Potentially new, HORRENDOUS news... faster infecting HIV

[Kuciwalker]

Originally posted by Provost Harrison
No Kuci, you are speaking out of your arse. Reverse transcriptase inhibitors are not proteins, they are nucleotide analogues (AZT is a thymidine analogue). It blocks the active site of reverse transcriptase. However sometimes it can be integrated into the human genome by DNA polymerase. And hnce mutation can arise. Delivered by a virus? WTF are you talking about?

I was assuming it was an enzyme, since I didn't see how anything else would inhibit a reaction. That's why I said it would have to be delivered by a virus to be integrated - because only then would the code for it be present.

[RGBVideo]

Using vaguely the term "Africa" and lumping it together to support your views

Originally posted by Last Conformist
Word.

So VJ thinks AIDS is killing of secularists? Interestingly, it's mostly killing people in Africa, where people on average is more religious than in the West ...

Compared to total amount of religious people in Africa, the people dying from AIDS certainly aren't particularly religious. Quite the opposite, actually. And if someone who would've be registered as a christian would actually die from AIDS, would that prove anything? Just about everyone can claim to be a true believer, but that doesn't mean that they are (homosexualists who **** around without protecting their partners when they know they themselves have HIV certainly aren't).

What really gets me, though, is the way you use Africa here: Essentially you pick a random statistic from an ENTIRE CONTINENT, pick another random statistic, then don't even re-check to see if there's ANY CONNECTION BETWEEN THEM, then use it to support your bs point.

"So, you're claiming that Japanese people are smarter in maths than us Swedes? Interestingly, most Japanese are in Asia, where people on average are actually, according to IQ tests, dumber in maths than we, Swedes. OMG TOTALLY MAKING A POINT HERE!"

[Kuciwalker]

Compared to total amount of religious people in Africa, the people dying from AIDS certainly aren't particularly religious. Quite the opposite, actually.

Bull****. They just don't follow YOUR religion to the letter of the doctrine YOU hold.

[Last Conformist]

VJ's ability to spot trolling is impressive.

Now, I'm sure he's got better things to do. Like praying for his enemies.

[RGBVideo]

Can you remember the days when you used to have a decent-sized sig; none of those ridiculous badges (are you trying to make a point or something? they've been there for ages so isn't it obvious that nobody cares from your point?); you used to keep all your messages in a single post instead of 50 posts with one sentence; and most of all, when you used to back up your posts with data instead of making predictable, trigger-happy, arrogant knee-jerk posts? I'm willing to listen if you're gonna find me some proof. Go ahead and look it up, please. Whether they're muslims or christians, religious people, as a group, in Africa, don't get HI-virus as often as non-religious do.

Now I'm not claiming that this would be universal, since in some countries (Sweden comes to my mind) secularists are not willing to un-register their christianity [edit: I mean that they have parents which register them, they go to the christian summer camps etc. until they suddenly after high school decide that atheism, alcohol and unresponsible sex is cool] from official papers (being either too lazy or wanting to keep some sort of back-up social safety net in church).

VJ's ability to spot trolling is impressive.

So you now noticed that you were wrong in your speculation, hm?

[Mr. Harley]

The problem is that mutation is determined by two factors - population level and I cannot remember the technical term, essentially genome platicity.

The first factor says that the more organisms of the species out there, all things being equal, the better the chance of mutation. Simple genetics.

The other item is something interesting I read about several years ago in Scientific American, and I'm sorry I don't have the cite - it was in the early 1990's. It turns out certain organisms, the example they used was the polio virus, are extremely rigid. It has very little variablility in it's genome, thus making is fairly easy (combined with other factors) to create a vaccine for.

AIDS is fairly unique. It seems to be close to the limit of mutation while still maintaining it's integrity as a species, if you can use the term properly for viruses. They suspected, at least at the time, that is AIDS had much more variability, then it actually could not maintain it's integrity as a species.

This is germane because it means that if a mutation can create resistance to a drug class, then AIDS is the organism to do it. Thus the resistance does not surprise me in the slightest. My biggest worry is that it has a 1st cousin in Greenland or Iceland. It turns out it is mosquito born, and highly lethal to sheep. Since we really don't know the mutations necessary to create an insect vectored disease, that's what bothers me. That mutation would make the Black Plague look like a mild cold.

