Health

Bone marrow transplant may have cured AIDS

by Paul Conneally | November 12, 2008 at 04:02 pm

895 views | 45 Recommendations | 4 comments

A bone marrow transplant may have cured a man who had AIDS say German Doctors. If this proves to be true then it opens the door to tackling the scourge of HIV AIDS.

Experts are warning caution as similar claims have been made before. So far the patient has gone 20 months seemingly cured.

An American man who suffered from AIDS appears to have been cured of the disease 20 months after receiving a targeted bone marrow transplant normally used to fight leukemia, his doctors said Wednesday.

While researchers — and the doctors themselves — caution that the case might be no more than a fluke, others say it may inspire a greater interest in gene therapy to fight the disease that claims 2 million lives each year. The virus has infected 33 million people worldwide.

Dr. Gero Huetter said his 42-year-old patient, an American living in Berlin who was not identified, had been infected with the AIDS virus for more than a decade. But 20 months after undergoing a transplant of genetically selected bone marrow, he no longer shows signs of carrying the virus.

"We waited every day for a bad reading," Huetter said.

It has not come. Researchers at Berlin's Charite hospital and medical school say tests on his bone marrow, blood and other organ tissues have all been clean.

However, Dr. Andrew Badley, director of the HIV and immunology research lab at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., said those tests have probably not been extensive enough.

"A lot more scrutiny from a lot of different biological samples would be required to say it's not present," Badley said.

Anthony Nolan Trust

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Amy Judd

at 16:53 on November 12th, 2008

If this turns out to be true, it would be amazing. However, wouldn't this have been something that would have been tried before? I guess if it is just a fluke, then it would explain it.

Alexandra Erin (not verified)

at 20:22 on November 12th, 2008

JolM, that may be the requirement for a patent but the issuance of a patent does not, in fact, -prove- that it works. The Patent Office would have to be staffed with experts in every field and discipline in order to evaluate that sort of thing, which is not the case.

The tetrasilver patent application includes documentation of supposed tests to "prove" that it works, but that doesn't mean te Patent Office has actually evaluated it. The consensus of medical doctors and the scientific establishment is that injecting pesticide (which is what this is) into the bloodstream is dangerous and stupid, and that the description of how it's supposed to work is pure science fiction. Firing electrons? Pesticide molecules aren't nanobots!

panzerlawyer

at 22:25 on November 12th, 2008

Sounds like a pipe dream

JoIM

at 20:16 on November 12th, 2008

Here is something 99.9% of people just don't know about, an 11 year patent for a cure. Direct from the US patent office's exposed public record :

http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO2&Sect2=HITOFF&p=1&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsearch-bool.html&r=1&f=G&l=50&co1=AND&d=PTXT&s1=5676977.PN.&OS=PN/5676977&RS=PN/5676977

Keep in mind of the requirements for a patent is the process or method has to work and be repeatable. My low level understanding of bio-chem cannot make sense of how could possibly work but "meh" there is a patent for it.

Allegedly, there is a patent for H.I.V. as well, although i have not done my due diligence and looked it up. I mention this in the event someone else know this patent No. and can post it.