Tag Archives: cure

The Limits of Science

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A few weeks ago I was cruising the Internet and found an article about how an American man with AIDS was “cured” after he got leukemia, and got a bone marrow transplant from someone who had a rare mutation that made him HIV resistant. After this transplant, not only did the patient (Timothy Ray Brown) no longer have leukemia, but he was also HIV-negative! He underwent countless blood tests and tissue tests over the next year, and none of them could find any trace of the virus, even when he stopped any antiviral treatment. This discovery caused mass excitement in the scientific community. Could a cure finally be close at hand?

HIV: the pesky virus that has been causing so many problems for humanity

HIV: the pesky virus that has just won’t leave

Well, that turned out to be a false alarm because just this Saturday, the virus was detected again in both Timothy Brown and another man who went through the same procedure. It had just not been found earlier because the levels were too low to be detected with current methods of screening.

Dr. Timothy Hendrich, the doctor who had treated both patients, explained that all this hadn’t excitement and disappointment been for nothing; “through this research we have discovered the HIV reservoir is deeper and more persistent than previously known and that our current standards of probing for HIV may not be sufficient to inform us if long-term HIV remission is possible if antiretroviral therapy is stopped.”

This reminds us why science can be so complicated– just a few blogs ago I was talking about how long and tedious clinical trials are and how many steps a drug has to go through before it can be approved. Now I guess it makes sense– it took more than a year to discover that this treatment actually wasn’t a treatment at all. What would have happened if wealthy HIV-positive people had decided to get bone marrow transplants within this time? It would have been unpleasant and somewhat pointless.

What are your thoughts on this event? Are you disappointed, or do you see it as a chance for us to learn more about the nature of HIV and work harder on other treatments?

 

Source: http://www.cnn.com/2013/12/07/health/hiv-patients/index.html?hpt=hp_t2

Will Research For $

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Let’s talk about the government. Again? You say. But this blog’s about science! What cures got discovered this week?

Well, the answer is, profitable ones. When people hear the word “science,” what comes to mind are test tubes, fruit flies, spaceships, and cancer treatments. But the thing is, the government is actually behind all of it— not in a creepy way, but their funding is needed for any type of research.  Every scientist has to apply for grants to get enough money to keep their lab and their job.

The problem is that the government has limited funds and mostly gives grants to research about diseases whose treatment could eventually benefit the government economically. They’re basically making an investment. As a result, many serious diseases that affect poor countries (but not developed ones) are being neglected; out of 336 new drugs and vaccines developed in 2010-2011, only 1% were for diseases that are mostly common in developing countries (like tuberculosis, malaria, diarrheal and tropical diseases, etc.), even though those diseases account for 11% of the global health burden.

These diseases have become known as “neglected diseases.” Dr. Bernard Pécoul, the director of the Drugs for Neglected Diseases Initiative (DNDi), says that “We must keep pushing to keep these diseases on the international policy agenda and move quickly to deliver truly transformative, life-saving treatments.”

Dr. Nathalie Wourgaft, medical director of DNDi, points out that “[There are] deadly gaps in new medicines for some of the world’s least visible patients.” And this is definitely true; research is ridiculously expensive and it often takes years and years of developing a cure, and then doing animal experiments and clinical trials, before a drug is approved. People in non-visible countries just can’t afford to pay enough money in order for all the research behind the cure to be profitable. So the government’s probably not interested.

This is obviously a pretty bad situation. But what changes in the international policy agenda could be made to fix it? Should the government set aside funding for neglected diseases? Or would it be better to provide science education in poor countries in hopes that someone will grow up to discover a cure?

Sources:

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/10/131024121923.htm

http://www.dndi.org/