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Australian Scientists Discover Potential Aids Cure
smi.james.th writes "Several sites report that Australian researcher David Harrich and his team have potentially discovered a way to stop HIV becoming AIDS and ultimately cure the disease. From the article: 'What we've actually done is taken a normal virus protein that the virus needs to grow, and we've changed this protein, so that instead of assisting the virus, it actually impedes virus replication and does it quite strongly.' This could potentially hail one of modern medicine's greatest victories."
Let us celebrate with a trip to the brothel!
... use condoms?
I might be slightly paranoid and I hope I am wrong, but why would big pharmacy want to produce this? They have a choice between selling someone a whole life really expensive medicines (well not to make, but to buy) or cure him... I am just going to assume that this method will be deemed 'unsafe'.
Just starting animal trials. Too early to know if it's really going to work.
I eat only the real part of complex carbohydrates.
I don't get it. This research is at such an early stage that there is no way to know whether is can work. Leave it in the science journal and when clinical trials are over then write about it.
Just like any potential cures to other major diseases that plague mankind this potential cure will be quietly buried and forgotten because god forbid the people who make money off drugs to prolong people suffering with HIV will suddenly go broke.
Trials here in South Africa showed that circumcision reduced the HIV infection rate, because apparently the skin on the inside of the foreskin is more porous, therefore without it there was less of a gap for the virus to get in. This only works one-way, naturally, and it's not 100%, but while no cure was in sight, I think it's better than doing nothing.
One thing I know, and that is that I am ignorant...
TFS has a quote that refers to changing an AIDS virus protein. How is that accomplished?
Thanks for any insights.
We should just go ahead and cut the head of the penis off, since its more porous than the rest.
You will still be HIV positive and can spread the infection, to others that don't have the modified protein, as it don't completely inhibit HIV reproduction. It's still great news for suffers, if the animal trials are successful.
You first!
Sent from my ASR33 using ASCII
The researcher is AUSTRALIAN!
That makes this News for nerds, stuff that matters.
But is he?
Many times we've seen a much trumpeted discovery or whatever by an Australian, only for the "Australian" involved to turn out to be an English, American or other nationality scientist.
Take Brian Schmidt. Just about everyone I know came in their undies when they heard an "Australian" astronomer had won a Nobel prize. They simply did not want to know that he was an American who had moved to Australia only relatively recently after marrying an Aussie.
Now I'm not saying the scientist involved in this instance is not Australian, but I would like to know it's true before I start leaping about and waving the flag.
As opposed to what? "Could actually"?
Really want to be able to find a cure for AIDS as early as possible!In those patients reported see, is really too painful
FFS, Schmidt is Australian! How hard is it to look up?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brian_Schmidt
There, see? Now you can feel proud again.
Ill stick to condoms.
If you have to use glue, you should probably get a smaller size.
If I had a Zimbabwean dollar for every time..... O, forget it.
Nothing will come of this for decades, even on the 1 in 1000000 chance that it actually works.
They should bar miserable old gits like myself from commenting on forums - we've been around too long so don't excited about every little 'new' thing every time some scientist gets excited about every little 'new' thing.
Um... Doesn't that WP article actually prove you wrong while corroborating just about everything the GP said?
From the linked FA in your own post:
Schmidt, an only child, was born on February 24, 1967, in Missoula, Montana, where his father Dana C. Schmidt was a fisheries biologist. When he was 13, his family relocated to Anchorage, Alaska.
Schmidt attended Bartlett High School in Anchorage, Alaska, and graduated in 1985. He has said that he wanted to be a meteorologist "since I was about five-years-old" but "... I did some work at the USA National Weather Service up in Anchorage and didn't enjoy it very much. It was less scientific, not as exciting as I thought it would be—there was a lot of routine. But I guess I was just a little naive about what being a meteorologist meant." His decision to study astronomy, which he had seen as "a minor pastime", was made just before he enrolled at university. He earned his BS (Physics) and BS (Astronomy) from the University of Arizona in 1989. He received his MA (Astronomy) in 1992 and then PhD (Astronomy) in 1993 from Harvard University. Schmidt's PhD thesis was supervised by Robert Kirshner and used Type II Supernovae to measure the Hubble Constant.
