP to extending the lives of the old and the sick. Now my conscience is clear.

Re:Like to see this replicated

[Xtravar]

Eh, let's just get rid of the licenses, and let everyone do whatever they think is best for their own person.

If I think Joe down the street is good at pairing symptoms with drugs, let both of us take a voluntary risk.

Re:Like to see this replicated

[fractoid]

You can't 'work against' natural selection. It's not a rule that you can fight, it's a description of what will happen regardless. All that we're doing is messing around with the fitness function. Sure, 'being very short sighted' or 'RH positive mother with RH negative baby' or 'broke ma leg, an it git infected' aren't deadly any more. But to counteract that, we have 'doesn't look both ways before crossing the road' and 'can't maintain hygiene standards and talk to the opposite sex'. ;)

The problem as I see it is where the fitness function doesn't match what I think it 'ought' to be. For instance, professional couples have a lower birth rate because they're too busy to care for kids and they have access to reliable contraceptives, whereas welfare families get extra handouts per child and so they just keep pumpin' em out (and teaching them that "this is how you get money").

Re:Like to see this replicated

[yndrd1984]

You seem to be confusing "freedom of religion" with "freedom from religion". The only thing the US federal government is prevented from doing is establishing a state religion or designating a single religion as state-sponsored.

You seem to be misreading the first amendment, when it says "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion..." translates directly to "Congress shall make no law with regard to a religious organization...". This does not just prevent the government from picking a state religion, it also prevents congress from supporting monotheism in general. And just a s bit of support for this, the Supreme Court has stated that, under the first amendment, "government should not prefer one religion to another, or religion to irreligion."

Our laws are indeed based on the Ten Commandments, at least on their base level.

Not really - I have yet to find the concepts of "voting" or "rights" anywhere in the Bible. Of the commandments, only six through nine are a significant part of our legal system (the rest are rare exceptions, like "blue laws" preventing alcohol from being sold on Sunday) and those four commandments are such basic concepts that they've been a part of human morality since before we had codified rules at all, and perhaps even before writing existed.

If you want the real basis of American law, start with John Locke. Christianity did influence the American legal system, of course, but the real basis for it (individual rights, restrained government, elections) came from ancient Greek and secular philosophers.

I don't understand the huge emotion involved in purging religion from our history.

And I don't understand why people keep trying to make religion central to everything in our history, even when other influences were clearly greater.

Re:Like to see this replicated

[ultranova]

Um, no, that doesn't follow at all. Or did you fail to see that the sterilisation would only be for those who (a) carry the HIV virus and (b) have received a bone marrow transplant giving them artificial immunity?

No.

terilising these individuals would not cause culling of genetic variations at all -- compared to not giving them the bone marrow transplant in the first place, it's a zero sum.

No. HIV takes such a long time to kill its host, even if the host is vulnerable, that they would likely have time to get offspring. You are, in fact, trying to create artificial selective pressures here.

And even if you're opposed to restoring that equilibrium (fair enough), you're still not "culling 99% of genetic variations from humanity" by sterlising a small fraction of a percent of the human race.

If HIV will never spread to more than a "fraction of a percent" of the human race, then what use is your eugenics program, exactly speaking ? Trying to make people resistant to a virus they have almost no chance of contracting, and which can be cured even if they do ?

Re:Like to see this replicated

[iluvcapra]

But no-one has advocated sterlilisation based on HIV suscpeptibility.

Uh, you said it should be "mandatory," contingent upon availing oneself of a lifesaving treatment. What are you going to do, handcuff people to the bed after the bone marrow transplant, so they don't skip the country before the sterilization? In the end, the choice you present to the afflicted is horrible: die of an fatal disease for which a cure exists, or survive in exchange for giving away a fundamental human right, really the animating human activity. You preach eugenics.

Sterilisation of those who otherwise would have been removed from the gene pool if it wasn't for genetic intervention is a very different thing. That is a measure to reduce our meddling.

And the un-meddling of the meddling, and the un-meddling of the other meddling, ad infinitum. The problem is that "meddling" is an artificial idea, and can be defined by any group to mean whatever they feel is "undesireable" in a "true" or "perfect" or "most optimal" human. No person should have the right to judge an other person's genotype for any reason; the only survivability criterion is survival, period. There is no handicapping for "artificial" "medical advances" or "modern society." Are ants cheating evolution by forming colonies and mutually aiding each other? How do you know that diseases are not stimulating our societies development and survivability by spreading vital knowledge memes, and that by breeding out variances due to some disease threat local in space and time (like HIV), you aren't compromising other factors? You tamper with a great machine.

In the end, the problem is political. Any regime that would force a reproductive choice upon an individual is wrong, no matter what justification or quid pro quo may be involved. It was wrong when states were paying "morons" to be sterilized, and it's still wrong.

Re:Like to see this replicated

[jmhoule314]

dont forget wegeners,sarcodosis,and wilsons disease.

Re:Like to see this replicated

[Thiez]

I was merely objecting to GGPs implied reasoning:

A. Hitler sterilized people he considered inferior.
B. Hitler is bad.
C. Thus sterilizing people you consider inferior is bad.

Which is wrong.

I agree that sterilizing people is bad, but that is because the thing in itself is bad, not because 'Hitler did it too'. Hitler wasn't the only one who practiced eugenetics you know... *cough*U.S.*cough*.

This whole thing is kind of blown out of proportion, it appears I have 12 reactions now on a post that was merely meant to point at GGP's Reduction ad Hitlerum. I probably should have been less vague.

Re:Like to see this replicated

[ceoyoyo]

Bone marrow harvesting is not basically chemotherapy. That's bone marrow transplant.

The harvesting is not necessarily very unpleasant. Having the transplant is. High dose chemo and radiation are not pleasant and the 30% fatality rate is also problematic.

Re:Like to see this replicated

[ceoyoyo]

No. Bone marrow stem cells are very difficult to keep in culture, never mind amplify to a great degree. There's some promising research, but bone marrow transplants are generally pretty straight shots from donor to recipient.

Re:Like to see this replicated

[nog_lorp]

What? I've never heard of an instance in the US where someone was given medication by a pharmacist without paying for it...

Re:Like to see this replicated

[arkhan_jg]

Ok, try this one on for size.

"It's denial, and it's an important part of voluntary human relations. It simply doesn't matter if racism is behind it. Forcing doctors to perform procedures on black people against the will of the doctor is slavery."

Pharmacists aren't doctors, but that isn't particularly relevent. It's not slavery because the pharmacist has a choice to go and do something else. He will also get paid for serving a morning-after pill just like everything else. Most of us don't cry over the loss of a bar-owner's "right" not to serve black people or women.

As a society, we consider the greater good of civil rights legislation, that all people shall be treated equally to be greater than the ability of a bigot to refuse service to those he dislikes.

If the bigot doesn't like that? He's entirely welcome to go do something else that doesn't offend his bigoted sensibilities.

Or you know, I don't feel like serving any customers today. But I should still be employed, and get paid the same as my co-worker. It's just my religion says I'm not allowed to talk to anybody who isn't also in my religion, in case they corrupt my immortal soul. So I'll be out back, watching TV. But I have the right not to serve any customers dammit, and you can't fire me! My religion says so, and firing me for slacking off would be making me a SLAVE!

Re:Like to see this replicated

[arkhan_jg]

I just wanted to thank you. You might just be arguing a troll, but you're doing so using the tools of science and well-informed reasoned debate using points non-biologists can follow easily. I for one learned a couple of new arguments against such dangerous mal-information. So.. thank you.

Re:Like to see this replicated

[pipoca]

1. "I am the LORD your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt, from the house of slavery. You shall have no other gods before Me..."

Seeing as freedom of religion is in our constitution, our law has no base in this.

2. "Do not make an image or any likeness of what is in the heavens above..."

Again, freedom of religion. Nowhere is anything legislated that prohibits idol worship.

3. "Do not swear falsely by the name of the LORD..."

Guess what? Only kind of covered by obscenity laws, and definitely not covered today. Not explicitly illegal, but could be in certain situations (e.g. being broadcast in a puritan area).

4. "Remember the Sabbath day and keep it holy"

The only thing kind of like that are blue laws. Freedom of religion, and all, not much is legislated here.

5. "Honor your father and your mother..."

When your a minor, you're legally required to obey your parents a certain amount, but still, it's a stretch.

6. "Do not murder"

Well, plenty of laws against this.

7. "Do not commit adultery

Again, not precisely illegal, but can be used in legal proceedings for divorces and suchnot.

8. "Do not steal."

Another one where there are plenty of laws against.

9. "Do not bear false witness against your neighbor"

Only illegal in the case of purjury.

10. "Do not covet your neighbor's wife"

Not illegal in the slightest.

So... for a law system supposedly based on 10 rules, you've only got 2 which are really illegal, a handful which are completely legal, and several where a stretch can be made to link it to the law. Yeah... our legal system is totally based on them...

Re:Like to see this replicated

[amorsen]

Sorry, English is my second language. What is the English word for a bacterial infection in the lungs?

Re:Like to see this replicated

[arkhan_jg]

Well you dedicate 68% of your discretionary federal budget to blowing things up and killing people. It's only $799 billion, twice as much as you spend on medicare. Perhaps a slight middle ground to avoid bankrupting sick people would be in order?

Re:Like to see this replicated

[hachi-control]

Pneumonia? Pft. We should be sterilizing people that get the 'flu. Especially since they'll have antibodies against it afterwards, just terrible for society!

Re:Like to see this replicated

[lordofthechia]

"Yo baby, i have HIV immunity"

(Wakes up the next morning in a bathtub filled with ice and a note that says "Your bone marrow has been removed, seek immediate medical attention!)

Re:Like to see this replicated

[misterjjones]

Wouldn't this then become something of a pyramid scheme? Yes, we'll charge you a vast amount of money for your transplant, but you can recoup it, AND MORE, from selling your own marrow later!!!! I guess it would speed up the treatment, you wouldn't want to be the last person to receive a marrow transplant, after all....

Re:Like to see this replicated

[giorgiofr]

But we "change the equation" every single time we give any kind of medical treatment to anyone. Why are you singling this specific treatment out?

Re:Like to see this replicated

[BiggerIsBetter]

I dunno ... is she really hot?

Nobody said it would be a she.

Re:Like to see this replicated

[olman]

I dunno ... is she really hot?

Or more to the point, worth dying for?

Re:Like to see this replicated

[HungryHobo]

http://www.talk2action.org/story/2006/5/8/113314/2024

Cases where women are denied drugs, in the example antibiotics, simply because the prescriptions have been issued by a women's clinic which performed abortions.

Funding for treatment, education and condoms gets denied because religious nutcases are in charge and isn't granted unless the education becomes "education" and only mentions abstinance only and the birth control gets removed entirely.

So yes. people do get denied treatment for religous "moral reasons" because they fit the wrong profile or got their prescriptions from the wrong clinic. It most certainly is bullshit.
Sheep who let the local priest think for them do tend to hate whores and gays and do everything they can to make life harded for them.

Re:Like to see this replicated

[marcosdumay]

That is the decision that would lead to the extinction of humanity. Nobody is immune to all disieases.

A more logical decision would be to apply such treatment massively on everybody that gets infected, and extinguish the virus.

Re:Like to see this replicated

[HungryHobo]

*harder not harded

Re:Like to see this replicated

[marcosdumay]

Yes, but economies of scale are huge on high tech medicin.

Re:Like to see this replicated

[pradeepsekar]

We do not sterilise people just because antibiotics have helped them survive an infection.

Re:Like to see this replicated

[FrkyD]

You egotistical fucktard. The health system isn't just about old and sick. It's about new-borns and their parents, children, and the working adult.

In a country with a functioning social network, it is actually possible to have a high standard of living , even if income is considerably lower than places like the U.S. It's not just about being able to go to the doctor when I want (which is great, btw) but knowing that being sick won't leave me unemployed.

Combined with a shorter workweek, real vacation time and a decent wage, that means I actually end up getting sick much less frequently. Lower stress levels does wonders for a persons health, and it actually makes society in general a much more pleasant place, as we have fewer people who are as aggressive as those in the states. Crime rates are lower, violent crime much less violent, and people are less likely to resort to crime out of a sense of desperation.

On the other hand, I really wish you could experience the full consequences of a true pay as you go society. God knows I shudder at the thought that ANY taxpayer has been forced to support any aspect of your apparently ungrateful and selfish existance.

You aren't by any chance born again are you?

Re:Like to see this replicated

[moortak]

My wife and many others have been refused prescriptions. Sadly enough birth control is a touchy subject for some people.

Re:Like to see this replicated

[Miseph]

Remember how they were all up in the Avian Flu's nuts before there was even a single human diagnosis?

Remember that stupid SARS shit that nearly shut down all international travel around 2000?

Ebola?

i'd hope at least one of those is ringning some bells for you.

Re:Like to see this replicated

[SlashBugs]

Beats me. I'm just a software engineer. Maybe SlashBugs can help you out there.

Based on my activity in this thread so far, I'm actually slightly more likely to start ranting at people. I really must stop that...

Anyway:

How large of a sample of people do you need to do a genome comparison and locate the gene that provides the immunity?

In this specific case, I think it's known to be CCR5. I don't know the story in detail, but I think they identified the HIV receptors and then started looking at the gene, so they alrady knew what they were looking for. In general though, this is hugely variable between diseases. In something like Downs' Syndrome and a few kinds of cancer, the difference is very easy to spot because it's a huge genetic change. Downs' sufferers have a whole extra chromosome and, IIRC, there's a type of leukemia that's characterised by an arm of one chromosome translocating onto another choromosome. These are both very obvious, so you have a high signal:noise ratio.

Most genetic disesases and heritible vulnerabilities to disease are much more complex, so the analysis is looking for an unknown pattern of small changes in the whole genome. As an example, I know someone who's looking at genome information from healthy people and a specific subset of breast cancer patients. She's doing statistical analyses of all the information she has, trying to find and significant pattern that'll tell her who's particularly predisposed to the condition. Here the signal:noise ratio is much lower because she's looking for changes that are probably much smaller, maybe mutations in just one or two genes. She has genetic information from a few hundred cancer patients and is finding it difficult to see any statistical significance. Bigger programs, as run by people like the WHO, get samples from tens or hundreds of thousands of people (depending on the disease), which obviously increases the statistical power of the study.

That was a bit of a tangent from your question, but I think this stuff is cool :D.

Can gene therapy be utilized here?

In principle, yes. Lacking the CCR5 gene doesn't seem to have big side-effects, although may increase your risk of getting West Nile Virus (unfortunate, but not as bad as AIDS). There are several fairly easy techniques to stop cells from making CCR5 or to block its activity in the lab, so it's very tempting to try thm in patients. However, delivering these techniques to a person without unacceptable side-effects is still tricky. A few clinical trials have shown promise (the X-SCID trial that cured a few immuno-suppressed "bubble boys" but later gave two of them leukemia; the cystic fibrosis trail that cured the patients completely but only for about four weeks... etc.), but there isn't really much ready to be used used in the clinic yet.

