Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

New antibody attacks 99% of HIV strains

bbc.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

211–220 of 256 posts

Re: New antibody attacks 99% of HIV strains

#211

Post by acjohnson55 »

therein wrote: post #193
smitherfield wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not the most virulent 1%, it's 1% which have unusual mutations that cause them to be resistant to this treatment, but which usually reduce their fitness in other respects. (This can be seen in humans as well, e.g. malaria resistance->sickle-cell). The fastest-multiplying viruses are also (obviously) going to be the most common, in the absence of treatment.

Interesting point. I hadn't considered unusual but useful mutations they accrued might come with reduced fitness in other regards.

It's like having superpowers, but with physical abnormalities. Like so many things, this was explored in the comics!

Re: New antibody attacks 99% of HIV strains

#212

Post by jMyles »

snakeanus wrote: post #181
jMyles wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> Isn't sexual freedom a goal? For whom? Not for me.

I get the sense that you're hoping that someone will ask you to explain what you mean. So I'll do that.

What do you mean?

Re: New antibody attacks 99% of HIV strains

#213

Post by L_Rahman »

chasil wrote: post #68
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.

Antibody manufacture is not cheap. The antibodies are made by fusing the b-memory cells with mouse cancer, then putting the result in a bioreactor and filtering out the desired product, which must then be refrigerated. Drugs that use this technique commonly end in -MAB (for monoclonal antibody).

Given the entrenched nature of the American pharmaceutical industry, I'm unconvinced that any of them have actually tried to solve the problem of cheap antibody manufacturing at scale.

Re: New antibody attacks 99% of HIV strains

#214

Post by tryingagainbro »

tertius wrote: post #208
tryingagainbro wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Drugs are cheaper and largely subsidized by governments with high incidence of HIV. I'm South African, antiretrovirals are free.* Almost got it right: Drugs elsewhere are cheaper and largely subsidized by USA citizens. Those drugs cost a fortune to make and the companies make their money in USA https://www.reuters.com/article/us-pharmaceuticals-usa-compa...

> Almost got it right: Drugs elsewhere are cheaper and largely subsidized by USA citizens. * Correction, by U.S. government (through law). > Those drugs cost a fortune to make and the companies make their money in USA. Yes R&D is expensive, but pharma is extremely profitable. Here in the U.S. and abroad.

The difference in pricing is STAGGERING. http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/New-Hepatitis-C-dru...

The blockbuster hepatitis C drug will cost about $900 (around Rs 54,000) in India for a 12-week course of treatment. That would be a fraction of the $84,000 (over Rs 50 lakh) price tag for the same treatment in US.

I'm sure that they wouldn't be that profitable if USA paid $900 for that drug, especially the first few years.

https://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/04/business/sales-of-sovaldi... 140,000 patients in USA and going to 250,000

Re: New antibody attacks 99% of HIV strains

#215

Post by snakeanus »

jMyles wrote: post #212
snakeanus wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Isn't sexual freedom a goal? For whom? Not for me.

I get the sense that you're hoping that someone will ask you to explain what you mean. So I'll do that. What do you mean?

> What do you mean?

That I do not believe that sexual freedom is a goal.

Re: New antibody attacks 99% of HIV strains

#216

Post by tertius »

tryingagainbro wrote: post #214
tertius wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Almost got it right: Drugs elsewhere are cheaper and largely subsidized by USA citizens. * Correction, by U.S. government (through law). > Those drugs cost a fortune to make and the companies make their money in USA. Yes R&D is expensive, but pharma is extremely profitable. Here in the U.S. and abroad.

The difference in pricing is STAGGERING. http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/New-Hepatitis-C-dru... The blockbuster hepatitis C drug will cost about $900 (around Rs 54,000) in India for a 12-week course of treatment. That would be a fraction of the $84,000 (over Rs 50 lakh) price tag for the same treatment in US. I'm sure that they wouldn't be that profitable if USA paid $900 for that drug, especially the first…

Drugs are cheapest in India. Let's normalize. I.e. far end of the pricing bell curve.

But the answer is still, yes, there is profitability. Just not as much as with the hyper inflated prices in the US.

In short: Does the extreme cost for drugs in the US cause groundbreaking research to benefit the whole world?

No, same results could be had with way less profit. Money to fund moonshot research is still important though.

Re: New antibody attacks 99% of HIV strains

#217

Post by FabHK »

tryingagainbro wrote: post #187
tertius wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Drugs are cheaper and largely subsidized by governments with high incidence of HIV. *I'm South African, antiretrovirals are free.

Drugs are cheaper and largely subsidized by governments with high incidence of HIV. I'm South African, antiretrovirals are free.* Almost got it right: Drugs elsewhere are cheaper and largely subsidized by USA citizens. Those drugs cost a fortune to make and the companies make their money in USA https://www.reuters.com/article/us-pharmaceuticals-usa-compa...

And yet, reportedly US pharmaceuticals spend more money on marketing and promotion (i.e. coddling up to the doctors who prescribe their products) than R&D.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/02/11/big-p...

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/01/080105140107.h...

Re: New antibody attacks 99% of HIV strains

#218

Post by FabHK »

snakeanus wrote: post #215
jMyles wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I get the sense that you're hoping that someone will ask you to explain what you mean. So I'll do that. What do you mean?

> What do you mean? That I do not believe that sexual freedom is a goal.

Well, it is for others. Let's all agree then on freedom, because then those who want to pursue it can, and those who don't, needn't, and everyone is happy (except those, to appropriate H. L. Mencken's famous phrase, with the haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be having sexual freedom).

Re: New antibody attacks 99% of HIV strains

#219

Post by FabHK »

sethrin wrote: post #148
andriesm wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What about people's individual rights? I don't want the community to tell me what to inject into my body? (Ps I am NOT anti-vax)

Rights can be said to have a real existence only to the degree that society dictates, and only in a social context. Your will is not inviolate simply because you choose to frame it as a right. So the first answer to that question is that it must first be established that this is some sort of right that society has agreed to respect, and secondly you would have to take on the issue of the harm to society in order to a…

People that refuse vaccination on the basis of their rights should be perfectly free to do so, but on some isolated island where they do not interact with the rest of humanity.

Re: New antibody attacks 99% of HIV strains

#220

Post by autokad »

api_or_ipa wrote: post #149
MechEStudent wrote: post #93

HIV evolves with amazing (super-villian-ic) speed. Many "cures" attack 99% of cells, or similar. Resistance is evolved during treatment, and is usually uniform within just a few months. It mutates/evolves so fast that given just virus samples, it is possible to determine sequence of infection. I think it needs to kill more than 6-9's before it has a good chance at being a cure.

Reminds me of a lesson about misleading statistics I tell my nephews. We've all see the hand sanitizers that advertize killing 99.99% of germs, but what does that actually mean? 99.99% equates to 1/10,000 survivors and assuming for each generation the population doubles means it takes just 14 generations for the original colony to be back at full strength again. For extra creepy effect, e coli can reproduce in optima…

hand sanitizers aren't to replace soap, where as soap kills and washes surviving germs away
Post reply on HN