I’m still impressed by the pills that stop infection. From epidemic to this all within a lifetime.
Fuck yeah science!
They help prevent infection but they’re definitely not 100%
That’s still amazing if you ask me.
Agreed! I just wanted to clarify that it isn’t 100%.
Maybe I’m wrong here, but from TV (not the best I know) I thought the pills were so effective you didn’t even need to disclose your status to a sexual partner?
Not that hiding your status is great either, but from a legal standpoint that’s substantial.
If you’re HIV Positive, you wouldn’t be taking PrEP anyway, and would need to disclose your status. If you’re taking PrEP, it’s preventative therapy, so you would not have to disclose that you’re taking it.
Ah, I got that mixed up then. Thanks!
No worries. I deal with this kind of thing all day at work.
While certainly an interesting development, this is just in a petri dish.
Every science article, every single one. They always make things sound like breakthroughs and I have to come in the comments to find out it’s bullshit or exaggerations. Why?
Why?
so that people click the link
Jokes on them, I did not, I just read the most popular Lemmy comment.
deleted by creator
Rtfm?
The headline is clickbait. The article ends with
“While these preliminary findings are very encouraging, it is premature to declare that there is a functional HIV cure on the horizon,” the researchers say.
I get more frustrated with articles like this than true clickbait. Here’s a genuine breakthrough in science, in an important health area: we should be excited, happy, inspired. Instead we’re annoyed by a misleading clickbait headline
It’s an issue with media outlets sensationalizing everything. The authors of the study even say that it’s premature to call this a cure in humans. It is a nice step forward though.
Maybe view this stuff as a gradual accumulation not as a world changing event. As others ITT pointed out there was fuck all medical science could do about this disease in the era of Reagan Christians laughing about it. Now you can get it and live almost a normal life, provided you live in a wealthy country. The virus is dying not with a bang but with a whimper.
I think its to emphasize the importance of what seems small and boring out of context. Even though it may border on being misleading, I certainly would rather read extrapolations by informed journalists than be left not knowing which conclusions are important to me after reading a scientific publication.
Here’s what’s interesting about this: HIV is a retrovirus. That means it integrates itself in your DNA. This approach edits the virus in your DNA. The downside is that, like most recombinant viruses, hiv mutates often. This would have to be tailored.
The other, bigger issue is that this only removes the virus in DNA. The virus RNA and packages to turn it into DNA and reinsert it need to be delt with before it can be cured.
In achieving a true cure, you would have to achieve both steps. Considering our previous success was to off all your bone marrow and replace it, this is a promising approach.
I’m pretty excited. Sad it took 40 years though
Sure, but this approach could’ve never been achieved without CRISPR. That basic research was the lynchpin that may allow gene editing in the future.
As even the article says, we must be cautious because this is purely in the lab at the moment, but this could be a breakthrough along the lines of antibiotics in terms of doing something about virulent viruses, not just HIV!
Just think of all the lives lost because of the Reagan government hating gay people.
HIV played a huge part in making societies generally more conservative in the past 40 years or so. Having a cure might start to turn things in the other direction again.
Well, until Reagan’s buddy Rock Hudson got it. Then it started getting funding.
Bout time