At Harvard, he met his future wife, the Australian (Jenny) Jennifer M. Gordon who was a PhD student in economics. In 1994, he moved to Australia.
So, Australian citizenship or not (I assume he has it by now), it's kind of a stretch to accurately describe the guy as Australian.
Birth Certificate or GTFO!
How is HIV passed from women to men? Does it go down the man's urethra and somehow into his bloodstream? How, exactly? How much HIV is present in vaginal fluids, and how much, if any, vaginal fluid, goes down a man's urethra when he is having sex?
Did any of you idiots bother to THINK about basic stuff like this?
You clearly haven't, since all you're doing is asking the questions. Why don't you go out and find the answers? Then come back and present a little thing that the rest of us like to call "evidence."
I'll do the first one for you. The second one is your homework.
For HIV to be able to infect someone it has to cross through the mucosal membranes (the skin that lines the vagina, cervix, rectum, urethra (hole where urine/pee/semen comes out), mouth, nose, etc).
Contrary to popular belief, there does not have to be a cut or a tear in the membrane for HIV to pass through (though the presence of such will increase that persons risk should they be exposed).
I got that from Yahoo! Answers, fer chris'sakes. It's not heard.
Do some RESEARCH
Good advice. Why don't you follow it?
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
Will this method work against the common cold? *cough* *cough* It affects many more people than AIDS ever did. *trumpet sound* Probably causing more sick days at work as well. Can we, now that we have a cure for AIDS, please *cough* focus on finding a cure for the common cold? *Sneeze* It has been a menace for much longer than AIDS.
I got that from Yahoo! Answers, fer chris'sakes. It's not heard.
Hah. Not hard, obviously. Stupid fingers.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
Now, if we can only figure out how to clone Freddie Mercury...
Haha, Oh my days.
As a doctor in the UK who has worked in the largest centre for HIV in Europe (Chelsea and Westminster hospital, at the GUM/infectious diseases centre there) I can tell you that fewer people are dying of AIDS for the exact reason you mock, drugs are saving their lives. These aren't wonder drugs, and they aren't nice drugs for your body in many ways, but they do work well.
Here's a great page describing the HAART and modified HAART regimes that we mostly use nowadays http://emedicine.medscape.com/article/1533218-overview
To give you an idea of how effective these treatments are life expectancy in someone newly diagnosed with HIV with a high CD4 count in the UK is now expected to be only one year less than if they had not been infected. Not that that means their life will be easy, the drugs have a lot of side effects and they will often be very ill for a long time before they die, and the drugs cost a lot, but they will live.
I'm pretty sure those trials were ended early and the lower infection rate was mostly due to guys not engaging in sexual activities while they healed from the procedure. Afterwards they probably also noticed their sexual pleasure being reduced as the foreskin has a great deal of nerves and protects the head of the penis.
I never knew the greatness of foreskin due to doctors and my parents decided something that should have been left up to me to decide, but these guys will probably regret their decision.
So what's wrong with the tried and true method of not engaging in sexual activities with everything that moves?
So, Australian citizenship or not (I assume he has it by now), it's kind of a stretch to accurately describe the guy as Australian.
Well, what exactly is the definition of a "true Australian", then?
If someone was born in Australia? But then, what if the mother just spent a few days in Australia?
Maybe if the parents were Australian? Do they have to be "true Australians", too? Then the only true Australians are the Aborigines.
Actually not even those are true Australians because ultimately all humans came from Africa.
There have been a few announcements about a "cure." I hope one of them sticks. This is another interesting finding using a vaccine.
Views expressed do not necessarily reflect those of the author.
and ultimately cure the disease.
For a treatment to be a cure it has to eliminate the virus from your system, and what is described in the summary doesn't seem to be that.
So I did the unthinkable and actually read the TFA (I know, I can't believe it myself). To the credit of the summary in it the reporter does claim that it's a cure. However just a couple of paragraphs over a scientist in the team is quoted as saying:
"You would still be infected with HIV, it's not a cure for the virus, but the virus would stay latent, it wouldn't wake up, so it wouldn't develop into Aids," he added.
So, no, it is not a cure, but a great promising treatment for the disease.
