[HN Gopher] Woman appears cured of HIV after umbilical-cord bloo...
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Woman appears cured of HIV after umbilical-cord blood transplant
Author : nabaraz
Score : 238 points
Date : 2022-02-15 17:24 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.wsj.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.wsj.com)
| Animats wrote:
| Wasn't this done once before via a bone marrow transplant?
| Kognito wrote:
| Yes, a few times if I recall correctly. It's just not
| particularly accessible treatment (for HIV) as it requires the
| complete destruction of the host immune system and essentially
| 're-growing' a new one - hence this is usually a pleasant side-
| effect of treating certain cancers.
| phkahler wrote:
| IIRC that procedure has something like a 50/50 chance of not
| working and leaving the patient dead with no immune system.
| It's a hail Marry treatment for cancers that are about to
| kill you anyway. Really cool that using the right donor can
| cure HIV, but not useful as a general treatment at any cost
| due to the high failure rate.
| peter303 wrote:
| Article says this is the 5th time. The headline is incorrect.
| ianhawes wrote:
| This is amazing news. My only hope is that the recipient has been
| thoroughly vetted with a complete background check and panel
| interview to determine if they are worthy of such a cure[0].
|
| /s
|
| [0] https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/13/health/pig-heart-
| transpla...
| 999900000999 wrote:
| I actually don't get the outrage on this, anyone willing to
| undergo an experimental procedure should be held as a hero.
|
| If this country didn't have an absolutely horrible criminal
| justice system, I would love something where inmates can sign
| up for experimental procedures in exchange for a full pardon.
| But knowing America, this was just encourage prosecutors to
| push inmates to get unnecessary procedures.
| [deleted]
| williamtrask wrote:
| Downvoting - I don't support the idea that the criminal justice
| system should extend to the opportunity to be cured from
| certain diseases, particularly so long after the fact. It's a
| dangerous precedent.
| appletrotter wrote:
| you missed the /s
| nefitty wrote:
| The sarcasm squelched the intent of what you meant.
| DoreenMichele wrote:
| (stem cell) _Transplants, which are risky and costly, are
| unlikely to be an option for HIV patients other than those who
| need them for treatment for diseases like cancer,_
|
| Made me wonder if fasting might help. A quick search found
| anecdotal support for "definite _maybe_ ".
|
| https://www.quora.com/Can-prolonged-fasting-help-fight-HIV-A...
| lopis wrote:
| Hiv lives in your imune memory cells. I guess if you starve
| yourself into they die, you could get rid of it. Sounds drastic
| though.
| DoreenMichele wrote:
| I didn't say _get rid of it._ I said _help._ And I provided a
| supporting link.
| Saint_Genet wrote:
| A Quara link full of anecdotal evidence isn't really
| support for your thesis.
| DoreenMichele wrote:
| It's not a _thesis._ It 's a comment on a discussion
| board.
| valarauko wrote:
| It's clear that the parent comment is using "thesis" =
| "premise/claim" in this context, and it's a reasonable
| use of the word.
| DoreenMichele wrote:
| It's an unreasonable standard though, one to which I seem
| to frequently be held for bullshit reasons that appear to
| me to boil down to "We refuse to believe that you know
| anything about health topics and also require you in
| specific to meet a higher standard than other posters
| just making conversation."
|
| It's a means to gatekeep me out of medical discussion
| because people don't like the idea that I'm getting
| healthier when doctors say that cannot be done and rather
| than engage in meaningful discussion, I fairly often
| receive a dismissive pile on of replies in a way that I
| do not believe is the norm for HN.
|
| I don't have to defend it or prove a claim. I didn't make
| a claim. I stated as clearly as I know how that it made
| me wonder x and so I did a search.
|
| This should not be drama of any sort. Other people
| routinely make conversation on medical topics and aren't
| given a hard time for it. Other people in this discussion
| are making conversation about donating cord blood to
| research.
|
| No one is required to be a medical professional to
| participate in medical discussion here. No one is
| required to defend their interest in such subjects.
|
| Except apparently me. Probably because of my personal
| situation and people having some issue with that.
