Spam filters may lead scientists to AIDS vaccine

[icymist]

Wednesday, February 23, 2005

Spam filters may lead scientists to AIDS vaccine
Scientists hope method will find patterns in variations of HIV

By TOM PAULSON
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER REPORTER

Software scientists at Microsoft Research have teamed up with biomedical researchers in Seattle, Boston and Perth, Australia, to see if computer techniques used to defeat e-mail spam can also be used to help design a vaccine that can defeat AIDS.

Today, members of this unique collaboration will announce a plan to use "machine learning" or "data mining" computational techniques to decipher HIV's wildly creative genetic ability to constantly change and disguise itself from immune system detection and deletion.

"HIV mutates like crazy, but it does show a pattern," said Dr. David Heckerman, a physician and computer scientist at Microsoft Research.

"It isn't completely random," added Heckerman's colleague Nebojsa Jojic. Just as a spammer can add only so much nonsense or other disguising characters without obscuring the message, Jojic said, so can the AIDS virus vary only so much without disabling itself.

More:
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/213232_microsofthiv23.html

[whistle]

1. Are these the same biomedical researchers who are being....

...mysteriously murdered around the world?

[Damien]

2. explain

I haven't heard anything.

Thanks.

[Ravenseye]

3. What What What?

Mysteriously murdered? I haven't heard about that. You got a link, or were you joking? If so...then call me 'a-buuuuuh'

[vpigrad]

9. Exactly!

If I was an AIDS researcher, I would be watching my back. The one murder after another is getting ridiculous.

[Damien]

12. care to post info?

Apparently most of us haven't heard about this.

[Renew Deal]

10. My hat fits well

:tinfoilhat:

Any references to what you are talking about?

[whistle]

16. Here are some links....

<snip>

Author airs conspiracy theory on Im’s death


By MIKE WELLS of the Tribune’s staff
Published Sunday, January 23, 2005
The death of retired research Professor Jeong Im has all the makings of a spy novel, and some say that idea isn’t far off base.

Someone stabbed the 72-year-old scientist multiple times in the Maryland Avenue parking garage at the University of Missouri-Columbia, put him in the trunk of his Honda and set the car on fire. Adding to the mystery, police say a hooded, masked man was seen carrying a gas can away from the scene.

University police on Friday announced a $10,000 reward for information leading to an arrest in the Jan. 7 killing. Police have received more than 185 leads, including some that appear far-fetched.

A few days after firefighters found Im’s body, a national radio talk-show guest theorized the killing was part of a plot to kill off key microbiologists in the world before unleashing "the ultimate epidemic."
<more>
<link> http://www.columbiatribune.com/2005/Jan/20050123News004.asp

<and here> http://www.stevequayle.com/dead_scientists/dead.scientists.chron.html

[Damien]

28. thank you

your initial post seemed ominous -- especially from a nondoner with no profile. It just seemed mysterious. Thanks for responding. :smoke:

[skids]

4. Greeeaaat. A vaccine by Microsoft.

I can just see it now: you've been vaccinated for AIDS, but you may experience a few "pop up" warts. Just click on "OK" to make them go away.

[icymist]

7. lol n/t

[Renew Deal]

11. Your licensing agrement for the vaccine has expired.

Would you like to renew or die?

[rayofreason]

23. Actually...

...this kind of thing is not too surprising. Many spam filters use advanced techniques like Bayseian statistics or latent semantic analysis. It makes sense that such pattern recognition techniques would be useful in tracking HIV mutations. Other ideas from the computer world, like scale-free networks, might also be useful when tracing the evolution of HIV. Bioinformatics is a brave new world indeed.

[denverbill]

5. Oh great. So the cure for aids will be created by Microsoft.

That means it'll be so full of bugs and security holes that whoever receives the treatment will have their entire immune system immediately compromised.

[Igel]

6. And you'll need monthly booster shots.

But, nonetheless, all other immune functions will be deleted immediately.

Won't die from AIDS, but the first cold that comes along ...

[denverbill]

8. No, they'll deliver the shots in the form of a patch. n/t

[soulcore]

13. here is a link to the list of murdered or dead microbiologists

I know it's on rense but hey, these guys really are dead.

http://rense.com/general62/list.htm

[Damien]

15. thank you

I've never seen this before.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

18. Is there a problem with Rense?

I'm not being sarcastic or insincere or anything, genuinely curious.

I've read a couple of interesting things on there. Is it all unverified or what?

[soulcore]

21. yes, it is mostly unverified, anyone can submit

something; photos, documents, theories, you have to take it all with a grain of salt of course, but a lot of the info is genuine, imho.

