Stacey Smith
I'm a graduate student studying the molecular and biochemical evolution of HIV within patients and within populations. I also study epigenetic control of ERVs.
sa smith
Posts by this author
August 7, 2014
Ive written about modifying plants to do lots of fun things (vaccines, counter allergies, etc) in the past:
Green our vaccines!
Green our vaccines! Part II
Green our vaccines! Part III
Green our vaccines! Part IV
Unfortunately, this kind of technology has been held back by luddite/anti-…
August 4, 2014
Oh, Sanjay Gupta.
Secret serum likely saved Ebola patients (warning: link has auto-play video, ugh)
Three top secret, experimental vials stored at subzero temperatures were flown into Liberia last week in a last-ditch effort to save two American missionary workers who had contracted Ebola,…
July 29, 2014
"HIV mutates a lot".
People 'get' that. Why is HIV hard to stop? Why is HIV hard to treat? "HIV mutates a lot".
But HIV does not mutate willy-nilly. It mutates at an evolutionarily defined rate.
The reverse transcriptase enzyme makes mistakes during replication that are beneficial to HIV-- creating…
July 21, 2014
Some of you might remember the waves made earlier this year about 'The Immunity Project'. They were crowdsourcing an HIV vaccine that was magical and amazing and they were totally going to give it away for free!!
YAY!
... Except 'The Immunity Project' basically had nothing to back their claims up.…
July 14, 2014
Though ERVs are my favorite tool vs Creationists, HIV is a fantastic choice as well.
I mean, has anyone seen hide or hair of Behe since 2007?
Poor guy.
Alas, there are still Creationists out there, so to address some of their 'concerns', c0nc0rdance made a couple of vids using his favorite HIV…
July 11, 2014
Of course, SciBlogs is in the middle of a Wordpress update when this news breaks:
'Mississippi Baby' now has detectable HIV, researchers find
Some of you might remember last year, when there was exciting news about a baby, born with HIV, who had subsequently become HIV- thanks to an alternative…
July 7, 2014
Quick recap--
An HIV Denier, Clark Baker, starts a web group, the 'HIV Innocence Project' to defend people accused of HIV-related crimes. Name-change to 'HIV Innocence Group' after the Innocent Project complained.
An HIV advocate, Todd Deshong, started a different website, 'HIV Innocent Group…
July 2, 2014
As those of us in the US are planning our holiday weekend, I wanted to make sure you all know that Trolling With Logic will be doing a 24 hour charity show to raise funds for Engineers Without Borders!
I had a marvelous time chatting with them back in January, so I jumped at the opportunity to help…
June 26, 2014
Remember this?
Wait, what? Faked HIV vaccine results
The researcher accused of manipulating his reagents to 'show his HIV vaccine strategy worked' admitted he did it:
Investigators say former Iowa State University laboratory manager Dong-Pyou Han has confessed to spiking samples of rabbit blood…
June 24, 2014
1-- Herpes viruses are old. They are ooooooold. Like, hundreds of millions of years old. Specifically, about 400 million years old.
2-- Herpes viruses are everywhere. Fish, reptiles, birds, cows, humans, everywhere. And there are lots of different kinds that humans have to deal with-- CMV, EBV, HHV…
June 16, 2014
Well, you cant say Brian Dunning doesnt put his money where his mouth is when it comes to his skepticism about homeopathy:
I’ve been speaking with lab managers, AIDS researchers, and doctors about my plan to make a documentary short film about drawing blood from an HIV-positive patient, properly…
June 11, 2014
Holy crap! This is so clever!!
A synthetic sex ratio distortion system for the control of the human malaria mosquito
Component #1-- Anopheles gambiae, the kind of mosquito that is notorious for spreading malaria.
Component #2-- I-PpoI, a protein that 'sees' a specific DNA sequence, and cuts it. aka…
June 3, 2014
A fungus plague has been attacking the American Chestnut tree population for over 100 years now. Scientists have been trying everything to save the tree from extinction.
I wrote about one approach back in 2009:
Virus helps save the American Chestnut tree
Really innovative idea-- Infect fungal…
May 27, 2014
The MMR vaccine does not cause autism. The guy who initially made that claim made it all up, and literally no one since has found any evidence to support that claim.
We have known this for quite a while now, and yet, the anti-MMR fad is still going, and parents arent vaccinating their kids. And its…
May 16, 2014
So scientists cured a woman of a pervasive, treatment resistant multiple myeloma.
With a genetically modified, vaccine strain measles virus.