Re:Like to see this replicated

[drinkypoo]

The treatments are artificially expensive. There, fixed that for you. Insurance companies and big pharma et al are mass murderers.

Re:Like to see this replicated

[Lershac]

See, one of the reasons Hitler is considered a Bad Person, was BECAUSE he sterilized people he considered inferior.

So I vehemently disagree with you. Whether the US did it or not... When anyone makes that judgement (you are genetically inferior) and (this is critical) takes action based on it to remove them from the gene pool... well they are monsters in my book.

Re:Like to see this replicated

[galoise]

i'd say that it depends on the amount of DNA material that makes up the particular gene that produces the phenotipic effect of HIV imunity. Could be just a couple thousand if the the amount to be isolated is big enough, or LOTS if its just a couple of dna pairings. think of it in terms of sets: you need to find a common subset of dna in the very large set of possible dna combinations. the bigger the set you want to find, the smaller the group you'll need to identify it, at least theoretically.

but mind you, IANAMolecularBiologist, just a statistician :)

Re:Like to see this replicated

[KillerBob]

The same reason they tolerate laws making homosexuality illegal. Religious interference... I've been through the Bible Belt in the US, and you have no idea how ridiculous it is until you pass through an area with more churches than grocery stores.

In most of the country, particularly the areas with more wealth and denser populations, such a law would never stand. Or rather, no right-minded pharmacist would ever exert that right, because they'd just be driving business away to the competition. In a small, deeply religious community with no choice in businesses? Perhaps. But unlikely. I have a very hard time swallowing the idea of a pharmacist denying somebody their prescription on religious grounds... they are well aware of how the prescriptions they're filling are medically necessary, and it isn't a career you choose unless you want to help people.

I had thought that he was talking about places like Africa... I could see people being denied treatment because of the stigma there, but in North America? o.O

Re:Like to see this replicated

[freespac3]

*claps* Thank you for your excellent post. Reminds me of why I come to /. :-)

Re:Like to see this replicated

[Anonymous Coward]

The fact that this "rebuttal" is modded +4 insightful is proof the /. moderation system is broken. Let's try to keep agreement out of the equation please.

Re:Like to see this replicated

[theaveng]

I don't think those of us on Slashdot need to worry about acquiring HIV through sex.

Re:Like to see this replicated

[garyebickford]

if your religion prevents you from performing the responsibilities of a medical professional, then you probably shouldn't be a doctor/nurse/pharmacist/etc. and AFAIK, pharmacists can quit their jobs or switch to a different occupation any time they want. no one is forcing them to be a pharmacist.

if you think that your religious freedoms include the right to deny someone else the medication they've been prescribed by their physician, then you are part of the reason why the conscience clause exists. freedom/liberty doesn't mean you have the right to do whatever you want regardless of the consequences it has on others.

Using your reasoning, then if the government enacts a law that violates your conscience, you should give up your career? My understanding of the principles of law is that we are obligated to put conscience above the law. For example, in the Nuremberg trials, various Germans were convicted despite "just following orders". Then there are also many instances of medical research (a very little bit of which was actually quite valuable) in many countries including the US, that involved the torture or death of subjects. Many of those who participated in such research have been brought to justice 30, 40, 50, and 60 years later.

For a specific example, in many cultures at one time or another, infants were 'tested' at the time of birth in various ways, and allowed to die if they didn't meet societal criteria for survival. Other societies did not give infants names until they were two years old, as so many of them died. Therefore, it is entirely possible that some government in the future would enact such laws. One side of the argument about partial birth abortion is that it is a present case of live-birth infanticide. So if the government should enact a law allowing all infants that don't meet some criteria for health or fitness to be killed (by whatever means), should the physician, nurses and aides all participate?

It seems to me that you are arguing that a doctor or pharmacist who is faced with participating in such horrific (from most people's point of view) practices should either proceed, or quietly go away, leaving the government to proceed with impunity. Or, in the case of a pharmacist, if a doctor were to prescribe an lethal overdose of painkiller (for whatever reason), then the pharmacist's obligation (perhaps after checking with the doctor) would be either to prescribe it or to quit the business.

I think you have confused conscience with desire. These professionals are not doing this because it is fun; they are doing it because they believe it is unethical, possibly illegal, and wrong. I think it was Patrick Henry who said, "Liberty is not the freedom to do what you want; it is the freedom to do what you must." Those medical professionals who refuse to participate in immoral acts out of conscience are following that principle. They are doing it because they must. If you disagree with them, then you are free to argue the case, but don't dismiss them out of hand.

Re:Like to see this replicated

[GargamelSpaceman]

I'm all for a pharmacist giving an interview and refusing to sell the drugs if they are not happy with the answers given. If I am filling 2 prescriptions for incompatible drugs, I want the pharmacist to warn me, ask me if I understand that taking these two together will kill me, and then refuse to sell me one or the other.

It is entirely appropriate for a pharmacist to explain how to take the morning after pill, including interviewing the patient to determine if for instance, the possible pregnancy is within the window for aborting with the morning after pill. You KNOW there are idiots that will try taking the morning after pill at three months pregnant. A pharmacist can and should prevent this. Don't antibiotics mess with the pill? Are you taking antibiotics seems like a great interview question to ask...

If a pharmacist won't give a clear answer as to why they are refusing to sell the drugs, then it's up to the patient to find a pharmacist who will. If there is no medical reason why the first pharmacist refused to sell the drugs, then there will be no problem finding a pharmacist that will sell them. If there is some bible belt conspiracy of pharmacists to not sell the morning after pill, then there needs to be something like Planned Parenthood around to point to a pharmacist that will sell the morning after pill.

The days of cramming crocodile dung up your snaz as birth control are over, effective as that may have been...

Re:Like to see this replicated

[ketilwaa]

A quick honest question: I see you use and I have also used, the word "die" about viruses. Is that technically correct? Viruses are by definition not living creatures just DNA or RNA, so how can they die? Wouldn't "permanently inactivated" be a better term to use?

Re:Like to see this replicated

[Gothmolly]

No, it was introduced to allow a business owner to refuse to trade with someone with whom he did not wish to trade. A sale requires the sellers consent.

Re:Like to see this replicated

[arbitraryaardvark]

Couldn't the recipients, who will generate the new bone marrow, then be used as donors?

Right now, there's a ban on selling organs for donation in this country. However, bone marrow transplants are expensive. If the recipient could later be used as a donor, the ability to pay them for their marrow (thus allowing them to more easily pay for the original transplant) could really help move this thing along. Even if a marrow recipient is reluctant to donate his own marrow, if he had a very large medical bill and was offered money to donate, he would be much more likely to do so.

Of course, given the limited number of naturally HIV-immune people in existence today, it would drive up the price of a transplant in the short term as they demand high prices for their marrow, but in the long run it would even out as we create more HIV-immune people.

A few thoughts. Normally, when you are looking for a transplant donor, you don't look for someone with hiv. Even if this process works as a cure, there's still some risk in using hiv+ donors, even if the recipients are also hiv+.
So the way to go might be to use hiv- people as breeders of the immunity bone marrow.

Make money fast! Ask me how...

As noted above, this sort of thing tends to be illegal in the usa.
Biomedical research interprets censorship as damage and routes around it. The place to get this going might be India, Switzerland, Tonga.

If you have a lifethreatening need for organ transplant, looking only in the us can be deadly.
On the other hand, if you need some expensive medical procedure, medical tourism is just sound economic sense. It's cheaper to buy a plane ticket to India than to pay US prices for medical case.

I looked into the economics of being a compensated blood marrow donor in the us. $125 for a painful procedure - it wouldn't have paid my gas to go do it. I make part of my living testing new drugs, including aids drugs, for a few $K per clinical trial. I am generally open to selling extra body parts for enough cash.
I'd be willing to get injected with this immune bone marrow and have it harvested later if it works as a cure. Who do I call?

Re:Like to see this replicated

[KillerBob]

Your argument hinges on there actually being a cure for HIV. There isn't. Once you're infected, you're infected. All of the existing treatments focus on boosting your immune system, because it isn't HIV/AIDS that kills you, it's something else like a cold, or flu, once you have no immune system left.

TFA is talking about a course of treatments that effectively replaces your immune system with one that's immune to HIV. Once that's complete, getting "reinfected" doesn't matter: you're immune.

Re:Like to see this replicated

[ikeman32]

"in the U.S. there are also conscience clauses in several states that allow pharmacists to refuse to fill a patent's prescription based on religious grounds. this was primarily introduced to to deny women emergency contraceptive pills, but it also opens the door for denying patients other types of medical treatment based on religious prejudices."

You gotta be fucking shitting me. That's blattant violation of the separation of church and state. But given the current state of evangelical interferance it doesn't surprise me all that much. But damm I can't believe that the ACLU isn't all over this like stink on shit.

Re:Like to see this replicated

[mcgrew]

Show me proof that people are denied drugs based on moral grounds, or don't spout such bullshit. What you are trying to say here is people hate whores and gays, and you are trying to hide that statement in a carefully worded post

I don't think that's what he was saying at all. The point isn't that people with AIDS will be denied drugs, but that the patients themselves won't seek treatment for fear of the stigma.

Speaking of "carefully worded", why did you use a euphamism for "homosexual" while using a derogatory term for a prostitute? I have some close friends who are prostitutes; you can't use the word "whore" in most mainstream media.

If you're going to be PC, then be PC. Did you refrain from saying "whores and queers" or "prostitutes and gays" because you think there are gays at slashdot, but no prostitutes?

Re:Like to see this replicated

[mcgrew]

I met a really nice woman in my favorite bar, and we really hit it off. I asked her out to dinner, we have a date for Friday.

I found out a day or two ago that this woman has AIDS. Is there a test to see if you're immune to this disease? Because if not the date Friday will be as far as it goes; I can't be more than "just friends" with a woman with AIDS unless I find out I'm immune.

AFAIK all my anscestors were European.

Re:Like to see this replicated

[AdamTrace]

Wikipedia lists a number of different kinds of pneumonia, including...

# Bacterial pneumonia
# Viral pneumonia
# Fungal pneumonia
# Parasitic pneumonia ...

Adman

Re:Like to see this replicated

[jcr]

Forcing doctors to perform procedures on black people against the will of the doctor is slavery.

Forcing doctors to perform procedures on anyone against their will is slavery. Forced labor isn't justified merely because you disagree with the laborer's criteria for choosing what labor he is or is not willing to perform.

-jcr

Re:Like to see this replicated

[SchrodingersRoot]

I understand your argument. I don't agree with it, but I understand it.

First, for those reading, it should be noted that arth is not advocating sterilization if you simply don't have the genes--merely if you'd otherwise have been removed from the gene pool. That being said, I can't deny that it still smacks of 'genetic hygiene' programs...

But since you seem to be approaching this from a fairly purely logical standpoint, I'll dispense with the humanitarian side for the time being. The flaw I see in your argument is this: evolution is dumb. Which is to say, if you look at history, it's full of deadends, missteps, and mass extinctions. It is undirected. Unless you believe in ID, in which case, the appeal to natural selection seems unwarranted. One thing seems pretty clear to me, at least--in the general case, genetic diversity in a population tends to be significantly more advantageous than any single mutation when it comes to survival of that population. What is an advantage in one situation may prove to be fatal in another. Sickle cell anemia helps ward off malaria. Myopia mitigates age-induced presbyopia.

Example: a disease comes along and wipes out the part of the population that does not have the CCR5 receptor. The population then uniformly has no CCR5. If another disease were to come along that the CCR5 receptor were to play a significant part in fighting (which is not implausible), then that disease might rampage through the population unchecked, wiping it out completely.

I don't know about you, but personally, I would prefer that my species--or its derivative--survives. If I can weight the dice thus, I will. I don't think natural selection is anything holy, that we're not to stand against. If you, on the other hand, only care about the 'Law' of natural selection and evolution, then I don't think we have enough common ground to establish any sort of framework for discussion. Me, I've got a vested interest.

Re:Like to see this replicated

[mechsoph]

If people have no problems paying health insurance (if they can afford it), then why is it such a problem to pay taxes to fund a proper health system?

Why does "proper" mean socialized? The problem I personally have is that I'm pretty sure our government will bungle things more than the current insurance companies and hospitals who sort-of have to compete against each other

The real problem here is a horrible regulatory framework that restricts supply, minimizes competition, and promotes frivolous malpractice suits, all of which drive up costs. Why is it that when government screws up, the answer is more government?

...unfair...

Interesting choice of words. What is fair? Equal opportunity? Equal results? Is any of this even possible?

Re:Like to see this replicated

[Mr. Foogle]

Try getting your science from reputable schools or journals rather than mass-market paperbacks.

One problem is that journals cost a whole lot more than a mass-market paperback. I can drop X dollars for a journal or a fraction of that for a paperback.

It's not the mass-market paperbacks that are the problem but the quality of the information inside.

Re:Like to see this replicated

[Tattva]

Awesome post, this is what I wish Slashdot would consistently deliver.

Re:Like to see this replicated

[triplepoint217]

I don't know this system in great detail, but I suspect the challenge would be in saturating all of the receptors. If even a few receptors were left unblocked, HIV could still enter the cell at a reduced rate. Thus, likely it would help with the infection but not cure it. I would not suggest trying this though, because having a person where HIV replication was still possible but substantially slowed by the blockage of this receptor would provide an excellent environment for evolving a HIV strain that could bypass this natural immunity and possible cure. I guess if you can make sure the person doesn't pass on their HIV then that isn't too bad for society, but it is a danger worth considering.

Re:Like to see this replicated

[butterflysrage]

maybe YOU can go to another pharmacy... maybe you live in a nice sized city or town that has more then one, maybe you can afford to drive a few hours to get to a city/town where you can get your Rx filled by someone else

not everyone is so lucky.

My hometown had exactly one pharmacy... the next one was an hour and a half away, if you needed to take a bus it left at noon 5-days a week. So if you needed a Plan-B Friday at 1:00pm and the local one refused, sorry, welcome to parenthood.

and in case you missed it, this law does not just cover pharmacists, it also covers paramedics. there have been cases where paramedics have stopped treatment of people because of their religious beliefs and they died without getting to a hospital. When you are broken and bleeding after a car crash you don't exactly have the option of calling around to various hospitals to see who can get you the best deal, you get whoever comes... and if that person is a bigot then you die.

if you do not believe that this clause has been used to stop emergency medical care, then I suggest you research the death of Tyra Hunter

Re:Like to see this replicated

[mcgrew]

God damn it, that was NOT a fucking troll. It was the absolute truth and I would sincerely like an answer. I'm incredibly offended that you would bury it with that stupid asinine moderation. Now mod this one flamebait, morons.

God I wish the dimwits would go back to digg and leave us adults alone.

Re:Like to see this replicated

[IronChef]

I'm voting for a parasite.

Well... Maybe a toxin. Break in to his apartment and check it out.