A cure for aids will not matter in the near or far future if Antibiotic-Resistant Gonorrhea continues to spread. The attitude in the public still seems to be that gonorrhea was something easily cured, but not always, not anymore.
If there was one "silver lining" about the whole HIV-AIDS issue was it forced people to take all STDs seriously. I think even the public attention on the the HPV vaccine has been helped directly or indirectly by attention to HIV. My personal fear is the day we "cure AIDS" we will all be set back to square one in the fight to stop any and all STDs. I hope I am wrong.
Ever heard of Koch's postulates, AC?
A successful API design takes a mixture of software design and pedagogy.
I believe this is cure for AIDS #3 on slashdot. Cures for cancer are at about 14. Cures for aging in general, at least 4. I think solar panels are at about 1000% efficiency too if you add up all the stories.
Just starting animal trials. Too early to know if it's really going to work.
The preliminary results of the animal trials are startlingly good, and in an interview the chief researcher said he believes the approval cycle will be short (ie: less than 5 years) because of the probability that this therapy will pass safety trials etc. We'll have to wait and see of course.
Which is fantastic, if you are a mouse with HIV. But, if you are a human with AIDS, you are still just as fucked as you were yesterday and there is, as yet, NO indication that you will be any less fucked in 5 years.
P.S. Déjà vu I've written that last line here on Slashdot before, several years ago.
I don't know about "true Australian" but I'd imagine that Australians would take the most pride in successful Australians who are not just citizens but whose genius could be argued is in part due to having been raised in Australia during most of their formative years. It would be dumb for Americans to point to Einstein's US citizenship as evidence of America's greatness or as an example of what great people America produces.
Ok, anything that stops AIDS is great, don't get me wrong. I really do hope this works. But, can a person undergoing this therapy spread HIV? My guess is it is a lot less likely but still possible but that is an amateur, uneducated guess.
If so, what happens when the world is no longer afraid of AIDS but this medicine is still patented. No doubt it will be extended as many times as possible. Maybe they will even find a way to patent it in parts, staggered over time too.
Don't get me wrong, free love for all sounds great! With no AIDS though I can imagine a world where the majority of the population caries HIV. It would be not unlike how we almost all carry EBV now. Think of the power that puts in the hands of whoever holds that patent. Wow! Should we be scared?
Why did it cause me so much pain, then? Why were my first memories of searing pain? Why did I lose my family because of complications from it? And why, after all the pain I've been through, that for about half of my life I thought was normal for a man, can I still get AIDS?
You fucking troll. Anybody who doesn't have rocks for brains, unlike my ex-parents and the AAP, knows that study was hopelessly flawed.
Who can undo all the suffering I've been through?
Who can make it right?
You sure as fucking hell can't you fucking goddamned piece of shit.
This'll only work for spherical chickens in a vacuum.
Wow, that's the 'perfect medicine' think of the money that must bring the drug industry!
Obviously you have never had sex.
Maybe that method is true, but it seems to be seldom tried!
--PM
Probably vaccine development, antibiotic development, and curable disease drug development ought to be run BY the people FOR the people. I.e., Government support of the research and development.
It would also lessen the motivation to pass off bad drugs onto the people for profit.
It's pretty insane that the US has a $600B military budget, when less than 10k people in the US die a year from hostile military action of any sort, yet 100k-ish US-ians die every year from antibiotic-resistant bugs. Can we have $100B/year for antibiotic development, please? If we were rational, we would probably swap the defense and medical research budgets!
--PM
Clearly he's not Australian since his name isn't Bruce!
Plus I heard he was a poofter.
I've been hearing about groundbreaking AIDS cures for at least 20 years. Sometimes, they're bold enough to tell us the production cure is a mere 5 years down the road. Meanwhile the researchers get flooded with investment dollars and we slowly forget about the claims. Same thing with cancer cures.
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
There have been posts about the methodology of the trials, I don't think there's that big a problem.
Bear in mind that circumcision is a common tradition among African tribes, they do it at an initiation ceremony at around 11 years old or so. As to whether this is right or humane or whatever, I'm not going to venture an opinion.
But, there are also tribes which don't practise it, so there's more than enough opportunity to find a control group. The fact that it was performed years ago removes the influence of waiting for healing from the procedure to complete, and FWIW I've never come across any indication in my discussions with the Africans that being circumcised curbs their performance at all. They seem to think it's a good thing.