| valarauko wrote:
| I think that's an incredibly uncharitable take from this
| thread. Almost none of the people here are medical
| professionals, nor do I think most people here are
| familiar enough with usernames to target you in
| particular. You opinion is just as valuable as any others
| here.
|
| If anything, at least in this case I can see that
| providing a Quora page as "supporting link" works against
| you - because of the low quality of most Quora content.
| You mused about a possibility, and the comment engaged
| with your point at face value with a very reasonable
| response. They did not ask you to meet a "higher
| standard" or provide evidence for your idea. You
| escalated the discussion from there by suggesting that
| the Quora page is "supporting" - which it really isn't.
| Making conversation is fine, but if you're going to try
| to back up your ideas with links, its natural that people
| will engage with the validity of the source. If you'd
| linked to a publication, for example, they'd have to
| engage with the science of it. In this case since its
| Quora, what's there to engage with? Anecdotes tell us
| nothing - perhaps 99.95% of people who tried it had no
| improvement and just didn't talk about it. This is not
| gatekeeping, nor are you being targeted, at least in this
| specific case. If you'd shared your own experience, that
| would give us something to discuss. For example, my ex is
| living with HIV, and it was a long road of treatments
| before he was out of the woods. His health was pretty
| poor when he was first diagnosed, and he was unresponsive
| to the first line of antiretrovirals (his particular
| strain was resistant) and it was upto me to manage his
| health on a daily basis. I can't speak to your specific
| personal situation that you speak of, but I can
| appreciate that sharing them on a forum doesn't offer us
| any extra cred with online strangers.
| DoreenMichele wrote:
| It's not uncharitable. It's highly qualified and based on
| more than twelve years of experience posting here.
|
| I know essentially nothing about HIV. I know a little
| something about using fasting to successfully treat an
| incurable condition.
|
| I didn't share that because it is routinely ridiculous
| levels of drama for me to comment on that and some people
| here absolutely remember me and target me.
|
| I have some mental models for why I think fasting is
| beneficial. I didn't share those because those amount to
| "personal opinion" and I can't back them up.
|
| I am happy to hear medical reasons why fasting is
| unlikely to work for HIV. That's mostly not the substance
| of the feedback I got initially.
| short_sells_poo wrote:
| I'm really sorry that you have been the victim of such
| forum drama.
|
| I also agree with you that people on this forum are on
| balance likely to dismiss non-mainstream medical
| approaches. If you are open minded about these and want
| to discuss them without prejudice, you'll often be met
| with responses that may be snarky or unfairly dismissive.
| That's the unfair reality of holding non-mainstream
| ideas. By default, they are off-piste, niche, etc...
|
| However, I didn't see anything like that in any of the
| responses here. A very valid point was raised that you
| support your proposition (ie that HIV might be helped by
| fasting) with a Quora link. People who are not closed to
| the idea will find that the link just contains some
| anecdotal information which at best can confirm sub-
| conscious pre-concieved biases, but not be a robust
| argument.
|
| Worse, it plays into the hand of those who are outright
| dismissive because you served them a perfect strawman to
| attack.
|
| Ultimately, with any discussion forum you have to
| consider the audience. People don't owe you anything and
| particularly a forum like this where things are supposed
| to be debated based on merit, the bar to debate claims is
| relatively high.
|
| All these considered, it would've been better to simply
| ignore the quora link, or at least strongly annotate it
| saying it is just anecdotal and should not be taken as
| supporting evidence.
| onychomys wrote:
| The reason that person's viral load went from 40k to 14k is
| because that's how HIV infection works. It would have done so
| whether he was fasting or eating 3 cheeseburgers a day. [0]
|
| [0] https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Natural-Progression-
| of-H...
| DoreenMichele wrote:
| Thank you.
| [deleted]
| mmastrac wrote:
| HIV always seemed like the worst of the worst viruses to cure
| permanently, but it feels like we're making some serious headway
| here.
|
| Curing latent Chicken Pox, HPV, and the other common viruses
| would be a fantastic improvement over our vaccination boosters
| that are fantastic, but still probabilistic.
| blagie wrote:
| Personally, I'd like a vaccine for the common cold, much like
| the annual flu shot.
|
| Even if it doesn't cure it, but reduces symptoms and duration,
| I'd be happy.
