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New antibody attacks 99% of HIV strains

bbc.com

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Re: New antibody attacks 99% of HIV strains

#121

Post by usaphp »

dna_polymerase wrote: post #120
nkkollaw wrote: post #37

Hopefully it's cheap and/or Bill Gates starts throwing money into producing it if it passes clinical trials. I have a feeling that Africa is where AIDS does the most damage, and I doubt they can afford the $1000/mo. it will certainly cost in the States.

If this is produced by Pfizer or some other company he is invested in, sure. Otherwise he will fall back to talking bs all day long like he does with Malaria. For those downvoting: His foundation made sure the WHO subcontracts all studies to companies he has a stake in. He isn't a saint, he is a capitalist.

> Otherwise he will fall back to talking bs all day long like he does with Malaria.

Can you elaborate on this? I thought he was a type of person who does more than he talks.

Re: New antibody attacks 99% of HIV strains

#122

Post by grzm »

noncoml wrote: post #104
grzm wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But... it was a question... Which is why I addressed this in the next sentence: > If you have an honest question that will move the discussion productively forward, please, by all means ask it. Does it move the discussion productively forward ? What is the motivation for your question? Where do you expect the discussion to go from here? This isn't a question like "Where's the post office?" where the expected respon…

> Does it move the discussion productively forward? Yes. > What is the motivation for your question? To know if we are discussing about public health issues or moral believes. If it is the later, then there is no point continuing the discussion. > Where do you expect the discussion to go from here? If the motivation behind his comment was morals, then I don't expect the discussion to go anywhere. It is a dead end. If…

In a good-faith effort to clarify: my edit was in response to the additions that you made to your comment above (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15315553), not to this reply. When I first composed my reply it consisted only of the line I quoted.

When I see that a discussion is not progressing constructively (as I observed from your first response to me), I try to make clear in a response that am indeed dropping the thread: I'm not interested in tit-for-tat back and forth, and know that it takes both parties to work toward a common goal for such discussions to be productive: I'm as much responsible as any other party. I do hope you find the constructive discussion you're looking for, and apologize for taking this off-topic as far as it has.

Re: New antibody attacks 99% of HIV strains

#123

Post by zghst »

jMyles wrote: post #28
anovikov wrote: post #4

Well, 99% means eradication of the virus very quickly. People won't become totally sexually irresponsible after the preventive shot, because there are many other hard to cure STDs now, especially as antibiotics are not as potent as they use to be, so i think there is no threat of 1960s style of unprotected sex wave.

> People won't become totally sexually irresponsible after the preventive shot, because there are many other hard to cure STDs now, especially as antibiotics are not as potent as they use to be, so i think there is no threat of 1960s style of unprotected sex wave. The way you've phrased this, it sounds like you are casting "other hard to cure STDs" as a protective measure against the "threat of 1960s style of unprote…

I hope so. Although other communicable diseases will still be a significant issue, as time progresses it should be easy to love a person, even if only for one instance.

Re: New antibody attacks 99% of HIV strains

#124

Post by tatterdemalion »

vkou wrote: post #119
kentosi wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're getting treatment, the amount of HIV in your blood is regularly measured as your "viral load". It's possible, with treatment, for people with HIV to have a viral load labelled undetectable. To date, from an article I read, there have been no recorded transmissions from people with an undetectable viral load. https://www.preventionaccess.org/faq

Two questions arise: How many people taking retrovirals have undetectable levels of HIV? Are those people using condoms?

The PARTNER study studied 767 serodiscordant couples, with the HIV positive partner undetectable. All participating couples did not use condoms at least some of the time. They found zero cases in which the undetectable partner infected the negative partner.

http://www.aidsmap.com/No-one-with-an-undetectable-viral-loa...

Frequent testing and early intervention are very effective to achieving an undetectable viral load. The adoption of these as public health policy, as well as making available of prophylactic measures for at risk populations, has been effective at combating the spread of HIV - e.g. in San Francisco, where infection rate has been declining significantly over the last 5 or so years.

Re: New antibody attacks 99% of HIV strains

#125

Post by fghvbnvbnfe »

c3534l wrote: post #110
wickawic wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sure that it is much more complicated than this, but I wonder how long the virus can remain immune to all previous '99%' cures? Maybe eventually we could come up with enough of these and then administer them all at once.

Probably for longer than we can keep coming up with chemicals that selectively kill it. After all, if we're not killed by the chemical, then that means it's possible to survive it.

