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From MIT, a cure for all viruses?

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Re: From MIT, a cure for all viruses?

#71

Post by silentscope »

Props to the writer for going out an getting the interview on a great story: possible cure for viruses project diagnosed with lethal lack of funding.

But there are some "questions" to not ask in a news interview:

"Oh, wow. That’s an amazing idea."

"There haved been articles, but I feel this is definitely front-page material."

I agree, this is amazing interesting stuff and the interviewer and interviewee made it great. But when you tell me how interesting it is instead of letting the content speak, you set off alarms in my head.

Sorry for being a curmudgeon--it's easy to berate things without contributing. Just saying don't let your opinion overshadow the story.

Re: From MIT, a cure for all viruses?

#72

Post by seclorum »

sukuriant wrote: post #66
xanadohnt wrote: post #55

This is great until the fallout is destroying all the potentially "good" viruses with which humans are infected. Little research has been done to determine the good bugs. You can guarantee lots of beneficial viruses will be identified once the adverse affects of their absence begins wreaking havoc.

I came on to inquire precisely that. This would most likely kill the good viruses, too. What are they going to do to counteract those virii death?

I'm guessing they can target the virus RNA they're attempting to eradicate.

Re: From MIT, a cure for all viruses?

#73

Post by uncoder0 »

DanWaterworth wrote: post #53
uncoder0 wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your reply is surely in jest.However, if it was not, the Iceman who lived 5,000 years had Lyme disease. "Perhaps most surprising, researchers found the genetic footprint of bacteria known as Borrelia burgdorferi in his DNA—making the Iceman the earliest known human infected by the bug that causes Lyme disease."[1] [1] http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2011/11/iceman-autopsy/hal...

> the Iceman who lived 5,000 years had Lyme disease I think you mean the iceman who lived 5,000 years ago, otherwise woah!

Pre-coffee comment. Thanks for the proof read.

Re: From MIT, a cure for all viruses?

#74

Post by carbocation »

streptomycin wrote: post #40

I wonder why this got published in PLoS ONE rather than a more traditional and higher impact journal.

PLoS ONE is quite a reputable journal, one which some people prefer for philosophical reasons (open access).

Without knowing the submission history of this paper or talking with referees in the big name journals, it's hard to know whether or not they submitted this to one of the other journals and simply didn't get accepted.

Re: From MIT, a cure for all viruses?

#75

Post by refurb »

secoif wrote: post #46

I wish more science would get behind crowd funding, then we could potentially have this kind of stuff sooner/at all. I wince at all of the amazing science that doesn't kick off, not because of a lack of feasibility or interest but simply because of a lack of funding.

If you look at the number of ideas that get funded and fail, I would say there is more money out there than good ideas at the moment.

Re: From MIT, a cure for all viruses?

#76

Post by jrnkntl »

cowkingdeluxe wrote: post #70
robomartin wrote: post #48

Sounds promising. It'll be interesting to watch and see how this evolves. Here's an off-topic comment issued in the spirit of constructive criticism for the site (please don't downvote based on this): If any HN reader has an account with process.org could you --if you agree, of course-- suggest that a small gray font against a gray background is simply not a good idea? On an iPad without zooming it is really strainin…

Yeah, I had to take the time to implement a custom stylish style for the website in firefox before I started reading it.

To prevent having to 'implement custom styling', use Readability (firefox add-on: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/readability/) or as for Safari the Reader functionality: http://shrt.nl/s/shot-UD7ba5RjHg.png

Re: From MIT, a cure for all viruses?

#77

Post by sukuriant »

seclorum wrote: post #72
sukuriant wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I came on to inquire precisely that. This would most likely kill the good viruses, too. What are they going to do to counteract those virii death?

I'm guessing they can target the virus RNA they're attempting to eradicate.

What I gathered from the article, though, was that this shortens a cell's self-checks before the cell itself self-destructs. There is no virus RNA being evaluated, that's still done by the cell.

If I misunderstood the article and people's commons in this thread, please help me understand properly.

Re: From MIT, a cure for all viruses?

#78

Post by d2vid »

huxley wrote: post #27

When I first saw it I though it was fake. But seriously, PANACEA and DRACO? Is Dr. Todd Rider trolling the crazies? For example: http://youtu.be/EneiDKw_zXg tl;dr: DRACO is attempt by Reptilians to corrupt human DNA, underwater cages, etc

I kept reading the article and looking for something that would give this away as an early April Fools joke.

Re: From MIT, a cure for all viruses?

#79

Post by goblin89 »

tomjen3 wrote: post #51
stevejabs wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honestly, all of the "non-profit" organizations out there who provide "funding" to AIDS research need to blow the bank and get behind something like this.

It is properly too early to tell, but if this proves to be something real, we need a march of dimes founding situation and we have to make it as much a national issue, and as important as when Jonas Salk headed the team that cured polio. One thing it will do is it will cure AIDS -- an insanely great achievement -- another thing it will do is that it will inspire a generation of kids to become scientists, which we sor…

> It is properly too early to tell, but if this proves to be something real

“Then there are government agencies and companies that will take it and take it to that final step.” The problem is getting to that stage when it proves to be something real.

Re: From MIT, a cure for all viruses?

#80

Post by wvenable »

nullflux wrote: post #49
wvenable wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The drug kills the cell but the not virus -- your body still has to do that. Given the way that vaccines work, this is probably not going to have a big effect on immunity.

I'm missing a bit of the logic here, then. If I kill the cells infected, won't the latent viruses go and infect a different cell anyway? DRACO appears to be a medical scorched-earth policy.

With AIDS, for example, it infects a cell and causes that cell to replicate as many copies of the virus as possible (remember viruses don't replicate on their own). The cell eventually ruptures spreading out more copies of the virus to infect more cells. By killing the infected cell as early as possible, you drastically reduce the number of copies produced.
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