| unfocussed_mike wrote:
| I have always entertained a "what if?" question here:
|
| What if... the common cold is like a folk tradition of
| viruses that do us little harm and keep our immune system on
| its toes, and that as such a "cure for the common cold" is
| the wrong thing to want?
|
| To be clear I am no kind of biologist and I have no reason to
| believe this is anything other than a silly idea, but I still
| like it.
| onlyrealcuzzo wrote:
| Why can't we just take vaccines to keep training our immune
| system to be strong?
| aliswe wrote:
| Maybe that's what a cold is?
| XorNot wrote:
| https://www.webmd.com/cold-and-flu/cold-
| guide/common_cold_ca...
|
| The common cold is a low level respiratory infection
| caused by a known suite of virus candidates. If we made
| ourselves permanently immune to those without going
| through the mucus and sore throat part there would be no
| negative consequences.
| toyg wrote:
| Like those "good Samaritan" network viruses that patch
| the vulnerability they exploited. Could be.
| tnorthcutt wrote:
| "what if?" can absolutely be a useful frame.
|
| The flip side: what if... the common cold causes small
| amounts of permanent damage, or damage that doesn't show up
| until much later in life? What if all viruses are this way,
| and preventing infection/bad infection in the first place
| is an enormous net benefit?
| nabaraz wrote:
| Bypass paywall: https://archive.is/wip/tbRwS
| voz_ wrote:
| I am somehow failing the captcha. If anyone has another bypass,
| that would be appreciated.
| 14 wrote:
| https://archive.is/tbRwS
| malermeister wrote:
| https://github.com/iamadamdev/bypass-paywalls-chrome
|
| Never worry about paywalls again :-)
| xyst wrote:
| glad to see some advancement in the gene therapy space. I think
| once people move past gene editing as "playing god", we will be
| able to get rid of advanced genetic diseases entirely (ie,
| muscular dystrophy) and edit our genes to be naturally resistant
| to todays and future diseases.
|
| Also I hope gene therapy becomes democratized. It shouldn't be
| limited to big Rx developing these solutions.
| tediousdemise wrote:
| Genetics ftw. I firmly believe that consumer genetic tests,
| self-order lab tests, and overseas pharmacies will disrupt the
| corrupt healthcare system because they empower patients to
| treat themselves instead of resorting to conventional medicine
| where Big Pharma, insurance companies, and overpaid doctors
| gatekeep access to treatment.
|
| For 100 dollars, you can obtain a full copy of your genome from
| a service like 23andMe and run it across a parsing tool such as
| https://www.codegen.eu to find genetic predispositions to all
| kinds of medical maladies. I found numerous bad SNPs in my
| genetic data that I correlated to confirmed family cases. I
| also discovered genes I have that reduce my response to certain
| pharmaceuticals or cause harmful reactions. Why take a risky
| shotgun approach when you can know in advance if something will
| or will not work for you?
|
| It's literally like looking into a crystal ball of ailments
| that are plaguing you now or in the future. Forget about
| bouncing around from specialist to specialist for years and
| years; read your genome to get the answers you seek today. It's
| your source code.
| 0x4d464d48 wrote:
| "I think once people move past gene editing as "playing god",
| we will be able to get rid of advanced genetic diseases
| entirely (ie, muscular dystrophy) and edit our genes to be
| naturally resistant to todays and future diseases."
|
| I think the "go fast and break things" mindset is scarier here
| than the debates about whether or not we have the right to play
| God.
| somesortofthing wrote:
| I used to think this way but honestly, given how poorly
| nature does in terms of creating genetic material for new
| people, I've come to believe that we have a pretty big margin
| for error. The harm done by a gung-ho attitude toward gene
| editing has to be compared to the harm done by allowing the
| "natural" course of events to continue.
| 0x4d464d48 wrote:
| Look up elixir sulfanilamide and thalidomide.
|
| That's the sort of blood that writes regulations.
| Experimental medicine has a long, clumsy and cruel
| tradition.
| solveit wrote:
| And nature has a long, clumsy, cruel tradition of killing
| literally everyone in various unpleasant ways, usually
| before their time. There is a tradeoff and "optimize for
| making sure we never ever ever repeat the thalidomide
| fiasco again" is not the best strategy to take.
