HIV-1
sa smith | June 14, 2012Welp, I cant blame this one on pop news.
The latest controversy over the HIV-1 patient functionally cured of HIV/AIDS shouldnt be that big of a deal. Scientists are asking the question "What does it mean to be 'cured' of HIV? What is our definition of 'cured'? How will we know 'cured' when we see it?"
Those are actually damn good questions. HIV-1 can infect cells and remain dormant for years and years and years. You might *think* the virus is gone, but it really isnt. Its just hiding. Or, maybe those 'hiding' viruses are stuck, and finding them doesnt mean the person is at risk of…
sa smith | June 13, 2012Many roads lead to Rome-- there is no one 'right' way to solve an evolutionary hurdle. Viruses encounter the same evolutionary 'problems', but have evolved lots and lots and lots of different solutions to the exact same problems. Random chance of mutations + the bumbling blindness of natural selection ('good enough' is selected, not 'BEST!') means all that bumbling mess leads to different 'solutions'. Some might work better than others, but they all work, and thats good enough.
Its easy to comprehend an RNA virus doing something differently than a very distantly related DNA virus. But…
sa smith | May 31, 2012I can think of at least two 'worst nightmares' for vaccine designers.
Your vaccine looked super in animal models and such... but it turns out to be directly harmful to people. And not 'some' people. All people.
Your vaccine actually does the opposite of what you want it to do-- instead of preventing the disease, it makes people more prone to the disease.
That second one is a nightmare come to life for a group of HIV-1 scientists:
Extended follow-up confirms early vaccine-enhanced risk of HIV acquisition and demonstrates waning effect over time among participants in a randomized trial of…
sa smith | May 25, 2012If you had asked me 6 years ago about using gene therapy to fight HIV/AIDS, I would have given you a nice rant about how expensive it is, how non-viable it is in the places that need anti-HIV strategies the most, how dangerous it can be, and I would have been damn offended you even considered it. Waste of valuable resources.
Flash forward to today... I am actually starting to think its not such a bad idea.
Well, specific kinds of gene therapy for HIV-1 might not be such a bad idea. One such idea is 'Chimeric Antigen Receptors', or, CARs. CARs are half laboratory designed antibody (to…
sa smith | May 18, 2012I have a some updates on a few stories I covered the past couple of weeks:
Some people who proclaim to have 'chronic fatigue syndrome' show everyone just how NOT CRAZY they are... by transcribing my entire interview with Conspiracy Skeptic by hand (they cant hold a job you see-- 'brain fog') and comparing me to a cheerleader/goat, and fantasizing about me getting my comeuppance for daring to speak negatively about St. Judy Mikovits (ie-- tell everyone the bullshit she and her comrades have been up to). Just to be clear, these folks are NOT CRAZY. THEYRE NOT FUCKING CRAZY GODDAMMIT!!!! We…
sa smith | May 15, 2012There are two groups of people I would be perfectly happy if they all just disappeared. Like, right now.
1-- Politicians
2-- Clergy/reverends/pastors/whatevers
Even the shittiests, hipsterish of musicians contributes more to positive to society than those two groups of people. Stephanie Meyer has contributed more positive to society than those two groups of people. The fictional characters on the HBO television show 'Girls' (I cant even hate watch that show) have contributed more positive to society than those two groups of people.
Politicians and 'people of god' are useless, stupid…
sa smith | May 14, 2012So some panel at the FDA just approved this antiretroviral drug, Truvada-- they say its okay to prescribe this drug for HIV negative people to keep them from getting HIV.
Im going to this news the nicest way possible:I think there were a lot of MDs, and very few PhDs, on this FDA review panel. If you know what I mean.
:-|
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I have been over this before--The Pill for HIV-1The Pill for HIV-1: Never mindThe Pill for HIV: A bad idea, actually
--Prescribing an antiretroviral to negative individuals to prevent HIV is a neat idea. When it comes to this particular antiretroviral, it appears…
sa smith | April 17, 2012This is just another excuse to poke fun at the stupidity of Creationists--
Creationists try to lecture us all the time about how 'perfect' our immune system is. How wonderful and precise and intelligently designed it is obviously points towards the existence of a creator god (aka the Christian god).
Well, if our immune system is the best their god can do, then we should all be worshiping HIV-1, because its 'smarter'. Its been outwitting our immune systems for well over a century, and outwitting some of the best thinkers of our time and the best technology we have to offer for three decades…
sa smith | February 16, 2012Conceptually, having something like The Pill anyone could take every day to prevent HIV-1 infections would be a good idea. Take some kind of preventative antretrovirals when you are sexually active and feel you are 'at risk', maybe prevent some new HIV-1 infections.
We had hopes that an antiretroviral drug Tenofovir would work in precisely that manner. It kinda worked as a microbicide for women. And then it kinda worked as a pill in homosexual men.
And then it turned out that in other larger clinical trials, Tenofovir didnt work well at all, in pill or microbicide form.
Tenofovirs failures…
sa smith | February 14, 2012Hey, do you all remember Michael Behe?
Dude was for real 'famous' a while back (not just 'Christian famous'). He went on talk shows and news programs (including the Colbert Report) to talk about his personal brand of Creationism, Intelligent Design.
Unfortunately, things 'didnt go as planned' with Intelligent Design. The courts didnt buy ID, in no small part thanks to the asshatty defense of it given by Michael Behe.
Even The Arguments Regarding Design 'think tank', the Discovery Institute, has abandoned ID in favor of pushing 'academic freedom' bills in state legislatures.
