Chapter: Aids Antidote?

(I know antidote is probably not the correct word to use, but hey, it's catchy, it's an alliteration, and now it's the title of this post.)

So, I just read there is a doctor in Germany that claims a man who was HIV-positive may have been cured with a stem-cell transplant. The miracle patient's name is Timothy Ray Brown, who was also suffering from Leukemia three years ago, when he received a stem-cell transplant from a donor carrying a rare, inherited gene mutation that seems to make carriers virtually immune to HIV infection. So in simpler terms, this donor was like an X-men or something, and HIV/AIDS can't harm a hair on his body. Yeah, something like that.

The transplant said to have wiped out both diseases, so said Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institutes of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, who has been studying HIV/AIDS for almost 30 years. So if this is true, this is kind of like the day he's been waiting for his entire career-life-existence, (also for the 33 million people worldwide living with HIV/AIDS, can't forget them).

Before you get too excited, that is if you are, which you should be because this is considerably the most groundbreaking thing to happen in the medical world since I don't know when (...to my knowledge), we must analyze the details. The rarity of something like this happening is pretty colossal. First off, “It’s hard enough to get a good compatible match for a transplant like this,” said Dr. Fauci to Foxnews.com, “But you also have to find compatible donor that has this genetic defect, and this defect is only found in 1 percent of the Caucasian population and zero percent of the black population. This is very rare.”

Womp.

So not every patient can be treated with this.Well, I guess we can shoot that horse in the face. And now comes the marathon of blah-news, the wompfest. Dr. Fauci said this isn't "prime time" for him at all because it's such a rare situation that doesn't have practical application. Meaning, it's like a miracle, chances of being duplicated are slim to none. Also, Dr. Fauci mentioned that it's not as pretty as it sounds. The transplant is pretty expensive and tremendously painful and complicated, and the patient would have to start a whole new platoon of drugs.

Again, this patients cure was kind of an accident/surprise. He was originally getting the bone marrow transplant for his leukemia, and the HIV cure kind of came like extra fries in the order.

Soooo, although this opens many doors for new HIV treatments and possible remedies, there is still a somewhat long way to go.

But let's not get too upset, one patient was cured, so hoorah!