About (a cure for) AIDS

[BWS-1]

So a friend and I were debating about how to manage the cure for AIDS if we'd find it one day (the dude is motivated to go study in that field, and is certain to find said cure).

Basically, sure, you could sell it and make a bajillion (lol, bajillion x3) dollars, and whoever acquired it would sell it to whoever has the money for it, but that doesn't stop you - the individual with the now crazy amount of money - to be able to do better researches or invest in affording enough samples of the cure you sold to third world countries. Which, with time and efforts, would allow you to be the first to get the Nobel Prize of Awesome. For being awesome.

Or you could virtually ''donate'' the cure to the main leaders of the world without discrimination, disregarding the affiliation some leaders may have towards others (aka, EU being one thing, G7 being another... Mother Russia feeling like chilling on their own with their lil group there). Which would allow you to instantly be the first to get the Nobel Prize of Awesome. For being awesome.

We still have yet to figure out what would be best. But we lost track of the topic when I told him I'd rather not see AIDS vanish from this planet; I mean come on, granted it's pretty destructive right now, but only because AIDS is AGAINST us, and not working in our system WITH us. Think about it, this is nature's most effective nanomachine, without quite being one... but still! Might sound silly, but if it could ''work for us'' think of all the benefits it would grant us! We'd kill anything bad for us in a second. XD

Right?

Yeah, I don't know either, but basically, I just think there is much to learn FROM it, it'd be a shame to annihilate such virus before we could start gaining from it; it's rather primal to say one ''gains'' only if something else ceases to exit. It's not true gain, it's just that one stops losing constantly, and not just loses naturally. haha.

But here's the best part.

\/ \/ \/ \/ \/ \/ \/ \/ \/ \/ \/

All this ONLY TO REALIZE that I was talking about HIV and not AIDS in my argument

AIDS is just... us being ''past the event horizon'' ALL THAT THANKS TO HIV -.- which means technically, YES I want to cure AIDS, but I seriously want HIV to work WITH us, or AT LEAST have that taken cared of first, damn. Such a potential there... too bad it's screwing us up instead of helping us :p But yeah... that makes me realize... why not cure HIV instead of AIDS? If we take care of the fire, we won't have to worry about the smoke. ;p

Bah! That's partially why I dumped that here, I'm kinda confused and upset about all this so I figured... I'd make a poll AND rant! :D

[Blackmage]

My problem is when you cure a disease like that nature always comes back with a vengeance and a disease worse than what is now gone.

Think... we erradicated smallpox and out came ebola a few years later.

[Silver Adept]

Considering that HIV is a public health hazard, regardless of where you are, to sell the cure to a corporation and let them make profit off of it, permitting them to decide who lives and who dies by the setting of their price point, offends my ethical sense strongly. Cures for cancers and diseases like HIV should be developed and then either sold at very low cost of given away to the infected, in the name of maintaining a higher quality of life for everyone. If HIV were reduced to what polio is now - a disease in the laboratory, studied, examined, but otherwise defeated, I think we'd all rejoice. And then the governments of the world would lean very heavily on the group that discovered the cure to release it, conscript their pharmaceuticals to manufacture it in great quantity, and distribute it everywhere there is a need.

[Aindriahhn]

Where's the "Make the data available to everyone, publish it everywhere." option?

[Ming]

I'm not going to lie...if I found a cure for AIDS, I sure as hell would be interested in how much I could get for it. However, I voted to essentially "donate" it. Look at it this way...regardless of what you do, you're probably going to win a Nobel Prize, which has a large cash aware attached to it, I believe. On top of that, you will inevitably make boat-loads of money just by making appearances, etc. AND...you will have done something that the public deems so ethical that you will most likely be revered as a living saint. You won't have to pay for anything, and even better...companies will just give you things without you even asking. Just so you can say that you use their product, etc. So while you won't get quite as much money...you'll still do extremely well for yourself.

[BWS-1]

So I think my buddy and I found a path to cure HIV!

Well, my first suggestion was a lil off, but now all we need is wicked nanomachine advancement. If that can't be done, then the alternate (read: original idea and HARDER) might need to be considered...

Too many uncertainties as of right now and I'm WAY too ignorant in the field to be able to forward anything at the moment, but for my friend [who knows more about HIV then probably any of us here] to go ''Holy shit, this might just work!'' at my idea, I guess there is hope. Just gotta formulate things the right way, and not turn this into a black plague on crack... cause that would suck.

[Terin]

I'd do the best of both worlds. I'd post a youtube link that would take you to my website, where I would have the cure on it, then I would use Google Adsense to direct all that traffic and get PAID! Am I evil?
-T

[BWS-1]

Actually, I think you're smart.