That is why it behooves us all to be involved in slowing the disease. I won't call it a plague except in Africa, which shows that is has the potential. I also do agree with the concept of isolation. We have gotten so blaise to modern medicine we have forgotten the old protocals of public health. Isolating people with communicable diseases is a very effective technique. Castro supposedly used that technique to stop AIDS cold in Cuba.

Oh - and in Africa many so-called healers are suggesting sex with a virgin will cure a man of AIDS. Since the vaginal tracts of young girls are not fully keratinized (thickening of the epithelial tissue essentially in preparation for sex) they are tremendously more likely to catch the disease from a single exposure. This has had horrendous results.

[Elok]

Er, VJ, you might want to edit that last post some more. You know, mods, flames, put two and two together?

Can somebody explain to me, or provide a link explaining, why anti-retrovirals cause all those side effects?

[Last Conformist]

Originally posted by VJ
So you now noticed that you were wrong in your speculation, hm?

I take it back. VJ is not merely unable to spot trolling; he's got severe problems with basic cognition.

[Ming]

Hmmm... let's discuss the TOPIC, and NOT the POSTERS!

[JohnT]

Originally posted by Kuciwalker


I was assuming it was an enzyme, since I didn't see how anything else would inhibit a reaction. That's why I said it would have to be delivered by a virus to be integrated - because only then would the code for it be present.

He is an industry expert, doofus. It's what he does for a living.

[Provost Harrison]

Originally posted by shawnmmcc
The problem is that mutation is determined by two factors - population level and I cannot remember the technical term, essentially genome platicity.

The first factor says that the more organisms of the species out there, all things being equal, the better the chance of mutation. Simple genetics.

The other item is something interesting I read about several years ago in Scientific American, and I'm sorry I don't have the cite - it was in the early 1990's. It turns out certain organisms, the example they used was the polio virus, are extremely rigid. It has very little variablility in it's genome, thus making is fairly easy (combined with other factors) to create a vaccine for.

AIDS is fairly unique. It seems to be close to the limit of mutation while still maintaining it's integrity as a species, if you can use the term properly for viruses. They suspected, at least at the time, that is AIDS had much more variability, then it actually could not maintain it's integrity as a species.

This is germane because it means that if a mutation can create resistance to a drug class, then AIDS is the organism to do it. Thus the resistance does not surprise me in the slightest. My biggest worry is that it has a 1st cousin in Greenland or Iceland. It turns out it is mosquito born, and highly lethal to sheep. Since we really don't know the mutations necessary to create an insect vectored disease, that's what bothers me. That mutation would make the Black Plague look like a mild cold.

That is why it behooves us all to be involved in slowing the disease. I won't call it a plague except in Africa, which shows that is has the potential. I also do agree with the concept of isolation. We have gotten so blaise to modern medicine we have forgotten the old protocals of public health. Isolating people with communicable diseases is a very effective technique. Castro supposedly used that technique to stop AIDS cold in Cuba.

Oh - and in Africa many so-called healers are suggesting sex with a virgin will cure a man of AIDS. Since the vaginal tracts of young girls are not fully keratinized (thickening of the epithelial tissue essentially in preparation for sex) they are tremendously more likely to catch the disease from a single exposure. This has had horrendous results.

Yeah, the ability of AIDS to mutate so quickly comes from the relative inaccuracy of reverse transcriptase - our DNA polymerase complex replicates and checks for mistakes. Reverse transcriptase just bangs out a copy. I am not sure of the progress but one of the clever ideas was to create a CD4/immunoglobulin hybrid protein. HIV finds CD4 to integrate into a cell. So (in theory, HIV seems to be a bit more complicated than using CD4 alone, bastard ) the HIV will bind to this hybrid protein and trigger an immune response onto it. A clever idea but I don't think it got anywhere which is a shame. The other thing they were trying to do was find highly conserved areas of HIVs protein (generally stuff like RT's active site or some aspects of the coat protein) and presenting those directly to the immune system (like a vaccine) and developing an immunity to HIV before it can cause any problem. Quite clever stuff...

[Japher]

our body reverse engineered the mutation...

this is why I tell people to keep a good design history file! development engineering is getting a copy of that!

[DinoDoc]

Originally posted by JohnT


He is an industry expert, doofus. It's what he does for a living.

PH washed out of the program.

[JohnT]

He did?

Oh, well. I guess the doofus here is... moi.

[Provost Harrison]

Yeah, I quit research, not the direction I wanted to go in any longer. Although I work for GSK now and the product line I analyse on (and head a small team): Zidovudine (retrovir, AZT, whatever you want to call it)