General News Cure in sight for HIV

Cool.

 

I was so tempted to talk to a science teacher of mine about this. I never did, though.

 

You should if you want to. We had a whole lecture on it in my biochemistry class pertaining to drug discovery. It's not a gay disease.

---------- Post added 25th Mar 2015 at 04:41 PM ----------

Upon reading it, can anyone explain how this is anything new? Scientists have used nucleases to cleave DNA (and then insert different DNA) in bacteria for years. gRNA sounds new. I wonder how they intend to get the intact RNA and enzyme into each individual human cell...

 

While this is outstanding news, let's not get too ahead of the game here. They've been able to modify cells that are out with a living body. The hard part will be how do we do it to living cells, given we have over 30 trillion cells is our bodies even if only 0.1% of cells have too much DNA 'cut out' of them, that's still billions of cells which with DNA missing which are at risk of mutation. Not forgetting that many people with HIV live healthy and unaffected lives, so would they risk it with a very high chance of developing cell mutations?

 

That's exactly the issue. How would we go about carrying this out on a living human? It's so much easier/convenient/different working with cell/tissue cultures as opposed to a person who may or may not have different results (even if they were successful with the cultures).

Also, my issue isn't the whole 'HIV = gay disease' thing because thankfully most of my teachers aren't that ignorant. I'm just worried that if it is searched, this site will come up on the results.

Also I searched 'deleting HIV' on Google and apparently this happened in mid-2014. How I only found out just recently is a little beyond me.

 

I find this hard to swallow. AIDS is such a young disease. It would truly be a medical marvel if they were able to end it within 50 years of its first occurence.