Re:Like to see this replicated

[hesaigo999ca]

This will open the door to allowing cloning for sure...too few of the people with the immunity to AIDS exist, they will want to keep their dna and clone them for more bone marrow

Re:Like to see this replicated

[jafac]

The real question, then, I suppose, is how the fuck exactly does an AIDS patient survive this procedure? Their immune system is already compromised, and they're infected with this deadly retrovirus. Sounds riskier than normal.

Re:Like to see this replicated

[mmwithpeanuts]

This is an excellent article written here. I used to keep company with a group who all thought it was all a conspiracy. They had some facts right regarding doctor deaths per year (nearly 1 million accounting for all kinds of ailments, not only AIDS) caused by misdiagnosis, overmedication, and wrong surgeries, claiming these all pointed to the conspiracy. What an awful tragedy it was finding out that one of the children died, because she was refused medication, being too young to ask for treatment herself. They would go around saying, go ahead, have all the sex you want, when you want without protection, etc. They ate lots of vegetables, including drinking wheat grass each day. Every once in a while they would splurge on regular food, which their bodies found harder to process, as time went by. One, an (ex?) friend of mine finally broke away, asking me what I thought, after visiting him in the hospital, as he lay dying. I said, take the drugs, man! He did, and is now in much better health! I've done vast amounts of research on this subject, and realized that there are always going to be exceptions to any rule, as in waterproof doesn't always mean just that. Disease is a collaboration of many mini-diseases, including stress, (in many people), abuse, (in some) malnourishment, (probably a big factor in Africa) and whatever we eventually call the disease in all who are infected with the actual rogue mutant running amuck, hampering our lifestyles. The ability of the body to ward off, suppress, or destroy such a disease also includes many factors, some easier in some bodies, than others, thus the multi-faceted problems of effective combat for doctors/researchers in these instances. The people who wanted to believe the doctors were in conspiracy were only slightly right in that the meds they refuted, did indeed destroy (partially) the body they were meant to healthify. They only wanted a purely healthy dose of medicine without the side effects caused by most medicines. They decided healthy food would do the trick, unfortunately for some, that and the other 'organic' things they were doing, wasn't the solve all they needed. Although, I must say, some of them, I'm sure, are still in good health, and I wish them all the best. In the case of children, things can get very tough, as is the case with certain J Witnesses. Getting back to the article, two years is hardly enough time to elicit joy in a disease with such ravaging effects. Thank Goodness for the wait and see factor everyone usually adopts now a days, and let's keep our fingers crossed. Still, you are absolutely right to state that this form of procedure is too costly, and far to over the top for present day circumstances to make this a widespread treatment possibility. I am probably one of the few who believe this disease will either eradicate itself from humans, or will just eventually blend in so well, as to become non-harmful as the years go by, at least to a small minority at first, then eventually to most, just like the monkeys, where they say we got it from originally. Every so often there are diseases that spring up in the human chain that causes us to take pause, and know we are not alone in our evolutionary matrix, (if I may). Just like an asteroid, one comes around and just slams us hard! Then we look back and see what happened, perhaps realizing, this is all part of who we are in an ever expanding universe. We are futurists whose purpose is progression.

Re:Like to see this replicated

[HuguesT]

It's not that simple. In small town or villages there aren't that many pharmacies to choose from, and often only a single one in turn is open during holidays and at week ends.

Pharmacies perform a public service.

Re:Like to see this replicated

[Free the Cowards]

So what? Go to another town. Petition a chain to open another pharmacy in your town. Open your own pharmacy.

If your local supermarket didn't sell alcohol because the owners didn't believe it was morally right, would you think it acceptable to force them to sell alcohol against their will and against their religion?

There is no "right to a full-service pharmacy within convenient driving distance".

Re:Like to see this replicated

[Lost Engineer]

When avian flu appeared we knew we were looking for a flu. The symptoms appeared quickly and were well known. SARS was basically the same. Quarantine was possible because of the nature of the disease. This was not possible for AIDS, and HIV was not a known virus when AIDS was finally isolated as one particular disease. The fact that it appeared first in gay men was actually a boon to research because it was a clue to the infection vector.

Re:Like to see this replicated

[mi]

I'll be really interested to see if this DONOR can be replicated.

If I understand it right, every successfully treated patient becomes a potential donor... Offering treatment can be made conditional on the patient's willingness to become a donor at least twice after healing. Spread the health, so to speak.

Re:Like to see this replicated

[steeviant]

The fact that this "rebuttal" is modded +4 insightful is proof the /. moderation system is broken. Let's try to keep agreement out of the equation please.

Just because his answer was short and coarse doesn't change the fact that it's true.

Re:Like to see this replicated

[PCM2]

Dangerous, indeed. I actually believe that sometimes one has a civic duty to step up and argue this sort of thing.

The reason these kinds of ideas spread is because they go unchallenged. Sometimes people don't know how to address the specific talking points. Sometimes they think the idea sounds crazy and they just want to tell the other person to fuck off. But as long as an idea is left to float in the air, there's always the chance that someone else might listen and have a seed planted in their brain.

The idea that drugs cause AIDS is insidious because it sounds plausible. Whatever you may think of drug use -- right or wrong -- even the most unabashed recreational drug user will tell you that heavy drug use can be pretty rough on your body.

So it starts with a simple idea. "The math doesn't add up; there's no way that the gas chambers in Auschwitz could have been used to kill as many Jews as they say." Sounds interesting. Remind me to look up the figures sometime. But as soon as the door is opened, sooner or later other ideas get let in. "Isn't it true, after all, that in the late 1930s Jewish activist groups were inciting political unrest in Germany?"

If you look at the world political stage, HIV/AIDS is very much a human rights issue. In Africa, corrupt politicians have used arguments very similar to the GP's as tools of oppression. The same arguments can be used to deny basic human rights to entire segments of the U.S. population, as well -- and that would suit some people just fine. It falls to right-thinking, compassionate people to nip it in the bud.

Thank you for your kudos, though!

Re:Like to see this replicated

[Siker]

Brilliant post. Clear and to the point, backed by cogent reasoning and checkable facts.

Re:Like to see this replicated

[konohitowa]

He obviously knew his opinion was going to be controversial, hence his final sentence. And yes, it is extreme. What he's saying is that if you *opt* for the bone marrow transplant, then he doesn't think that should give you a genetic advantage to reproduce, because it's an unnatural advantage. And in this case, it's not something that causes you personally to perhaps be a burden upon society. Rather, it's something that can potentially cause you to infect multitudes of others. Which will only result in a majority populace that isn't immune, rather than the natural majority populace that is immune.

Having said all of that, the same can be said of polio and smallpox; which are at least closer analogies than Down's syndrome or sickle-cell. That is, if I'm correct in believing that neither of them are contagious.

Re:Like to see this replicated

[joocemann]

!!!I have returned upon horseback to tell you all that I, sir Joocemann, have stumbled upon a man, who was completely full.... ahem.. yes..... Full.. of.. Sh... Sh.. SHit! Haha... yeah. he was full of shit. I suppose thats just right how I felt about it! Good day, fine sir. Tea and crumpets are in the dayroom.

(rides off into the dark...)

Re:Like to see this replicated

[arth1]

What part of "with the intention of provoking other users" was it you didn't understand in the part you quoted?
There was absolutely nothing in the originall post that was intended to provoke other users. Whether it did provoke was all on the froth-at-the-mouth receiving end, not the posting end.

Re:Like to see this replicated

[arth1]

Antibiotics isn't a genetic alteration of the host. A bone marrow transplant is.

Re:Like to see this replicated

[ClioCJS]

what reality are you in? You do realize the people who aren't treated are MOST OFTEN DEAD and that's why you don't hear from them. American hospitals are only required to stabilize immediate health conditions that threaten your immediate health. Diseases and cancer do not fall into this category; if you don't have insurance, you will get treated, but only once you ARE IN THE PROCESS OF ACTUALLY DYING. If you have cancer and no insurance, nobody is going to pay for your chemotherapy. Once you start dying, and go to the hospital, then the hospital will try to keep you alive, but obviously will fail because you have advanced cancer. I spent a summer reviewing medical records of uninsured people, many who died. This is how it goes. And every death results in $500,000 of hospital money spent, which doesn't get recovered by insurance when the person is uninsured. Which is exactly why that person doesn't get more treatment; it already costs half a million just to let one person die. The money's simply not there under the current system, unless we socialize our health care like the rest of the developed world.

Here's a good comment for you: http://science.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1023173&cid=25697193

Re:Like to see this replicated

[sfjoe]

I've had a bone marrow transplant. It's not so much a transplant as a regeneration of bone marrow from the donor stem cells. In my case it was an autologous transplant, meaning I used my own stem cells. It sounds like the transplant being discussed is an allogeneic or donor transplant. An allogeneic transplant is no small procedure and I have to wonder if maybe the cure isn't as bad as the disease? After all, with treatment, isn't AIDS largely manageable these days? The fatality rate of an allogenic transplant approaches 1 in 5.

Re:Like to see this replicated

[pcolaman]

Sadly, it does happen, but you make it seem rampant. From what I have read (I'm not a woman and don't know anyone who's had an abortion, so I have no anecdotal evidence pro or con) these situations do happen but are isolated. And in many cases, if the woman has issues at one pharmacy, she can just go to another. Most of these problems are at mom and pop type pharmacies, not your walgreens, CVS, or Wally World. Most of the large companies have very strict non-discrimination policies when it comes to this sort of stuff.

Re:Like to see this replicated

[pcolaman]

I was referring more to the treatments that help people manage HIV, not cure it. But I do hope that one day there is a cure. Personally I'm all for giving the cure to anyone who has the disease, if there ever is a cure. That's assuming enough is available for everyone. But if we have limited supply, I'd say treat it similar to organ donation, which ignores social status but doesn't ignore your medical history. And Medical History includes drug abuse. That's not discrimination. That's pragmatic medical treatment.

Re:Like to see this replicated

[pcolaman]

I'm sorry but anyone who makes a living off of providing sex for money is a whore. That's the way I feel and no amount of PC sugarcoating will change my personal opinion of that. Being a homosexual, and being someone that pimps themselves out for cash, are two completely different beasts. You choose to be gay (or maybe born gay, another debate for another time) and that is a lifestyle choice, but one that harms no one else. If you provide sex for money, whether it be legal or not, you are cheapening the great and wonderful thing that is sex, and possibly opening yourself up to a lot of nasty STDs as well. Yeah I know, prostiutes in places like Nevada where it is legal are medically screened, but are their clients? And even if a condom is used, it can break. Even condoms do not 100% prevent the transfer of STDs, they just give you a reasonable chance that it will be prevented. I see his point that some people might not seek treatment for fear of the stigma, except that's not what he said. He specifically said people are denied the drugs because of some protected status. You might find incidents of this happening, but it is in no way rampant. In fact, most large companies that run pharmacy chains have strict rules against that sort of thing. The mom and pop places might have this occur to some extent, but that's why you have choices to shop at different pharmacies.

Re:Like to see this replicated

[Rary]

I'm all for a pharmacist giving an interview and refusing to sell the drugs if they are not happy with the answers given.

I'm not, when the drug in question has been approved for over the counter sale. The pharmacist shouldn't even be involved.

Re:Like to see this replicated

[sjames]

No, there is a vast difference that you and many others either fail to see, or refuse to take into consideration. The bone marrow transplant allows the patient to survive, when he otherwise would have died. By saving the life, you change the equation, and if that person then go ahead and have children, you have in effect done Mengele's work yourself.

It sounds backwards, but remember that I'm not in any way advocating killing undesirable individuals, nor sterlising undesirable individuals, but sterilisation of those who would have died if it wasn't for genetic intervention. That, I think, is a safeguard that it would be highly irresponsible not to implement, precisely because we do not want to pass judgment or play god.

Presumably, that includes rape victims as well?

What about people saved from dieing in a serious accident?

Would you limit that to medical issues or would being rescued unharmed from a burning building also be a reason to be sterilized?

Re:Like to see this replicated

[Khyber]

Maybe, but the gene change that happens is the same. This lends more credibility to Yersina being the culprit.

Re:Like to see this replicated

[arth1]

Presumably, that includes rape victims as well?

What about people saved from dieing in a serious accident?

Would you limit that to medical issues or would being rescued unharmed from a burning building also be a reason to be sterilized?

What part of "if it wasn't for genetic intervention" was it you didn't understand?

What I see here, is a particularly stubborn kind of faulty logic at play, namely guilt by association:
X intersection Y > 0
!X => !Y

Or, translated to more normal English:
X and Y have common elements
X is very bad
Therefore, Y is very bad too

The logic doesn't hold up. Attack the argument for what it is, and stop arguing against what it isn't but bears a resemblance to.

Re:Like to see this replicated

[sjames]

I could argue that people genetically predisposed to be more careful would naturally become more common if the careless are sterilized or just allowed to die. Instead, we insist on playing God and helping them to survive and procreate.

It's the same argument.

As for rape victims, if they get AIDS, I guess they just didn't measure up genetically, did they?

Re:Like to see this replicated

[mcgrew]

I'm sorry but anyone who makes a living off of providing sex for money is a whore.

Then any man who has sex with another man is a faggot. That's not how I feel; I say it just to illustrate the point. There are those who disagree as vehemently with the homosexual lifestyle as you disagree with the prostitute's lifestyle. They have the same right to use derogatory terms as you do -- which is, it may be legal to do so but using those derogatory terms is sleazy and uncalled for. You are as much a bigot as a person who calls homosexuals "faggots".

You choose to be gay (or maybe born gay, another debate for another time) and that is a lifestyle choice, but one that harms no one else.

A prostitute and her client harm no one but themselves, no different from two gay men. A prostitute and her client don't affect you at all in any way.

If you provide sex for money, whether it be legal or not, you are cheapening the great and wonderful thing that is sex

So paid is cheaper than free? Strange concept. Some would say the same about sodomy, that it "cheapens" it somehow.

and possibly opening yourself up to a lot of nasty STDs as well

In the seventies there were no STDs that couldn't be cured with a shot of pennicillin. When AIDS came along in the 1980s it was jokingly said that AIDS stood for "Anal Intercourse Death Syndrome", because the second easiest way to catch AIDS is anal intercourse. AIDS isn't really an STD, it is a blood borne disease. Besides AIDS there are no deadly and incurable STDs; you can die from syphlus and other STDs if untreated, but they are curable.

You can contract a deadly disease (say, hepetitus or bird flu or e-coli poisoning) without sex.

You say it cheapens sex, did you know that most prostitutes' clients are elderly widowers who are past being able to get a woman to enjoy "the great and wonderful thing that is sex"? Well, it's true.

Yeah I know, prostiutes in places like Nevada where it is legal are medically screened, but are their clients?

Prostitutes screen themselves with or without legal constraints - nobody wants to die from ghonorrea when it's completely curable.

Your prostiphobia is as abhorrently bigoted as homophobia. You have no right to judge these women.

