What exactly is AIDS?

Alright, here we go:

HIV is the virus that causes AIDS.

AIDS is the syndrome (or disease) that you develop over time after having contracted HIV. It basically means that your autoimmune systems quits, and almost any other virus or bacteria you run into can be fatal.

There is extensive research going on right now, some focused on treating AIDS, most on defeating HIV.

Until quite recently, HIV and AIDS was a death sentence, unless something else killed you first that is. There have been a few cases recently where formerly infected patients tested HIV free. So, there is some hope.

HIV is a virus that damages cells (CD4+ T cells) in the immune system. If it damages enough cells then the person is classified as having AIDS, so HIV and AIDS are really just two different points on a spectrum. One day someone may have 201 CD4+ T cells per mil of blood the next day they have 199 and their disease goes from HIV+ to AIDS. It is now common to find it reffered to as HIV/AIDS (which is an annoying mouthfull but there we go).

Antiretroviral combination therapy can halt the progression of the disease so it’s now thought of more as chronic condition rather than a fatal one however if someone gets to the point where so much of their immune system is damaged that they are classified as having AIDS then their prognosis is not good.

HIV infects T Cells, which control the immune response of the body, and by that slowly but certainly shuts down the entire immune system, making you vulnerable to other diseases.
People do not die from AIDS, they die from any other disease that their body is no longer able to fight off. Even the common cold would prove lethal.

AIDS is more super-political than cancer, and that’s a large part of why it doesn’t get funding. Cancer is something that can happen to anyone at any time for no real reason; little white girls get cancer, and so do women with great tits, so we will not stand for that shit. AIDS, on the other hand, is seen largely as something that happens to deviants for being deviant, and to Others that we just don’t care about anyway.

At first, it was so connected with gay men that people thought it was about being gay, and called it Gay-related immune deficiency (GRID). Then, black people and drug users started getting it, and people weren’t really more sympathetic to black people and drug users than gay people. It was really only once middle-class, straight white women started getting AIDS that anyone started to get all “hey, maybe we should see about stopping this”. Right now, the population most affected by AIDS are Africans, which is not a population we are known for caring much about, especially beyond meaningless tears. Middle-class Americans can control AIDS to a fair extent, by using condoms and dental dams, fresh needles, drugs that prevent the transfer of HIV from mother to infant during birth, and antiretrovirals to help HIV from progressing. From there, there’s already a culture telling you not to have sex until marriage (thus “ensuring” that neither will have or transmit HIV, though this is hardly a fool-proof plan), and that drugs and especially intervenous drugs are horrible and not to be done. By not putting too much effort into finding a cure and/or vaccine for AIDS, we can continue to hate sluts, people of color, Africans, poor people, gays, and drug users.

AIDS means “Acquired Immune Deficiency syndrome.” It is caused by the HIV virus which resulted fromm African bushmeat hunters being scratched by chimpanzees they had caught which had killed and eaten two types of monkeys which had autoimmune diseases.

A very interesting video.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lO44ZeDcktA

Some of the information above is accurate and some of it less so, so rather than cutting and pasting, let me start over with the risk of being repetitive on some of the correct information.

As stated, HIV is a virus (human immunodeficiency virus). In other words, it is a virus that causes the immune system to become deficient in humans. Typically today, we talk about HIV disease. Once a person has had HIV in their system for a while, it causes damage that allows other (often very uncommon) diseases to grow out of control.

AIDS refers to a stage of HIV disease (also now referred to as Stage III HIV infection) that occurs when the individual has one or more of a list of 26 different diseases called “opportunistic infections” because they take opportunity or advantage of the body’s weakened immune system. There is also, as stated above, a blood test that can be done to see how much damage has been done to the immune system. If a person’s result on that test is below 200, the individual can also be considered to have AIDS even in the absence of one of the 26 diseases.

I know this sounds a bit like a word game, but think of it this way, the definition I described was put forth by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to help DOCTORS identify cases of this disease so that cases might be properly counted and estimates made of the number of people infected. It was never really intended to be a definition for everyday walking around people as much as a way to count cases. What is also important to know is that the US is the only country that uses the CDC definition.

