Wednesday, June 26, 2013

Cure For AIDS Has Been Found

I've suspected as much since Magic Johnson survived and thrived.

Born with HIV, baby appears to have been cured

"Despite ‘cure,’ HIV researchers cautious about path forward" by Deborah Kotz |  Globe Staff, March 12, 2013

With researchers announcing last week that they “functionally cured” a baby with ­human immunodeficiency ­virus, talk has turned to curing others of the virus. But AIDS research­ers, including those who treated the baby, caution that it is too soon to tell whether other HIV-infected children, who have been given anti­retroviral drugs such as AZT from infancy, can also safely stop their medications.

That is partly because tests conducted at the University of Massachusetts Medical School in Worcester show that traces of the virus remain in the infant.

“We’re calling this a functional cure, rather than a complete cure, because when we do ultrasensitive tests, we’re detect­ing, on occasion, very low levels of viral DNA in [the child’s] cells,” said Dr. ­Katherine Luzuriaga, a UMass immunologist who analyzed the baby’s blood and helped present the findings at an AIDS conference in Atlanta.

Luzuriaga was brought into the case by a University of ­Mississippi Medical Center physician who made the initial HIV diagnosis and started treating the newborn, now 2 years old, with a three-drug cocktail within two days of birth....

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"AIDS center’s new labs debut; US cuts may slow hunt for a vaccine" by Deborah Kotz |  Globe Staff, March 12, 2013

A leading AIDS research center unveiled its new $30 million laboratory building in Cambridge Monday, where it aims to push ahead with efforts to develop an HIV vaccine and to study tuberculosis, which has affected hundreds of thousands of HIV patients in African­ and other developing countries.

The opening of the Ragon Institute’s new home comes at a difficult moment for AIDS and other biomedical scientists, as they brace for possible cuts in their federal research grants driven by seques­tration of the federal budget and shows the growing importance of private support....

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What I think you have are three layers of treatment. The elite are cured, those that can pay are kept live by pharmaceuticals and soon a vaccine(!), and the poor, useless eaters are left to die.

Related: I Missed the AIDS Conference

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