Remission of Disseminated Cancer After Systemic Oncolytic Virotherapy
*anti-vax-anti-GMOers-heads-explode*
The media is going nuts over this, but this is not…
May 15, 2014
There has recently been (more) discussion about whether the US should destroy its remaining stocks of the smallpox virus:
Are We There Yet? The Smallpox Research Agenda Using Variola Virus
Like measles, smallpox is a human-only pathogen. There are not bat or pig reservoirs out there-- smallpox is…
May 5, 2014
The first and second baby, apparently 'cured' of HIV after being infected at birth, lived in the US. In the US, the standard treatment for an at-risk baby is wait for a firm HIV diagnosis before administering HAART. But when Baby #1 and Baby #2 got HAART ASAP, they are functionally 'cured' of HIV,…
April 29, 2014
If we vaccinated everyone who could be medically vaccinated against measles, measles would be eradicated.
Though there are other measles-like viruses, humans are the only hosts for what we commonly refer to as 'measles'.
Use vaccines to cut humans out of the equation? Extinct virus.
Its that 'easy…
April 23, 2014
Spoiler to apologize for click-bait title:
Yes, the MMR vaccine works just fine.
But there is a difference between 'just fine' and 'perfectly'.
A few things I would want in a 'perfect' vaccine-- Only one dose is needed, zero side-effects, 100% protective antibody or CTL mediated immunity for life,…
April 15, 2014
Via John Wilkins and John Farrell:
A Simple Visualization of How Species Evolve
This is basically my dissertation, animated. LOL!!
What are you looking at?
Every pixel in that square is a genetic sequence. Some of those sequences confer a higher fitness advantage (the red colored peaks) or…
April 1, 2014
Long-time readers of ERV know that I am not a fan of Pre-Exposure Prophylactics as a regular means of preventing HIV infection. In tightly controlled clinical trials, giving people who might be exposed to HIV anti-HIV drugs does lower infection rates... but when the same protocol is let loose 'out…
March 27, 2014
You all might have heard about 'delta32' or 'delta-CCR5' people in association with HIV infection.
People who naturally, by chance, have deletions and mutations in the CCR5 gene of their DNA dont make functional CCR5 proteins. It doesnt appear to be 'a big deal', and people who have this particular…
March 21, 2014
I have known about this for a while, and have been debating whether or not I should say anything. I really dont want to give the disgraces responsible for the XMRV-->CFS fiasco, Judy Mikovits, Frank Ruscetti, and Sandra Ruscetti, any more attention. What turned my opinion was something T.R.…
March 18, 2014
Fun! I like this new idea!
Targeted Cytotoxic Therapy Kills Persisting HIV Infected Cells During ART
I havent talked about 'scFv' on ERV yet, but theyre very handy tools scientists are taking advantage of more and more these days.
'scFv's are single-chain variable fragments... not an overly useful…
March 12, 2014
More HIV news!
HIVs ancestor, SIV (simian immunodeficiency virus), has been around a LOT longer than we previously thought.
As I have mentioned before, we always assumed retroviruses like HIV, lentiviruses, are evolutionarily 'young'. They are relatively complex, so probably 'newish' in retrovirus-…
March 10, 2014
Holy crap the HIV news last week!
So much HIV news!
First on the list:
Early Treatment Is Found to Clear H.I.V. in a 2nd Baby
Just in case you have forgotten, the first baby.
What happened to ‘the baby cured of HIV’?
Now, the second baby-- I must emphasize that I only know what has been reported to…
March 5, 2014
It is frustrating being a scientist in a political climate that is not supportive of science.
But what we have to put up with in the US pales in comparison with something happening right now in Egypt:
More from CNN:
Egyptian army's AIDS-cure claim gets harsh criticism
Maj. Gen. Ibrahim Abdel-Atti…
February 24, 2014
WHY IS THIS NOT STANDARD THERAPY YET?
Efficacy and Toxicity Management of 19-28z CAR T Cell Therapy in B Cell Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia
I wrote about this last year:
‘Dismal prognosis’ with leukemia? Nothing a GMO virus cant fix.
In the previous study, scientists took cytotoxic T-cells from five…
February 18, 2014
Long-term safety and tolerability of ProSavin, a lentiviral vector-based gene therapy for Parkinson's disease: a dose escalation, open-label, phase 1/2 trial
1. Start with HIV-1s 'country cousin', Equine Infectious Anemia Virus (EIAV). EIAV is a lentivirus, like HIV, so it is a good gene therapy…
February 10, 2014
YouTuber MylesPowers1985 has got an in-depth analysis of the HIV Denier movie, 'House Of Numbers', going. Of the episodes I saw, it is really good. Its not the usual boring 'person talking to a camera' video-- it is serious investigative journalism.
I say 'of the episodes I saw' because…