If you weren't alive in the 80s, it is hard to explain just what a massively earthshattering moment this is, now I know what it felt like to hear that,smallpox was preventable in real-time
I did some volunteer work for the National AIDS memorial, and one thing they wanted to emphasize is is AIDS was—and still is—a global epidemic, and that while major breakthroughs in research are good, more work needs to be done to get disadvantaged people access to education and treatment.
There is still a long way to go from "eliminating HIV from cells in a laboratory" to a medicine/vaccine reaching the market. With a lot of uncertainty on the way...
“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.
This happens with every new medical discovery - every damn one of them.
We're not expecting cures to be available tomorrow - that's ludicrous - we're joyous and appreciative of the successful research, and that's what you're yucking on.
Don't discredit the value of good incremental success.
Yes the one thing people have too much of is good news and optimism, if you hadn't been here to go Well Ackshully and debunk claims nobody made civilisation would have been unmoored completely
I saw an ad this morning that said "Tired of taking a daily pill for HIV? Here are just 6 shots a year!"
I was in design school in the 90's. I lost so many friends. They would have been so grateful for a daily pill. We have come a long way. Grateful to all who fought for care.
Every time there's an AIDS breakthrough I get this way, and every time a known name comes out about having AIDS I have a hideous, gut-clenching moment of horror and loss before I remember it's not the near-certain death sentence it was when I was a kid. It's just...it's so hard to explain.
I was born in 88 so became aware of AIDS at the time when the dialogue was finally moving away from "this is the gay punishment disease". It informed homophobia of that era, but homophobia of my era was defined by the idea that gay men deserved to get AIDS if they didn't have it already.
It really is. It also brings up the question about patents for things like this. We already saw it during Covid, where India etc could have made it themselves, but weren't allowed to.
This. I remember it so well. One of my uncles succumbed to it in the early 90s and I miss him so much. He would have _loved_ where my life has gone and I can't tell him.
Yes. If they are successfully able to translate this to in vivo, and then human trials, it could make it so previously HIV+ people would not need to take retrovirals at all. They'd be fully cured.
(and as a note, PrEP is a preventative, not a treatment)
To add further context: it's a "bigger deal" in the sense that it would be a huge scientific achievement if it ever becomes a viable therapy in humans. But even that would not be as transformative as today's HIV drugs, which have already turned an inevitable death sentence into a normal life.
Worth noting that the first patient who established viral control without therapy ("functional cure") was in 1998, by a different method (BMT). There were two 'Berlin patients' and one in London that are well documented. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berlin_Patient
I work in the HIV Cure field. Using CRISPR to cure HIV is a theoretical great way to go, by applying it on a whole body scale is still a long ways off.
The invention of Crispr was so revolutionary that it resembled magic. I never thought I'd see that in my lifetime. I never thought I'd see a complete mapping of the human genome either. Amazing stuff. Science illiteracy is keeping so many people from knowing the wonders of technology and invention.
Wasn't alive till early 90s but my formative career years was in HIV care: Holy. Fucking. Shit. I know moving from lab to getting into humans' hands to take is a long road but this is such a huge step that I didn't expect to see anytime soon, if ever
I remember being shocked that there wasn't a bigger to do over PrEP and PEP becoming available. We have already come so much further than I ever expected for my lifetime.
I was an intravenous drug user in the mid nineties... it loomed so large 🙁
I'll never forget how disappointed the nurse at the clinic sounded when she told me I'd tested clean, her opinion was my teenaged risky self deserved this a punishment from God.
A former supervisor of mine came to our lil state medical association & talked about the new (at the time) AIDS retrovirus inhibitors & I was blown away (I trained in Seattle during epidemic). This is equally huge.
I'm too young to remember the initial outbreak and this is still mind blowing, holy shit the amount of suffering this will eliminate is... actually pretty quantifiable
And people aren’t acting like this is a single move in a game with at minimum decades longer to go. Genetic engineering in vitro is a fundamentally different ball game than in vivo, and this is about as close to a cure as a car is to a mars rover.
Oh, wow! I lived through the worst of the AIDS epidemic in the Dallas gayborhood, Oak Lawn, 1989-92.
I remember a t-shirt that said, "All I want is a cure and all my friends back."
I have a good friend, a woman, who spent her young adulthood in late 70s and 80s as That One Girl with all the gay male friends having the time of their collectively debauched lives.
She described this to me in the process, one night, of telling me how she buried the last of them in 1993.
He must have known Ray Hill, the great former cat burglar, state prisoner, and human rights activist. Ray lived until just a couple of years ago, rabble-rousing with great success to the end.
There's a background detail in a @greatdismal.bsky.social novel, a man whose dna granted doctors a cure for HIV who appears in devotional graffiti, a golden double-helix coming from his gut. I remember thinking, no one will ever cure AIDS. That was forty years ago. It was (nearly) unthinkable.
