[Kazan]

http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/11/07/0240258

"Scientists at the University of Pennsylvania have announced that they have engineered a strain of the AIDS virus that fights AIDS. This strain of AIDS works like a vaccine and improved the immune system of the test subjects. After three years on this new therapy, no side effects have been observed."

[Colonol Dekker]

Kamikaze Aids woot, who'd have thunk it

[Prophet]

Clever.

[Unknown Target]

Wow, hope it gets approved soon

[Black Wolf]

It's good news, but results from five people are almost meaningless. We know, for example, that AIDS attacks blacks and whites differrently to some extent (something like 5% of caucasians are supposed to be naturally immune) - I wonder if this has been tested extensively from that angle.

Still, it's promising. I've always thought that Viruses were potentially right up there with immune boosters as one of the best way to approach curing a lot of severe health problems.

[Flipside]

It certainly sounds hopeful, but I'd like a lot more info before I started coming to conclusions. For example, what has been done about contagion, admittedly, HIV is not particuarly contagious, certainly far from the 'plague' type status it achieved in most peoples imaginations.

Whilst contagion might seem like a harmless risk with an anti-virus, the simple fact that HIV originated from a  mutation in another Immuno Defficiency syndrome, makes me concerned about the possibilities of accidental mutation.

That said, considering one of the first diseases to be effectively treated was with a weaker version of itself (Smallpox never appeared in farming hands. It turned out that having Cowpox, a weaker strain, made you immune), I'm hopeful

[NGTM-1R]

It's essentially another take on the live-virus vaccine. That said, I don't think it will work in the field, because the reason AIDS still defies simple regular vaccination is its rapid mutation rate. Tests three years long proved this would have worked three years (or more, probably) ago, but it probably wouldn't if mass-applied right this instant. I know people in biotech who believe that AIDS and some other relatively simplistic, rapidly mutating virus types (Q Fever was mentioned by name) will only be beaten when we figure out how to selectively attack their reproductive cycle (we can attack it via slowing the reproduction of normal cells right now), because they're just too difficult to vaccinate against.

[Scorpius]

I am currently writing a review paper about AIDS treatment with phytochemicals (plant chemical compounds) and I came across another interesting paper that talks about a chemical compound that deletes "highly conserved glycosylation sites" on important envelope proteins.  This means that the protective coating of the virus is improperly formed and cannot reproduce easily and ultimately prevents further generations of the virus from entering a new host cell.  Its pretty remarkable.

[Kazan]

FYI: it's 1% of the world population and about 2% of scandavians who are naturally immune

[Black Wolf]

FYI: it's 1% of the world population and about 2% of scandavians who are naturally immune

Well, the numbers are largely irrelevant. What matters is that the genetic immunities exist with cariations along racial lines, which means the virus responds differently to people of different races. This treatment needs to be tried on a racially broad group of people, which 5 people from Pensylvania aren't likely to be.

[Turey]

Well, the numbers are largely irrelevant. What matters is that the genetic immunities exist with _v_ariations along racial lines, which means the virus responds differently to people of different races. This treatment needs to be tried on a racially broad group of people, which 5 people from Pen_n_sylvania aren't likely to be.

Ah, so you would rather they had started with a racially-diverse study that contained three million people, and then found out it just killed you faster?

RTFA. It said this test was to see if the treatment was safe, not to test that it worked on everyone with AIDS. That's why they took a very small number of people who all were in the worst stages of AIDS. Next comes the study that sees if it works in a significant percentage of people.

[Gortef]

Nice!

[Colonol Dekker]

Now all we need is a derivative of Bush which seeks out and destroys Bush and world nuttiness will be solved

[Fineus]

Now all we need is a derivative of Bush which seeks out and destroys Bush and world nuttiness will be solved

FTW!