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Protein that destroys HIV discovered

loyolamedicine.org

31–40 of 72 posts

Re: Protein that destroys HIV discovered

#31

This isn't news, nor is it necessarily even exciting. There are thousands upon thousands of chemicals that destroy HIV (bleach is a good example), the tricky bit is working within the confines of the human body. Delivery, dosing, etc, etc, etc. As far as drug efficacy is concerned, those issues far outweigh anything else. Unless you are a drug researcher, ignore news of this sort, when you start seeing drug trials th…

Apparently air works pretty well, too. http://www.sfaf.org/aids101/transmission.html

Re: Protein that destroys HIV discovered

#32
post #26
post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because we have not heard of a $225K microscope before - thus the microscope must be well good - but have heard of $10M research building and actually expect the latter.

I'm sure the vast majority of the readers of this article have also not heard of a $10K, $100K or $700K microscope either which is why it's incongruous to have the price in the first sentence of the article without any context. Here are many other microscopes the prices of which you may not have heard. Is it enlightening? http://www.technicalsalessolutions.com/

There are only seven microscopes there which are more expensive.

This is journalism of course, but there is no need to discredit everything simply because you can word it in such a way as to make it sound stupid.

Personally, once the sum for the microscope was mentioned I was able to judge that the research is quite serious, has the latest technology and advantages of the latest technology and thus give me more confidence in their findings. Is it such a bad thing to use facts to make a story credible?

Re: Protein that destroys HIV discovered

#33
post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah, precisely, the lab is not the human body. The fact that you can kill HIV with X in the lab is meaningless. Bleach does a quite adequate job of that. However, we care about in vivo efficacy, and that's qualitatively a different problem. For every thousand drugs that seem promising in isolation in a petri dish (e.g. killing cancer cells and not damaging human tissue) perhaps only a handful make it to human trials,…

I am sorry, perhaps you are allergic to monkeys, but I did mention them, and I did mention that bleach was not tried on monkeys and succeeded. Monkeys that is, not labs.

Agreed. This protein DOES exist in the body, DOES destroy viruses, and now protects monkeys. That does sound significant.

Re: Protein that destroys HIV discovered

#34
post #29
post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Common. You probably are a college student, or the original poster is, or both were thus know full well that you get free access to the journals you need when you are a student. A journal has editors, some choose to have their journals in print which requires much money, and some journals have sub editors, and assistant editors, and chief editors, and a whole infrastructure which demands much money to be upheld. If y…

I'm sorry, but there is no excuse whatsoever for that old bloated system for distribution to continue to exist. Sure, editors have value, sure, peer review should be rewarded. But trying to create artificial scarcity by bringing an outdated distribution model to the online world doesn't make sense. Any pdf is just a few hops away on most social networks anyway, so it's not like their paywalls are stopping anyone.

"old bloated system"

You mean the same one that google uses for, amongst other things, to measure authority?

I am fine with kicking the old system into oblivion. I am not fine with doing so before suggesting a new system however. I simply do not see how, in this chaotic internet where everyone has an opinion and is able to communicate it to the entire world, we can differentiate between objective solid stuff, and mere speculation.

If we are for freedom, then lets us have such freedom. Let us not frown at wikileaks if they publish deep and damaging secrets, let us not be defensive when our own content is concerned and copied, let us so too resist any attempts of the real law, say the law of defamation to apply to the internet, let us be cool with bittorrent and the way it distributes freely our content.

If that is the internet we wish, then fine, let us be the pioneers and disrupt all older notions.

If the above is extreme however, then let us be impartial and judge where the line ought to be not from a selfish perspective, not from an emotional or ideological perspective, but from a rational, detached, without favour or fear perspective.

That is the choice of our generation, but I submit, we can have only one of them. We can not be hypocrites when our own interests are concerned and guard them ferociously, yet fight to undermine the interests of others.

Re: Protein that destroys HIV discovered

#35
post #27
post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then there should be grant money set aside to cover peer review. I'd bet most of the subscribers are already doing so with public money in some form, it doesn't make sense to lock up all that information behind a pay wall.

Why should there be grant money set aside to cover peer review? Just ask yourself honestly and try to be unbiased, is that not a very selfish proposition? This is only one article, amongst thousands of which we do not care of. We do not care of them because they have nothing to do with the field we have chosen to focus on, be that computer science, medicine, history, physics, law, or artificial intelligence. I would…

> Why should there be grant money set aside to cover peer review? Just ask yourself honestly and try to be unbiased, is that not a very selfish proposition?

Why should there be grant money set aside to cover research?

I don't think I'm alone in finding that it's frustrating to have tax payer funded research be hidden behind paywalls that other tax payer funded institutions can access but the general public cannot. We're paying for both sides and not getting the goods.

