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HIV Tracking Technology Could Pinpoint Who's Infecting Who

Daniel_Stuckey writes "No man is an island, but evolutionarily, each person functions like one for the HIV virus. That's according to Thomas Leitner, a researcher working on a project aimed at creating technology for tracking HIV through a population. The technology, which is being studied at the Los Alamos National Laboratory, may allow people to identify who infected them with the virus, a development that could have major implications in criminal proceedings. "If you're familiar with Darwin's finches, you have a population of birds on one island and they keep moving and evolving as they spread to other islands so that each population is a little different," Leitner said. "With HIV, it's the same. Every person infected with HIV has a slightly different form of the virus. It's the ultimate chameleon because it evolves this way.""

10 of 203 comments (clear)

  1. Sorry, but... by broginator · · Score: 5, Informative

    whom*

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    s/[stupid comments]/[intelligent discourse]/gi
    1. Re:Sorry, but... by Thanshin · · Score: 5, Funny

      Unless they were talking about identifying who infected The Doctor.

  2. Hopefully by i+kan+reed · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I really do hope we're past the point that any major governments are populated with people that view AIDS as a "gay plague", because otherwise, I can easily see petty local leaders using this research to arrest sick people and charge them with murder.

    1. Re:Hopefully by i+kan+reed · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Startling fact: many people haven't had access to affordable healthcare and have to take gambles with their lives sometimes.

    2. Re:Hopefully by Marxist+Hacker+42 · · Score: 3, Informative

      Sick people who know they are sick with a sexually transmitted disease, and then have sex anyway, ARE GUILTY OF MURDER. Doesn't matter if they are homo or hetero.

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      SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
  3. Actually, you can become infected more than once.. by Ellis+D.+Tripp · · Score: 4, Informative
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  4. Grammar by Laxori666 · · Score: 4, Funny

    Surely you mean who's infecting whom? Let's get our priorities straight: grammar first, world-changing health improvements second.

  5. Re:Two reasons I don't care about this by Eunuchswear · · Score: 3, Insightful

    My genitals were mutilated and I suffered all that physical pain that forced me to effectively chose impotence as the solution so that now I'm protected from AIDS/GRID

    The bad news is - no, you are not protected from AIDS.

    You are just less likely to catch it voluntarily.

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    Watch this Heartland Institute video
  6. Re:Two reasons I don't care about this by Charliemopps · · Score: 3, Insightful

    it's not actually the case that doctors are malicious or generally ignorant.

    I disagree. I think the majority of doctors, just like any profession, don't have a clue what they are doing. You have to search around to find anyone competent. I've lost count of the number of times I've had problems that bugged me for years... until I walked into the right doctors office and the doctor knew exactly what to do and cured me within weeks. The biggest problem with healthcare is the incompetence of our medical professionals. When you can have 2 hospitals in the same city, sitting less than a mile apart and one has a survival rate for heart surgery that's double or even triple the other hospitals, somethings Fing wrong. That sort of disparity happens in every town in this country and it's criminal that it's allowed to continue. They are literally killing tens of thousands of people with their incompetence.

  7. What is "the HIV Virus"? by Yakasha · · Score: 3, Funny

    I knew about the Human Immunodeficiency Virus. But not the Human Immunodeficiency Virus Virus.
    FYI, that joke was generated with a PHP Preprocessor on my IBM Machine.