Some of the latest theories on treatment of life forms virus have me kind of worried. The following links show why.

A page on virus mutants
hiv, drugs and the mutants they make
more on hiv mutation

Overall is such a move to wipe out hiv good or bad? When other evidence shows that a hardcore mutation as such could lead to maybe an airborne version of the virus.

The links you provide are extremely technical. Here is the one paragraph I found truly helpful:



Translating this into English as best as I can, it means that drugs designed to kill the HIV virus have helped reduce symptoms and extend patient survival times. The problem comes in when patients fail to get the full amount of therapy needed for the full amount of time. That's when you get drug resistance. This is nothing new, and is a big problem with antibiotics.

The bottom line: Drugs that attack the HIV virus are a huge benefit when used properly. Failure to use these drugs properly causes the virus to become resistant to them.

I like that summary (I wish it would get me through immunology/pharmacology )

I think this does bring an interesting point to debate - but it often gets lost in all the technical language. Even my eyes glaze over at times! The drugs used to treat HIV can be very expensive, even if a single drug costs a reasonable amount, the combination of drugs required is daunting. And the schedule to take the drugs would be difficult for the most regemented individual (imagine some of us complain about remembering just one pill a day). This leads to a dangerous situation - a situation in which it is easy for an individual to begin the therapy but not follow through properly - either through lack of medicine when funding dries up or through simple human error. And this creates the prime environment for the mutants to proliferate.

This leads to a question about current treatment plans pursued by doctors. THe idea would be to treat everyone with the cocktail - but should the doctors be assessing the individual ability/willingness to comply first? If the person has a history of being actively hostile to doctor's orders, or has shown past inability to follow schedules or simpler drug regimens (even as simple as finishing all ten days of antibiotics post-infection), does the doctor still have an obligation to treat this patient using the cocktail? Or is the doctor acting in the best interest of the greater good by denying them access to the drugs which lead to greater mutagenesis (those which create more mutants more quickly) and simply treat this patient with other therapies that may not have as good an outcome, yet would not create as many potentially harmful mutated HIV strains?

I have heard a similar argument in regards to ability to pay. In this case, the discussion centered on the African epidemic - but a doctor (actual practicing MD) argued we should not be treating any indigenous patient in Africa with the cocktail because the drug supply was not guaranteed to be continuous - mostly from money concerns and also due to logistics concerns (actually being able to get the drugs to remote locations, etc). While this might seem heartless, in the end we would be protecting more people by preventing a larger pool of individuals from becoming essentially HIV mutant factories.

Now, I was outraged by these types of argument, because my first instinct is to treat and support the patient in any way possible. But then, I probably will not be an immunologist working for the CDC trying to make these difficult decisions.


One final note - from the last study link:


Which translates to: not all viral mutations are bad for the patient - some kill the virus or render it inert. A fact that many of our earlier vaccines relied on. This could almost be an argument to reverse the ones I pointed out above - treat as many people as possible (to maximize number of mutations), and maybe we'll find a type of mutation that kills HIV all together.

HIV is a virus family which infects cells by incorporating itself into the host's DNA. Most viruses enter a cell, migrate to the nucleus, then hang out there as a separate strand of DNA or RNA, producing their own proteins. HIV actually picks out spots on the DNA and puts itself into the strands already present. Once a cell is infected, there is no way for the host to find it or recognize it.

All HIV treatments have been aimed at preventing HIVE from entering the cell in the first place. People who are naturally immune have cells which prevent this naturally ( a trait which dates back to the Black Plague era as this same ability enabled some individuals to be immune from the plague ).

The traditional treatments are all anti glycoprotein compounds which bind receptors on the HIVE virus, to prevent attachment to the host's cells. It takes a constant, and expensive, regiment to keep enough of those in ones body to prevent the spread of the virus within the body.

I expect the long term solution might be in the category of a competing virus which selects for the same locations on the host's DNA but does not produce disease.

Here is another link to back my point that I did not present very clearly.

link on genetics and such

It comes down to a math problem that even such issues as money of the host for treatment needs to be accounted. The chance of such stress in the environment producing a really nasty version of the virus such as airborne is a scary and possible reality. I feel that our current state of know on the subject is not enough to try and use this route for successful treatment, as is the same with genetic application(na) against research(ya). If the winning mutation takes to be it will be "trapped" so to speak in the local, but that does not hold true again on the person, and if such a mutation that actually allowed for it to become airborne arises such a condition would be hard to detect until it spread out. Being it would have already become suitable for a human body environment it would just pass around much like a cold. I feel some doctor may have greed or want to go down in history, i only hope it will work out for the better then the worse.