First Man Cured of HIV/AIDs

[~HentaiXXX~]

heeell yeaaah

See, now I'm glad I've been a supporter of Stem-cell research all this time.

[robertsona]

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/14/health/14hiv.html

[UnkownMan]

What a way to downer a happy moment. -__

[Reach]

The same story was out a long time ago. This is really old and is being rehashed for some reason.

Anyway, this isn't a cure for HIV. Rather, this is more of a proof that it's possible, but this could never be implemented on a mass scale.

The man was cured because he happened to be lucky enough to be a match for a bone marrow transplant with someone that, miraculously, is genetically resistant to HIV.

Chromosomal mutations in certain people code for the lack of a specific set of receptors that the HIV virus binds to before hijacking a human cell (CCR5, if you're interested). This man was lucky enough to receive a marrow transplant from one of these rare individuals, which allowed it to incorporate into his cellular makeup and confer resistance against the virus.


There are numerous problems with marrow transplants, and as such, don't expect to get one any time soon if you have HIV.


With that said, it goes to show that it's possible to stop the virus, but we already knew that because these mutations have been known for some time now. The problem is delivering the mutations into the rest of the population to make everyone resistant.

It might be possible with gene therapy, but even then, there are a ton of problems associated with ever trying to stop this virus. It has the capacity to mutate very, very quickly, which means, evolutionarily speaking, it's highly resistant to attempts to stop it. Any en-mass resistance to the virus would probably cause rapid and widespread mutations in the viral population allowing the virus to bypass the mutation that stops it in the first place (This is precisely the reason why anti-viral medications AIDS patients take never work in the long run; mutant resistant members of the viral population repopulate and avoid the effects of the medication. Likewise, some AIDS viruses are already resistant to this genetic mutation because they bind to different chemokine receptors).


TLDR; it's not really a cure. Don't get your hopes up too much.

[~HentaiXXX~]

The point is there's still a chance. Though I do remember seeing this some other time, but I can't put my finger on it...

[Nyokou]

Great find. Huffington can be a bit iffy though, but still... I was always 100% in support of stem cell research. And it's pretty awesome that they took 3 years to thoroughly test the guy to make absolute sure he is cured of the disease. Pretty lucky guy if he is. It's a terrible, terrible disease.

[welsh_girl]

Cool story, but I did a quick search of Google and found similar stories from the BBC etc from 2005/2008

[MrGiggles]

This story crops up every half year or so with accompanying cries of "WHY ISN'T DA MAINSTREAM MEDIA REPORTING DIS" well maybe because it's not a very good cure and it's a billion (3 whatever) years old.

I knew HuffPost was kind of bad but this is silliness.

EDIT: what the **** HuffPost actually reported on this in 08. They could have just linked to their old article. Here's some more times the story has cropped up.

Nov 08
http://nextbigfuture.com/2008/11/gen...cure-aids.html
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/1..._n_143762.html

May 09
http://www.baldwincountynow.com/arti...1598814432.txt

The surgery took place back in 07.

[freekilltwo]

this is definatly a good step in the push for stemcell research, however if i recall, arent stemcells harvested from unborn embryos and thats the cause of the contreversy?, if thats actually right then why not solve the problem of contreversy by using it in conjunction with women/familys choosing abortion and rather than completely abort if the possibility arises use embryos that were going to be aborted for the stem cell research, i admit to not knowing a whole lot about either topic but if they do line up well enough for this it would make both topics a little less contriversial i would think, granted with something like this we can never fully eliminate the contreversy

[kommisar]

this is only one case though, so you have to take this as a grain of sand


but this is pretty huge news if the transplant is successful for other patients

[devonin]

Lets try this discussion again without all the jackassery.