| roywiggins wrote:
| The Jesse Gelsinger case is probably the most relevant
| here.
|
| https://www.sciencehistory.org/distillations/the-death-
| of-je...
| woeirua wrote:
| I don't understand the argument against "playing god." Frankly,
| almost everything we do is playing god in some way, shape, or
| form. There is no way the planet could feed this many humans,
| without humans actively shaping and altering almost every facet
| of the ecosystem. Humans have already played god and will
| continue to do so in ways that were unthinkable in years past.
| [deleted]
| jorpal wrote:
| My wife is 33 weeks pregnant with our first. We plan to donate
| our baby's cord blood to research. Cool to think it could help
| researchers develop treatments like this in some small way!
| skrbjc wrote:
| It's very healthy for your baby to delay cord clamping as long
| as possible
| jorpal wrote:
| Thanks for the tip! At our hospital the standard of care is
| delayed cord clamping, although it sounds like they wait only
| a few minutes, not 15+ minutes. It used to be done in ~<1
| minute, I guess, so a few minutes is called delayed now. Do
| you have a good reference recommending to wait "long as
| possible"?
| throwntoday wrote:
| Wait until all the blood has passed through and the cord is
| white. Baby will likely be a little jaundiced but if you
| clamp too early they will have low blood levels. Don't let
| the hospital staff rush you (they will try). Best to let
| nature run its course IMO.
|
| Good luck to you and your partner.
| sersi wrote:
| Write a birth plan, make the doctor or hospital staff
| read it and confirm with them they read it. We had told
| the doctor we wanted delayed cord clamping (not the habit
| in hk), he acknowledged it despite warning us about
| jaundice (he was old fashioned). Then during the actual
| delivery, he completely forgot about it and both of us
| were too sleep deprived to force the issue.
| adolph wrote:
| Here is more data on delay in cord clamping.
|
| https://www.acog.org/clinical/clinical-guidance/committee-
| op...
|
| _because the placenta continues to perform gas exchange
| after delivery, sick and preterm infants are likely to
| benefit most from additional blood volume derived from
| continued placental transfusion._
| pkukp9 wrote:
| there isn't any evidence that delaying cord clamping for
| longer than 60 seconds gives the baby more benefits than
| delaying cord clamping for 30-60 seconds
| JacobThreeThree wrote:
| Did you consider freezing for future use?
| The_rationalist wrote:
| pkukp9 wrote:
| I think freezing for future use is the best way to go. A few
| reasons: 1) cord blood transplants from related donors have
| higher survival rates than unrelated donors
| https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/nejm199708073370602 2)
| this woman was lucky that she was able to find a partial
| match, but many don't. The combination of using a related
| blood donor + an unrelated cord blood donor was a lucky
| strike. I think for many very mixed race folks or especially
| people of color (specifically Black communities), they may
| not be so lucky 3) the cost of finding a donor can be
| extremely steep. Some may be covered by insurance, but not
| all of it will be. My guess is this woman who was cured from
| HIV is relatively affluent to some degree. Banking cord blood
| is considered to be for affluent folks, but the difference in
| cost of banking vs. finding a donor later on is massive
| smnrchrds wrote:
| The umbilical cord blood storage industry is under-regulated
| and untrustworthy, much like another freezing-related
| industry, cryonics. Both are full of examples of amateurs,
| bad actors, and mundane issues like bankruptcy resulting in
| things that were promised to be kept frozen for decades or
| centuries ending up in waste disposal after 5 years. Like
| this example from Canada:
|
| https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/cord-blood-bank-of-
| ca...
|
| Also, from the same article, does anyone has more information
| on this:
|
| > _there 's a very low probability that someone's own stem
| cells can be used to treat them, according to Health Canada._
| andy_ppp wrote:
| There was a YC startup on here attempting to do this...
| here we go: https://anjahealth.com
| jorpal wrote:
| I know some people keep the cord blood in a private bank. In
| my opinion it only makes sense if you have family history of
| or current relative with a disease that could be treated with
| it.
|
| Since the hospital we are using (Stanford LPCH) has a
| research program that will come collect it with no extra
| steps on our side, it seemed like a good choice.
