Re:Doctors Inject HIV Into Dying Girl [video]
by b0rsuk on Monday June 24, 2013 @02:33AM
(#5931350)
The idea is not new:
"""Julius Wagner von Jauregg (1857-1940), Austrian psychiatrist and Nobel Prize winner who discovered that advanced cases of syphilis, a sexually transmitted disease (STD), can be cured by deliberately infecting the patient with malaria. Until the development of the antibiotic penicillin in the 1940s made Wagner von Jauregg`s malaria cure obsolete, he achieved remarkable success in curing patients of a dreaded disease that had been thought to be incurable. For his development of the malaria cure for syphilis, Wagner von Jauregg received the 1927 Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine."""
Re:Doctors Inject HIV Into Dying Girl [video]
by coopdog on Monday June 24, 2013 @02:20AM
(#5931326)
Amazing. I wonder though, what happens to the HIV?
What I got from the video is that they modify the virus so it won't cause disease and rather just modifies the host t-cells to recognize cancer. Does the virus remain in the host system? Can it still spread? If it spreads what happens to the newly infected person: cancer proof, nothing or HIV?
Re:Doctors Inject HIV Into Dying Girl [video]
by kevingadd on Monday June 24, 2013 @02:33AM
(#5931348)
Presumably the way they stop it from being a disease is that they disable the virus's ability to reproduce, somehow. Or otherwise impair its function so that it doesn't behave in the way traditional HIV does.
Hypothetically speaking here, if they put enough of the virus in her system it'd be able to act upon enough of her immune system to get those cancer-killing T cells spread around her entire body and kill enough of the cancer to stop it from coming back. At that point, maybe it's okay if all those T cells die off and her body doesn't know how to kill the leukemia anymore, because it's gone?
Cancer and remission are pretty complex, so I don't know. But that seems plausible to me.
I expect that leaving the virus able to actually spread would be harmful, even if it's been altered to target cancer cells. It would probably alter the immune system in other ways and potentially compromise it?
EDIT: According to another source I just looked at, the cancer-fighting T cells actually do replicate. So I'm not at all sure how they mitigate the downsides to that. Maybe this is a case of it being worth the downsides.
Re:Doctors Inject HIV Into Dying Girl [video]
by nkoren on Monday June 24, 2013 @02:45AM
(#5931379)
Yes -- people these days can live more or less indefinitely with HIV, given a good antiretroviral regiment. Not so with leukaemia. As horrible as it is to say, that's a trade I'd make in a second, if it were me.
(Days ago, my friends lost their six-year-old daughter -- who looked very much like Emma in the video -- to leukaemia. So I'm very much in one of those "fuck cancer" rages right now...)
"""Julius Wagner von Jauregg (1857-1940), Austrian psychiatrist and Nobel Prize winner who discovered that advanced cases of syphilis, a sexually transmitted disease (STD), can be cured by deliberately infecting the patient with malaria. Until the development of the antibiotic penicillin in the 1940s made Wagner von Jauregg`s malaria cure obsolete, he achieved remarkable success in curing patients of a dreaded disease that had been thought to be incurable. For his development of the malaria cure for syphilis, Wagner von Jauregg received the 1927 Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine."""
http://www.mediahex.com/Wagner_von_Jauregg_Julius
What I got from the video is that they modify the virus so it won't cause disease and rather just modifies the host t-cells to recognize cancer. Does the virus remain in the host system? Can it still spread? If it spreads what happens to the newly infected person: cancer proof, nothing or HIV?
Hypothetically speaking here, if they put enough of the virus in her system it'd be able to act upon enough of her immune system to get those cancer-killing T cells spread around her entire body and kill enough of the cancer to stop it from coming back. At that point, maybe it's okay if all those T cells die off and her body doesn't know how to kill the leukemia anymore, because it's gone?
Cancer and remission are pretty complex, so I don't know. But that seems plausible to me.
I expect that leaving the virus able to actually spread would be harmful, even if it's been altered to target cancer cells. It would probably alter the immune system in other ways and potentially compromise it?
EDIT: According to another source I just looked at, the cancer-fighting T cells actually do replicate. So I'm not at all sure how they mitigate the downsides to that. Maybe this is a case of it being worth the downsides.
(Days ago, my friends lost their six-year-old daughter -- who looked very much like Emma in the video -- to leukaemia. So I'm very much in one of those "fuck cancer" rages right now...)
[1] http://xkcd.com/938/