Other locations most often rely on the World Health Organization (WHO) definition. This is important because it is logical to expect that diseases that are endemic in certain parts of the world might obviously be seen in a person with a weakened immune system—the list of diseases which comprise the AIDS definition differs based on different parts of the world.

When it comes to research, most of the focus has been on trying to reduce the amount of damage that HIV can do to the immune system. As most of the AIDS-defining illnesses have been around for a while, there are treatments (that may or may not work well without a cooperating immune system). Rather than focusing on 26 different diseases that people may get in any variety of combination, it has made more sense to slow the disease progression and focus, instead, on HIV itself.

There is a difference between treatment and cure. What we have today is treatment for HIV. While there have been a handful of very unusual cases where the patients seem to have cleared HIV from areas of their bodies that we can test (this doesn’t mean HIV isn’t lurking in places where we can’t test). The various treatments impact different aspects of the viral life cycle in a human.

Viruses are unique because they take over the function of a type of your body’s own cells to do their work. Without the correct “host cell” a virus can’t do too much damage, but with the right host cell, the damage can be life-ending for the cell and the person. Viruses are then broken into two major categories: those that use DNA to make copies of themselves in the host cell and those that use RNA to make copies of themselves in the host cell.

RNA viruses are more unstable and have a terrific ability to mutate from generation to generation. This is why it is so difficult to create a vaccine for a disease caused by an RNA virus. HIV is an RNA virus and, although there has been a great deal of research for ways to stop it, due to the frequency of mutation, it is hard to develop a vaccine. The content of the flu vaccine has to be changed every year to match the strain of flu that the doctors expect to see that year. Now imagine having to create a vaccine that changes every day or so and would have to be custom made for each patient—that is the difficulty with finding a cure for HIV.

The death rate used to be very high, but is much lower now in countries where resources are available to treat people. This means the availability of medication as well as healthcare professionals who know how to fight a disease that mutates very rapidly. In some parts of the world, HIV IS still a death sentence due to lack of these important resources. If the resources were available, the patients would be expected to do as well as (or better than) those who live in the US do today.

HIV research has gotten a LOT of financial support in the United States over the years, in part because it was made very political early on. Lately, some of the support comes from the awareness that people with HIV on the correct medication significantly reduce the likelihood of transmitting the virus to other people. So treatment is prevention in this instance. In some communities, there is still a stigma to having HIV and a blame-the-victim mentality which can keep people from seeking the help they need. So this stigma can keep people from getting the medication to treat their disease and reduce their transmission of the virus to others.

As it has been said, HIV is a virus, and it’s a virus that attacks the human immune system. It slowly kills off your T-cells (a type of white blood cell), as has been stated earlier. One of the reasons it’s so hard to treat is that it mutates so fast. Oh, and btw Aids stands for Acquired Immunodeficiency syndrome. I would say more, but it would sound redundant as it has already been said. Great answers around here.

I take it nobody has watched the video?
Its called ‘HIV=AIDS fact or fraud’

It seemed to make a lot of sense to me.
I just wondered did anybody else have any thoughts?

@Pazza I watched the first several minutes until I realized what it was—very old news. Peter Duesberg (depicted in the video you posted) presented those views much earlier in the epidemic. He often cites an article of his that appeared in a peer-reviewed medical journal. If you just pull up the article you will miss a key element, but if you actually hold the magazine in your hand, you will see that his work being in the journal was as a paid advertisement and not an actual journal article that was peer-reviewed.

The statement in the video that “many top research scientists” is misleading. There was a handful of scientists of which, Duesberg was the ring-leader who got a great deal of airplay up through about 1995. However, since 1996, when a new class of medications that specifically attack a stage of HIV procreation in the human host (the drug class is called protease inhibitors), no one much hears from Duesberg anymore. The video at your link only goes up through 1995 (more than 17 years ago or more than half the epidemic ago).

Unfortunately, some world leaders (e.g., Thabo Mbecki, former president of South Africa) decided to listen to Duesberg with the result of hundreds of thousands of deaths of their citizens by refusing to allow access to known treatments. Duesberg has been the subject of several investigations for academic misconduct.

I have worked in HIV/AIDS for more than 25 years and have absolutely no doubt in mind that HIV is the cause of HIV disease of which the most serious stage is AIDS.