As to your comment about abstinence: Yes, I agree with you on principle, but try telling people to stop having sex. Not going to work.
One thing I know, and that is that I am ignorant...
So, Australian citizenship or not (I assume he has it by now), it's kind of a stretch to accurately describe the guy as Australian.
So then the only people who are Australian are the native aborigine folks? Because in case you forgot, Australia was a prison island for Britain starting around 1788, and it wasn't until the late 1930's that Australia severed government ties with Britain.
No? Okay, then how many generations of your family have to be from Australia for you to be Australian? 1? 2? 4?
If he has Australian citizenship, he is Australian. 10 years and marriage to someone whose family goes back a generation or two is more than enough for most. As an American, I consider someone an American when they get their citizenship. So do they.
Please help metamoderate.
I saw an article that a Google founder's mother has Parkinsons and that he carries a mutated gene that gives him a higher chance to get it. If anyone is going to use their fortunes to find a way to reprogram the human body to cure diseases I'd bet on him.
I believe there were some cases of curing HIV through spinal (fluid) transplants with some people who have an inbuilt immunity.
IIRC, the remnants of the disease was eventually eradicated by the immune system.
I'd imagine that if we can bottle it up more and more, eventually it will be cured from progression and transmission. If the body never suffers the effects of AIDS, perhaps they'll have more success giving it a way to kill off HIV.
If it works on HIV, the technique might be useable for cancer and similar diseases.
And for the homophobes, let me point out this might work on the children of infected mothers (or are you also so ignorant that you don't know anyone can catch it, and it can be inherited?)
Of course, as has been said for decades, AIDS shows that lesbians are God's Chosen People (tm).
mark
Australians are very quick to claim something as being one of their own based upon the most tenuous of links. Somebody who became famous once saw Australia on a map? They're Australian.
Three words: I Am Legend
Three Words: I Am Legend
Yes, very convincing.
Read this - Gallo is a fraud:
http://www.fearoftheinvisible.com/aidsresearch
Fewer people of dying from IATROGENIC causes- i.e. TOXIC so-called 'AIDS drugs', than before, because Big Pharma have lowered the dose, to keep their victims alive for longer, thus making more money out of them.
"drugs are saving their lives". Sure. I believe you.
"As a doctor" (LOL), I'm sure you've taken the time to read the article on Nevirapine that I posted a link to? Thought not.
http://www.tig.org.za/The%20trouble%20with%20nevirapine.pdf
If HIV is THAT easily transmitted
If HIV is how easily transmitted, exactly? Give us some numbers to work with. You can't just keep shouting "it should be MILLIONS" without actually doing the calculations.
Can you show me any EVIDENCE of 'HIV' passing through a mucosal membrane?
Can you show me any EVIDENCE that there ISN'T a teapot on the moon? No? Oh, well, it must be true then! (hint: this is sarcasm to demonstrate the ridiculous position you are taking).
refuse to question anything.
And yet you will apparently blindly believe any conspiracy website that postulates anything contrary to the established and understood nature of things, simply so you can fulfil the need to convince yourself that you're superior to the ignorant cretins that roam the planet like a herd of sheep.
Since the number of people infected with STDs is rising every year, due to more and more people having more sexual partners, and not using condoms, why aren't there more and more people dying of 'AIDS'? Don't tell me - the 'wonder drugs' are magically saving their lives!
Well, yes.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
My comment isn't about abstinence but instead about not sleeping around with everything that moves. There are certain demographics that are at a higher risk of getting HIV and they all share the same damned thing in common: Lots of partners.
If I was a gay man living in a city I'd fear for my life since 1 out of 5 of them have it and half of those who do have it don't know about it. They see another gay guy they want to have sex with and go do it and damn the consequences since our healthcare system is legally bound to provide relief to them. Thousands of dollars worth of medication a week per gay guy that has found out he has HIV. All because they don't wear condoms because it slightly diminishes pleasure (though definitely not as much as circumcision does).
Want to have sex with multiple partners? Go ahead. Just make sure that they are clean and that they aren't screwing anything with or without a heartbeat. Want to shag that cute stranger? Use condoms. It isn't 100% safe but it is better than mutilating yourself.
