

A very real, though slightly impractical, cure for AIDS - rms
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122602394113507555.html?mod=rss_whats_news_us

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rms
This is the real deal, though it isn't practical at large scale. My business
partner is bitter because he had this idea a year ago and was told by experts
in the field that it would never work.

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timr
Sounds like this idea predates your partner, but more generally, the
skepticism he encountered would be a feature of science, not a bug. Scientists
are paid to be skeptical.

(I know that you probably know this, but I think most people would take your
comment to mean that establishment scientists are all incompetent curmudgeons,
irrationally resistant to "outsider" ideas.)

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tocomment
What makes it so impractical? Isn't a bone marrow transplant just an injection
with the new cells? It doesn't even require surgery right?

Disclaimer: I don't know what I'm talking about.

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hugh
I'm no expert either, but I think the problem is that suitable donors are
extremely rare -- and most of them would prefer _not_ to give up their bone
marrow to some random stranger, thanks very much.

update: Oh, and a bone marrow transplant is a horrible procedure which kills
30% of recipients.

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rms
Yeah... for it to work you basically have to completely destroy the immune
system of the transplant target and they recover in a bubble.

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kylec
The way I see it AIDS will do that on its own, so you might as well give it a
shot.

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rms
AIDS perhaps, but anyone that could afford to pay for a treatment like this is
unlikely to have progressed past HIV, as they could surely afford the best
current treatments.

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mleonhard
I bet the first designer babies will all have this CCR5 mutation and will be
immune to HIV.

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tel
I doubt it. It's effectiveness relies on the fact that CCR5 isn't so common as
to force microevolution. Like antibiotics, something like this needs to be
applied very carefully.

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ingenium
Sure, it may evolve around it, as there already exist some strains that infect
directly via the CXCR4 receptor and bypass CCR5 receptors all together.
However, this isn't reason to not include the mutation in "designer babies".
It will still be effective, and provides resistance to diseases other than HIV
(though it also makes you slightly more susceptible to others). In other
words, there really isn't any reason to NOT include it, especially since there
is a definite benefit achieved by including it.

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aredkin
Couldn't it be that he never had AIDS and its just a mistake?

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river_styx
*impractical