@Pazza I watched it but i didn’t feel it was worth responding but seeing as how you asked for it… . It’s a pile of crap.

@Kayak8 – question? It is my understanding that HIV is only found in sexual fluids?
Can’t remember if it’s in the video, somewhere there is a story of a woman that had her baby forcibly put on AZT because the mother was HIV positive, and the baby was forcibly given the AZT because the mother was breast feeding her child.

If that was the case, what logical reason would there have been for doing so?

Also, the video says a couple of other things like, that the HIV test only looks for the anti-body that the body produces to fight the infection.?

That an intact HIV viral particle has never been found in any sex organ fluid (or words to that affect)?

That statistically, we should all have AIDS by now (or words to that affect)?

That statistically, the porn industry should have the highest count of HIV infections but doesn’t?

That the retro-viral infection mechanism means that if your not dead within a month or so, you should be immune?

So when I said the video made a lot of sense to me, those are the points from the video that I had to take on board. So for me, unless you can address those points (and I’m sure there’s more but can’t think of them right now), I will continue to have no fear of HIV what-so-ever.

My opinion (until persuaded otherwise) is that HIV is a benign virus that the body naturally produces an anti-body to, and becomes immune to, and passes the immunity to children through breast milk.

No disrespect to you, but if you work in the pharmaceutical industry, or are a general practitioner, I won’t be able to take you seriously unless you can address the evidence in the video. The problem the medical establishment has with people with opinions like myself, is that I have no access, time, or ability to read medical papers, peer reviewed or not, nor do I have the access time or ability to read and understand statistical data on the subject. I’m also pretty sure that there are a lot of other people who have seen the video and come to form the same opinion as me based on the information in the video.

So if my opinion is flawed, the video needs addressing in full, and a new video issued by the medical establishment world wide.

If this is an epidemic, and the only way to stop it is education, then a video addressing all of those points would be the first thing they should do? Surely it would be irresponsible not to? Statistically it should bring the numbers down?

I don’t recall ever seeing an advert, news article, or flyer posted through anybody’s door explicitly demanding that people with HIV should not breastfeed, or better still that all mothers/expectant mothers be tested for HIV, and then warned on testing positive that they should not breastfeed.

(just my luck, you’ll probably come back and tell me that all those points have been addressed…..)

In any case, that information has never found me so the PTB aren’t doing there job properly.

It is my understanding that HIV is only found in sexual fluids?

Not true. HIV’s favorite host cell (what it needs to reproduce) is a type of white blood cell (called a T4 or CD4+ cell). ANY body fluid that contains white blood cells can transmit HIV. This includes blood, synovial joint fluid, cerebrospinal fluid, semen, vaginal fluid, etc.

Can’t remember if it’s in the video, somewhere there is a story of a woman that had her baby forcibly put on AZT because the mother was HIV positive, and the baby was forcibly given the AZT because the mother was breast feeding her child.

HIV can be transmitted through breast milk. It is an unusual situation because it is not just the breast milk, but the immature development of an infant’s digestive system that increases the likelihood of transmission through this mode. Due to the combination of the two things (breast milk and the infant’s digestive tract), it would be most accurate to say HIV can be transmitted through breast feeding (rather than through breast milk alone).

In the US and other developed countries, women with HIV are encouraged NOT to breastfeed, but in some parts of the world, infant formula is not an option because there is no clean water to prepare it. Some governments have decided that the possibility of the infant getting HIV through breastfeeding is low compared to the relative risk of the infant getting malaria from contaminated formula. It is not a good situation.

We also know that if we give mom the correct medication during pregnancy and delivery, we can reduce the likelihood that she will pass HIV to her baby during that part of the relationship between the two organisms. Mom on meds can also reduce the likelihood of transmitting HIV during breastfeeding after the infant is born.

Also, the video says a couple of other things like, that the HIV test only looks for the anti-body that the body produces to fight the infection.?

The HIV test used at the time the video was made DID look only for antibodies that were indicative of HIV being in the body. Again, back to infants, this antibody test was NOT effective in babies because they had their mother’s antibodies and if Mom was positive, the baby would always test positive because the baby had Mom’s antibodies (even if the baby did NOT have Mom’s virus). As a result, scientists needed a better test to use in babies to get around the antibody problem.

