November 13, 2005

Cured of HIV
posted by Gyan 18 years ago
  • Isolate this guy, stick tubes in him, get him sliced and diced we need to know what's going on. Fucker is not coming back in for tests, bastard.
  • If true, this is obviously important, although I suppose we shouldn't be too surprised if it's the case that evolution has managed to find a cure for a deadly disease without the help of science. Certainly he should go in for more tests, but if it would help to motivate him, why not offer to pay him for the trouble?
  • ...if it's the case that evolution has managed to find a cure for a deadly disease without the help of science. AIDS has killed over 20 million people in the world since 1980, only 3,800 of those in the UK. I wouldn't go jumping the "evolution" gun just yet. If you wanted to see evolution in humans vs. HIV/AIDS look to Africa. That's where the massive death tolls are and the survival populations will have to emerge if the pandemic isn't curbed. I'd sooner chalk this up to: oops!
  • One would imagine that such a (proved) "medically remarkable" diagnosis would be somewhat overwhelming for any person to absorb. Given that Andrew Stimpson almost certainly anticipates a future full of "slicing and dicing", his most rational course might be to allow a period of reflection before accepting said future. One has read (somewhere) that approximately 20% of the poplation may either have an immunity to HIV, or have some element 'missing' in their DNA which makes it impossible for them to contract the disease. Unfortunately, I cannot recall where I read of this, or the source. Are there any on MonkeyFilter who might know of same?
  • My mind is equally vague on the subject, jeraboam, but I seem to remember that a certain percentage of people had an increased resistance to the virus, but not true immunity. Repeated exposure, IIRC, showed them contracting as well. Just took more.
  • See? Load of fuss over nothing. People just need to take their vitamins, pull themselves together and get over it.
  • Good grief. Evolution has done nothing. The law of natural selection, however, states that a certain proportion of the population will prove resistant to any virus natural selection throws our way. Even ebola is expected to kill only 90% of the population, should it go mediaeval on our asses.
  • Or maybe the first positive test was wrong. They do however many millions of tests, each having a small but non-zero false-positive rate, somebody was bound to be "infected" and then remit due to type-2 error. I'd wait to see the writeup in a medical journal before getting excited.
  • jeroboam - there have been links to AIDS immunity to changes linked to the Black Plague more here
  • Thank you Polychrome. A prompt to one's memory of the source; this being a lady who informed me of her immunity to HIV/AIDS (attributing the missing CCR5 docking protein) and the location being O'Reilly's Pub (San Francisco) rather close to midnight! Without doubt the main contributor of vague recollection would be the Guiness, and in some quantity.
  • wasn't there a story 9 or 10 years ago about an infant born of an hiv+ mother who had not developed hiv?
  • If I were naturally immune to HIV, the first thing I'd do before submitting to slicing and dicing would be to visit a good IP lawyer. I'm happy to help humanity, but if something in my genetic (or other physiological) makeup is going to lead to a multi-billion dollar drug line, I'll have my cut, thanks. (Sound heartless? Well, this wouldn't be the first time medical researchers have won a Nobel, multi-million dollar patents, and the life of Riley while the person whose peculiarities enabled the research ended up getting less than nothing.)
  • roryk, as far as I know it is possible for a non-HIV baby to be born to an HIV+ mother. The risk is in fluids exchanged in the birth canal and via breastmilk, from memory. Or is that only with lesser STDs?
  • Good grief. Evolution has done nothing. The law of natural selection, however, states that a certain proportion of the population will prove resistant to any virus natural selection throws our way. Ex hypothesi, the "law of natural selection" does not ensure that "a certain proportion of the population will prove resistant to any virus natural selection throws our way." It makes this likely, sure, as it works to shave off undesirable traits. But only through mutation can evolution work its magic, viz, to make species evolve. These are, together, what is meant by "evolution" in the Neo-Darwinian synthesis, and what I meant when I said that, if the tests are to be believed, evolution has found a cure for HIV. Natural selection is not all there is to evolution.
  • I'd sooner chalk this up to: oops! I would too. That's why I put a conditional in there.
  • ...the "law of natural selection" does not ensure that "a certain proportion of the population will prove resistant... Beat me to it, Smo. And the conditional was noted. I just know people who write like they talk, and think unlike either. As far as oops! is concerned, the amount of medical oops! that occurs is staggering. Malpractice is for only severe cases of oops! Doctors and medical technicians are far from infalliable.
  • Shapely, James Delmore. It could happen, who knows.
  • Smo - Right now it's just a mutation (if it's anything). It's not evolution until he breeds and passes on the trait to future generations who will share the selective advantage and breed and make more with the advantage...etc. Since the article mentioned he is gay, passing on the trait seems less likely than I would normally suppose.
  • Flagpole beat me to it.
  • Right now it's just a mutation (if it's anything). Or, more likely, if you want to use evolutionary theory it is probably just a trait. This may be the first recorded instance of it showing it's resistance to HIV. In Africa uncountable cases of HIV go unreported. The same is true everywhere else but probably on a smaller scale. People may have HIV and not know it because they didn't get tested for whatever reasons. It is entirely possible that he is not the only one that this has happened to if this isn't a medical oops. However, this is an anomaly because he was tested.
  • Re: Mother's passing HIV to their infants... These days there are a lot of preventive measures in countries with decent healthcare to prevent this kind of transmission. They mostly effective, although I don't recall the stats offhand.
  • Since the article mentioned he is gay, passing on the trait seems less likely than I would normally suppose. Which would be the ultimate irony, n'est-ce pas?
  • Given the last 20 years of AIDS breakthroughs, I'm not holding my breath. OK, I'm mostly not holding my breath because it's uncomfortable.
  • On further review, how does one go from a positive antibody result to a negative one? Even if he is cured, there is no way his antibody response just disappears (assuming he still has an immune system). I call Shenanigans.
  • "Stimpson was tested three times in August 2002 at the Victoria clinic for sexual health in central London and the results showed he was producing HIV antibodies to fight the disease." That's 3 times within four weeks or less at the same clinic. The tests showing him negative were conducted in Oct. '03, Dec. '03, and March '04. Not clear where those were all taken. I hope he is some kind of medical miracle who can offer life-saving information about AIDS. I also hope they've been closely analyzing the testing process at that clinic to ensure that those tests and the rest of them done that August, that year and since then were not faulty in some way.
  • Since the article mentioned he is gay, passing on the trait seems less likely than I would normally suppose. Or maybe more likely if he goes the Gallo route and sells it online.
  • > roryk, as far as I know it is possible for a non-HIV baby to be born to an HIV+ mother. (following some reading about this) yes it is possible. i thought that hiv crosses the placenta, but it seems this happens only in some cases. if precautions are taken, the transmission rate can be as low as 1 in 12.
  • That's why MY feotus always wears a condom.
  • That was quick!