| inglor_cz wrote:
| Cord blood is a good source of "your own" stem cells. We do
| not know what is going to be possible with such cells 20 or
| 30 years from now; possibly unimaginable things. I would
| save them if I had a child. Just in case.
| jorpal wrote:
| I get that it is very tempting. We all want to do
| anything that could help our kids. However, there are
| also an endless number of things people are selling to
| new parents that prey on that reflex. I truly don't know
| the right thing to do here, but the position I mentioned
| earlier basically follows the recommendations from the
| American Academy of Pediatrics: https://publications.aap.
| org/pediatrics/article/140/5/e20172...
|
| This was from 2017 and is basically the same as a
| reference I found from 2007. Has there been any actual
| changes in the state of the art since it was published?
| musha68k wrote:
| Do you happen to know what's the maximum storage time? I
| remember reading that it was about 10 years only?
| yread wrote:
| we did it. It depends on the freezer. at -80C they say
| it's for a lifetime with a caveat that the technology is
| only 23 years old so none can prove it's for a lifetime,
| yet
| londons_explore wrote:
| If few other people save it, then nobody will develop
| treatments using it, since a treatment is only developed
| if it makes financial sense, and if <1% of potential
| patients for a treatment have cord blood banked, then a
| treatment that requires their personal cord blood will
| never be developed.
| noah_buddy wrote:
| There are many companies doing this now and many
| (affluent) parents are saving it. I think your analysis
| misses the mark, even if there's a niche market, if it's
| comprised of people willing to spend lots of money, it
| can make sense as a business.
| omgwtfbyobbq wrote:
| There are state led efforts to bank cord blood as well
| b/c of it's usefulness in some medical treatments and
| research.
|
| https://sd25.senate.ca.gov/news/2017-06-26/california-
| umbili...
|
| Unfortunately, public donations are only an option in
| some locations.
|
| https://health.ucdavis.edu/cord-blood/locations
| throwawaynay wrote:
| apparently the founder of Anja Health said that she
| launched it after her sibling almost drowned and needed it,
| so maybe it make sense even without a predisposition?
|
| If I had a kid and enough disposable income I'd do it
| without even thinking about it to be honest
| pkukp9 wrote:
| hello! founder of Anja Health here :)
|
| Yes, it makes sense without a predisposition. Things like
| HIV with the woman cited in the article, cerebral palsy
| due to a near drowning accident, etc. could all be use
| cases. Our own team has a sales exec who used stem cells
| for a knee injury he got in track & field in high school.
| Another has a grandfather who used it for dementia.
|
| BTW, a lot of our clients self identify as having <75k in
| income. Our pricing is 35-85/mo. for 8 years to cover 20
| years of storage. :D so hopefully you don't need to
| allocate too much disposable income. It's still an
| investment for sure, but many think it's worth it. Myself
| included obviously haha
| speg wrote:
| Make sure they don't forget! In the chaos after birth,
| sometimes these things slip through. I'm not sure what
| happened when our first was born, but I do remember the
| folks who came by a bit later to pick up the cord being
| annoyed that the delivery team didn't save it.
| pkukp9 wrote:
| In a perfect world, I think everyone has access to their own
| stem cells as opposed to sifting thru donor pool.
|
| Donating is definitely awesome, but there's a lot of research
| surrounding how cord blood transplantation from related donors
| (or yourself) increases your chance of survival from a stem
| cell transplant vs. using an unrelated donor.
| https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/nejm199708073370602 -
| there's a chance of rejection. This woman found a partial
| match, but she was lucky. I assume she's only 2 races or a
| common mix i.e. half white, half something else
|
| Finding a match later on can also be much more expensive than
| keeping your own!
| vmception wrote:
| Are there any negatives of this mutated CCR5 gene?
|
| This article makes it seem like HIV can be cured or at least
| decimated in 100 days.
|
| I'm all for this STD whack-a-mole, just go down the list and
| revert to consequence freedom
| mmastrac wrote:
| Will we ever get back to consequence freedom? "That" is a
| particularly successful reproduction strategy for viruses and
| bacteria to spread around. It feels like we'd just be waiting
| for the next epidemic.
| vmception wrote:
| > Will we ever get back to consequence freedom?
