Tags
AIDS, Antiretroviral drug, HIV, Immune system, Infectious disease, National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, National Institutes of Health, New York
I recently read an article from New York magazine and published June 6, 2011. The article is about how doctors in Germany was able to cure a person living with HIV from this dreaded disease. So why is this cure not available to the millions living with HIV?
My intent here is not to give you a medical detail account, for this I highly recommended that everyone read the entire article and do your own research. Instead my goal is to provide you a summary how incorrect THE BELIEVE of many pharmaceutical companies and the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases–that a cure was impossible, IS BULLSHIT!!
After learning that this virus is able to remain dormant and invisible to the immune system many researchers took a defeatist attitude and focused all their energy on anti-retroviral or working on a vaccine, which coincidentally is more profitable for the pharmaceutical industry.
Since the likes of Magic Johnson and other high-profile HIV infected persons show that they can live productive lives taking anti-retroviral medicine and basically test nil for the virus, a false sense of security has engulfed many. The truth is that taking medicine may help one cope with the disease but in it’s no panacea. In contrast, one can expect to live a substantial shorter life with a much weaken immune system and suffer many deadly side affects from the drugs.
I say that we owe it to those infected for us to fight for a cure coupled with a vaccine and treatment. So, what is the cure?
Okay, patient Brown living with HIV and leukemia received a stem cell transplant. Not any ordinary transplant, but one from a donor with a natural genetic mutation aka delta 32. A person with copies from both parents is almost immune from getting the HIV virus.
If you feel like you got an epiphany think how the operating doctor felt when he look at the literature and learned it was never performed. Well in 2007, him and his team performed this extremely and costly operation. And guess what? After years of countless biopsied, patient Brown shows no sign of HIV.
Wait, before getting super excited remember many in the research communities initially denounced the findings and then when they reluctantly admitted this procedure successfully cured patient from HIV, some said so what. Mr. Fauci, Director of NIH’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, comments sums up their nonchalant attitude towards these findings, “It’s very nice, and it’s not even surprising,” he said. In other words, “so what.”
Here is an opportunity to build enthusiasm with potential financial donors to advance these findings and develop less expensive and practical treatment of gene therapy for persons living with HIV.
Unfortunately, cures do not make good business for dug makers.