Anti-virus virus?

[robkelk]

CBC: 'Maraba' virus destroyed HIV-infected cells in laboratory trials

If this works in clinical trials, we just might have an actual cure for AIDS and some kinds of cancer. Mind you, the cure would involve deliberately injecting a virus into the patient.

[DHBirr]

The question then of course becomes:  What other cells does it destroy?  In which ways could this be misused?  Which of those misuses will be most profitable to ME persons of evil intent?  Inquiring would-be plutocrats and/or dictators want to know!

[hazard]

We already have a cure for AIDS.

It involves heavy radiotherapy aimed at the bonemarrow followed by a bonemarrow transplantation.

Given that such transplantations are dangerous at the best of times, it's an option not used in the face of medicine that can effectively suppress HIV to the point it cannot be transmitted.


Maraba virus seems to exclusively target cells struck by HIV or cander. Further research is needed to give certainty.

[robkelk]

Okay - a practical cure for AIDS.

Maybe.

[hazard]

To be honest, it reminds me of bacteriophage therapy, which is a promising alternative to antibiotic therapy that desperately needs more research done for it in the face of the decreasing effectiveness of antibiotics.

One of the advantages of bacteriophage therapy is that what you are using here are living things, viruses, which breed inside the pathogen and nowhere else. Because of this you can through clever methodology create a medicine that evolves along with the threat its meant to destroy, and that way not lose effectiveness the way antibiotic resistance does.

[Star Ranger4]

viruses, which breed inside the pathogen and nowhere else. 

Tell that to the Krogan.

[hazard]

Tell that to the Krogan.

What the krogan are subject to isn't a bacteriophage.

It's a genophage, entirely different prefix and as such function and target.

It either eats genetic material, or it eats beginning life.