|
| honestly I should rephrase because I don't think we've ever
| had it, maybe in some isolated societies pre-colonialism, but
| now we've never been closer even though sex-education is
| currently based on so much fear.
| mmastrac wrote:
| I'm not sure it's fear, but rather caution and awareness of
| consequences. Things can spiral out of control fairly
| quickly if caution falls out of fashion. Two major
| precautions prevent the vast, vast majority of disease and
| pregnancy in virtually all situations.
| vmception wrote:
| Routine testing fixes most of issues too, many people
| just have a stigma of testing at all, let alone as often
| as they should. At this point, some forms of sex workers
| that have more partners are cleaner than the general
| population, just because they test often and fix things
| early. Which is worth saying because it is
| counterintuitive to what many people think will happen,
| linking promiscuity to negative health outcome (because
| they themselves don't test and just accumulate
| probabilities of infections). the line isn't preventing
| all exposure to disease, its fixing them when exposure
| occurs.
|
| and yes, combining both strategies of protection
| alongside testing + early fixing reduces the negative
| consequence even more even when not preventing absolute
| exposure to disease.
| inglor_cz wrote:
| This is what I found on Wikipedia:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CCR5#Potential_costs
|
| There may be downsides for carriers of the mutation when
| fighting infections by other viruses. But nothing completely
| obvious (unlike, say, in sickle cell anemia).
| taran_narat wrote:
| The CCR5 probably codes for a chemokine, these are a group of
| proteins which help white blood cells home on to specific
| locations, I would guess you may get some sort of immune
| deficiency if a chemokine protein was mutated enough
| neonate wrote:
| https://archive.is/tbRwS
| Dowwie wrote:
| Woman appears cured of HIV following HIV-resistant stem cell
| treatment
| dang wrote:
| Recent and related:
|
| _Launch HN: Anja Health (YC W22) - Freezing stem cells at birth
| for future health_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30305959 - Feb 2022 (147
| comments)
|
| (I wouldn't normally link to a Launch HN like that but this topic
| is so unusual and specific that I figure it counts as
| interesting.)
| mmastrac wrote:
| Totally tangential, but this was a shocking sentence from that
| post...
|
| > plancentas are so valuable that physicians - especially in
| Europe - sometimes prefer to take them for themselves to sell
| to cosmetics research for ~$50k
|
| I wonder if there's a hybrid approach where you could share the
| placenta/umbilical cord w/other companies and get free storage.
| Alex3917 wrote:
| You can donate cord blood for free to a public bank.
| Obviously you're not guaranteed that it won't be used by
| someone else before a sibling potentially needs it, but the
| chances of it being useful to your own family are almost zero
| anyway -- not exactly zero, but if you were making a list of
| the ways to best increase your life expectancy given $5k to
| spend, I doubt it would even make the top 1,000 options in
| terms of expected ROI.
| pkukp9 wrote:
| hello - founder of Anja Health here :)
|
| I would actually argue that the chances of using it are
| actually much higher & it would make the top 1000 options
| in terms of expected ROI. Using type 1 diabetes as an
| example:
|
| By age 18, approximately 1/300 people in the US develop
| type 1 diabetes
|
| https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/240160#1 ->
| here's an article demonstrating how cord blood has
| successfully reversed type 1 diabetes
|
| and that's just for diabetes. Consider the chances and
| corresponding research around cerebral palsy, hair loss,
| heart failure, liver disease, cancers, and more that stem
| cells - and specifically cord blood stem cells - have been
| successfully used for.
| acchow wrote:
| What would be some things you might expect to see in the
| top 50?
| Alex3917 wrote:
| Things generally related to diet, exercise, health, and
| education.
| op00to wrote:
| - Spend good money on therapy - At home exercise
| equipment - Dental care
|
| Just a few things off the top of my head.
| skrbjc wrote:
| That should be illegal
| jacquesm wrote:
| It is.
| pkukp9 wrote:
| A doula told me that she saw this happen in the US once too.
| It's not legal, but I think there are legal loopholes around
| it. Another OBGYN told me it's more common in Europe
| jacquesm wrote:
| That claim is bullshit, see my comment in that thread.