Re:Like to see this replicated

[pcolaman]

I never said anything about a man having sex with another man. If a man paid to have sex with another man, I'd have a huge problem with that. But if two men have sex, I have no problem with them doing that. It's their unalienable rights as human beings to do that, even if I don't agree with the lifestyle. You are taking what I said way out of context. And I don't know how I can be seen to have a prostiphobia, I just don't think it's morally right for women to pimp themselves out for money. I don't go running down the street looking for prostitutes to yell at. I just do not think that their lifestyle has any merit to it whatsoever. And you know as much as I do, whether you admit it or not, that most men use prostitutes simply because they either have a huge self esteem problem, or are physically too unattractive to get someone to sleep with them. That, or they are addicted to sex and need it OnDemand, like some sort of cable tv service. And considering that I have a son to raise and the need to teach him not to disrespect women, and to not look at sex as just enjoyment, I do have a right to judge these women. Otherwise should I just tell my son, "They are just trying to make a living, so you should help support their family if you really feel the need for easy, quick, cheap sex."

Re:Like to see this replicated

[Jack9]

The marrow can (and to an extent, always does) compete and kill (each others' types). Grafts are rejectable in a bad way. Marrow rejection can result in exorbitant pain via Graft-versus-host (Thanks House M.D.) or simple non-persistence of the graft marrow, which is a waste.

Re:Like to see this replicated

[mcgrew]

Why is it legal for me to have sex with your wife so long as I don't pay her?

Adultery I have a great problem with. Adultery has at least one victim, the adulterer's spouse. That is the one thing I have against prostitutes - they don't care if the guy's married or not. But barring marriage, if two people agree to have sex why should it be my or your business if they do, and under what circumstances?

And you know as much as I do, whether you admit it or not, that most men use prostitutes simply because they either have a huge self esteem problem, or are physically too unattractive to get someone to sleep with them.

Like I said, most of their clients are elderly widowers. Why should an elderly man, an ugly man, a crazy man, or a man with low self-esteem be denied sex?

Judge not, lest you be judged yourself.

Re:Like to see this replicated

[pcolaman]

Adultery and Prostitution are both bad. You are basically trying to say that one isn't so bad because the other is. You must've failed logic class, right? Agreeing to have sex is one thing. Buying the right to sex is quite another, and has nothing to do with adultery. Having sex while you are committed to one person for the entirety of your life is also bad, although it really doesn't have anything to do with Prostitution other than sometimes the two happen simultaneously.

Re:Like to see this replicated

[mcgrew]

You are basically trying to say that one isn't so bad because the other is.

No, I'm saying that the only thing I have against prostitutes is when they're hired by married men. "No harm, no foul". Adultery has innocent victims, prostitution does not.

Re:Like to see this replicated

[pcolaman]

Just because prostitution doesn't have innocent victims doesn't make it right. Otherwise, I guess drug dealing is okay too because neither the dealer nor the user is a victim. But of course if the dealer slipped drugs into the pockets of someone who wasn't a user, then he'd be an innocent victim.

Re:Like to see this replicated

[mcgrew]

I have no more against drug dealers than I do against prostitutes or gamblers; I think all these things should be legalized.

I wouldn't even have something against a drug dealer if he "slipped them into someone's pocket"; if I found a strange pill in my pocket I'd just throw it away. Talking someone into, say, shooting heroin or smoking crack would indeed be wronging that person, as would providing drugs to a minor.

In fact, I buy and use a drug called "alcohol" all the time. It's not only a drug, but an addictive drug, and more people overdose on alcohol than any other drug combined. Its abuse also causes severe medical problems; both girlfriends I've had since my divorce are dying of chirrosis (one of them has thankfully since stopped drinking).

Some people become violent on alcohol. Some people drive their cars on it. Some people have sex with strangers on it, which I guess you're OK with so long as no money changes hands?

Who are you to tell me what is and isn't moral? It doesn't harm YOU, so it's none of your business.

You can't regulate an illegal activity. I would like to see laws on the books regulating prostituton, drugs, and gambling rather than futily trying to stop them. After they legalized alcohol, you no longer had gang warfare between liquor distributors, and you no longer had people going blind because there was wood alcohol in their gin.

Re:Like to see this replicated

[pcolaman]

I personally believe (as someone who does drink) that it wouldn't be a bad idea to start treating alcohol as a controlled substance. I know too many people who are crippled or dead due to drunk driving (and some people who weren't the ones drinking, but got hit by a drunk), so really I don't buy that as an excuse as to why drugs and prostitution should be legal. I would give up drinking if it meant getting drunk people off of our roads. Hell, our insurance rates would probably go down as well.

Re:Like to see this replicated

[mcgrew]

See, that's the thing: alcohol was once what they would call today a "controlled substance" (and note that the word "controlled substance" is a lie; you can't control an illegal activity). The law didn't work; it caused gang warfare, poisons being introduced into the illegal substance accidentally and on purpose, did nothing to reduce the incidence of overdose, use, drunk driving, and in almost all aspects made the problems worse. Outlawing a popular activity always causes the very problems outlawing it purports to solve.

Re:Like to see this replicated

[HuguesT]

This is not realistic

1- Go to another town

May be far away. In an emergency this is not good

2- Petition a chain

Right. Emergency ?

3- Open your own pharmacy

Did you notice my mentionning of the work "emergency"?

Pharmacies are not like any old bread and butter business who sell what they want.

In the various countries where I've lived and worked, pharmacies have always been a regulated business. A pharmacist diploma is pretty much PhD level. You need to know your stuff, in particular the major and side effects of the drugs you sell, some of which are pretty dangerous. You need to be able to prepare on the spot some of them, to advise customers depending on their condition, age, etc. It's not something you can improvise.

It is expected they can fulfil a prescription and they can help in an emergency. If a pharmacist doesn't want to give away some kind of drugs for some kind of moral or religious reasons they are simply in the wrong business.

In many countries yes there is a right to a full-service pharmacy within convenient driving distance, mandated by law even. Perhaps not in the US, I don't know. And if you honestly think about it, it makes a lot of sense.

As for matters of conscience You can read these guidelines. Notice the obligations of the pharmacists.

Re:Like to see this replicated

[Free the Cowards]

In many countries yes there is a right to a full-service pharmacy within convenient driving distance, mandated by law even.

So what happens if I'm in one of those countries and I move out into the middle of nowhere, with no civilization within whatever the law defines as "convenient driving distance"? Does The Man force a chain to open a new store just for me? Do they force me to move back to civilization?

Re:Like to see this replicated

[GargamelSpaceman]

Here are 2 items approved for over the counter sale: Tylenol and Ny-Quil.

If I happen to be filling a prescription for antibiotics, and the pharmacist offers to ring me up, they might ask: Are you planning on taking the tylenol and the ny-quil together?

If I answer yes, then I want the pharmacist to warn me that ny-quil contains a full dose of acetominophen, and that I should not take the tylenol at the same time.

If ( crazily ) I declare that I am going to take them, then the pharmacist should decide that I am suicidal, and not sell me either of the drugs, and phone an ambulance to take me to the loony bin.

Also, what about the decongestants made of what sudafed used to be made of that gets purchased by those wishing to brew methamphetamine? I think it's pseudoeffedrine? That's over-the-counter, but it very well may be stored on the other side of the counter to prevent it from being stolen. You might have to go through a pharmacist, who might very well refuse to sell it to you.

Re:Like to see this replicated

[tsotha]

This is mostly wrong. I live in Northern California, which is (or was) the epicenter of AIDS in the US, and the care gaps for these patients revolve more around things like getting meals delivered because they don't have enough energy to shop. California has a program called Medical which covers people who are too poor to afford care. People you read about who come to the emergency room as a the first contact with care either have a genuine emergency (as in a car crash), or they've been ignoring symptoms in lieu of dealing with the bureaucracy. Nobody likes to fill out forms, but I don't accept that as a reason to switch to a European-style system.

The last thing in the world I want to see is a system similar to Britain or Canada. They get appalling care compared to Americans for anything more complicated than a broken bone.

P.S. is that the right link? I'm not sure what you're trying to point out.

Re:Like to see this replicated

[ClioCJS]

California is a strange place. As in, it's not necessarily where one would look for an example of how something is *normally* done. They often have their own way of doing things. Except movies :)

So you need immune bone marrow?

[Krupuk]

Is there a way to create or replicate this bone marrow? Or will this immune donor be continually used for every AIDS patient in the world? How many natural immune donors are there? I think only a few. But still interesting.

Re:So you need immune bone marrow?

[v1]

Bone marrow replicates itself. You can keep digging it out of the same person's bone, or out of someone who receives it.

Though I've heard this procedure is quite painful, breaking into bones to dig out (or stuff in) marrow.

Re:So you need immune bone marrow?

[Tubal-Cain]

Any hope of putting the marrow into a petri dish and growing more?

Re:So you need immune bone marrow?

[jimicus]

Is there a way to create or replicate this bone marrow? Or will this immune donor be continually used for every AIDS patient in the world?

It's not quite as simple as that. As I understand it, there are different bone marrow types - just like you get different blood types - and for a transplant to be successful, you want to be transferring to someone with the same type. So for every HIV+ patient, you need to find a donor who is not only of the right type, but is also naturally immune.

Re:So you need immune bone marrow?

[macklin01]

Any hope of putting the marrow into a petri dish and growing more?

Isolating the haematopoietic stem cells would probably help, but I'm not sure how long they survive in extended culture conditions.

Re:So you need immune bone marrow?

[PeterPlan]

You can generate this mutation using engineered zinc finger nucleases. http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/07/02/2018251

Re:So you need immune bone marrow?

[blair1q]

Everyone it's transplanted into becomes one.

Re:So you need immune bone marrow?

[clarkkent09]

How many natural immune donors are there?

That's a good question. Most people never get tested and those who do and are negative wouldn't normally be assumed to be negative specifically because they are immune to the virus. Seems like it would take a more or less unusual case, such as a person heavily exposed to the virus and not infected and then someone gets curious as to why. I wonder if there are many more cases of natural immunity than reported.

Re:So you need immune bone marrow?

[Faux_Pseudo]

One in ten people of European ancestry is immune to HIV. It seems that it came from the selective pressure of the plauge. Of course the odds of HIV+ Africans finding a compatable marrow doner aren't that great. But this could still lead to a cure for them too. This proves that treating the marrow can treat starve the virus. All we have to do is wait the praverbial 20-50 years for medical science to pull that off.

Re:So you need immune bone marrow?

[DebateG]

Well, there are two problems with this. Firstly, hematopoietic stem cells don't last very long in culture. Lots of people are trying to figure out why, but I'm not optimistic that this problem will be solved any time soon since the cells normally exist in a complex microenvironment in the marrow that we don't really understand yet. But more importantly is the issue of MHC typing. While you need someone who has the CCR5 mutation (which is pretty rare), you also need to have someone who matches your MHC type. Think of MHC as the molecules that allow your body to identify self from non-self. The more MHC matches you have with the donor, the less chance you have of developing a life-threatening disorder called graft vs. host disease. Ideally, doctors want someone related to you, but if those people don't match, you have to do an unrelated donor search. Generally, finding a MHC match requires a large registry search that takes weeks to months to carry out, and many people, especially non-whites (due to the lack of representation of those elasticities in the bank), do not have a match.

Re:So you need immune bone marrow?

[jonaskoelker]

If I've learned anything from watching South Park, it's that instead of a bone marrow donor, you can just as well used highly concentrated cash shot directly into your veins!

(12.01, Tonsil Trouble)

Re:So you need immune bone marrow?

[__aamnbm3774]

Is there a way to create or replicate this bone marrow? Or will this immune donor be continually used for every AIDS patient in the world? How many natural immune donors are there? I think only a few.

Well, now there are at least two donors.

Re:So you need immune bone marrow?

[sjames]

Approximately 1 percent of people of European descent are immune. That's a lot of people.

Re:So you need immune bone marrow?

[fm6]

According to this article, that 10% figure applies to people who've inherited a single gene that confers reduced susceptibility, not immunity. To get immunity, you need to inherit the gene from both parents.

Re:So you need immune bone marrow?

[Lord Apathy]

Of course the odds of HIV+ Africans finding a compatable marrow doner aren't that great

Okay, now that the africans have been brought up the question has to be ask. Who is going to pay for this? This is not a simple drug to be given, this is a full blown medical procedure that can cost several thousand dollars. A real quick google search shows there are 33 million infected with AIDS living in africa in 2007. Based on cost alone there is no way we can treat that many people. Then there is the logistics.

Then there is the moral and ethical costs to be considered. A lot of AIDS is being spread in africa because they refuse to act responsible on a individual and government level. Even though they have AIDS many people still continue to have sex with out precautions or even being on treatment. There are so many of them and given the lack of technology it's impossible to track these people.

Re:So you need immune bone marrow?

[dvh.tosomja]

>> How many natural immune donors are there? I think only a few. Actually, 10% of native european population is immune to AIDS (or even HIV, I'm not sure).

Re:So you need immune bone marrow?

[blitziod]

the hlaf a million or so for the transplant is not that bad considering what we are spending on drugs per year for decades to treat a person in the west. In africa this is just not an option yet. But just because we can not help africa does not mean we should not treat people in the west. The procedure will lead to something cheaper if done a bunch. the problem now is the mortality from marrow transplants.

Re:So you need immune bone marrow?

[cleojo42]

The genetic 'defect' that causes people to be immune to HIV is not very common in the US. Descendants from the Western European countries have a higher probability of having these mutations.

Re:So you need immune bone marrow?

[Lord Apathy]

Absolutely. Just because we can't treat the world, yet, doesn't mean we treat nobody. I heard a quote on the radio of 50,000 AIDS patients in the U.S. Don't know if that number is accurate or not. While 50K is no small number its chump change compared to 33 million in africa. I could actually see us making this available even on public funds for that many.

To bad we can come up with genetic neutral bone marrow source.

Re:So you need immune bone marrow?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's rather simple then, actually.

If it is a known mutation, CCR5, which leads to the immunity... we take a patients bone marrow, isolate the short-lived hematopoietic stem cells... engineer them to have the mutated CCR5 version instead of the wild type... reintroduce modified bone marrow into patient.

No MHC match issues. A difficulty is a targeted mutation method, which thousands of researchers are working on. Showing safety in humans is the really hard step.

I expect this procedure should be done with several different HIV-resistence alleles to have the least chance of the virus developing resistence to the therapy.

I am a molecular biologist, but post AC due to personal privacy policy.

Re:So you need immune bone marrow?

[msuarezalvarez]

Do you always have to end up referring to "these people"?

Re:So you need immune bone marrow?

[getmerexkramer]

"So for every HIV+ patient, you need to find a donor who is not only of the right type, but is also naturally immune." and who didn't have fish for dinner.

Re:So you need immune bone marrow?

[Lord Apathy]

I could. There are many ways to refer to them but I'm going to continue using the term "these people." Mainly because I see no reason to change. If that annoys you then I'm sorry. No one is forcing you to read my posts. You can just drop me in your freak file and move on.

