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CBS News correspondent Hank Plante, with San Francisco affiliate KCBS, reports that 45-year-old Timothy Ray Brown, now living in the Bay Area, tested positive for HIV back in 1995, but now has entered the scientific journals as the first man in world history to have his HIV completely eliminated from his body. It’s what doctors call a “functional cure.”

He was living in Berlin, Germany, in 2007, dealing with HIV and leukemia, when scientists there gave him a bone marrow, stem cell transplant that had astounding results.

“I quit taking my HIV medication on the day that I got the transplant and haven’t had to take any since,” Brown says, adding that his diseases are effectively gone.

In fact, his only medical problem these days is one involving his speech and motor skills because of neurological damage after the treatment, but that’s getting better.

“The Berlin Patient,” as Brown is known, received stem cells from a donor who was immune to HIV. In fact, about one percent of Caucasians are immune to HIV. Some say it goes back to the Great Plague; People who survived the plague developed an immunity, and that immunity was passed down to their heirs today.

Interesting.  Not to be a buzzkill or anything, but something here seems too good to be true.

Yes, it IS too good, but it is true, and it make sense. The HIV virus is good at hiding. Some people (mostly white) have been found to be immune to the virus. This guy had leukemia, which is a cancer of the white blood cells. Blood cells are made by the bone marrow. They killed all of his bone marrow and inserted someone elses who was not only a good match, but also happened to be immune to HIV. In his case, without a bone marrow transplant, he would have died. But bone marrow transplants have a very real and significant morbitity and mortality rate, usually from graft vs host reactions, which can be very nasty. If we did a bone marrow transplant on every person with AIDS (if we could even find a match for them, which is another story) a significant number of them would die from the transplant that would have done just fine on the maintenance medications we have now. It violates the ‘first, do not harm’ medical ethical considerations.

http://www.economist.com/node/18774722

Article.  The End of AIDS

Money: the cause of, and solution to, all the world’s problems.

I recently talked to longtime LGBT activist and HIV+ Mayor John Duran of West Hollywood for an upcoming article in THE FIGHT Magazine. He told me this:

There have been many drugs that have come along that everybody thought was the cure… Compound 2… strange mushrooms that people found in the rainforests of South America… the idea of boiling blood in blood transfusions… those of us that have been around a while have a healthy skepticism about it.

BFH - 07 July 2011 03:39 PM

I recently talked to longtime LGBT activist and HIV+ Mayor John Duran of West Hollywood for an upcoming article in THE FIGHT Magazine. He told me this:

There have been many drugs that have come along that everybody thought was the cure… Compound 2… strange mushrooms that people found in the rainforests of South America… the idea of boiling blood in blood transfusions… those of us that have been around a while have a healthy skepticism about it.

I’m a nurse, and I’ve cared for patients who have had bone marrow transplants. It makes complete sense that this would work. There is,however, a catch. It is NOT a benign procedure. That is why it never took off for the treatment of Sickle Cell disease either. We only use it in instances where there will be death without it, because bone marrow transplants have a not insignificant mortality and morbidity rate. Both HIV and SSD are manageable with current treatment. If they can get the mortality rate of BMTs down to near zero, it can be revisited.

Boiling blood?  That um, seems like a stupid idea.  Who came up with that?