| hangonhn wrote:
| Interestingly enough, the HIV virus has been repurposed to cure
| Leukemia (vs. Leukemia treatment used to fight HIV):
|
| https://www.focusforwardfilms.com/films/72/fire-with-fire
|
| IIRC the first patient of this treatment has recently marked 10
| years in remissions.
| m463 wrote:
| I liked the joe rogan episode with Mel Gibson.
|
| #1066 - Mel Gibson & Dr. Neil Riordan
|
| Mel Gibson took his aging father to an america doctor in panama
| who harvests umbilical stem cells and it pretty much gave him a
| new lease on life. They also help with hard to heal injuries
| onychomys wrote:
| Ever wonder why a miracle doctor from America has to work in
| Panama? Yeah, it's because he spends a lot of time doing things
| that don't have much (any) evidence to back them up.
|
| https://www.skepdoc.info/beware-stem-cell-clinics-that-offer...
| mateus1 wrote:
| Please don't take your scientific news from Joe Rogan.
|
| Science Vs. podcast has just released a great episode on the
| kinds of misinformation spread there...
|
| https://gimletmedia.com/shows/science-vs/49hngng
| [deleted]
| Decabytes wrote:
| I feel like there have been so many advancements in the HIV space
| that have been coming together these past few years. I'm so
| excited by the progress that has been made and I hope one day we
| can eradicate it completely. Kudos to everyone who has been
| working towards this goal
| cuteboy19 wrote:
| Pretty soon the question would shift from 'how do we do this'
| to 'how do we do this _cheaply_ '
| bduerst wrote:
| The first HIV mRNA vaccine just started it's phase I trial on
| humans, only two weeks ago:
|
| https://investors.modernatx.com/news/news-details/2022/IAVI-...
|
| I have a feeling mRNA tech will be regarded as one of those
| medical discoveries on par with penicillin, but only time will
| tell.
| andy_ppp wrote:
| We haven't even started to see the potential for using the
| body to manufacture the drugs needed to fix all kinds of
| ailments. It's going to be a very interesting time that COVID
| has brought forward dramatically I'm guessing.
| nomel wrote:
| > to manufacture the drugs needed
|
| This assumes that the drugs are proteins, correct?
| f6v wrote:
| I wonder if a bone marrow transplant from resistant donor is
| going to be an option one day.
| BizarroLand wrote:
| It's worked in the past at least twice, but then instead of
| well-controlled HIV you have to deal with Graft vs Host disease
| which is much more problematic.
|
| https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2019/03/05/7003618...
| abcc8 wrote:
| One of the big issues with this approach is that you have to
| effectively kill the person's immune system with very high dose
| chemo before introducing the resistant bone marrow cells. While
| BM transplantation is routinely performed, there are instances
| where the transplant is not successful (for reasons other than
| HLA match, etc), with the failure of bone marrow engraftment
| being typically fatal. Given this, and that the current anti-
| retroviral drugs generally work pretty well (i.e. those taking
| the medication enjoy a reduced risk of mortality), this
| curative treatment might not be pursued.
| peter303 wrote:
| A quarter of recipients die the first year after a bone marrow
| transplant. Survival taking AIDS drugs is much higher like 97%.
| sebow wrote:
| Unrelated but while we're on this topic, people should also
| remember Alan Greene's gold talk [0] about cutting the umbilical-
| cord and how (not doing) it can save so many kids quite literally
| "for free".I don't want to sound insensitive here, and i somewhat
| smell that stem-cell treatment(s) will somewhat be used for
| "anti-aging" therapeutics for the well-off higher-class if
| they're not already;But before that we should still keep in mind
| that we can help kids or those people in need with serious
| conditions.I see people act disgusted by it, eat it, or other
| crazy sh1t, but it has an evolutionary role we cannot gloss over.
|
| [0] ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cw53X98EvLQ )
| smm11 wrote:
| I'm thinking of a certain political party that will strike this
| down.
| sudobash1 wrote:
| I assume that you are referring to Republicans and medical
| procedures related to abortion. If so, I don't think there is
| anything with regards to this procedure which requires an
| umbilical cord from an aborted fetus. Additionally, most pro-
| life/anti-abortion groups seem to be highly supportive of
| umbilical cord treatments. Searching online turned up many
| sites like this: https://www.prolifewi.org/cord-blood
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