[tridim]

19. Wow!

I'd like to see data regarding the per-capita death of biologists in relation to the average person. Hey TIA, here's a new project for you!

[tridim]

14. Sigh.. Why does every Microsoft thread have to be a bash MS thread?

I hate to have to tell you, but Microsoft does do good things, and they employ some of the smartest people in the world. I understand why some people don't like Bill Gates.. I'm not a big fan either, but he's also the greatest philanthropist in history. Well, his wife and father are.. But it's Bill's money. If Microsoft's spam algorithms can help cure Aids, I'm all for it.

[skids]

17. Because they cause me stress.

There are oodles and oodles of people like me who, during the course of trying to make a living, are caused no end of stress and undue hardship because someone else foisted on them a Microsoft product. Their stuff is crap, by and large, and is barely BETA quality. They get tons of free technical support from their customers, who have to hire all sorts of help to babysit their crummy products and spoon feed them whenever changes need to be made.

Everywhere their products go, incompatibilties follow. And this is not just due to them "doing things different." Their marketing team makes most of the technical decisions on how their stuff works, and the purposefully create problems for people trying to get their systems to work with non-Microsoft products, so that their salespeople can come in and talk to the same idiot who bought their product in the first place, and explain how everything will be just fine and dandy if they just get rid of the non-Microsoft components. That would be bad enough, if it weren't for simply not being true. Even pure MS solutions are ridden with technical glitches and an utter nightmare to support. And that's on purpose, too, to keep you upgrading and keep the money flowing.

OK, enough :pant: The reason, in six short words: Because we are angry at them.

[tridim]

22. I'm a web developer and use MS and Unix systems every day

and I have no problems with either system. How can that be? My XP systems never crash, probably because I use high quality hardware. Honestly I think the problems you describe are hardware related. As for the upgrade argument.. Show me a software product (outside of Linux) that doesn't do the exact same thing.

Regardless, this thread is about curing AIDS, not blue screens of death.

[skids]

25. Well, to answer your question:

"I'm a web developer"

That's the answer. I don't mean to deride the profession, but you don't get to see the "underbelly" of Microsoft by doing web development.

And as far as cracking jokes about Microsoft, we do it to relieve stress. You'll just have to live with that, we aren't going to stop because if we did, we'd probably go quietly insane.

And as far as this discussion being OT, I was asked. So I answered.

[tridim]

30. Well to be accurate I'm a web developer/programmer

I mostly do .net and aspnet development now (along with PHP, standard asp, Perl, C and Python), so I do indeed see the underbelly of the beast. I don't use assembler any more, so I guess I can't claim full knowledge.

[skids]

32. I shouldn't even say this but...

Programming does not qualify -- you only see the little API wars. Try systems integration or network support. Then you get to see the beast in action.

[Pawel K]

26. Then don't use them or create something better

Why is that so complicated? If it really stresses you so much you need to find a new line of work and stop using computers. There is also the option of going with Mac or Unix, so what's your problem with it?

[skids]

31. I don't. When I have that choice.

I haven't run a Microsoft product on any of my personally owned systems in many years, and I am an OpenSource developer.

The problem isn't that there are no alternatives available. The problem is that the decisions about which alternatives to use in a business setting -- you know, the kind of place people like me have to work in order to pay the bills -- are very often made by those least qualified to make them. Sometimes for ethically questionable reasons, I might add.

[SomewhereOutThere424]

20. That's great...

I'm betting this is why we haven't FOUND any tangible cure yet...if we're teaming up with the people who create pop up blockers to try to find the cure for a very serious disease...

Maybe, you know, instead of teaming up with microsoft....they can try to research it more heavily...last I checked spam and a relatively mutating widespread and fatal sexually transmitted disease are...not the same thing.

And just for the sake of conspiracy theory...just what exactly is microsoft doing researching diseases when their own operating system is known for thousands of 'viruses', and just the same, many companies make billions off of them? Hmmm...I'd say this is getting suspicious.

[icymist]

24. My theroy is that this company actually creates the viruses....

that it's own 'virus protection' programs cure. Now, what this theroy has to say about MSN and AIDS? For the sake of humanity, I hope 'not much'. For the power hungry and .....awwww. this couldn't happen, could it?

[SomewhereOutThere424]

27. Well, taking a trivial example

Microsoft entered the video game world with x-box. now, I'm not anti x-box. I like the system. I don't like microsoft or its tactics however. They bought out many of the leading game makers to try to make other video game producers go under, the most joints mergers and bankruptcies of the major video game and game maker titles has happened in the time x-box made an appearance into that world.

