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New Antibody Attacks 99% of HIV Strains (bbc.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from BBC: Scientists have engineered an antibody that attacks 99% of HIV strains and can prevent infection in primates. It is built to attack three critical parts of the virus -- making it harder for HIV to resist its effects. The work is a collaboration between the US National Institutes of Health and the pharmaceutical company Sanofi. Our bodies struggle to fight HIV because of the virus' incredible ability to mutate and change its appearance. These varieties of HIV -- or strains -- in a single patient are comparable to those of influenza during a worldwide flu season. So the immune system finds itself in a fight against an insurmountable number of strains of HIV. But after years of infection, a small number of patients develop powerful weapons called "broadly neutralizing antibodies" that attack something fundamental to HIV and can kill large swathes of HIV strains. Researchers have been trying to use broadly neutralizing antibodies as a way to treat HIV, or prevent infection in the first place. The study, published in the journal Science, combines three such antibodies into an even more powerful "tri-specific antibody." The experiments conducted on 24 monkeys showed none of those given the tri-specific antibody developed an infection when they were later injected with the virus. "We're getting 99% coverage, and getting coverage at very low concentrations of the antibody," said Dr Gary Nabel, the chief scientific officer at Sanofi and one of the report authors.
Our medical system has plenty of faults, but crazy conspiracy theories are not involved. If there was a conspiracy by big medical companies to hide cures because they make more money treating, then explain the following:
[a] The elites ALWAYS carve-out exscape hatches for themselves. Just look at Al Gore and friends who rant about Climate Change and demand the public change their use of energy etc - while THEY sail super-yachts, fly private jets to conferences at exotic vacation spots, own many glorious power and resource-sucking mansions and so forth and claim to be making up for it by buying "offsets" (google: indulgences and corrupt popes). Rich elite lawmakes put taxes on sodas and limit table salt (which affect middle-class and poor folks) but they do nothing about their expensive and fattening and salt and sugar-laden foods and beverages. Somehow, however, executives of big medical firms and their family members suffer the same diseases and unhappy demises as the rest of us.
[b] Big entities cannot keep secrets. There are always insiders who are opposed to a policy, or who see an injustice, or are personally affected, or see a hypocrisy they despise, or who want to puff-up their credentials with friends or relatives who end-up leaking stuff. Where are the current or former "insiders" who are publicly outraged to be ill or dying or have sick or dying family members who are blowing the whistle on the particular executives who are hiding these magical mystery cures while making sure they themselves and their kin have access to those cures?
The simple FACT is that human beings are remarkably complex biological machines. An individual blood cell is frighteningly complicated and not fully-understood nor human-engineerable. Bone cells, kidney cells, liver cells etc are all similarly brain-bending in complexity and when you gang all of these together into a complex creature and then add-in a virus - well I personally am impressed by ANY drug advance. When you consider how difficult it is to find ANY new medicine, add-in the idea that we have probably discovered all the "easy" to discover drugs, then consider the enourmous resources to find a new drug and clear the massive pile of government regulations to get a drug approved, it's even more amazing ANY drug advance is possible.
Oh, I personally have a chronic illness and have experienced the annoyance of hearing about "breakthroughs" periodically and seeing nothing that helps ME, while also having a family member with a very serious illness who is currently involved as a subject in a drug trial program. If you ever find yourself in that tough spot and are a good candidate to be a test subject, DO IT. It may be very unpleasant and painful and embarassing and lots of other stuff and my do nothing for YOU but your participation could eventually contribute to a new drug or a better understanding and thus save or improve the lives of an uncountable number of people. Imagining conspiracies that do not exist only makes people hostile and bitter; it does NOTHING to improve the condition of any human being and is a completely self-centered non-productive waste of human energy.
If 24/24 of the subjects managed to survive without infection, then it's clearly not useless.
No, the 99% refers to the % of HIV strains it kills. The 0/24 monkeys is an animal experiment. Totally different things.
Because religion is one of the reasons AIDS could spread like it did in the US.
The first cases were reported in late 1980/early 1981. It took researchers (at least those who did actually bother to give a shit) almost a year to trace it back to their "patient 0" who passed on the virus often years before, with reports reaching back into the 1970s. No later than this moment it was a given that this is a time bomb the population needs to be warned of. What they learned was they're dealing with an incurable, nearly unknown infection with an incubation time of years, and they even understood the infection route: Body fluids. I.e. mainly unprotected sexual intercourse and swapping of needles of drug addicts.
The Reagan administration did ... NOTHING AT ALL. It only affects the fags and druggies? Great! Issue a warning? Are you nuts, the less of those two scourges, the better!
Only when they noticed that it does affect people who need blood transfusions and, guess what, drug addicts need money and sell blood, only then they slowly and VERY reluctantly started attempts to fight it.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Yup, that's what the Reagan administration thought, too. They, too, forgot about blood donations and people who need them. Who then in turn infect their spouses and future kids.
Even they back then eventually understood why this is not going to work out, so I am confident you'll eventually see it, too.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
That attitude comes from snarky atheists as well. Maybe focus on the attitude?
(Snarky atheist here )