I don't know about true Australians, but I do have a pretty good idea of what is and isn't a knife (pronounced more like "naaoif").
My wife and I ate in a Sydney restaurant a few years ago, and a woman at a nearby table asked the waiter for another "norf." It wasn't until he returned with a knife that we understood just what the fuck she was talking about.
Doc sorry to tell you this but just living in misery is not enough for some people. As someone with Major Depression and panic-disorder I can assure you at some point life becomes more work than it's worth... I've been there a few times now but my symptoms backed off just enough to go on and I have people to help me. I fully expect to die from this as I've tried most drugs now... Quality of life is very important, you probably know that but some doctors think otherwise.
We all are going to die after all..
Those are a different kind of study, but both types have some serious problems.
You're talking about population studies, where you try to find a correlation between circumcision and HIV infection rates. But because circumcision is based on culture any other variation in cultural practices will give a false connection. Some countries have a strong correlation but a large Muslim population, so we can't be sure if it's circumcision, prohibitions against adultery and unaccompanied women, or just a general view that sex is sinful or dirty (or some combination) that is actually responsible. Other countries have a strong inverse correlation (more circumcision -> more HIV infection) but have different levels of contact with the West, so that might just be a result of picking up both circumcision and HIV from outside groups.
The studies that the GP brought up were experimental - find 1000 uncircumcised men in a high-risk group who want to be circumcised, split them randomly into experimental and control groups, and see what happens. One problem is that they ended those studies after 18 months, so time while healing and temporary behavioral changes could explain much of the difference in apparent risk. And that also leaves out long term effects - if you look for subjects at a brothel, giving them a few weeks with no sex might make them rethink their behavior, or because they were required to wear condoms while healing they might pick up that habit. Another is that the experimental group has much more contact - they had to come back to the hospital to have the surgery done, at least one follow-up visit, and also come back if something went wrong or seemed odd - and every time they see AIDS prevention posters, talk with medical professionals, and are reminded that they have to wear condoms. Then there's the possibility of control group members going to religious practitioners (a common HIV vector in Africa), low numbers (out of hundreds, 12 infections vs 6), more people dropping out of the study than contracting HIV, preexisting biases, and lots of other more minor issues.
Of course the biggest issue (for both of these kinds of studies) is that studies in first-world countries, where it's easier to be rigorous and socioeconomic factors can be compensated for, almost never show a statistically meaningful correlation between circumcision and any STD, let alone a medically meaningful one. That's why after the three African studies came out almost every medical organization worldwide reviewed their policies regarding circumcision and left them the same - the studies were of questionable value, and for the groups we deal with (infants in the West) we have better studies that have different results.
Why offer a one-time cure when you can offer a life-time treatment
Curing or preventing a lethal disease extends a patient's life, making the patient a potential customer for a company's other drugs.
Pharmacies can (and do) change the generic vendor for a particular drug whenever they see fit.
Once a patient is doing well on one generic manufacturer's version of a particular drug, can't the doctor avoid "additional variables that are introduced as soon as the Pharmacy decides to switch to a different generic" by prescribing "fluoxephetamine by Teva, dispense as written"? It's like people sticking with Equate brand because they know what they're going to get out of Perrigo or whatever other company manufactures Equate drugs for Walmart.
The pharmacies all think it's okay to do so because the drugs are all the same... mostly
A trend of D.A.W. orders for a particular generic might be a step toward changing pharmacists' mind about this.
guess what would probably happen if the medical community as a whole settle in behind a particular generic? That generic essentially becomes the defacto drug and you lose a lot of the benefit of price wars that make generics GOOD for the consumer.
Eggs wouldn't be in one basket necessarily as much as two to four, depending on how many manufacturers make a particular generic drug. If there are at least two or three manufacturers, there's a bit of monopolistic competition going on, just as there's competition in my area between Faygo and Sam's Choice for cut-rate cola. But even with some barriers to switching, the threat of at least some doctors and patients switching to another brand (why did I just suddenly think of cigarettes?) should be enough to keep emerginng second-tier name brands from increasing their prices anywhere near what the monopoly used to charge.