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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.
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.
"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.
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"
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!
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.
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
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.
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