Doctors claim to have “functional cure” for HIV
The facts:
- About 1% of Caucasians are immune to HIV/AIDS (likely a holdover from surviving The Plague)
- One such genetically immune person donated bone marrow stem cells.
- These were implanted in one Timothy Ray Brown in 2007 in Berlin. The new bone marrow produced white blood cells that were not infectable with HIV, and which seem to have purged his system of the virus. He now has no signs of AIDS or HIV.
- The treatment did give him neurological damage affecting his speech and motor skills.
- This sort of treatment is rather more difficult than popping some pills; requires a lot of individualized attention and careful matching of donor to recipient.
There are millions of people with HIV/AIDS; not so many of them could afford this treatment. It’s made more difficult by the fact that even though 1% of white folks may be immune to AIDS… *which* 1%? A white person *with* AIDS obviously wasn’t immune. A white person without AIDS may or may not be immune. I suppose there are tests to determine that. But such tests would be invasive and quite possibly painful… especially if they require bone marrow. So even if the treatment works, a whole bunch of donors would be required. How to find them? Well… offer to *pay* them.
Sadly, in the US it is illegal to sell your organs, or the organs of the deceased, for reasons that are just sad and silly. Offer people good money for the organs of their dearly deceased beloved, and suddenly there will be a *lot* of organs on the market, and those months and years-long waiting lists for hearts and livers and such will get cleared out. The same would seem to apply to bone marrow anti-AIDS donations. Offer people money to take the immunity test… and then *real* *good* money for actual donations of bone marrow. I suspect only a single donation would be required; the bone marrow would be cultured and grown in whatever quantity required. But you’d need a whole lot of donors to cover a whole lot of recipient types.
So, who would pay for all this? Well… how much have the AIDS activists and celebritards spent over the decades on concerts and protests and quilts and museum and whatnot? Now that there’s an actual cure… it would seem to be time for these individuals and organizations to put their money where their protest signs are, and start paying. According to Wiki, some 60 million people were HIV infected in 2009. If this treatment can be had for the bargain basement price of $100,000 each, then the total elimination of AIDS would only cost six trillion dollars. Bono had best get busy with some benefit concerts.
10 Responses to “AIDS Apparently Cured”
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Interesting stuff. Mind you if that 1% can be found and are paid to be a cure, they would be set for life, as would their descendants most likely. Heck were I immune I know I would be setting my price pretty high due to the pain and time the procedures would take.
There’s a downside. The “cure” has about a 50% chance of killing you. They start by nuking you with radiation to destroy your current bone marrow, once you have no marrow they can do the transplant.
years-long waiting lists for hearts and livers and such will get cleared out
Along with many schools and homes and wards for the mentally retarded, brain-damaged, and others that would suddenly become Lebensunwertes Leben.
“Honey, it’s costing us a quarter-million a year to keep little Tommy on the respirator. Parts, Inc. will give us ten million for his organs — that’s money we could use to help our other kids. They’ll do it painlessly… he’ll never even wake up…”
No thanks.
> No thanks.
For starters “this idea can be abused” is hardly a good reason to avoid progress. The law can be made real simple… only organs from suspicion-free accidents, clear stranger-based murders or clear natural causes can be sold. While euthenasia is certainly somethign society needs to give a good hard look to, simply removing the profit potential from the abuse of euthenasia would seem to get rid of the problem.
And for laters, comparisons of *anything* to Nazi-era programs is generally not an intellectually honest approach.
“Gasp! Hippies drive Volkswagons! The VW was designed by Hitler! Hippies are Nazis!”
“Gasp! The Boeing 787 uses axial-flow turbofan engines! Those were developed in Nazi Germany!! Boeing is Hitler!”
“Gasp! The interstate system is like the Autobahn, which was instituted by Hitler! Eisenhower was a Nazi!”
“Gasp! America in the 1900’s used sterilization against the mentally retarded… just like the Nazis would 30 years later! America in 1900 was full of time-travelling Nazis!”
“Gasp! Hitler believed that Darwinian evolution was a lie and that mankind had been placed on Earth by providence in a state of perfection that we have fallen from! Creationists and Intelligent Design proponants are Nazis!”
“Gasp! The Nazis conducted medical experiments on humans! Anyone who conducts a pharmaceutical trial on humans is a Nazi!”
“Gasp! The Nazis wanted Lebensraum… living room! Anyone who wants to colonize other worlds is a Nazi!”
Says someone who is not the parent of a disabled child. I have a disabled son and I would never euthenise him just because someone offered me any amount of money to do it, not while he still happy, relatively healthy, and still has hope of some kind of life. On that same token however, if we are talking someone who is in a persitent vegitative state, that is a different matter. That right there is hell, and it is cruel to keep someone trapped in that state when there is no chance of recovery. However, the deciding factor in whether or not to end the life of someone in a PVS should never be money driven.
> the deciding factor in whether or not to end the life of someone in a PVS should never be money driven.
How certain are you of that? Look at it from the *other* side: who’s paying how much to keep someone in that state, and what if they don’t have the money? Let’s say the economy *completely* collapses. The government nationalizes the health care industry, taxes go through the roof, the oil economy evaporates, and we head into a depression the likes of which the world has never seen before. The average person cannot afford a PB&J sammich. How much do we spend on extremely expensive life support?
Triage. Just sayin’.
I was a cancer-research lab mascot at parties (I was the only one without an advanced degree in a biological science), so they didn’t pay much attention to me. One night they drank a bit too much and started talking about why they were doing the research. They admitted that there was no incentive to find a cure for cancer because a cure meant they’d have to into the classroom or sell pharmaceuticals. So this report may destroy a lot of careers, and so will get little support from most of the researchers.
These arguments always look at the jobs destroyed by some advance, not the jobs created or the resources freed to be plunged into other work. By your (their) argument, there’s no economic incentive to find a cure to any disease, because finding such a cure would only put the cure-seekers out of business. And yet diseases do get cured. So I don’t think the situation is as economically dire as you’re suggesting.
You could always just clone the HIV resistant bone marrow cells.
And undoubtedly they will. But at least at present, one line of bone marrow cells won’t be transplanatable into everybody; most will simply reject it. So you’ll need a bunch of donors.