possible cure for HIV in the works.

Discussion in 'Science and Nature' started by hippielama, Oct 2, 2010.

  1. Definitely a step in the right direction.

    Nice article
     
  2. Sounds interesting but maybe a little premature to be excited about cures. I've got nothing to add, but I attached the journal article.
     

    Attached Files:

  3. Integrase is an enzyme that does what the name implies, combines the genetic material of HIV DNA of human CD4 cells, which allows infected cells to make new copies of HIV. Addressing the HIV integrase during the life cycle of integrase inhibitors prevent the genetic material of HIV, including CD4 cells, which stops viral replication.
     
  4. I heard there was a vaccine in the works. I wonder if they're intentionally infecting people with the disease to test it though
     
  5. cause there aren't enough people in the world with HIV? I'm fairly sure they could find people with it rather than infecting people and risking a lawsuit.
     

  6. You know what a vaccine is right?
     
  7. The link is broken for me.
     

  8. It was just a heads up on some new research on a HIV gene, that was phrased in such a way to make it sound like there is a cure just around the corner. I uploaded their submission to the journal if you want to read that instead. People need to realize that there are thousands of institutes all doing this kind of research, it's not a cold world of pharmaceuticals and money.
     
  9. This. Every year newspapers hail the cure of AIDS, cancer, everything. The truth is that the research process and extremely slow and most things never work out. There's too many points of failure when it comes to pharm research - your compound may only work in the original test animal or in a petri dish, it could be unsafe for human consumption or cause terrible side effects, it could cost ten thousand dollars to produce one dose, it could depend work erratically, or most usually, not at all. Even if something does work, it takes years of animal testing, then human trials, before they can study the short and long term consequences, and then it could come out.

    These small steps are really important, but we need to stop pretending that a cure is here.
     

  10. Exactly. Speaking of toxicology, the dichloroacetate gets a pretty bad rap for neurotoxicity which is fairly serious. Although most anticancer treatments have a high degree of toxicity, it doesn't strike me that dichloroacetate works any better than what we have now. A far cry from a "cancer cure".
     

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