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13-Year-Old Finds Fungus Deadly To AIDS Patients Growing On Trees
An anonymous reader writes Researchers have pinpointed the environmental source of fungal infections that have been sickening HIV/AIDS patients in Southern California for decades. It literally grows on trees. The discovery is based on the science project of a 13-year-old girl, who spent the summer gathering soil and tree samples from areas around Los Angeles hardest hit by infections of the fungus named Cryptococcus gattii.
I did'nt know there were AIDS patients growing on trees...
AIDS patients grow on trees now?
Thirteen year olds have access to the results of genetic testing and do basic analysis on them. The tools that are available for people to do science is amazing. It is a good time to be alive. Now if we could only find a way to convince the politicians and parents to let teachers share these insights without forcing students to sit in chairs and be lectured at all day.
Yeah, it's people who have AIDS that spread it, not people with asymptomatic HIV, right?
I mean, I get that you're just trying to be funny by being a shitty person, but could you pretend to be a shitty person who also isn't completely ignorant?
Because the incurable disease comes after the infectious period begins, numbnuts.
I'm sure you have magic moron powers that will let you detect people infected with HIV who don't yet have AIDS, but the rest of us depend on science and medicine to solve health problems.
2) Disseminate a fungus which grows on trees so we can target those left-wing tree-huggers. Check.
3) ???
4) Profit!!!
Damnit - I forgot the part where we nuke the whales. Oh, well - nothing's perfect.
Sounds like a great way to get rid of the Flu or Cold.
Except that killing off people with a disease tends to make people who have the disease a good bit quieter about it, which is harmful to eradication. If you want to throw down blame, it would be those that didn't do anything to stop it because it was a disease that seemed to only affect socially undesirably groups.
This is my signature. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
I think we can be 100% at this point that if we had spend the money and time we have on trying to develop a cure, on prevention, detection, and education that it would of did a whole lot more good.
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
"our" methods have caused huge reductions in new infections. Your methods at work in places in subsaharan Africa(until recently at least) have led to ignorance, violence, and huge spikes in infections as people try to home remedy HIV away.
Oh, right, so your plan is to implement the (unreliable, which you'd know if you weren't a moron) HIV test across the entire population, in order to commit mass murder for the high crime of having caught a disease.
Please kill yourself next time you catch a cold.
We have spent a ton of money on prevent education and detection. And it has done a lot of good.
Infections are way down.
http://www.cdc.gov/nchhstp/new...
English is a naturally ambiguous language, and there are two gramatically correct parsings of that headline.
It's a bit like "fruit flies like a banana"
I have not seen any AIDS patients growing on trees so this should not be an issue. :-)
The truth shall set you free!
Only two? I think that grammatically any of the three nouns could be the one that's growing on trees. The 13-year-old growing on trees is even more semantically problematic than the AIDS patients.
Subject verb agreement kills that parsing.
How many AIDS patients grow on trees?
Assuming that society takes the moral hit and people buy into the concept by not hiding their infections from testing (basically society as a whole accepts self-sacrifice based on a test)...
Most infectious type of people are not discovered till it is too late. This is a very slow virus. You could be a carrier for months to years and be a vector without showing up positive in a test. Killing off an AIDS victim is kind of pointless, for the virus, the host is well past the diminishing returns curve. Even one that has tested positive for HIV.
Even if you do find and kill off every HIV patient, it won't kill off the virus. Its origins are from other mammals (this version being chimps). Unless you intend to kill everything that has this virus or a potential parent of it. At which point you would also start targeting other currently non-lethal immune system attacking viruses.
So the road above is fairly stupid, comes primarily from ignorance & fear, and in the end, doesn't work. If people don't commit to killing themselves based on a test, the above will actually make the HIV/AIDS situation worse as it will go underground.
The better solution is to let the people live and use them to find a cure. This way, we not only solve the current situation, but also similar mutations in the future. By letting people live, we have already discovered some folks who are immune to AIDS!
You can test for HIV, but the patient becomes a vector for infection prior to the test working.
