Holy Crap! These guys in Germany just cured AIDS!

This was a fun fun funny article that I found in Popular Science this week... So it's more about medicine than innovation... But hey, it's innovative medicine...I'm including the entirety of the entry with comments to follow because I think it is worth a read...

Of course, the procedure is so expensive, complicated, and risky that it's not replicable as a large-scale public health strategy, but we'll ignore that for a minute. Here's how they did it. Drs. Gero Hutter and Eckhard Thiel are blood cancer experts at the Charite Medical University in Berlin. Their patient, an American ex-pat, was suffering from leukemia as well as a full-blown case of AIDS. His case was so desperate that his doctors decided to get craaazy and give him a bone-marrow transplant--(this isn't the crazy part)--using blood stem cells from a donor who was immune to HIV (this is). About 10 years ago, doctors discovered that a few of their gay male patients never developed AIDS, despite engaging in risky sex with hundreds of partners. It turned out that they had a rare mutation called Delta 32 that blocks a molecule in HIV from adhering to the cell surface. Delta 32 must be inherited from both parents; it occurs at a rate of roughly 1 percent in European populations (it's more common in Northern Europe and much much, rarer--basically unheard of--in Africa and Asia), so it was difficult but not impossible for the doctors to find a donor in Germany who fit the bill. The patient was asked to stop taking his antiretroviral AIDS medication for the duration of the procedure with the understanding that he'd have to restart the meds fairly soon after the transplant was complete and the level of the virus in his bloodstream started to rise. But to everyone's surprise, it never rose, not at all. It has now been close to two years since the transplant, and there are still no traces of HIV in the patient's blood or brain tissues. So: success! A cure! For this guy, at least."

Now back to the caveats. A bone marrow transplant is dangerous and painful--it involves wiping out the patient's entire immune system with chemotherapy and radiation and carries a 30 percent mortality rate. The prospect is so daunting that one doctor joked to the New York Times that he'd rather just take antiretrovirals for the rest of his life. It's also not always possible to find a donor who is a good match for the recipient (if the donated cells are not taken from someone with similar human leukocyte antigens, a crucial part of the immune system, they are likely to be rejected or cause severe graft-versus-host disease) and is also happens to be resistant to HIV. This would be particularly tricky in Africa, where the mutation doesn't occur naturally. And carriers of Delta 32 might actually be more susceptible to certain other diseases, like the West Nile virus.

But even though this particular procedure doesn't offer a new standard of care for AIDS patients worldwide, it offers a lot more than just hope (although hope is nice). For one thing, researchers now have a clear path to a cure. If the steps taken by Hutter and Thiel can be refined, simplified, and made less risky, they could become a viable protocol for thousands of other people with AIDS. Eventually, this might entail bone-marrow transplants in which not all of the body's immune cells are killed, or "snipping" the segment of DNA that codes for HIV receptors out out of blood cells and transplanting them into AIDS patients. Eventually, patients' own cells could actually be engineered to resist HIV. These advances are probably decades away, but this breakthrough is confirmation that, once they're made, they could amount to something big.

Okay...Me again...

There are a few interesting implications that we need to discuss here on three levels. First the pharmaceutical industry, second, eugenics, and finally, validity of the discovery.

So first, this is the one are where I feel like a bit of a conspiracy theorist. Who, in the general population anyway, actually knows if there is already a cure for AIDS, outside of this little--or rather huge--discovery. If there is, which is a possibility, then the pharmaceutical industry, one of the most powerful lobbying groups in the world, would be screwed. Billions of dollars go into AIDS research and treatment. The companies who make these drugs and do this research would loose a pretty penny if there was all of a sudden a cure for the THE incurable disease of our time. These companies also send funding and share political platforms with candidates who are in the public eye all the time. Just look at the issue of universal health care in this last election. I think it is entirely possible, however horrible, that the upety ups in the gov't wouldn't want to piss off some of their biggest contributors and flip the bird to the economy when all of the jobs created by AIDS research are suddenly unnecessary. In short... no cure for you silly dying people, sorry about your quality of life... or lack there of.

Second, eugenics is super fun! Hey, since this procedure is super invasive and takes very specific genes that occur in one percent of the population, we need to find all of the people with the immunities and create a super race of AIDS fighting babies. Just think of it--they'll be like super heroes. We could force men and women, who may or may not know each other, to procreate and essentially create drug babies that belong to drug companies in the name of science. We'll rip out their bone marrow... I mean "donate it" to dying people so they can live. Hey the baby might die, but it fulfilled its purpose. I know I know, the pro-lifers will not be happy--but hey, at least the conservatives livin' on the DL wouldn't have to worry about transmitting the plague to their wives anymore. (Okay, I know that was a super low-blow, but I think you are smart enough to get it).

And finally... Dun dunna nun!!! Who knows the validity of all of this anyway? Yeah, you've heard about this now, but if it is true shouldn't it be one of the top stories in the world? I mean, it only affects millions of people. Oh, wait... *see paragraph on pharmaceutical companies* Anyhoo, I would love to believe that these findings are accurate, but I am suddenly reminded of the only episode of South Park I have ever seen. In the story two young boys are infected with HIV and they go to Magic Johnson to find a cure. Turns out the cure was money. Yup, thousands of dollars injected right into their veins... funny that... Yes this is a comical twist on finding a cure for HIV, but we've all thought it. If we haven't, we aren't doing enough thinking.

Well, heres to hoping you are all immune like those lucky dogs from eastern Europe. If not, do your part to find those who are and let's get on the ball creating our super race of AIDS killing babies. So then we can focus on something really important, like what Palin did on her most recent huntin' trip.

--Roger