Re: Protein that destroys HIV discovered

#36
post #22
post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most researchers haven't really chosen to charge for their papers. It's the only way to get published in the journals, and it's based on an old scarcity where the distribution of quality journals was a difficult task. Now a social network of scientists could handle it for almost nothing. Barriers to research do nothing but make life difficult for poor college students. See http://arxiv.org .

Common. You probably are a college student, or the original poster is, or both were thus know full well that you get free access to the journals you need when you are a student. A journal has editors, some choose to have their journals in print which requires much money, and some journals have sub editors, and assistant editors, and chief editors, and a whole infrastructure which demands much money to be upheld. If y…

>Common. You probably are a college student, or the original poster is, or both were thus know full well that you get free access to the journals you need when you are a student.

That's entirely false. If there was a single distribution point that charged a nominal fee, that would be one thing, but to do any significant research you need at least 5 such £30 monthly subscriptions, and no school subscribes to all journals a student might want.

>If you do not pay for it, well not you precisely, but the professionals who work in that field, then the funds would be taken either away from research or from students.

I'd like to meet the professionals that buy these papers. I get the distinct impression it's mostly professors, students, and universities paying these outrageous fees.

Personally, I'm a professional now and if I needed a paper relevant to my work I would buy it. But I don't need it. Very few professionals need any sort of academic papers, especially in CS. We've got the whole Internet, from Wikipedia to Github to this very site to get information about trends, and we offer it for free because we know that hiding information is more trouble than it's worth (and it's much easier for us to work when those around us freely share.)

Re: Protein that destroys HIV discovered

#38
post #35
post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why should there be grant money set aside to cover peer review? Just ask yourself honestly and try to be unbiased, is that not a very selfish proposition? This is only one article, amongst thousands of which we do not care of. We do not care of them because they have nothing to do with the field we have chosen to focus on, be that computer science, medicine, history, physics, law, or artificial intelligence. I would…

> Why should there be grant money set aside to cover peer review? Just ask yourself honestly and try to be unbiased, is that not a very selfish proposition? Why should there be grant money set aside to cover research? I don't think I'm alone in finding that it's frustrating to have tax payer funded research be hidden behind paywalls that other tax payer funded institutions can access but the general public cannot. We…

Those who are interested in the goods however, subsidise those goods. You, or the tax paying public is not interested in those goods, but only the results. Just bare in mind this is only one article. There are thousands of other articles which you personally, let alone the tax paying public cares nothing of.

Knowledge is useful only to those who know how to make use of it.

But my opinion is not wanted, thus, you have your opinion and hold it dearly beside any questions of reason or logics because perhaps I should say if you had such understanding then you would have the liberty to suggest a better system.

Re: Protein that destroys HIV discovered

#39
post #36
post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Common. You probably are a college student, or the original poster is, or both were thus know full well that you get free access to the journals you need when you are a student. A journal has editors, some choose to have their journals in print which requires much money, and some journals have sub editors, and assistant editors, and chief editors, and a whole infrastructure which demands much money to be upheld. If y…

>Common. You probably are a college student, or the original poster is, or both were thus know full well that you get free access to the journals you need when you are a student. That's entirely false. If there was a single distribution point that charged a nominal fee, that would be one thing, but to do any significant research you need at least 5 such £30 monthly subscriptions, and no school subscribes to all journ…

This should perhaps be my last comment on this.

On your first point. I was a student and during that time I had access to all the papers I needed, sufficient papers to get the top grades.

Second, I do not know what profession you are in, computer science is very different from medicine. To start with, the latter requires actual physical stuff, you know, people you can experiment with, or monkeys, and substances, like bleach, and an actual physical space, rather than simply a computer and some time.

I understand that my opinion is in the minority. I understand too that most of you bright smart angels are trying to find loopholes in my reasoning or arguments. I am not however pleased at all with having the entire people of reason and intelligence set against like leaches.

This is a discussion. Not of an adversarial kind, but of a collaborative nature, where people of reason and intelligence try to arrive at a conclusion, rather than win one over. If I gather this wrong, then that is my bad. My intention however was to suggest as to how things taking in consideration practical matters, matters of principle, matters of a complex nature and combined by my own self, derives at simply copying a journal article and putting it on your web page to be no different than my buying the application you sell and putting it on my web page for free for all others to use as they please.

If reason is dead in this place and what counts is the "I am right", then that is fine.

Long Live Liberty of Choice.

Re: Protein that destroys HIV discovered

#40
post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am sorry, perhaps you are allergic to monkeys, but I did mention them, and I did mention that bleach was not tried on monkeys and succeeded. Monkeys that is, not labs.

Agreed. This protein DOES exist in the body, DOES destroy viruses, and now protects monkeys. That does sound significant.

"(The research was done on cell cultures; no rhesus monkeys were used in the study.)"
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