Vaccine

Everyone, I'd like you to meet Flossie Wong-Staal.

Flossie is a PHD in Molecular Biology with a staggeringly long list of accomplishments in the field of virology. She may also be the one person that can kick HIV to its well-deserved place in the gutter.

This week HIV prof covered the research and possibilites of creating an HIV vaccine. I wont bore you with all of the details but it could be a long road until we get to a point where that can happen.

On the plus side there is the work of Dr. Wong Staal. She has a completely different concept than most. Rather than detecting the virus in people then treating them with the cocktail (which tries to disable separate icky things that the virus does to your body and has varying levels of success depending on your body chemistry and virus strain) she wants to create an injection that simply disables the entire HIV replication mechanism based on a common mechanism shared by all strains. She knows this common point.

Not only does she know this commonality, she has developed gene therapy against it. Gene therapy basically takes HIV, cuts out all of the bad stuff that will kill you and sticks in known genes that can pistol whip the virus. When injected into a subject the new gene therpay version of HIV integrates like a trojan horse into all of your cells. When the fatal HIV comes a knockin' it simply whips out a shotgun and blows its face off, then goes quietly back to sleep. Cool, isnt it?

She has successfully injected her gene therapy into virus-free chimps, then repeatedly challenged them with multiple strains of live, infectious HIV. They remain uninfected. Unfuckingbelievable, huh? Her gene therapy product is in clinical trials, which is exciting, of course. But there are still issues surrounding this type of therapy. (1) The FDA cycle is long, sometimes 15 years long and gene therapy is a new technology that is not widely accepted so it could be even longer (2) Is this therapy going to be cost effective to the population that needs it the most (Africa, India and SE Asia).

The bottom line for me was that an effective mechanism to obliterate the virus seems much closer, which should definitely convey a cautiously optomistic feeling for the future. Its definitely not time to throw away the condoms and go back to the 70's but that day may come in our lifetimes. Lets just hope that the superior minds of our time, like Dr. Wong Staal, will keep pushing, keep experimenting and keep believing that it can be done.

On a side note, look again at Flossie's picture and convince yourself that this lady will be 59. Yes, FIVE NINE. You know people are going to write her.

Dr. Wong-Staal:

Whats up babe?! So, that whole erradicating HIV from the planet thing is pretty cool. Go, Flossie!

Anyway I had a very important question a little off topic. What facial products do you use? :)