Behe also helped…
sa smith | January 30, 2012Im glad none of you accused me of joking or exaggerating when I told this story:A *very* common exchange I have with the general public regarding HIV-1:
Person-- Where did HIV-1 come from?Me-- HIV-1 is related to a virus we can find in African primates, SIV. SIV crossed over from chimpanzees to the human population to make 'HIV' sometime in the late 1800s, early 1900s. This event happened at least three times, giving us the three groups of HIV-1, Groups M, N, and O, however it most likely has occurred numerous times over the course of human evolution, it just never lead to a pandemic like…
sa smith | January 24, 2012We in the skeptic community like to make fun of naturopaths and homeopaths and all the snake oil salesmen out there. While its a good ol laugh here in the West, if not nostalgic, the damage these charlatans can do in other parts of the world is not funny at all.
Long-time readers of SciBlogs might remember someone named Matthias RathIn the battle of science versus woo...The Dr. Will Sue You Now - A stolen chapter from Ben Goldacre's book Bad Science
Homeboy got rich taking advantage of desperate HIV/AIDS patients in Africa. Gave them some 'magic potion' of Vitamin C to cure HIV/AIDS HE…
sa smith | December 13, 2011Once you are infected with HIV-1, you are screwed.
Yes, we have antiretroviral therapies, but you will never be cured. You will never be free from the virus. And there is always a chance that the virus you are infected with will become resistant to the antiretroviral drugs used (this isnt just a distant chance, it does happen, regularly).
So the best way to 'stop' HIV/AIDS is to stop that initial infection from ever occurring.
We have condoms, and those work pretty damn well, but that is assuming people actually use them, and use them properly.
We have also tried giving high-risk people…
sa smith | December 12, 2011While you all are having a good time making fun of PZ Myers for bravely outing a dead Russian (damn zombie trolls!), I figured it would be a good time to talk about Anons in HIV World.
Okay, so, I do HIV-1 research. The first thing everyone says when I mention this is "Oh my god! Arent you afraid you are going to infect yourself??" and my answer is a 100% "Not really."
First of all, HIV-1 is not *that* scary-- its not airborne, spill a little you just squirt some EtOH or lysol on it and its dead. The only way I could infect myself would be if I like, STABBED my hand through two pairs of…
sa smith | November 29, 2011One problem we have to deal with in HIV-1 world (of the many problems we have to deal with) is that no one is 'cured' of HIV/AIDS (except this guy).
So people who are infected go on to infect more people, who go on to infect more people, who go on to infect more people... I mean thats how we *got* a pandemic.
So since we cant get rid of HIV-1 once it has infected someone, it means the trick to stopping the pandemic is to stop new infections. Interrupt the dominoes falling, protect the down-stream dominoes.
We have a way of doing that: condoms.
But for any number of reasons, condoms are not…
sa smith | November 23, 2011Do you want the good news first, or the bad news?
I like to get the bad news first, usually, because then the good news can cheer me up. So, the bad news:Kim Bannon has Passed Away
(back-story on Kim Bannon)
HIV-1 Denial claimed another life. It was reported that (HIV-1 positive) HIV-1 Denier Kim Bannon was doing very poorly last year, but she apparently hung on until now. She died last week. Her life did so much harm to HIV/AIDS education and awareness... I hope her death can reverse some of the damage...
Edit to add:
Apparently (HIV-1 negative) HIV-1 Denier Lynn Margulis has died as…
sa smith | November 15, 2011Quick recap of ERVs for new readers of ERV (or long-time readers who have forgotten!)--
ERVs are retroviruses that accidentally infected an egg/sperm cell, and became a permanent part of that egg/sperms DNA. That egg/sperm then went on to successfully generate a viable embryo, and because that retrovirus was part of the egg/sperms DNA, it also becomes a permanent part of the organisms DNA.
Though this is a very very rare, totally accidental event, on an evolutionary time-scale, random events have happened quite a few times, to the point where a large chunk of your, *your* DNA, is…
sa smith | September 19, 2011Of the many things that annoy me about Creationists, one Im going to focus on today is their child-like understanding of biochemistry and what actually goes on inside of a cell.
They put out these pretty animations (well, they put out 'animations' copied from pretty animations) and everything is so cutesy and perfect and multicolored and smooth...
Yeah, stuff dont look like that in real life.
And those 'artistic renditions' are just that. Artistic renditions. We dont stare into our microscopes and see this stuff happening-- its too friggen small. So we go through all of these elaborate…
sa smith | September 15, 2011This study is a case study from this study (lol):
Chimeric Antigen Receptor-Modified T Cells in Chronic Lymphoid Leukemia
I imagined this scene happened in one of their lab meetings:
I didnt go in-depth as to how everything was working before, so I thought I would do it now!
This paper is a case report of an individual who had a B-cell cancer. The patient had tried everything and anything recommended to him by scientists (no mention in the report of him disappearing for 6 months to Mexico for 'vitamin c' therapy, or whatever stupid thing wooers push to 'cure' cancer) and he was still dying…
sa smith | September 12, 2011Dear Sally Kern--
GO AWAY. NO ONE LIKES YOU.
Yours in Christ--
--ERV
Good Ol Sally Kern is in the news again, repeating the same BS that a hateful piece of shit, Fred Pope, was saying that helped drive a gay boy to suicide this time last year.
Yaaaaay...
Actual quote:You know if you just look at it in practical terms, which has destroyed and ended the life of more people? Terrorism attack here in America or HIV/AIDS? In the last twenty years, fifteen to twenty years, we've had maybe three terrorist attacks on our soil with a little over 5,000 people regrettably losing their lives. In the…