Re:So you need immune bone marrow?

[ChienAndalu]

I haven't done it myself (yet), but I remember a Penn Jilette radio show where he emphasized that this is not true. Did a little digging myself and found this:

MYTH: The bone marrow donation procedure is painful.

FACT: General or regional anesthesia is always used for this procedure. Donors feel no needle injections and no pain during marrow donation.

On the other hand, some google results show that there may be some pain after the procedure.

In any case, it's a good thing and everybody should do it.

Re:So you need immune bone marrow?

[Kleen13]

I used to work at a donor clinic http://www.blood.ca/, and assisted with some of the staff in basic prep, (supplies, equipment, etc)so I was able to talk to the medical staff about it. I'm a blood donor, and would be more than willing to donate marrow, until I heard about the process. It takes real dedication to donate marrow, and I admire all that do. http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/bone-marrow/CA00047

Re:So you need immune bone marrow?

[mollusc]

Marrow transplantation hasn't been a matter of breaking bones and taking or stuffing marrow in quite some time. In the majority of cases it now resembles blood donation/transfusion. The donor is treated with drugs to increase the level of circulating bone marrow stem cells, which are then harvested from the blood over a couple of hours while the donor sits in a big chair and watches TV. The recipient then gets the cell solution transfused in to a vein, and the stem cells find the bone marrow and engraft all on their own. It's very elegant. In some cases donation still involves getting marrow from a large bone, usually the pelvis, but it involves putting a large needle into the bone through a very small cut in the skin. It's done under a general anaesthetic, but it's pretty quick and simple as surgery goes.

Re:So you need immune bone marrow?

[Idarubicin]

Though I've heard this procedure is quite painful, breaking into bones to dig out (or stuff in) marrow.

The final stage of bone marrow transplantation - the delivery of bone marrow to the recipient - is pretty much painless. The bone marrow can be delivered through an ordinary IV, just like a blood transfusion. (The blood-making cells - hematopoietic stem cells - are smart enough to find their way to the marrow of the recipient's bones; there's no need to put them back in bones manually.)

The collection of bone marrow can be painful, but doesn't have to be. The old-school way was to jab large needles into the donor's pelvic bone under general anaesthetic. It can be done as an outpatient procedure, but most centers prefer to have donors stay overnight. There's usually soreness for a few weeks afterward (rather like falling - hard - on your ass) that is generally controlled with oral painkillers. It's not fun, but it's not the end of the world.

The newfangled technique is to administer G-CSF (granulocyte colony-stimulating factor) to the donor for a few days. G-CSF stimulates the donor's bone marrow to dramatically increase its production of stem cells; it also mobilizes those stem cells out of the bones and into the blood. Side effects may include a bit of fatigue and a day or two of bone soreness (rather like the flu).

A so-called peripheral blood stem cell (PBSC) collection takes a few hours, requires a couple of IV lines in the donor's arms, and has essentially zero aftereffects. (A continuous flow cell separator draws blood from the donor, retains the white cell fraction containing the stem cells, and returns the rest of the blood to the body.) The donor can return to work the next day; the side effects of G-CSF injection fade almost immediately.

I was a donor for a PBSC collection earlier this year. (I've been in my country's bone marrow donor registry for about ten years; this was the first time I was matched to a recipient.) All told, it probably cost me a couple of work days - a pair of half-days to do blood workups and physicals (including, appropriately enough, HIV and other infectious disease testing) plus a full day off for the collection itself. No biggie.

No, the real problem here isn't the transplant itself; it's the recipient preparation. Right now, the workup includes some really nasty chemo and/or radiation to wipe out the recipient's own marrow. The side effects of chemo/radiation treatment are brutally unpleasant (massive nausea, digestive problems, hair loss, the whole shebang). The recipient is badly immunocompromised until the new bone marrow gets settled in and starts cranking out new immune system cells. (Interesting fact: the recipient often acquires the donor's allergies.) Even minor infections can be life-threatening during this period.

Something like one in three people won't survive the procedure. Until we can fix that, this treatment option will remain a laboratory curiosity for the bulk of HIV-positive individuals.

found the missing second to last step!

[Anonymous Coward]

1) Be born with natural HIV immunity.
2) Sell bone marrow to desperate people.
3) Profit!

Re:found the missing second to last step!

[aaron alderman]

In all seriousness, guess how they find the people in Africa who are immune to HIV?

They just look for the prostitutes that should be dead and aren't.

So step 2 in your list would be prostitute yourself out until you get the attention of researchers, and get double profit!

Re:found the missing second to last step!

[qmaqdk]

1) Be born with natural HIV immunity.
2) Sell bone marrow to desperate people.
3) Profit!

I think there should be a

2.5) Ouch!

in there. Supposedly it's very painful and has a high risk of complications.

Is it for real this time?

[Junior J. Junior III]

Over the years, I've witnessed probably 640 articles on a cure for HIV either having been discovered, or very near.

So before I get all excited and start fucking everything that moves without a condom, is this for real? Or is this another one of those "cures for a small number (eg, 1) of patients, and cannot be turned into a general cure or vaccine for all?

Re:Is it for real this time?

[maugle]

Sure, it's real. You just have to find someone who's immune to HIV, and then take his bone marrow. Easy!

Re:Is it for real this time?

[mapkinase]

I am not aware of anything that would require a condom for its movement.

Re:Is it for real this time?

[ScrewMaster]

Over the years, I've witnessed probably 640 articles on a cure for HIV either having been discovered, or very near.

Well, 640 articles should be enough for anyone.

Re:Is it for real this time?

[Anonymous Coward]

The article states it clearly - 30% mortality rate plus you have to find a donor.

Re:Is it for real this time?

[Anonymous Coward]

Mrs. White: He was deranged. He was a lunatic. He didn't seem to like me very much - he had threatened to kill me in public....
Miss Scarlett: Why would he want to kill you in public?
Wadsworth: I think she means he threatened, in public, to kill her.

Re:Is it for real this time?

[jcr]

AC wins the thread. Congratulations.

-jcr

Re:Is it for real this time?

[mapkinase]

Could you please pass some of this (,,,,) to the GP?

Re:Is it for real this time?

[Rigrig]

FTFA:

Caveats are legion. If enough time passes, the extraordinarily protean HIV might evolve to overcome the mutant cells' invulnerability. Blocking CCR5 might have side effects: A study suggests that people with the mutation are more likely to die from West Nile virus. Most worrisome: The transplant treatment itself, given only to late-stage cancer patients, kills up to 30% of patients. While scientists are drawing up research protocols to try this approach on other leukemia and lymphoma patients, they know it will never be widely used to treat AIDS because of the mortality risk.

So for now it's only for people who already need a bone-marrow transplant anyway, and then are lucky enough to find a immune donor.

About 1% of Europeans, and even more in northern Europe, inherit the CCR5 mutation from both parents. People of African, Asian and South American descent almost never carry it.

Re:Is it for real this time?

[hydrofix]

Bone marrow transplants are very painful to both extract and put in use: someone sucking the soft stuff out of the core of your spine is not the funniest thing I know, and neither is the operation in reverse. So chances are, if the treatment should be ever commercialized, it would be expensive and the donors hard to find.

I must say, I tend to find curing youself from HIV by a bone marrow transfer somewhat analogous to curing your liver by a transplant after first carelessly consuming enough alcohol (in an extended period of time) to turn your own liver to a malfunctional pile of grease..

Re:Is it for real this time?

[TheLink]

I'm sure you'll find other incurable sexually transmitted diseases. For example: Hepatitis B and C.

So I recommend you:
a) use condoms
b) don't be promiscuous and pick a partner who isn't promiscuous
c) be abstinent

c) should be easy for most slashdotters :).

Re:Is it for real this time?

[couchslug]

"I am not aware of anything that would require a condom for its movement."

I do, now. Yuck...

Re:Is it for real this time?

[Free the Cowards]

The nice thing about this purported cure is that it's really quite simple and obvious. It's one of those things where now that I've heard of it I'm amazed it wasn't tried earlier.

HIV feasts on the human immune system. The human immune system lives in the bone marrow, which can be transplanted between people. Some people are naturally immune to HIV. It's really very simple when you think about it, almost mechanical.

Of course it could end up being crap for one reason or another, but given how it supposedly works I'd say there's a much greater reason to believe that this one will really come through.

Re:Is it for real this time?

[mog007]

Hepatitis B might not have a cure, but it does have a vaccination. I got it back when I was in 7th grade.

Re:Is it for real this time?

[ceoyoyo]

Wow... using condoms AND being abstinent. That's taking protection to a whole new degree. Like having a firewall and an air gap!

What I'd like to know is...

[3seas]

Are there any tests to find out who has natural immunity to HIV?

And on a related note, how much can such a person expect to get for their bone marrow?

Is this immune bone marrow replicatable via stem cells?

Re:What I'd like to know is...

[DKP]

don't know about the first question but nothin in the US as blood is considered part of he body and cannot be legaly sold.

Re:What I'd like to know is...

[dogberto]

Yeah there is...

Currently, the theory is that HIV immunity is provided by a mutation of the CCR5 receptor. In particular, it seems to provide an immunity also to the bubonic plague--it is as a result of the bubonic plague that this recessive mutation has manifested itself today in somewhat greater numbers in certain populations--natural selection, so to speak at work.

check out:
http://www.wired.com/medtech/health/news/2005/01/66198
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CCR5

Re:What I'd like to know is...

[wittnate]

Perhaps, but by the same token there is nothing requiring individuals to donate either, hence plasma donation centers offering money for donations. Likewise, sperm banks often offer payment, and if a woman is willing to sell an egg, she can expect upwards of 10k plus medical costs for her troubles.

Re:What I'd like to know is...

[NotSoHeavyD3]

Bone marrow is full of stem cells which is kind of the point which is why the technical term is Hematopoietic stem cell transplantation http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bone_marrow_transplant

Re:What I'd like to know is...

[ColdWetDog]

You don't know much about the second question either. Two words:

Plasma donor.

Re:What I'd like to know is...

[Sethb]

23AndMe includes HIV Resistance in their battery of genetic tests.

Re:What I'd like to know is...

[Tawnos]

You don't know much about plasma donors, because if so, you'd know that you cannot legally sell plasma for donation use. The plasma you sell is for medical testing ONLY.

Peer review

[FeatureBug]

The Wall Street Journal is a fine newspaper, but it is not a scientifically peer-reviewed journal. I'd wait and see what the peer review process decides about this proposed treatment. It would not be the first time that a "revolutionary" treatment has failed to prove itself in peer review.

Re:Peer review

[SoundGuyNoise]

The WSJ is simply reporting the story. According to the article, it was already presented to Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections and to the Foundation for AIDS Research.

Re:Peer review

[FeatureBug]

The peer review in CROI consists of peer-review of the abstracts only, not of the papers themselves, so it isn't nearly as solid as a journal publication. The research itself may be solid, but I'd still prefer to wait for it to appear as a paper in a peer-reviewed journal.

Re:Peer review

[RockDoctor]

it was already presented to Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections and to the Foundation for AIDS Research.

Not really an area I have confidence in my understanding of - though as a registered bone marrow donor, perhaps I should - so I'll restrict my comment to linking to the presented poster : Treatment of HIV-1 Infection by Allogeneic CCR5-32/32 Stem Cell Transplantation: A Promising Approach.

Re:Still no cure for cancer.

[Blade]

That was from a previous case,

"In 1989, Dr. Rossi had a case eerily similar to the one in Berlin ..."

not this case.

Germans

[Atheose]

Good job Germans, bring that karma back up to about neutral!

All joking aside, this could be an amazing breakthrough if it could be commercialized. And since when have people been "HIV Immune"? I've never heard of that shit.

Re:Germans

[chuckymonkey]

There are some people that are immune to the disease, however the incidence of immunity is very low. Here is a linky start if you want to check it out. http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/evolution/library/10/4/l_104_06.html

Re:Germans

[Anonymous Coward]

And since when have people been "HIV Immune"? I've never heard of that shit.

Sure, there have been reports of HIV-immune prostitutes in Africa for years. With a large and diverse enough population, there's bound to be a few individuals who are resistant or immune to any given disease.

I'm a little surprised that the solution was as "simple" as a bone marrow transplant. I expected genetic therapy, etc.

Re:Germans

[Vancorps]

A number of people have been shown to have natural immunity. Call it a strong argument against eugenics. Rich gene pool for the win!

On a side note, a friend of mine has natural immunity. She got preggers from a guy with advanced HIV who now has full blown AIDS and both she and her baby are HIV free.

I'm uncertain if they have any idea what percentage of the population is immune though and since HIV is constantly mutating I'm not sure if natural immunity makes you immune from all the strains out there in the wild.

Re:Germans

[Atheose]

Yeah, after reading the article from the original post I did a bit of research on it myself--apparently 1% of all Europeans have this CCR5 mutation? The bad news: about 30% of people who get bone marrow transplants don't survive the procedure, and the CCR5 mutation makes it more likely for them to die of other things lik West Nile Virus.

In any case, this is wonderful news for the scientific community. Even if this doesn't amount to anything it's still a breakthrough that could help piece together the overall picture. Exciting news.

Re:Germans

[dogberto]

...for a while now. Mutation of the CCR5 gene seems to provide some degree of (even total) immunity to HIV (and also the bubonic plague).

read:
http://www.wired.com/medtech/health/news/2005/01/66198
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CCR5

It's a recessive mutation, so it is as a result of the bubonic plague going across Europe that certain European populations have a greater incidence of this mutation.

Re:Germans

[Lord Kano]

Even without natural immunity, exposure doesn't mean guaranteed infection.

For a single sexual encounter, the odds of transmission are less than 1%.

LK

really?

[anonieuweling]

Was HIV isolated before he began operating?

Re:movie?

[4D6963]

This sounds alot like the movie "I am legend"

Which itself sounded a lot like the book "I Am Legend".

Re:hooray!

[4D6963]

Using a condom kills the spontaneity of getting fucked up the ass by a complete stranger at airport bathrooms.

Larry Craig? (I assume Larry Bagina would be your incognito name?)

Re:hooray!

[hedwards]

Yeah, because clearly only gay men contract HIV and obviously the only way that gay men hook up is anonymously in airport bathrooms.

Unoriginal

[thetoadwarrior]

He just stole the idea from Omega Man. He needs to give Heston the credit he deserves.

Re:Unoriginal

[ScrewMaster]

He just stole the idea from Omega Man. He needs to give Heston the credit he deserves.

Misattribution. Tim Matheson wrote the original novel. Vincent Price, Charleton Heston and Will Smith just acted in different interpretations of the original story.

That said, I did prefer the Heston version to the others, in spite of Vincent Price's talents and the modern special effects of the Smith incarnation.

I am immune...where's the market?

[bogaboga]

I am immune to HIV/AIDS and have tones of student debt! Where is the market for my bone marrow? Where do I start?

Re:I am immune...where's the market?

