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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."

4 of 232 comments (clear)

  1. Still a long ways to go by Megahard · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Just starting animal trials. Too early to know if it's really going to work.

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    I eat only the real part of complex carbohydrates.
  2. Re:Let us celebrate.. by sjames · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Actually, it has the potential to be much better than current treatments though it wouldn't actually be a cure. IF (and as always it's a big if) it really forces HIV to become latent, the patient would have a normal immune system and probably fewer side effects than with current drugs.

    But it wouldn't be a cure, just a very effective lifelong treatment.

  3. Re:Let us celebrate.. by jkflying · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The trouble is that there *have* been a number of cures/vaccines, but HIV mutates so quickly that they were quickly rendered ineffective. HIV can differ significantly even between somebody and the person they were infected by, all depending on how their immune system responds to the infection and what drugs they are given.

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  4. Re:This will never get approved by sFurbo · · Score: 5, Insightful

    As a business why would I want to cure a person when I can keep making money by offering lifetime treatments?. That's just how it is with big Pharma, most intelligent people know this.

    Big Pharma is actually more than one company, and company A doesn't care whether their cure for disease X makes the treatment of company B irrelevant.

    If they started actually curing everything, their profits would fall and the markets would tank.

    Because people can only get cancer once, and old people are not a better stream of revenue than young people, because Alzheimer medicine is not expensive.