The article hinted at containing and controlling the pathogen and the ecosystem. IMO a wholesale waste of effort for a few people who, really are more of a symptom of our medicine and cultural practices. No they don't deserve to die, and yes it's good they know not to go to California, but that is not how the article nor the slashdot summary was spun.
Bullshit. It's believed it infected humans because they *ate* the monkeys, you freak.
There is no widespread practice of beastiality within the countries where HIV developed. Current operating hypothesis is that it came from improper animal handling procedures resulting in blood-to-blood contact between SIV-infected apes and ordinary humans, allowing the virus to jump hosts.
There's a fungus among us.
Table-ized A.I.
even so, its nice to see a father and child doing research, even if she is not old enough to fully understand it all
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
There is no widespread practice of beastiality within the countries where HIV developed. Current operating hypothesis is that it came from improper animal handling procedures resulting in blood-to-blood contact between SIV-infected apes and ordinary humans, allowing the virus to jump hosts.
It doesn't have to be widespread. All it takes is one instance.
Current operating hypothesis is that it came from improper animal handling procedures resulting in blood-to-blood contact between SIV-infected apes and ordinary humans, allowing the virus to jump hosts.
Probably somebody cut themselves while butchering infected bush meat. Although, such accidents must have happened numerous times throughout history. Why is HIV only around now?
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
makes me think of the Ricky Gervais skit. Either you caught AIDS from having sex with a monkey... or you cut yourself while preparing monkey Yeah, I was totally eating monkey... etc etc etc le lulz
For other STDs, public health authorities engage in contract tracking. But AIDs has lobbiests. If the syphilitic can't get it together to buy a congress critter or two, why is that AIDs patient's problem?
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Yeah, that'll be my response to the next time that I choose to do something that clearly risks further spreading a pandemic that has killed millions, so my dick can feel good for a few minutes.
It's your fault, society. You should have pre-emptively done something about the consequences of my actions.
(Yeah yeah, "-1, Troll". Fire away at facts. FWIW, I don't primarily blame gays. I blame the heterosexual pre-murderers in Africa--regardless of skin color.)
"There's a humongous fungus among us." -- Zoidberg
Chuuch. Preach. Tabernacle.
My father in the mid-south had a 3 year long struggle with this infection. It has left him a completely different person (three tumors in his brain). This is a nasty disease that was previously sub-tropical and is making its way into North America. The treatment is really nasty.
Amphotericin B has terrible common side effects and the nurses had a nickname for it that was something like "Ampho the Terrible."
Flucytosine is also used and it has a dramatic effect on the mental state of the patient.
During the time my father was taking these medications he suffered kidney failure, massive weight loss, constant nausea and vomiting, poor impulse control (to the point that it was like he had no filter to stop him from saying or doing anything). I'm very glad my father is still alive but even two years removed he still is suffering the effects of this illness.
Probably somebody cut themselves while butchering infected bush meat. Although, such accidents must have happened numerous times throughout history. Why is HIV only around now?
Because the people who got it were only traveling around the world on airplanes now.
Also because it spread through gay anal sex and IV drugs.
Now you've got the trees being deadly.
A fungus deadly to AIDS patients was found by a 13-year-old to be growing on trees.
The passive voice has it's uses.
this signature has been removed due to a DMCA takedown notice
English is a naturally ambiguous language
What an odd thing to say. It's not any more or less ambiguous than almost any other language.
You do, however, need to apply a modicum of effort to make sure that whatever word slop you just barfed on the page is readable to others. Slashdot "editors" notoriously refuse to do so, though.
sic transit gloria mundi
Many Arab states are doing exactly as you suggest and claim to have no AIDs. Cuba is pretty close. We'll see how it turns out.
I'm predicting many unexplained deaths of 'lingering illness' (in the Arab world anyhow). They all use the prison definition of gay. Only the catchers are gay, the top fags are just normal Arabs.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
So the trees are deadly, not the fungus? Hmm...interesting twist to the story. Why not: aids patients find deadly trees growing on 13-year-old. That would be something of a scientic marvel.
http://www.acetonestudio.com
You realize the huge fraction of HIV/AIDS in heterosexuals? This is not due to gays pretending to be straight to fit in, but because normal missionary style heterosexual sex can also transmit the virus.
