Scientists find a key HIV mechanism [AP]

[truthisfreedom]

http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/fea/texasliving/stories/030104dnlivHIVmonkeys.a3d1.html

Scientists find a key HIV mechanism

05:50 PM CST on Sunday, February 29, 2004

Associated Press

Scientists say they have discovered why some monkeys are resistant to infection with the AIDS virus – an exhilarating find that points to a promising strategy for blocking HIV in people.

The discovery caps a more than 10-year search for the answer to the mystery of what stops the virus cold in certain primates.

Carl Dieffenbach, director of basic science research for AIDS at the National Institutes of Health, says the finding could lead to drugs to treat HIV infection or a vaccine to prevent it.

The discovery was reported by Dr. Joseph Sodroski and his team of Harvard University researchers at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in the current issue of Nature .

Normally, a virus spreads through the body by entering cells, hijacking their machinery and using it to make new copies of itself.

But monkeys have a protein called TRIM5-alpha that is somehow able to stop the virus from shedding its protective coat after it enters a healthy cell. The shedding of the coating is poorly understood but is considered essential to the infection cycle.
<snip>

[Occulus]

1. Good news.

But I wonder. All viruses, once present in the body, remain. Could there, possibly, be a way to eliminate all viruses from the body? Or would that require advanced nanotechnology?

[Dogmudgeon]

2. Viruses and viruses

Viruses are a vital mechanism in spreading genes through the pool of organisms, not just within a single line in one species.

Sometimes this is called "horizontal transmission". I am not well-read in the current literature, but Greg Bear wrote a popular sci-fi treatment of the subject called "Darwin's Radio".

Pathogenic viruses may be undesirable, but they are an inevitable part of our micro-ecology. Obviously, the "ideal" solution would be to eliminate a new pathogenic virus as it develops, but we're still in the early stages of such research. But killing off all viruses would probably also cause a complete crash of our ecosystem. Within a single body, it would probably cause death.

--bkl

[xchrom]

3. combination therapy

might be able to remove a virus -- but probably not all.
and we want technology to be specific in this case -- so we don't upset a balance.