Thursday, February 09, 2006

Possible cure for AIDS?

Now way... really? Not a cocktail to inhibit the activity of the virus. A cure... kills the virus... no more HIV/AIDS (via Ace).

Damn.

Researchers, including a BYU scientist, believe they have found a new compound that could finally kill the HIV/AIDS virus, not just slow it down as current treatments do.

And, unlike the expensive, drug cocktails 25 years of research have produced for those with the deadly virus, the compound invented by Paul D. Savage of Brigham Young University appears to hunt down and kill HIV.

Although so far limited to early test tube studies, CSA-54, one of a family of compounds called Ceragenins (or CSAs), mimics the disease-fighting characteristics of anti-microbial and anti-viral agents produced naturally by a healthy human immune system.

[...] What studies to date show is a compound that attacks HIV at its molecular membrane level, disrupting the virus from interacting with their primary targets, the "T-helper" class white blood cells that comprise and direct the human immune system. Further, CSAs appear to be deadly to all known strains of HIV.


What I didn't quote above is that the research is sponsored by Ceragenix Pharmaceuticals. Yep, those big, bad pharmaceutical companies, gouging patients worldwide, lining the fat-cat CEOs' pockets with tons of cash, and, oh yeah... funding research for new drugs that will potentially cure a disease that currently affects over 40 million people worldwide.

They're such bastards aren't they... trying to help people and all that "for the good of humaity" crap...