AIDS Cure on the Horizon?
One of the most powerful scenes for me in the movie Philadelphia was the moment in which Tom Hanks’ character, Andrew Beckett, introduces himself to Denzel Washington’s Joe Miller. They exchange a handshake at one point in the scene, and Beckett reveals to Miller that he has AIDS. When Miller reacts to the revelation by immediately backing away and becoming visibly uncomfortable, while looking, desperately, for some way to clean what he believes is a now tainted hand, it served as a stark reminder to me of how prominent this disease once was in the psyche of the American public. I think there was a lot of fear, and a lot of unknowns about the disease: how it was spread, who was susceptible, and what it could do to you.
Since those days of uncertainty, the disease has ravaged millions, though in its wake followed a continually growing understanding of the virus and how it works. I remember talking about it in high school several times, mainly, I think, for the purpose of empowering us to make smart decisions as we awakened to new knowledge of ourselves and of our sexuality. It seemed everyone agreed that the best way to defeat the disease was to be steadfast in our resolve to prevent its spread and continually educate people on how to accomplish this task.
Unfortunately, however, education didn’t always work, and for those that succumbed to the disease, medicine offered many ways to combat its effects. People soon were able to live many more years than they ever had before, though the illness still lingered in a body that had to be maintained by a cocktail of drugs. And while both education and drugs are available in abundance in the US, other countries, especially those in Africa, have been much worse off because of the lack of resources.
Perhaps we are finally approaching a time when the disease can be eradicated rather than just held at bay. Boston.com reported on November 12th that German hematologists Eckhard Thiel and Gero Huetter of Berlin’s Charite Medical University may have developed a method for defeating the full-blown virus.
Dr. Huetter had been treating a 42-year-old American patient living in Berlin for leukemia, which was unrelated to the AIDS infection in his system. When screening possible donors to treat the cancer, Dr. Huetter remembered a study he read in 1996 that posited that certain people carry a genetic mutation that makes them resistant to the HIV infection. If a person inherits the mutation, called Delta 32, from both parents, it prevents HIV from attaching itself to cells and spreading throughout the body. The doctors treating the patient screened 80 donors for the mutation, and found one that both matched the patient’s marrow type and carried the special mutation.
Prior to the transplant, the patient followed a radiation treatment to eradicate his own infected bone marrow cells and disable his immune system. Because Huetter’s team feared that the drugs might interfere with the treatment, he was also weaned offf his AIDS drug cocktail. After the transplant and in the 20 months since, the patient has shown no signs of the AIDS virus. Though researchers and the doctors themselves admit that the results could be no more than a fluke, it does offer hope that a breakthrough has been made in the treatment of the disease.
The thought that we may be approaching a “cure” for AIDS is astonishing. Have we really made such inroads in 30 or so short years that a treatment could destroy the disease instead of just treat its symptoms? We haven’t been able to create a “cure” for the cold or the flu (which our bodies can thankfully handle if they’re strong enough), but we’re now approaching a treatment for something that to me seems infinitely more complex and deadly because of its aggressive nature.
Certainly, a better understanding of what happened needs to occur before the method can become an accepted way to treat AIDS, and more research needs to be done in the dangers of this treatment and how they can be negated in the future. Destroying the patient’s immune system before initiating a transplant of new marrow cells, for example, carries with it a high risk of mortality by itself. Coupled with the other parts of the treatment, it’s miraculous that this person even survived.
Then again, cures for what afflicts us never come without risks. Countless cancer patients probably wouldn’t be around today were it not for experimental, risky procedures. The first heart transplant, artificial heart, or even recent successful face transplant are all examples of risky medical procedures that yielded results that improved both quality and longevity of life for their patients. It may take some time before the procedure is perfected, but there is no reason that with some genetic research, AIDS can’t be on that list of curable ailments.
Now, if we could only figure out a cure for that common cold.
