Hola SuperForesterinos!
How this news morsel snuck by is beyond me, but since most folks haven't heard the news:
A German man who underwent stem cell treatments to treat his leukemia has found as a happy side-effect that the HIV cells in his system had disappeared, and have yet to reappear. The operation was headed by Dr. Gero Hutter of the Charité-Medical University of Berlin.
"We waited every day for a bad reading," Dr. Hütter told reporters this week, some eight months after he first reported the case, in February at the 2008 Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections. But so far, he and colleagues have been unable to find the virus in blood, bone marrow, lymph nodes, intestines, or brain, he said."
Ummmmm.
Let's run that by again, much simpler this time.
HIV positive human + stem cell therapy = no HIV.
AAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!
Now the treatment is expensive, half a mill, but the cost will drop. And the treatment is dangerous, but in time it will be safer.
So anyone with half a mill and a reckless streak can be cured of their HIV.
This news is staggering in the extreme.
Here's news words: MedpageToday, Wall Street Journal, and NY Times.
Go technology! And a massive SuperForest "Thank you!" to Dr. Gero Hutter and the Charité-Medical University of Berlin.
Okay, so far thanks to stem cells, we can regrow lost limbs, help paralyzed folks walk, and cure HIV. One wonders what could have been achieved had we not banned research eight years ago.
Love that tech.
-Jackson
stem cell transplants are expensive, dangerous, NOT EASY and should NOT be entered into lightly. [as a nurse ive seen people die in the process from the side effects alone many times.] however, theyre currently being used, often with great results, to help people with a variety of diseases such as leukemia, lymphoma, brain tumors, blood disorders and especially sickle cell disease (for which a transplant is considered CURATIVE!). its not a cure-all for everything (i truthfully doubt if they CURED the hiv...its likely just hiding somewhere and we just dont have tests sensitive enough to find it), but the potential is undeniable indeed. the research is complicated, expensive and difficult, but a lot of great stuff is going on right here in NYC! heres hoping that some legislative changes come along to continue this important quest for knowledge.
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