Sorry but your mom was begging for it, and without protection. So there you are.
I am an African American (not by choice)
Really? Not by choice? Weird. Where I live, we all get to choose our skincolor right up to our birthdate. After that it's set in stone, though. But thanks for clearing that up for me. Otherwise I'd have thought you'd volunteered or something.
Oh, and by the way? Get help. You obviously cought Trollitis from a tree that snuggled up close.
Therefore, by the (faulty) logic you're using, you're just a cow with a keyboard - osu-neko (2604)
Just for the record, this is not correct. While it is true that there is an eclipse period during which testing is not useful (as indeed, there is an eclipse period for any viral infection), for HIV that window is currently very small.
See:
-- The Genesis project? What's that?
There is a lot of joking about sheep fucking in Scotland, but I don't think it's practiced much. And even if it is, it does not turn people into pure sheep only fuckers, who don't even get hard from a woman. Though there is such a thing as jaded, too much of women or too much pussy may make you lose your excitement over it after a while, and then something brand new and fresh and exciting, like sheep booty, may still get you excited, so it's all very complicated. Getting bored of the same old same old booty is what keeps the US divorce rate over 50%, nothing else. I mean job and economic stress helps at it, but it does comes down to sexual appetite and getting bored. Then you get crazy things like threesomes and swinger parties, where the couples are not jealous and can stick together for longer, but usually it happens by a jealous exclusive couple catching one of the partners cheating, and then it's over. Cheating cheating cheating. Why you consider it cheating? Ask to come along next time instead, and save your marriage, especially if you still got kids at home dependent on a stable family in their most vulnerable and sensitive teen years.
IDGAF about burgers either. I'm a halfass vegetarian, meaning I eat burgers sometimes, but most of the time, not. Burgers are too much of a luxury item, I prefer frying my own rice instead, it's pretty cheap. A whole lot of the world survives on a cup of rice a day, and I'm blessed that I get many cups a day, and can add things like carrots and spices. In Indonesia - or old Dutch Indies colonies - , for instance, a country that usually does not show up on the spotlight of top population charts like China, India, US, they have pushed the limit of rice farming to the brinks, up to the mountaintops and hill tops, there is nowhere left to push farming rice. There is lots of population that needs food every day, and people can't help themselves, like you can't issue a presidential decree to people to stop fucking. There should be a holiday, like there is Earth Day, etc, called fuck free day where the whole population does not fuck or masturbate or fuck that day, just to prove they are able to do it. And of course some won't celebrate. As in, you idiots keep your no fucking day, me, I'm gonna pop a new baby as fast as I can while there is free welfare money to take care of the baby.
Hey, at least the AIDS infected homos are not consuming welfare money with their sexual exuberance, the rest of us don't have to pay for them not being able to keep their dicks out of each other's pants.
Proof that God hates tree-huggers.
Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways
Isn't everything deadly to AIDS patients?
- Zav - Imagine a Beowulf cluster of insensitive clods...
always be careful with bush meat.
one wrong move, and a portion of your paycheck will be commandeered for 18 years.
I got confused for a moment and thought I was browsing reddit.
"You can't win. You can't break even. You can't quit." -A. Ginsberg
Incidentally, "improper animal handling procedures resulting in blood-to-blood contact" may include chopping up an infected animal for dinner (as most people envisage it), or digging bits of splattered bat out of the radiator of your car or from your clothing after the bat has become road kill. Which is certainly what worries us and our medical advisers as we travel near to infected areas.
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"
Seems gays made their own mess by causing AIDS to be identified with homosexuality. It took a kid dying of AIDS (Ryan White) to get the public to realize that it wasn't just a gay disease. Some asshats had even beat the kid to death because they assumed that he had to be gay.
It is so sad that the general public can be so stupid. Simple logic says that AIDS has nothing to do with homosexuality. Consider that AIDS is a crossover virus from apes. That means that a gay disease was prevalent among apes. That means there must be a sizable gay ape population.
What about feline HIV? I don't know any gay cats, but there must be a sizable gay cat population. So is nature punishing gay animals and it took until 1980 for God to get around to punishing human homosexuality although homosexuality has existed for thousands of years.