[ScrewMaster]

I am immune to HIV/AIDS and have tones of student debt! Where is the market for my bone marrow? Where do I start?

Better do it fast before they start synthesizing the stuff. The value of your marrow will drop to zero at that point.

Re:I am immune...where's the market?

[BarryJacobsen]

Better do it fast before they start synthesizing the stuff. The value of your marrow will drop to zero at that point.

Never underestimate the value of delicious, fresh marrow!

Re:I am immune...where's the market?

[bogaboga]

Magic Johnson.

I sense a chance because I have some trace of African blood in me!

Re:I am immune...where's the market?

[ceoyoyo]

I'm not sure where you start, but I believe selling organs on the black market usually involves a hotel room and a bathtub full of ice.

Yeah great and all

[NotSoHeavyD3]

I mean other than the downsides of a bone marrow transplant actually being one of the riskiest procedures around, often killing anything up to 20% of recipients within a couple of weeks. Maybe after all drug treatment options have failed this might be a good idea.

Re:Yeah great and all

[compro01]

I'm pretty sure that mortality rate is due to the fact that they are already in bad shape (advanced leukemia, auto-immune, etc.) prior to the transplant, in addition to the fact that you need to wipe out their immune system (via radiation or some other method) prior to the transplant which results in them having no immune system until the donor marrow takes hold, which means that pretty much any kind of infection will kill them and creating and maintaining a completely sterile environment for that length of time is difficult. AFAICT, the wiping out is not needed in this case, as the virus is already suppressing the immune system, allowing a more graceful transition to the new marrow.

Re:Yeah great and all

[ceoyoyo]

You got it half right - the mortality is due to having your bone marrow wiped. That's the cells that make much of your immune system but also your platelets and your red blood cells.

I doubt very much a patient wouldn't require their bone marrow cells wiped out. If you didn't, the new cells would probably not take hold at all and would be very unlikely to become dominant. They almost certainly wouldn't take over completely, meaning you'd remain infectious.

Note that the transplant the article describes was a standard procedure, complete with high dose chemo to knock out the existing bone marrow cells.

Nerds everywhere rejoice

[Liquidrage]

The return of free sex is near!

Re:Nerds everywhere rejoice

[ScrewMaster]

The return of free sex is near!

Yeah, right. When did nerds ever partake of free sex? Not that they didn't want to, but you know ... they were nerds.

Re:Nerds everywhere rejoice

[smoker2]

Carry on mate !

Conditional recipients could also be donors?

[phorm]

Seems to me that, to start with, you'd need at least one sample of marrow from the different blood-types (I think marrow-types and blood-types are pretty much related, marrow creating blood and all). Once you have that, you can transplant recipients. Once the recipient is clean and (presumably again) their own marrow is making antibodies, the recipient could become a donor.

So maybe if every recipient had to legally become a donor after being HIV-free (and free of other diseases that could transfer through marrow/blood), then the resistant marrow could then be produced and distributed almost exponentially...

Heh

[hkz]

Gero Hutter is the new Gutter Hero! :-)

I know what bone marrow transplants do to people

[haaz]

My late mother had a bone marrow transplant (BMT) to treat her pre-leukemic condition and try to prevent it from becoming full-bore leukemia. To do this, they blasted her whole body with radiation (sorry, don't know which frequency), which killed her existing bone marrow. They then inserted/transplanted his sister's bone marrow. Now, I am not a doctor, so I'm probably leaving out a lot of important steps here. But because of the radiation dosage, she lost her hair, a lot of weight, and the ability to keep food in her for any length of time.

Yes, we knew this was coming. In fact, she had worked as a radiation oncologist for decades before her diagnosis with myelodysplasia. The irony abound.

Unfortunately, either the transplant didn't take or the weakness was too much for her. She passed away on November 16, 1999. Two weeks after I'd gotten married. And some of you may remember my then-wife from what happened five months later. Yeah, life kinda sucked.

I do want to see the HIV/AIDS pandemic curbed, and I do what I can to help people who have it live a little better. But a BMT is a major, major procedure. It's not guaranteed to be a death sentence, but it's not guaranteed to work, either. Is it worse than HIV/AIDS? That question is beyond my pay level to try and answer. I just have one story from one BMT that unfortunately did not go well. I am thankful that no one in my family has had HIV/AIDS. But I just don't know if this is the best way to deal with it once someone is infected.

Re:Nice to hear....

[FooAtWFU]

Leave it to a U.S. institution to be concerned with profiting from a possible cure for HIV.

Sure, I'll leave it to them to do that, if you'll at least leave it to a US institution to invest in a ton of experimentation, research, development, refinement of the techniques, overcoming regulatory hurdles, patient trials...

Insurance companies won't buy into this

[bjdevil66]

Good luck getting coverage for that kind of treatment. Probable responses: "The vat of pills you take every day is much cheaper. Claim denied." Or, "Experimental - denied."

If this truly works on a large scale, this particular treatment will unfortunately be for the upper class only.

Re:Insurance companies won't buy into this

[sjames]

Given that the vat of pills is VERY expensive and is lifelong, that's unlikely. Even the high mortality is no deterrent to the insurance company. A one time expense either cures the patient and relieves them of a thousands a month liability or the treatment kills the patient and relieves the insurance of a thousands a month liability. No downside for them.

If they could get away with it, once the effectiveness is established, they might be tempted to insist that people roll the dice.

Re:Insurance companies won't buy into this

[badkarmadayaccount]

Lacking a stable spouse, and no better way of administering also expensive and dangerous street drugs, what do you suppose I do? Shoot myself? Thans a lot, not the first timeI heard that... Condoms? I barely can get laid now, and it ain't all that fun if there's no romance, now THIS? Tell ye what, get me some reliable source of decent quality/price dope, and I won't come near any sex (like I ever have much anyway...). Until then, back to abusing any girl who overestimates her alcohol tolerance, seen aseven whores avoid me. /theoretical personality rant

Re:Insurance companies won't buy into this

[badkarmadayaccount]

Needles ain't the only way to get AIDS... ;)

Re:Nice to hear....

[dogberto]

...sad but true (the part about making a profit)... ...though to be fair, to commercialize does also imply that they would be trying to expand the number of people to whom the treatment can be given to. Currently, it's only one person treated, under the guise of a highly talented doctor and his research team.

Sometimes, seemingly ingenious ideas never get out of the research stage because the processes involved can't be replicated on a wider scale. (of course, there are other reasons why some ingenious ideas never see the light of day, but that's beyond the scope of this discussion)

Re:Nice to hear....

[Anonymous Coward]

... it's being commercialized. Leave it to a U.S. institution to be concerned with profiting from a possible cure for HIV.

Okay, would you be happier if an institution or organization from some other country was commercializing it or profiting from it? Or are you one of these people that believes that drugs and treatments should made available to all for free, via some magical process that has zero cost of production?

I don't quite get your point, I'm afraid.

1 percent of northern Europeans

[symbolset]

And peoples descended from them, are immune, smaller percentages from central asia.

30% mortality rate

[slashing1]

The article mentions that the mortality rate from this procedure is 30%, which precludes widespread replication as it is only used in late-stage cancer patients. Thus, while the CCR5 mutation is promising, they need another method (besides bone marrow transplant) to deliver the therapy. This leads to gene therapy, but that has other issues (such as causing leukemia as a side effect).

Re:30% mortality rate

[sjames]

It may be that a modified procedure can be used that would reduce that mortality.

When used to treat leukemia, the patent has to undergo radiation treatment to completely destroy their own marrow before the transplant can take place. Then, after the transplant there's a window where neither their native immune system nor the donor's is active. That's where a lot of the mortality comes in.

It may be possible to either skip the radiation or reduce it considerably when the transplant is done as an AIDS treatment. THE HIV itself would take care of killing off the native immune system once the drugs are stopped, leaving the donor system in place and immune to the infection.

That would still be a rather serious procedure with significant risks, but might be less risky.

Re:30% mortality rate

[des09]

The mortality rate for HIV is nowhere near 100%.

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/updates/science/july-dec08/hivmortality_07-01.html among many other sources.

Re:30% mortality rate

[mewshi_nya]

And the current mortality rate for living is a solid 100%. may be even higher in coming years.

natural immunity problem

[girlintraining]

Most of what I've read about so-called natural immunity isn't really immunity per-se. People with immunity still carry the HIV virus; It just doesn't turn into AIDS for a long time, but in a lot of cases, eventually it overcomes the immunity. Here's an article on one such study [BBC].

Re:natural immunity problem

[cleojo42]

What you are thinking about is called long-term non-progressers. If the virus can't actually get into the cell, which is what we are talking about here, means that while there might be some HIV in the blood (floating around in the liquid part), it can't actually infect any of the cells. No infection, no disease.

Evolution as a problem solver

[dmomo]

It's fascinating that Evolution has managed to find a "cure" for this disease through random mutations more quickly than decades of brilliant minds and lots of money. Hooray for mass parallelism. Once we have computers capable of simulating this, we'll be able to solve some amazing problems. I have no idea how complex such a simulation is or how far off that would be.

Re:Evolution as a problem solver

[st0rmshad0w]

Actually, the natural immunity can largely be traced back to small populations in europe that had very large survival rates during the Black Death in the middle ages. The immunity was likely present prior to HIV's emergence.

Re:Evolution as a problem solver

[sjames]

And did so centuries before we had ever heard of AIDS.

Re:Evolution as a problem solver

[ceoyoyo]

Hooray for millions of years of trying. Give the brilliant minds more than twenty years and they'll probably come up with something pretty cool too.

Re:Nice to hear....

[gandhi_2]

A tax-payer funded institution at that.

Re:I know what bone marrow transplants do to peopl

[jcr]

BMT is a major, major procedure.

With about 30% mortality, I've read.

-jcr

Re:Nice to hear....

[Atheose]

Heaven forbid that the people who spend a lifetime looking for a cure and pouring billions of dollars into research get reimbursed for their work.

Re:Monetization

[religious freak]

Are you suggesting that HIV doesn't exist? Are you suggesting those that work to get educated all the way up to PhD level do not deserve to make money (because the company that makes money needs to pay its employees)?

If you want reproducible proof that HIV exists, I'd suggest you check a little place called Africa where HIV/AIDS is a plague in every sense of the word.

Respectfully, what the F@$#% are you talking about?

Re:Still no cure for cancer.

[Krigl]

Even then, the first man with transplanted heart also died several days after the operation (pneumonia, if I recall correctly), yet it didn't stop heart transplantation from becoming kind of "routine".

Evolving an immunity

[Arancaytar]

It's interesting to look at this in the context of evolution.

Viruses and bacteria have a distinct evolutionary advantage in mutating far more quickly and being far more numerous. Thus they can develop immunities to cures more quickly than humans can develop immunities to the diseases.

On the other hand, we have the technology to identify and isolate the gene that grants us immunity, and then manufacture a cure without having to wait thousands of years for natural selection to make us all immune.

Survival rates

[Harmonious Botch]

The bad news: about 30% of people who get bone marrow transplants don't survive the procedure,

But the people who currently get bone marrow transplants are already in very bad shape to survive surgery - far worse than a person who has aids. Most bone marrow transplants are done to cure leukemia or some similar disease that damages blood cells. These blood cells includes platelets which are necessary for coagulating blood. If your blood does not coagulate well, you don't have a good chance of surviving surgery.

So the very disease that makes bone marrow transplants necessary often prevents the patient from surviving the surgery to cure it. With AIDS patients, this would not be a problem, so one could expect a better survival rate.

Re:Survival rates

[ceoyoyo]

"Surgery" in this case is an IV injection. Even if your platelets are completely fried you're probably not going to bleed out from that (unless you get a REALLY bad nurse).

The mortality mostly involves the complications that come from having high dose chemo and/or radiation that wipes out your bone marrow cells, leaving you in really bad shape for a while waiting for the new BM cells to take hold. I doubt an AIDS patient would have a much better survival rate than a cancer patient. You MIGHT get some slightly better survival if you went for otherwise healthy HIV+ patients, but then you're taking someone who might well live for another twenty, thirty, forty years and exposing them to a high risk procedure.

That damned socialiced medicine

[Meshugga]

try to avoid it at all cost... what use is getting healed when you start talking like Marx afterwards? ;)

Re:Evolution.

[ScrewMaster]

The dude who is immune is clearly a case of evolution. Survival of the fittest.

Unless, by curing HIV, we're putting a halt to the next stage in human evolution. It could be that HIV was intended to trigger a dormant subsection of our genome. Granted, this process would be fatal to the majority of the infected but the survivors would be graced with an extended lifespan, as well as physical and intellectual powers far beyond those of mortal men.

Yeah okay. Good plot for a Sci-Fi Channel Made-for-TV movie, or maybe a Direct-to-DVD production.

Side effects of bone marrow transplant

[NigelTheFrog]

Ok, I'll admit this sounds like a neat concept for curing someone with HIV, but wouldn't you just be trading all of the consequences of having HIV/AIDS for the consequences of being a bone marrow transplant recipient? One of the most feared complications of bone marrow transplantation is graft-versus-host disease. The treatment for GVHD is...immunosuppression. So HIV patients who receive this treatment would have to face the possibility of being no better off than they were pre-treatment and potentially much, much worse (graft vs-host is a horrible condition).

Re:Side effects of bone marrow transplant

[khallow]

Neither does HIV in someone who knows they have it.

Re:Side effects of bone marrow transplant

[KozmoKramer]

True, but an HIV patient has little to risk, other than a slow painful demise. I'd say that this is promising news and the risks are well worth it, provided that this proves to be a successful treatment via trials.

Re:Side effects of bone marrow transplant

[NigelTheFrog]

A slow painful death is not a certainty for HIV+ patients, at least not those receiving highly active antiretroviral therapy (HAART). I've met several people who have been HIV+ for close to a decade and have not developed AIDS thanks to an effective drug regimen. All these people are "risking" is having to take these medications for the rest of their lives.
See the following for actual prognosis statistics for people with HIV:

May et al. Prognosis of HIV-1-infected patients up to 5 years after initiation of HAART: collaborative analysis of prospective studies. AIDS. 2007 May 31;21(9):1185-97.

This data is over a year and a half old now, so probably a bit out of date, but does illustrate the point that being HIV+ is not a death sentence anymore, and does not necessarily warrant a very risky procedure for a possible cure. There are cases of multi-drug resistant HIV out there, especially in patients who acquired the infection through IV drug use, and in those people I can see a possible justification for this treatment. However, I can't see this as a reasonable treatment for all HIV+ patients.

Re:Side effects of bone marrow transplant

[KozmoKramer]

Some HIV infected people will live a long time. Most HIV infected individuals progress to AIDS within 20 years no matter how much treatment they receive. A risky cure that works might be desired by some patients.

Carrier?

[wonkavader]

Does this or does this not still leave the recipient as an HIV carrier?

Re:Carrier?

[sjames]

That's an open question. Right now they don't know for sure if the HIV dies out entirely or just becomes permanently dormant in the host. If the latter, they don't know if that would present a risk of transmission to another host or not.

