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Promising Vaccine Candidate Could Lead To a Definitive Cure For HIV
Zothecula writes "A very promising vaccine candidate for HIV/AIDS has shown the ability to completely clear the simian immunodeficiency virus (SIV), a very aggressive form of HIV that leads to AIDS in monkeys. Developed at the Vaccine and Gene Therapy Institute at the Oregon Health and Science University (OHSU), the vaccine proved successful in about fifty percent of the subjects tested and could lead to a human vaccine preventing the onset of HIV/AIDS and even cure patients currently on anti-retroviral drugs."
Which is why they spent over $500 million in 2011 just on HIV vaccine clinical trials? Sorry, your argument doesn't really hold water, and anyway the company that *does* come up with the vaccine will make a killing.
Help I am stuck in a signature factory!
Not just make a killing, but will put all the other companies out of business as their treatments become worthless.
Why is figure 12 in the supplements, it seems to be the most important part (it compares cd4+ T-cell levels)? It is not even mentioned in the main text. Isn't reduction in the actual pathology the most important goal of a treatment?
This sounds really interesting...
It sounds like, instead of infecting the patient with a blunted virus that would eventually die away, they are permanently infecting the patient with a persistent virus that looks and acts like their target but causes no harm to keep up the immune response over the long haul. Sounds to me like a really interesting approach.
Maybe someone could enlighten me to the history of this approach in the treatment of other diseases, or is it novel?
Hmm, the humour and sarcasm seem to have been be lost on you.
Besides any vaccination campaign would take some years to ramp up and anti-retrovirals become less effective and ultimately go out of patent over time any way. So it's not like their business is going to go bust over night or wouldn't have drawn to a natural end anyway.
Only if they price it so that everyone who needs it can afford it. Obviously that won't happen, they will want to maximize profit in rich countries instead of practically giving it away in Africa, so all those poor people will still need the other cheaper treatments.
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SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
There are provisions in international law that state that poor countries can ignore patents on life-saving drugs if the patent-holder prices them prohibitively expensively. In practice, this means that drug companies price the products by region, trying to replicate the US model of "rich people can afford it, poor people can go and die in a corner."
Given that HIV/AIDS has made the population growth rates in certain places explode, and that these places have very young populations, would a definitive cure for HIV/AIDS set off a massive population timebomb? Has any thought been given to the consequences of very suddenly removing a big source of mortality?
I'm just waiting for there to be an accidental release of smallpox. I know that nearly no one from my generation on has been vaccinated. A single out break of that in a major metro area and international airport would be one of the most devastating things our generation could witness.
'...if only "Jumping to a Conclusion" was an event in the Olympics.'
So are you saying you don't understand that drugs cost huge amounts of money to research, develop, test, and approve? Or is it that you don't understand that no business concern can operate at a loss indefinitely?
It may SUCK that we have to make these decisions, but unless you have a way of funding drug research that doesn't involve the companies doing the research losing money year after year, then this is the reality we live in.
Education would make those poor people's lives better. Better food. Better medicine. Better housing. Better water treatment. Is it "sickening" that I didn't buy a house for a poor family in Africa, yet bought a house for myself and my family? Is the contractor who built my house morally reprehensible for working for me, instead of losing his life's savings building houses that people can't afford in Africa?
Please learn to divorce the touchy-feely "every human is special and deserves to live like Warren Buffett" from the practical reality that there's no such thing as a free lunch.
Wrong - you're just so wrong. Look at the top causes of death worldwide - HIV/AIDS is SIXTH, more people die of diarrhea than of HIV, and diarrhea is very preventable. More than FOUR times the number die of heart disease, which is also largely preventable.
And that's just worldwide. As an exercise to improve your awareness of the facts, go look up the causes of death in the U.S. and report back to us. Don't forget to mention motor vehicle accidents (4 times the deaths caused by HIV), and FREAKING DIABETES (8 times the deaths caused by HIV).
People needlessly die from HIV/AIDS, but it's not even close to the "biggest Darwin award disease ever". Maybe you have some personal bias that makes you think that.