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Gene Therapy Approach 'Completely' Protects Mice From HIV Infection
Pierre Bezukhov writes "Scientists from the California Institute of Technology have come up with a gene therapy approach that has proven effective in protecting mice (with humanized immune systems) against HIV infections. They used a genetically altered virus to infect muscles cells and deliver DNA codes of potent antibodies isolated from the blood of human HIV victims (abstract). The muscle cells then began to manufacture the antibodies in quantities that proved 'completely protective' against HIV infection. By contrast, traditional vaccines have not worked against HIV, as scientists have failed to find a molecule that induces the immune system to produce enough potent antibodies. The difficulties stem from the fact that HIV disguises some of its external structures from the antibodies."
There have already been trials. You give the treatment to one group of at-risk individuals and a placebo to another group. You make sure that they understand that they aren't to rely on this as a cure/certain protection. Then you follow them over the years and see what the infection rate is. If 30% of the control group is infected with HIV at the end and only 5% of the treatment group is infected, you've got a good result. If they are both about the same, your treatment doesn't work.
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
It can't be cited other than by checking every single scientific study in all of history and seeing that nonw of them proof that ADIS is caused by HIV.
it can be trivially disproved by showing the proof of course.
For that we basically have Koch's Postulates.
1. The germ must be found in every host with the disease
There have been cases of of AIDS like symptoms without HIV:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8093633
They are very rare though, and just because something that isn't influenza can cause flu like symptoms doesn't mean influenza doesn't cause the flu.
Essentially everyone with AIDS tests positive for HIV, and >99% of people without AIDS test negative for HIV.
2. The germ must be isolated from the host and grown in pure culture
This is done routinely .
3. The germ must cause the disease when introduced into a susceptible healthy host.
4. The germ must be re-isolated from the infected host
Ethics prevent us from doing these steps for things we think will kill you.
However, there have been a few lab accidents in which workers have been infected with HIV (cultured HIV, not just say blood from an AIDS patient getting into their bloodstream, which would carry more than just HIV). All of them showed T-cell depletion. And HIV was then isolated from them and matched the one they had been infected with exactly.
http://gateway.nlm.nih.gov/MeetingAbstracts/ma?f=102203749.html
Plus the dozens of health care workers who have contracted AIDS from mistakes with HIV+ blood/etc - clearly not as good as isolated HIV infection for showing it is HIV, but more volume.
... in the United States.
That's where you go wrong: compared to southern Africa, where about 1 out of every 5 adults currently infected, the 50,000 per year in the US is almost negligible. And in that population, about 60% of all adults with HIV are women and girls.
source.
I am officially gone from
1) Most people getting infected with AIDS aren't in the United States. They are in Africa and other underdeveloped regions.
2) AIDS prevalence is not the same as the infection rate. The total AIDS prevalence is high among gay men for historical reasons. But young heterosexual women are now the most at risk demographic.