I mean, so, a) this is not a cure. This is a research breakthrough that could *lead to* a cure. It's a finding in a lab, not in people.
b) if you really want to lose your mind: HIV has already been cured in 3 people. It's just not an easily replicable cure/management through medication is easier.
exactly this. insulin and cancer treatments are already unnecessary expensive and THEY’RE life saving medicine. I really can’t get hyped about this breakthrough knowing what the AHCS does with this kinda stuff.
I've been alive since the late 40s, so I have a good idea how amazing this is. It's totally wonderful. I think of my cousin, an early victim of AIDS; also other friends. I still shed a tear for them. If we don't destroy ourselves, the discoveries of my lifetime open the way to a world of wonders.
I feel your optimism, but I've been HIV+ for decades, and though I am thrilled with this breakthrough, I feel it's still too early to be too excited about just yet. I've had my hopes raised and dashed over and over by this type of news, and HIV is treatable and preventable with what we have now.
A little while back there was a Tik Tok in which a person announced their diagnosis and was like "no biggie, I'll just have to take these meds from now on" and my brain could not entirely process it.
While it is an interesting laboratory process, unless and until it is a viable, safe, and affordable treatment for people with HIV, not ready to pop any champaign corks.
While I understand, to a point, people raining on this parade, that it isn’t that big of a deal…let people who lived through this shit have their feelings and celebrate. AIDS has been a very real specter of evil in people’s lives. A dark burden. Let people take a goddamn breath.
I spent my youth terrified I would get this, at first as a child who thought she’d get it from a toilet seat in her rural school, then as a young adult in queer needle-using communities. I’m happy for this and now only hope they make it fucking accessible
If anyone is massive nerd like myself here is the core of Cas-CRISPR from 2020 and even then this is some United Federation of Hold My Beer, I Got This level use of current tech capabilities due to the nature of HIV
Felt so many echos of that with Covid. A pandemic that the top of the exec branch refused to acknowledge even existed till so many bodies had piled up.
past tense? Covid not done with us! Many still can't go about their lives with any confidence of safety & people still dying & getting long covid (~1/10). Each case more & more harmful. Impacts brains, heart, vascular system-even mild cases. Could clean/vent air(#CovidisAirborne) but people go meh..
My professional life includes a time we couldn't include language recommending needle exchange for harm reduction/HIV prevention because it would be labeled soft on crime/drugs by a certain portion of the US electorate. To think I might live to see a cure is crazy.
I cannot fathom, after everything that's happened, that we might cure AIDS in my goddamn lifetime. If I think about it too hard I start to tear up just from the sheer size of it.
Luckily, unless there is a series of deliberate acts of maliciousness and a whole lot of security protocols fail, this is not something we will ever have to worry about.
Comments
We're not expecting cures to be available tomorrow - that's ludicrous - we're joyous and appreciative of the successful research, and that's what you're yucking on.
Don't discredit the value of good incremental success.
Have a good life.
Something that had been untouchable, or a guaranteed death/life sentence, has been rendered mortal.
I was in design school in the 90's. I lost so many friends. They would have been so grateful for a daily pill. We have come a long way. Grateful to all who fought for care.
(and as a note, PrEP is a preventative, not a treatment)
Like.. I scrape and scoop? Huh? Just 3? Hope it's not crayon day.😭
Worth noting that the first patient who established viral control without therapy ("functional cure") was in 1998, by a different method (BMT). There were two 'Berlin patients' and one in London that are well documented.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berlin_Patient
I'll never forget how disappointed the nurse at the clinic sounded when she told me I'd tested clean, her opinion was my teenaged risky self deserved this a punishment from God.
This is amazing news! 💃💃💃
When you think of all the people lost to AIDS, it's hard to even grasps the scale.
And yep, I was a kid back in the 1980s and I remember those dark years. This is a massive ray of hope blasting into the darkness.
I remember a t-shirt that said, "All I want is a cure and all my friends back."
She described this to me in the process, one night, of telling me how she buried the last of them in 1993.
b) if you really want to lose your mind: HIV has already been cured in 3 people. It's just not an easily replicable cure/management through medication is easier.
Coming soon to America ... for $50,000
I guess after all of these years of treatments, the shock has subsided.
Still, an incredible development after all of the death & fear Gen X & older lived under.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9863116/
yes, its 100% what happened, holy crap... hope~
(and yes, I turned 21 in the 80s)
Not paywalled either, so you should be able to see the entire paper.
https://www.myinstants.com/media/sounds/ffxiv_level_up_DFe3J9y.mp3
(well, that, and how this is a big fucking deal)
But...
God, Crispr is incredible. If it had been figured out when I was in highschool, I might have gone into biology.
I really do think Crispr is to genetics what Nuclear Power was to physics. Both in it's raw potential, and in how potentially destructive it could be.