To say you are evil would only be true if one would dare assume (and unfortunately end up being right about the statement) that with the money you'd terrorize the world with psychopathic schemes ;p

[Graillik Tur]

There have been discoveries in South Africa of women that are immune to the HIV virus by Canadian Scientists. How this did not get national coverage I don't know. I cut the paragraph that is most important but put the link at the bottom for the whole article.

Over the next few years, research involving the women yielded two big discoveries. The first was that mothers passed HIV to their babies in breast milk. Researchers already knew there was some transmission of the virus this way, but a study in the slum showed that the longer a mother breastfed, the higher was the risk of transmission - and that far from being negligible, this was in fact a major source of infection. The second major finding was that a person with a conventional STI, such as gonorrhoea, has a much higher chance of contracting HIV - as much as 70 per cent higher - than a person not infected. All of this, however, paled beside a discovery that emerged in the late Eighties. Frank Plummer, now the director of Canada's Centre for Infectious Disease Prevention and Control, in Ottawa, worked in the Nairobi project from its early days. He was intrigued by these HIV-positive women, who gave the lie to so much of the predominant thinking about Aids at the time - that it didn't exist in Africa, that women couldn't get it, that heterosexual sex was no real risk. By 1988, he had noticed something bizarre: over time, more and more of the women were testing positive for HIV - but not all of them. Some, including Agnes, were still around, three and four and five years later, and in their biannual HIV tests they were still negative. Plummer began to track them closely, and concluded that a small number of the women - perhaps five per cent - were simply not getting infected. 'They're basically immune to HIV,' he told me. 'Their immune systems for whatever reason are able to recognise and kill HIV.' In the study of a particularly impenetrable virus, this was a massive discovery.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2007/may/27/aids.features

[BWS-1]

It'll probably sound silly, but it seems sheer willpower's at work here.

Hey, I DID nullified my alergies to mangoes because (and I can't think of any other reasons, seriously, I should have been DEAD by now):


1) they were my favorite fruits;

2) I refused to believe I would die from eating more despite the enhanced allergic reactions I'd get AND the warning of my friends witnessing said reactions;

3) I thought that to drown myself with that which could fatally harm me would only but fuel my desire to deny such fact AND also cause me to overcome such a threat leading me to do the impossible;

4) Reinforcing the belief that what was to be done was impossible also fueled my desire to overcome.


Because see, I was later told it wasn't possible to do such a thing... I ask myself, ''What have I done then? it's not like I wasn't allergic to mangoes. And it's not like I went to the hospital to ''get that checked/fixed'' either. In fact, everything I have done should have lead to my death.''

What's willpower anyway? How have we scientifically proven anything about this affecting our immune system or any of our physical abilities? It's probably going to be complicated though if the one cure for HIV is ''a philosophy class with mental-strength conditioning courses on the side''.

Seeing as with what has been observed in the researches you spoke of, Graillik, it doesn't even appear to be 100% efficient if one would like to believe willpower is the cause of such a feat. Could it just all go down to the survival of the fittest? But now it would be how he/she who is mentally - and not physically - fit, will survive this plague... maybe?

Overwhelming exposure to HIV seems one of the key elements tho, but like mentioned in the article, women that have been fighting it off for years were known to be vulnerable to it INSTANTLY if they were coming back to do their job after a period of break.

Which makes me realize, I still eat mangoes religiously, they're my favorite fruit ya know (I know I know, I'm repeating myself)... so maybe if I'd get that off my system I'd get allergic again? Who knows, willpower seems to be part of the solution, but it's not much the ''will to fight it'' but the ''will to dive into it'' that will then lead the body to force itself to adapt to a ''now inevitable situation of crisis''.

That may also make it so that, unlike a situation where we'd ''freeze in fear'' because we are being victim of something we'd want to avoid, our psychological approach would be to go head-on into it, therefor, making the body realize:


1) it's not something we're afraid of;

2) it's not something that, since we're not afraid of it, cannot be defeated.*

3) it leads the body to ''believe in itself'' and say ''... fine I guess I'll do, say, a shitload of killer T cells''.

Catch my drift?


* fear of pain, pain is damage, damage may lead to loss of life, loss of life is death, death is unwanted, hence, pain is unwanted. damage is unwanted. loss of life is unwanted. Prevention of loss of life, of damage, of pain, may lead to close yourself to all these - or flee and avoid elements causing the aforementioned ''annoyances'' - to prevent death. But one loses himself there: for if one forgets about the pain, and by ignoring this value, motivates himself to take actions to overcome, one survives. Why? because a great offense is a great defense. The article linked above pretty much shows that. And yes, I admit it, I'd like to think that my take on mango allergies shows that as well haha.