That's why for now, they're calling the patient 'functionally cured' rather than simply cured.

Re:Carrier?

[WhiteHorse-The Origi]

They may be a carrier but they can't transmit it because it isn't present in their blood and sex fluids. The odds of transmission are so small that it's virtually impossible to spread.

Re:Use Resources Wisely

[turgid]

I hope these operations for people who got AIDS by accident. No one who earned AIDS by promiscuous sexual behavior deserves to get these limited resources.

Don't worry. I'm sure God will come up with something even more dastardly to punish them. Maybe it will even involve EDS.

Erm, this is Slashdot

[Malevolent Tester]

What relevance do sexually transmitted diseases have here?

Re:Erm, this is Slashdot

[ccguy]

If you haven't made a developer cry, you've wasted a day.

Wasn't this in one of the files of that Visual Studio source that was leaked a few months ago?

Re:I know what bone marrow transplants do to peopl

[ScrewMaster]

But I just don't know if this is the best way to deal with it once someone is infected.

I'd say it isn't, given the nature of a bone marrow transplant (such things always seems so easy on TV.) Still, there may be other ways to transfer this genetic protection to an individual (a retrovirus maybe) so this qualifies as significant progress.

Re:Still no cure for cancer.

[hedwards]

Indeed, often times it's easier to get consent from people that are nearing end of life. While the standards for what is and is not OK for experimentation doesn't really get more liberal it tends to be easier to get volunteers when it's a +- 6 months proposition than in other cases.

Re:Monetization

[ScrewMaster]

It's all pure greed.

Partly greed, I suppose, and partly because the resources being devoted to HIV/AIDS research aren't free, and other important venues are being underfunded or defunded. Resources are limited, no matter where you are, and public health isn't about dealing with only the medical conditions that get the most media attention. AIDS is not like, say, a food-borne illness that can strike anyone at any time, and there are people suffering from other serious ailments than AIDS.

Interesting solution for more bone marrow

[spineboy]

Make the bone marrow donor recipient donate his new bone marrow after he's immune at least twice. Kind of like the gift that keeps on giving.

After several generations of that I might expect weird problems to show up in the marrow.

Re:Interesting solution for more bone marrow

[Erikderzweite]

I like it, a GPL-like solution.
"By accepting this bone marrow in your body you agree to provide your own copy of bone marrow at least twice on same conditions you have received it."

Re:Interesting solution for more bone marrow

[ScrewMaster]

I like it, a GPL-like solution. "By accepting this bone marrow in your body you agree to provide your own copy of bone marrow at least twice on same conditions you have received it."

Hm, sounds sort of ... viral in nature, doesn't it?

Re:So you need immune bone marrow? God' Will be

[davidsyes]

Done, or done for? Whether this cure is the prize from bone-cracking, back-breaking, or just plain old scintillating responses, that this science is making progress could be "God's" work to once again show human (especially a number of majoq, organized yet divisive churches) their odious, insidious, insipid and myopic and discriminatory ways must be overcome and shamed or, hopefully, enlightened out of existence. This is great science!

Re:Monetization

[SlashBugs]

Making money off of a disease which is very much kept in the vague, unclear, opaque situation is evil.
Where is the reproducible proof that HIV exists?
Where is the reproducible proof that HIV causes AIDS?

Go to the (American-run but internationally funded and popular) National Centre for Biotechnology Information here: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/entrez ...and type "HIV" into the search box. You'll get just under 192,000 peer-reviewd articles from groups all over the world, funded by various governments, public and private companies, charities and rich donors. Anything from HIV genome sequences and molecular sctructures through molecular biology, disease progression, transmission studies, all the way to local- regional- and global epidemiological studies. The evidence is pretty damn strong and well understood from the atomic level up to the global level.

Altenatively, click on the "Reviews" tab and it'll give you a mere 24,000 articles assessing, collating and criticising the others. Have fun!

True for HIV, True for HPV.
True for whatever.

When you've finsihsed the HIV evidence, feel free to look up the 15,000 HPV articles (or just 12,600 if you restrict your seach to "HPV AND cancer"). The HPV thing is actually very easy: most viruses carry genes evolved to push cells into their growth phase, because that forces the cells to release and synthesise resources that the virus must hijack to replicate. HPV-associated cancer happens when the viral gene gets incorporated into the cell's DNA (rare, but through well-established mechanisms) and get permanently switched on, making the cell grow and divide constantly. Any biology undergrad could tell you that if you asked. It's more common in the cervix simply because it's out of sight, and doesn't get noticed until it's really big and nasty. (Which is why all sexually actve women should be screened: catch it within the first 5 years and the cure rate is better than 98%. It's an easy cure if you *find* it)

THINK first. Do your research.

My undergraduate degree is in virology and I've just finished a PhD looking at how viruses interact with cancer and parts of the immune system. I've done plenty of thinking, and a hell of a lot o research. Now it's time for *you* to think, and for *you* to do some fucking research.

You're no better than the creatioists who say that evolution's impossible but have never botheres to get a fcuking clue how it actually works.

Re:Evolution.

[Thomas M Hughes]

Unless, by curing HIV, we're putting a halt to the next stage in human evolution. It could be that HIV was intended to trigger a dormant subsection of our genome.

HIV doesn't have intentions. It's a virus, not a God.

Re:I know what bone marrow transplants do to peopl

[Slippy.]

Wow. Someone gets cured and you complain about it not being good enough. Boo on you. The issue is that someone *did* get cured.

While this patient *did* have radiation done, ideally I hope the radiation would be unnecessary with more study. Maybe just implant some marrow producing HIV immune white blood cells (or better, HIV destroying cells) to maintain health. A better way of living with the disease would be acceptable too, right now.

At least you could live with the HIV if you had bone marrow producing immune T-cells. Ideally, there will be a better way to remove the cells hosting the HIV than radiation with future research. Something cheaper, faster, and easier.

This *is* a *big* step, your criticizing aside. A proof of concept. Curing someone with a process that can potentially be repeated!

  1. Prove the process works.
  2. Look for ways to simplify and improve.
  3. And now you have something that can be applied (cheaply?) to large groups.

Yeah, he left out the real Step 3

[davidwr]

1) Be born with natural HIV immunity.
2) Sell bone marrow to desperate people.
3) ???
4) Profit!

There, now it complies with internationally accepted business-model obscufication protocols.

So, on the free market...

[NerveGas]

Naturally-resistant bone marrow is probably worth what, about 5 million dollars per gram?

Re:Evolution.

[Anonymous Coward]

Hmm... you used the words 'Evolution' and 'intended' in the same post.

Too much of a tradeoff at this point.

[Animats]

First, of course, bone marrow transplants are very risky. The fatality rate is around 20%.

Lacking CCR5 provides HIV immunity, but increases susceptibility to West Nile virus. In that, it's similar to the genetic difference that enables sickle-cell anemia. People with that mutation are less susceptible to malaria.

This is progress, although a long way from a useful treatment.

Re:Nice to hear....

[MartinSchou]

In other words, exactly what the German team did?

Come on

[dvh.tosomja]

Dr. Gero Hutter? Did you mean Dr. Hero Gutter!?

Re:Come on

[D. Taylor]

Who's Dr. Guitar Hero?

Re:Nice to hear....

[Anonymous Coward]

You know, i wish people like you would get over it. It costs money to live. Doctors and researches need to get paid. It is precisely because of this that we have the innovations we have in medicines.

Are you sure?

[Grendel Drago]

This sounds like you'd need to add bone marrow, rather than replace it. As I understand it, bone marrow transplants are performed in leukemia because the marrow itself is cancerous, and so destroying it is important. But that's not the case here, so it's at least possible that it's not as dangerous as the procedure that would be performed on people with leukemia.

It's still likely to be major surgery, of course, with all the attendant risks of any transplant, but it might not be quite that bad.

A life is not worth 1 billion

[mechsoph]

Better a hundred people at a billion each than zero for free.

Not at all. Currently various US government agencies estimate the value of a human life at 5-10 million USD. They use this number to figure out things like pollution limits and whether mandatory seatbelt installation is a good idea.

A billion dollars could save MANY lives if used some other way, ie converting a coal power plant to solar-thermal.

Re:Evolution.

[bitrex]

Yeah okay. Good plot for a Sci-Fi Channel Made-for-TV movie, or maybe a Direct-to-DVD production.

Or a Greg Bear novel. I can't wait for my kids to smell more than kids already do!

Re:movie?

[philspear]

Well, the beginning of the movie did have a doctor trying to cure a disease, if that's what you're talking about.

If you're talking about using the measles virus to cure cancer, this is not that at all, this is using bone marrow to cure HIV.

And if you're talking about zombies or vampires or whatever it was they were supposed to be in the movie (they sure didn't seem at all like the vampires of the book) then the only similarity to this is that the "iamlegend" taggers are a bit like zombies.

You know one kind of method for one kind of illnes

[Marrow]

I have had a bone marrow transplant. No radiation, minimal chemo-like drugs. In the hospital a week or a week and a half, 6 months of outpatient monitoring and I was cured.

For the AIDS treatment to work, they would most likely use something closer to my transplant protocol than the full oblation that they use with cancer patients.

Note to those interested: They dont have to go in with needles or drills to "dig out" the bone marrow from the donor. They give you a drug call the "G" that causes your bone marrow to percolate into your bloodstream. Then they filter it out with a dialysis-type procedure. Its fairly painless. I had it done to save my own marrow in case something went wrong with the transplant.

Re:Nice to hear....

[philspear]

... it's being commercialized. Leave it to a U.S. institution to be concerned with profiting from a possible cure for HIV.

I don't see you donating your life savings to this. You expect people to do this at a loss, but not you. Hmm.... there needs to be a new word to describe hypocrisy on the internet. Hypotroll? Nah, that sounds too much like hypnotoad...

Re:I know what bone marrow transplants do to peopl

[DiegoBravo]

He's not criticizing, just accounting a real experience. Adding that people can live with HIV for several (many?) years, so there is a very good chance that in the near future any patient can get a treatment or cure less invasive and with a better success probability than the article's case. And agreed, this is time to congratulate the physicians for this cure.

Re:Nice to hear....

[Hyppy]

Nobody is against the people doing the research being compensated. I highly doubt a medical biologist is incapable of choosing a job based upon his compensation, financial, altruistic, or otherwise.

I assume what most people are against is a megagiant pharmaceutical (or other) corporation exploiting a global medical breakthrough to enhance their "bottom line" at the cost of human life.

Re:Evolution.

[ScrewMaster]

Yeah okay. Good plot for a Sci-Fi Channel Made-for-TV movie, or maybe a Direct-to-DVD production.

Or a Greg Bear novel. I can't wait for my kids to smell more than kids already do!

Yeah, I must have been thinking about that one when I wrote that.

What the hell?

[Anachragnome]

" Some physicians at UCLA have developed a similar therapy and plan to commercialize it."

Not "in the know" on this one, do doctors PATENT procedures? Is there some guy/s out there, essentially holding the cure to AIDs, that has the RIGHT to withhold such a procedure from common use, if they are not paid?

If so, wouldn't the intentional withholding of such a treatment from a patient, for whatever reason, be a direct violation of the Hippocratic Oath, and thus grounds for the revocation of a medical license?

Pretty obvious I am out of my realm, eh? Serious questions though.....

Re:What the hell?

[argent]

This isn't a drug, it's a naturally occurring mutation that's apparently common in parts of Europe.

Re:What the hell?

[WhiteHorse-The Origi]

Yes this is true. Most modern treatments are with-held until the patent holder is paid. A perfect example is Thailand where they disobeyed the patent laws and made generic HIV drugs for 1/10th of the cost. Now everybody in Thailand gets affordable treatment and the Bush admin is trying to pressure them to stop selling life-saving drugs to people. Go figure...

Re:Evolution.

[ScrewMaster]

Hmm... you used the words 'Evolution' and 'intended' in the same post.

So? Humans have been interfering in the natural course of evolution for centuries now. You may think I was advancing a pro-Creationism argument ... but if so, you little know your man.

natural selection NOT largely bypassed

[r00t]

We're probably evolving faster than ever before,
for two reasons. The first is a greater number
of people to get mutations. The second is the
tremendous changes in our environment.

Look at the factors that determine how many
decendents (grandkids, etc.) a person will have.

The biggest selection force is birth control.
We're being selected to DESIRE actual kids,
not merely sex. We're also being selected to
be irresponsible, be dumb, and have menstrual
cycles that require higher doses of birth
control pills to suppress.

The next biggest selection force is diet. We're
being selected to tolerate or dislike all the
normal junk food. We're being selected to crave
vegetables or do without them.

The next biggest selection force is addictive
substances. We'll be less affected by it, or
we'll desire it less.

Never imagine for a moment that humans can be
immune to natural selection. Just look around
you, and you can see the forces at work.

Re:Evolution.

[ScrewMaster]

Unless, by curing HIV, we're putting a halt to the next stage in human evolution. It could be that HIV was intended to trigger a dormant subsection of our genome.

HIV doesn't have intentions. It's a virus, not a God.

Correct. Which is why I said, "HIV was intended" and not "HIV intends."

Re:Evolution.

[Erikderzweite]

>Granted, this process would be fatal to the majority of the infected but the survivors would be graced with an extended lifespan, as well as physical and intellectual powers far beyond those of mortal men

Sounds nice unless you are one of those "majority of the infected"...

Re:Nice to hear....

[Atheose]

and pouring billions of dollars into research

You ignored the above part of my statement. Like you said, nobody is against the researchers being compensated. But if I'm a large company and I fund said research (and with AIDS we're talking billions and billions of dollars), and then want to make a profit off of it, I'm "exploiting" the medical breakthrough? Using that logic, do restaurants exploit hungry people?

Re:Evolution.

[swillden]

You need to read to the end of the GP's post. In a Sci-Fi plot, HIV might have intentions, or it might be a tool used by some other entity or group that has intentions.

Re:I know what bone marrow transplants do to peopl

[blitziod]

sorry about your mom.. the symtomns of BMT transplant are kinda like what a person goes through before they die of AIDS. We need to perfect this.

Re:You know one kind of method for one kind of ill

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

They give you a drug call the "G" that causes your bone marrow to percolate into your bloodstream.

That sounds like one of those beneficial uses of chemical weapons research. ick

Re:Evolution.

[ScrewMaster]

>Granted, this process would be fatal to the majority of the infected but the survivors would be graced with an extended lifespan, as well as physical and intellectual powers far beyond those of mortal men

Sounds nice unless you are one of those "majority of the infected"...

Well ... we are talking an apocalyptic scenario here.

Mod Parent Up - Informative

[Jaazaniah]

"Some physicians at UCLA have developed a similar therapy and plan to commercialize it."