That's not really a meaningful argument. You're talking about a large multi-cellular organism that has tissues, organs, and all that and comparing it to something that doesn't even have cells.

Re: New antibody attacks 99% of HIV strains

#126

Post by esm »

carlisle_ wrote: post #103
wickawic wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sure that it is much more complicated than this, but I wonder how long the virus can remain immune to all previous '99%' cures? Maybe eventually we could come up with enough of these and then administer them all at once.

I believe that's actually somewhat how AIDs treatments have worked. I'm not sure if all are like that but it's pretty much the exact logic.

Yep. Triple therapy is now standard in HIV treatment. The odds of developing mutations to 2-3 agents simultaneously are very low

Re: New antibody attacks 99% of HIV strains

#127

Post by dna_polymerase »

usaphp wrote: post #121
dna_polymerase wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If this is produced by Pfizer or some other company he is invested in, sure. Otherwise he will fall back to talking bs all day long like he does with Malaria. For those downvoting: His foundation made sure the WHO subcontracts all studies to companies he has a stake in. He isn't a saint, he is a capitalist.

> Otherwise he will fall back to talking bs all day long like he does with Malaria. Can you elaborate on this? I thought he was a type of person who does more than he talks.

Sure, The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is used for tax evasion, supporting corporate interest in developing countries and to control the WHO.

https://www.globaljustice.org.uk/sites/default/files/files/r...

They even advised not to lower prices for vaccines, because then pharma corporations wouldn't invest in the global south anymore.

Re: New antibody attacks 99% of HIV strains

#128

Post by noncoml »

grzm wrote: post #122
noncoml wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Does it move the discussion productively forward? Yes. > What is the motivation for your question? To know if we are discussing about public health issues or moral believes. If it is the later, then there is no point continuing the discussion. > Where do you expect the discussion to go from here? If the motivation behind his comment was morals, then I don't expect the discussion to go anywhere. It is a dead end. If…

In a good-faith effort to clarify: my edit was in response to the additions that you made to your comment above ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15315553 ), not to this reply. When I first composed my reply it consisted only of the line I quoted. When I see that a discussion is not progressing constructively (as I observed from your first response to me), I try to make clear in a response that am indeed droppin…

> When I see that a discussion is not progressing constructively (as I observed from your first response to me)

You offered unsolicited advice. I didn't take it personally, I tried to reply with arguments.

> I'm not interested in tit-for-tat back and forth

Just because I don't agree with the arguments you make it doesn't mean I have anything personal with you or that it is tit-for-tat or don't like conversing with you. Quite the opposite, the more difficult and challenging your arguments are, the more I enjoy the conversation.

Edit: Removed the "I am having doubts if you were interested in an open discussion in the first place." Please disregard it.

Re: New antibody attacks 99% of HIV strains

#129

Post by esm »

otakucode wrote: post #57
vkou wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the 1980s, getting HIV was a quick death sentence. In the 2010s, getting HIV means that you are likely to live until... Your 70s. (Assuming you have access to medication.) The problem is that you need to take expensive medication for the rest of your life. And that you can infect other people.

The infecting other people is mostly theoretical. As far as I know there is no actual instance of transmission from a person with an undetectable viral load on antiretroviral drugs to an uninfected person.

It even works the other way around. IIRC, there have been something like 2 documented cases of HIV(-) people becoming seropositive while taking PrEP as prescribed.

Re: New antibody attacks 99% of HIV strains

#130

Post by jahnu »

joshstrange wrote: post #60
nkkollaw wrote: post #37

Hopefully it's cheap and/or Bill Gates starts throwing money into producing it if it passes clinical trials. I have a feeling that Africa is where AIDS does the most damage, and I doubt they can afford the $1000/mo. it will certainly cost in the States.

Not that it helps Africa but in the US for a drug like Truvada (PrEP) it costs ~$1500/mo on insurance but they offer a copay card that covers $3600/yr which is enough to hit my deductible at least so after 2 months I only pay $30/mo but in practice I don't pay a dime because the copay card covers it all.

Honestly, when you US folks talk about how your medical bills work and are paid there is so much jargon and complexity it sounds like Star Trek techno-babble to my ears.

"I have a common but chronic ailment so all I had to do was re-route the phase-converter to the deflector shield and invert the chromaton particles in Shelk-Einstein space and we're done!"

:/

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