I don't know if they plan to screw people over who have AIDS. I am more than willing to bet they will try to destroy and bleed out the leading AIDS and other medicinal researchers and make other companies crumble. Maybe it's for money, maybe it's to claim microsoft saved the world of AIDS. I don't know, but their presence in our medical research terrifies me.

[rodeodance]

29. whow--this is what I call thinking out of the box

[jmowreader]

33. I hate to sound like a pessimist

but I don't think there ever will be a workable "AIDS vaccine." Here's why.

To be a "Person With AIDS," one must carry two things:

* one of at least 30 "indicator diseases"--Kaposi's sarcoma, tuberculosis, yeast infections in women, there's a bunch of 'em.

- AND -

* antibodies to HIV.

When you vaccinate someone, you give them a little dose of the disease--not enough to make them mortally ill, but just enough to wake up their immune system and get it to produce antibodies against said disease. If you get a tetanus shot, you wind up with tetanus antibodies in your bloodstream.

If we create this "AIDS vaccine," which properly should be called an "HIV vaccine," the person receiving said vaccination will become the proud recipient of antibodies to HIV...which are one of the two components of AIDS! Therefore, how's this vaccine going to help?

[NickB79]

34. You answered your own question

"If you get a tetanus shot, you wind up with tetanus antibodies in your bloodstream."

You don't get tetanus if you step on a rusty nail once you are vaccinated, now do you? The vaccine prevents the virus from gaining a foothold in your system and destroying your immune system. You never come down with the opportunistic diseases characteristic of AIDS when your immune system crashes.

[girl gone mad]

36. Two problems with that.

The only way that we can detect HIV is to test for antibodies.

If we vaccinate people, everyone who is vaccinated will have HIV antibodies - therefore, how will we know who is going to get sick from HIV and who isn't? I think that was jmowreader point, if I'm not mistaken.

People with HIV vaccine will be clinically indistiguishable from healthy people with HIV disease.

As for never coming down with the opportunistic infections, there is not one single opportunistic infection that is HIV specific. Even Kaposi's sarcoma is now known to be a form of the herpes virus and not and indicator of "AIDS" as was long thought.

jmowreader also makes a good point. It should be called an HIV vaccine and not an AIDS vaccine.

[jmowreader]

38. That's exactly my point

The Army throws people out if they come up HIV-positive. Or at least they used to--with the Army's current drastic need for cannon fodder they soon won't be able to spare any warm bodies.

If we had an HIV vaccine, which would obviously produce antibodies to the virus it's made to counter as all good vaccines do, we'd have to throw the whole Army out in six months. They'd all come up positive on an HIV antibody test, or at least the ones it worked on would. (No vaccine causes antibodies in everyone who receives it.) Why? Surprise! It's because you intended it to happen that way!

I remember reading once that they were going to test an experimental HIV vaccine on a group; the experimenters promised to take care of the subjects' medical expenses if they later came up HIV positive. Uhh...how would you tell?

[jmowreader]

37. Did you ever hear the term "natural vaccination"?

Go get your South Park DVDs out. Find the Chickenpox episode and play it. What Kyle's mom did--sending all the boys to sleep over at Kenny's house while Kenny had the chickenpox--is called natural vaccination, exposing someone to the disease on purpose so they'll get antibodies against it. Now they've got a chickenpox shot, and when you get it you get the same antibodies against further Varicella zoster attacks that you would have by actually getting the chickenpox. (OTOH, vaccination against V. zoster by needle requires a hell of a lot less calamine lotion than vaccination by playing ookie-mouth with Kenny.)

HIV infection by natural means causes you to gain HIV antibodies. This is what the HIV shot would do.

The normal progression of AIDS seems to be virus - antibody (which is proof that your immune system has swept up the virus) - indicator disease. So it seems to me that the antibody itself is what's fuckin' you up, not this virus that your immune system has fought off.

I have a perfect use for the Bush administration after we impeach them and throw them in jail. Since they seem to have a taste for atrocity, how 'bout we send them to a deserted island, inject them with different AIDS strains at various intervals (while keeping them away from things that are known to cause indicator diseases like poppers, cigarettes, heroin and cocaine) and see if they come down with full-blown AIDS? If they stay alive, that's fine, and if AIDS kills them all dead, that's fine too.

[VegasWolf]

35. This is brilliant. Clog up the AIDS virus with unwanted solicitations

form AOL, Christian Mortgage companies, and Vigra offers. The
virus wouldn't have time for anything else.