Enough is enough. The demand factors that will go into this "commercialization" will put this out of reach of many who would seek it, despite success rates of these transplants. As if HIV wasn't a death sentence in today's world. While this isn't an end-all, be-all cure against the disease (Mod parent up Informative!), "commercialization" only puts procedures like this out of reach for people in both high-density population areas, and areas of high infection rates, like urban centers in South Africa and its neighbors. The Previous Poster was right about how it would be valued - "Naturally-resistant bone marrow is probably worth what, about 5 million dollars per gram?" This is unacceptable to curb populace infection densities.

Re:Evolution.

[ScrewMaster]

Tonight at 8, exclusively on the Fox Movie Channel, "Darwin Thwartifying Deciderers"

Most of those Deciderers seem to think that Darwin is one of Satan's lieutenants, if not the Big Guy himself in human guise. They need some thwartifying.

A little education wouldn't hurt either.

Re:Evolution.

[ScrewMaster]

You need to read to the end of the GP's post. In a Sci-Fi plot, HIV might have intentions, or it might be a tool used by some other entity or group that has intentions.

That's true, I hadn't thought of that. HIV could be a self-aware virus (maybe some kind of gestalt mentality that operates through another dimension) having designs upon the human race. I mean, as long as we're in the realm of science-fiction why not go all the way.

Re:I know what bone marrow transplants do to peopl

[compro01]

The thing about this is, if I'm understanding it right, is that the radiation part is not needed for this, as the HIV is already keeping the immune system sufficiently suppressed, allowing for a graceful transition from the old marrow to the new marrow.

Re:Monetization

[rrohbeck]

You sound like one of the large number of Americans who also believe that the sun revolves around he earth, who don't believe in evolution, and other nonscientific beliefs. You can sustain any belief by only listening to the sources that corroborate it, and in a free society you can find support for *anything*. The main problem is that with the freedom of speech (only) in America there's also the apparent non-freedom (or un-PC-ness) to call BS what it is. That goes from global warming deniers all the way to Rush Limbaugh. Interestingly enough, it is generally limited to one corner of society.

Re:Monetization

[bennomatic]

Eloquence and information FTW.

Quick answer

[PCM2]

STD cases are rising every year (NON-CUMULATIVE figures, of course), yet where are all the teenagers dying from 'AIDS'?

The fast answer is that HIV is not a highly contagious disease. In fact, compared to something like measles -- or HPV or active herpes -- it is actually quite difficult to catch HIV. The reason we focus so much attention on it, however, is because unlike herpes or genital warts, you die from it.

That is, until recently. Compared to 1981, we have quite a lot of experience treating AIDS. In fact, the clinical definition of AIDS an HIV-positive patient with fewer than 200 T-cells per cubic millimeter of blood. By definition, if we can stop your T-cells from dying, you don't get AIDS. (But if we stop treating you, you do.)

Other than that, it's 2008. To say that HIV does not cause AIDS at this late stage in the game is akin to denying evolution. The amount of scientific evidence linking HIV to AIDS is simply overwhelming.

I'm not at the tail end of a PhD in biology or anything close, but even I know this much. You do yourself a disservice by approaching scientific topics with blinkers on.

Re:Quick answer

[adavidw]

  You do yourself a disservice by approaching scientific topics with blinkers on.

My grandfather approaches most things with his blinkers on. He pretty much leaves those things on whenever he's driving.

Still, I can't figure out how that would impede his understanding of scientific topics.

Re:Evolution.

[Repton]

No, no, HIV was a virus designed by the CIA together with the International Jewish Conspiracy to kill black people, gays, and those who make right turns without indicating.

I know it's true because I read it on the internet!

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Re:Nice to hear....

[msuarezalvarez]

of course it should be publicly funded until it is given to the private sector for commercialization: big pharma did not get any bail out recently, so we owe them as much!

This is good news

[kilodelta]

My doc tells me I'm a CCR5 Delta 32 mutant too. That said, this is very interesting.

In a bone marrow transplant first you have to kill off the existing bone marrow. That means you deny the virus the ability to reproduce and by replacing it with CCR5 Delta 32 marrow, it can't invade the cells.

Apparently the CCR5 Delta 32 mutation is pretty common in European populations like Ireland, England, Italy etc. It came from the time of the plagues, it conferred immunity to the bubonic strains.

Re:Monetization

[Anonymous Coward]

>>You'll get just under 192,000 peer-reviewd articles from groups all over the world

Peer-reviewed.

>>You're no better than the creatioists who say that evolution's impossible but have never botheres to get a fcuking clue how it actually works.

Creationists. Fucking.

Enter Bill Hicks

[XaN-ASMoDi]

"These guys came up to me; "Hey buddy... We're christians and we don't like what your saying." "Then forgive me." Later when I was hanging from the tree!" Although I am wondering where the fucking in the streets is going on, He was spot on with hypocritical christians.

What is...

[isBandGeek()]

Herpes?

neat but is it really a "cure?"

[seeker_1us]

Will the newly "immune" people be carriers of HIV?

Re:neat but is it really a "cure?"

[WhiteHorse-The Origi]

No, they kill all the infected cells before the transplant, and any they miss die off from the virus.

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Re:Evolution.

[MindlessAutomata]

Evolution doesn't really have "stages" and wouldn't be put to a "halt" by preventing a disease from killing us; it just means we don't make a certain type of change. Seriously, read up on evolution! You should really know better.

Re:Evolution.

[MindlessAutomata]

Wow, not only do you not seem to understand evolution, but you thought he was saying something he wasn't at all, and I have no clue whatsoever you thought he said.l

To say evolution "intends" something IS TO COMPLETELY AND ABSOLUTELY MISS THE POINT OF EVOLUTION.

Anonymous Coward, I too join you in shedding tears over this ignorance of evolution.

Attention Pat Robertson

[hyades1]

So if AIDS is a curse from God on all those nasty, sinful homosexuals (as alleged by so many fundamentalist preachers you can't count them all), how is it that some German guy came up with a cure?

Has God downgraded the sentence for being gay from Death to Painful Operation?

Re:Monetization

[MLease]

People have a tendency to make typos when they are upset. The parent poster was understandably upset about the ignorance on display in the grandparent post.

-Mike

Re:I know what bone marrow transplants do to peopl

[madshot]

BMT is a major, major procedure.

With about 30% mortality, I've read.

-jcr

30% isn't bad considering that AID's is 100% fatal. (well, most people die of something else but the cause of the second illness is AIDs)

Re:Evolution.

[ScrewMaster]

Wow, not only do you not seem to understand evolution, but you thought he was saying something he wasn't at all, and I have no clue whatsoever you thought he said.l

To say evolution "intends" something IS TO COMPLETELY AND ABSOLUTELY MISS THE POINT OF EVOLUTION.

Anonymous Coward, I too join you in shedding tears over this ignorance of evolution.

Okay, so you both missed it. Let's move on now.

Re:You know one kind of method for one kind of ill

[SlashBugs]

The drug is Granulocyte Macrophage Colony Stimulating Factor (GM-CSF) if anyone wants to look it up. It's just a growth hormone that you have produced in your body naturally. They just give you a *lot* of it, causing your stem cells to start dividing. Some stay in your bone marrow, the excess cells move out into the bloodstream, from which they can be painlessly extracted.

I know someone who's had cells extracted that way, and she described it like Marrow (very apt name!) does. The hormone treatment made her feel like she had a cold coming for about a week, and the extraction procedure (required about 2 hours sitting in a comfy chair) was just "really boring".

If you sign up to be a bone marrow donor (you should if you can! Brits check out the Anthony Nolan Trust), that's what you're signing up to do: feel like you have a mild cold, be bored for two hours and hopefully save someone's life.

Very rarely (more common in people 50+) the drug doesn't work well and they do ask if they ca take your cells directly from the bone. I know a woman who had this done too. She stayed in hospital for 2 days after, rested in bed for another 2 days and was back in work after a week. It wasn't great fun, but it healed up perfectly and painlessly after a few weeks. She said it was definately worth it to try saving someone's life.

Re:National conscience clause

[MazzThePianoman]

There is a national version of a "conscience clause" in the works and it allows anybody involved with medical care, from ambulance drivers to doctors, to deny service based on their own personal beliefs. The 2008 bill expands this provision to include "care" as an activity that an organization may refuse to provide based on a moral or religious objection. This will allow organizations who receive U.S. funds to deny services to those whose behavior, identity, religion, or other attributes may be deemed objectionable. Scary stuff

Re:Monetization

[WhiteHorse-The Origi]

A HAH! I'm not a geek! PhDs read slashdot too... I'm a genius!!!

Re:You know one kind of method for one kind of ill

[WhiteHorse-The Origi]

Mod parent up. This needs to get out.

lucky go happy

[Alinabi]

Does not sound like a universal solution for AIDS. You must be lucky enough to find an HIV-immune person who also is a donor match. That sounds like a tall order.

Only 25 million?

[fish_in_the_c]

by the way the media etc talks I wouls have though a lot more then 25 million people have been killed by AIDS
in the last 20 years. I mean that only twice as many as are killed by auto accidents. what happened to 1 out of every 4 people contracting it or something like that from back in the 80's. Seems like something must be working to slow it down.

Potential career path

[FritzSolms]

This is a brilliant career path. No more work - just a now and then donate some bone marrow to people who would be willing to pay a lot of money as it is a life or death situation!!

How about patients that refuse to be treated?

[Zerelli]

I see a lot of talk about people who are refused treatment and such, but I have seen no mention of the people who refuse to get treated or to stop spreading the disease. My wife worked as a case management RN and set up an AIDS/HIV clinic intended to supply free treatment to those who could not afford it. The issue they had was that a lot of these people do not want to be bothered by treatment. They seem to either not give a shit because their lives are already hell or they assume that because they have it they are going to die so they do not want to be bothered. To me the biggest problem with HIV/AIDS are the people who still go out there sharing needles and engaging in unsafe sex. I think that needs to be prosecuted a lot more vigorously. I have seen spouses who were dying because their significant other was going out on the DL and brought home a nice case of HIV/AIDS (I used to be a MLT/phlebot). The guy that did that should be prosecuted for murder.

Re:Monetization

[SlashBugs]

Well spotted, thanks for pointing out my mistakes.

Behold the power of peer review!

I've seen several

[butterflysrage]

I've seen several friends in the US be denied medications because the pharmacist didn't agree with their sexuality, or their sex. There have been thousands of cases of women being denied birth control under this law.

just cause you've never had it happen to you doesn't mean it doesn't happen to anyone.

Re:Monetization

[anonieuweling]

The 'known' relation between HIV and AIDS is not accepted by the critics. They say:
The virus has not been isolated.
The isolation has not been done in the open.
Nobody has replicated isolating HIV.

As I udnerstand it:
The virus needs to be isolated at various patients,
The pations must not carry other virusses, diseases.
Then the patients get AIDS which has to be caused by HIV (which has to be proven).
AIDS is a complex of *known* diseases.
Perhaps caused by the expen$ive medication.
Why wasn't all this cleared up after ~30 years of AIDS? Why didn't medication go down in price?
Why is the medication so bad that you get AIDS-like symptoms?
Why do HIV+ people recover or at least lead a healthy life without medication?
I don't know for sure. I don't have HIV nor AIDS, I won't let them test me.
I am not a doctor or virus-wizard.
I am just an interested party.

So no flame-bait, just what they write.
AIDS/HIV research is much shadier than flu research. Why?

Not a cure

[Hoi Polloi]

This isn't a cure, it is a transplant. The disease itself wasn't stopped. It is like saying they cured heart disease with a heart transplant or TB with a lung transplant.

Re:I know what bone marrow transplants do to peopl

[Ohrion]

What a HORRIBLY inappropriate comment! ...and yet I laughed for about 15 seconds or so. *sigh*

Re:I know what bone marrow transplants do to peopl

[jcr]

30% isn't bad considering that AID's is 100% fatal

Except that the 30% is within days of the treatment, and the 100% is over a decade or so.

-jcr

Re:I know what bone marrow transplants do to peopl

[ElAurian]

30% mortality within a few weeks, then. You pedant.

Re:Evolution as a trouble maker

[Markimedes]

AIDS is people too.

wow, it's like you're too idiotic to read your own

[ClioCJS]

post. Gee, someone couldn't accidentally "sleep with the wrong person" who HAPPENS TO BE A DRUG USER. A lot of non-drug user, straight people get infected due to drug users getting infected. You fucking moron. You're in the same class as Catholics who wont dole out birth control. You make me sick. Your specious logic is laughable.

Re:wow, it's like you're too idiotic to read your

[ClioCJS]

p.s. here's a good comment that helps explain why you're full of shit: http://science.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1023173&cid=25697193

if you stick your head in the sand, you're bound

[ClioCJS]

to see nothing. But all you'd have to do is a simple google to prove yourself wrong. I know it's alot easier to declare "with my head in the sand, i've never heard of a single case!" however, your statement is rather useless when faced with the actual reality of... well, reality:

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=refused+to+fill+my+prescription+based+on+legal+grounds&btnG=Google+Search&aq=f&oq=

actually

[ClioCJS]

Actually, even our for-profit pharmaceutical corporations get a LOT LOT LOT of government grants. But of course, corporations don't accent this fact, because then people like you wouldn't be able to spout excuses like you just spouted.

Re:wow, it's like you're too idiotic to read your

[pcolaman]

Trust me, most people who sleep with the wrong person know that they are druggies, or they are too naive and the Darwin process is merely in action. If that makes me a fucking moron for recognizing it, than what does it make you, a naive moron? And what does that have to do with Catholics who won't dole out birth control? You think that people who want birth control MUST go to the Catholic Church to get some? It's called CVS Pharmacy, you fucking retard. Go, like, read a fucking book or step in front of a train. Either way you might do us all a big favor.

Re:wow, it's like you're too idiotic to read your

[pcolaman]

You must've missed the response posts where I basically dismantled his argument. I think your bad karma has more to do with being a fucking retard than not giving a fuck. You are too stupid to give a fuck, it has nothing to do with choice.

Re:wow, it's like you're too idiotic to read your

[ClioCJS]

oh i get it. i missed the posts that are out there "somewhere" where you actually make sense. i suspect i'll live.

Re:wow, it's like you're too idiotic to read your

[ClioCJS]

and what do you do when the person at CVS refuses to give you your prescription because they have idiotic judgmental views (you know -- like yours). If you say it doesn't happen, then you have no clue how to use google. Mostly, though, you are a disgusting individual, up there with the likes of George Bush. You think people get what they deserve. That is actually a tenet of Satanism.

Re:wow, it's like you're too idiotic to read your

[pcolaman]

I posted direct replies to the post you referenced. I wouldn't expect you to catch this though, as you obviously have the intelligence blinders on.

Re:wow, it's like you're too idiotic to read your

[ClioCJS]

I provided a link of a comment I liked earlier. You could perhaps do the same and provide me the link to the comment that you are supposedly referring to.

p.s.

[ClioCJS]

p.s. I used to not know where it said what your karma was, but I just checked, and mine is actually Excellent. Not that it matters. My signature is parody. As much parody as you are of a compassionate human being.