Hello all,
With all this talk of anal, bareback cocksucking, and the horrible threat of HIV/AIDs, I decided to do a search an see what the hope was for a cure. I came across this article, which looks extremely promising...
http://www.aidsnews.org/2007/10/kp-1461.html
Here is a small bit from the page...
So Dr. Eigen developed the concept of viral quasispecies, and suggested that if you hypermutate the virus, you could push it to the state of non-viability; you could exceed error permissiveness, you could bring about an error catastrophe in the population, and the virus would collapse. This theory has been out there for a while; Eigen published during the 1990s. And scientists from the University of Washington and MIT, (Jim Mullins, the HIV virologist, Larry Loeb, a DNA polymerase expert, an MD PhD also at University of Washington who studies mutations and cancer, and a chemist at MIT, John Essigmann), came up with the idea of fashioning a drug that could induce mutations in HIV, and helped develop KP-1461. Several series of in vitro experiments were done in cell cultures, using a very nasty strain of HIV, a homogeneous, highly fit virus. And after an average 15 serial passages, that virus was irreversibly extinguished -- repeatedly. Repeated, published experiments have demonstrated that you can collapse the viral population with KP-1461.
You and I both know that none of the HIV drugs currently marketed have been able to extinguish the virus in laboratory cultures, and certainly not in humans. They may be very potent inhibitors, but when the drug is taken away, the virus re-grows. That did not happen with KP-1461. It's distinguishing feature, from a therapeutic perspective, is that it is capable of viral eradication in vitro. We don't know if that will happen in humans; this is exactly what the current phase II clinical trial is designed to determine.
Basically what they're saying, is that they've found a way to mutate the virus is a way that it starts cranking out shitty copies of itself (errors), and eventually the virus collapses on itself. Its a big change in direction, and looks promising. Thoughts??