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Italian Team Cures Wiskott-Aldrich Syndrome With the Help of HIV
New submitter tchernobog writes "An Italian team funded by Telethon and S. Raffaele of Milan, was able to cure six kids affected by lethal genetic diseases (in Italian, English video): the Wiskott-Aldrich syndrome and the metachromatic leukodystrophy. This is the culmination of a project lasted 15 years, and which cost more than 30M €; the researchers published some preliminary results last year in Nature, and are waiting for the results on more patients to submit another. The really interesting part is: they used a mix of advanced genetic techniques to achieve this result. Firstly, the DNA of a defective cell is corrected with a gene assembled in the lab. This procedure has been very dangerous for the past 20 years: that it can even be used is a good achievement alone. Secondly, the corrected DNA is propagated in the patient's body using a stripped-down version of HIV, of which less than 10% of its original genome remains. Might the feared HIV in reality prove to be salvation for some?"
Soon after, the Italian government put them in prison on charges of manslaughter for not curing all genetic illnesses when clearly they could have saved lives. http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/10/22/us-italy-earthquake-court-idUSBRE89L0WM20121022
http://xkcd.com/938/
HIV kills the sinful but cures the sick. There's no inconsistency.
First of all, it doesn't resequence DNA (if that is really a valid concept). It just ADDS a small bit of DNA into the genome.
Just like viruses have been doing since, well, since there were viruses. But yes, it's potentially scary. So are nuclear weapons, particle beam accelerators and most politicians.
Man up here. It's a big, dangerous world.
And you're not getting out alive.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
But they claim that they do. And in in the case of religion, if you take out the spurious claims, you're basically left with no beliefs at all.
There have been a number of these headlines the past few years and they all use the sensationalist headline of "HIV CURES DISEASE" which simply is not true. What is true is that genetic mechanisms that HIV, a lentivirus, uses to engineer cells are being re-purposed for medical benefit. The basic technique has been used in the laboratory for ages but the big headline here is not HIV but genetic engineering. This is as much HIV helping to cure a disease as getting X-rays at the dentist amounts to "DEATH RAY HELPS PREVENT CAVITIES!"
I live in constant fear of the Coming of the Red Spiders.
We didn't steal fire, we just infringed on the gods' patents.
I read TFA and all I got was this lousy cookie