They developed a test call PCR (polymerase chain reaction) that could detect the presence of HIV itself. This same technology was later morphed into the DNA tests that law enforcement uses today to see if person x committed a crime (like rape). Now this test is commonly used in adults with HIV to see how much virus they have in their system (it is called a viral load test). About the time this test became available, people pretty much quit listening to Peter Duesberg.

That an intact HIV viral particle has never been found in any sex organ fluid (or words to that affect)?

Not true. It was true at the time of the video, but we didn’t have PCR testing then.

That statistically, we should all have AIDS by now (or words to that affect)?

Only if you believe Duesberg . . .

That statistically, the porn industry should have the highest count of HIV infections but doesn’t?

The porn industry HAS had a significant count of HIV infections over the years considering the relatively small number of people employed in the industry. The difference with porn is that all employees are tested quite regularly for HIV (in response to the number of infections seen in the industry). Porn and boxing are the only two industries that come to mind where testing is mandatory for employees in the field.

That the retro-viral infection mechanism means that if you are not dead within a month or so, you should be immune?

I have no idea what this question is asking.

My opinion (until persuaded otherwise) is that HIV is a benign virus that the body naturally produces an anti-body to, and becomes immune to, and passes the immunity to children through breast milk.

HIV is hardly benign. Now that we have PCR testing, we can test for its presence (rather than antibodies to it). The immunity is NOT passed on to the child, although antibodies are. I think I get what you might be missing in the discussion . . .

I often use the analogy of sheep to explain this (so please bear with me). Let’s say you and I own a sheep ranch. You are the brains of the operation and I am the brawn (but not real bright). You notice that some of our sheep are sick, but you don’t like guns, so you go out and put little metal ear tags on the sheep that are sick. My job is to go out with the gun and only shoot the sheep with ear tags. Pretty simple concept.

This is how antibodies work, the get attached to pathogens in the body (like ear tags) to mark the pathogen for special immune system cells that can kill the pathogens (like me with the gun in the sheep example). The problem is that, although there is some quantity of HIV particles loose in the blood (this is how infection happens), the blood stream is NOT where HIV wants to be, it is only the road to get there. HIV wants to get INSIDE a certain type of white blood cell. Because the immune system is designed to NOT attack ourselves, the antibodies will not target a white blood cell to latch onto. In other words, I have been instructed to shoot sheep with ear tags, but several of the sheep went into the barn, so I missed shooting them.

Initially, right after infection and before most people even know they are positive, the immune system does a very good job of trying to suppress HIV. The reason this virus is so effective is that it gets into cells that our bodies need (and that we don’t want to destroy if we can help it) so HIV wins over time. The several cases cited of people who appear to have cleared HIV from their bodies were people who had HIV disease AND cancer. To treat the patient’s cancer, doctors did bone marrow transplants. In order to do the transplants in these patients, doctors first DID destroy the cells HIV needs to reproduce (unwittingly, it was not an intentional outcome of the procedure). This handful of patients still have HIV antibodies, but they do not appear to have HIV any longer. More study will have to be done, but this could give some great clues to those doing research to find a cure.

No disrespect to you, but if you work in the pharmaceutical industry, or are a general practitioner, I won’t be able to take you seriously unless you can address the evidence in the video. The problem the medical establishment has with people with opinions like myself, is that I have no access, time, or ability to read medical papers, peer reviewed or not, nor do I have the access time or ability to read and understand statistical data on the subject. I’m also pretty sure that there are a lot of other people who have seen the video and come to form the same opinion as me based on the information in the video.

I do not work in the pharmaceutical industry, nor am I a general practitioner. I hope I have addressed the “evidence” in the video and will continue to answer any questions you have. It is unfortunate that such an old video is still out there as it serves to deliberately confuse people. I read HIV journal articles on a regular basis and part of my job is to translate what they actually mean for lay people who don’t eat, sleep, and breathe HIV all day.

My career in HIV started in the late 1980s when I worked with two others to create a training program used in the collegiate fraternity and sorority system. I then worked training “buddies” or people to befriend individuals dying of AIDS and to be with them through their final days. I was then promoted to be the director of HIV education and training branch of where I worked and did training all over my state. I then went to work for our health department and I am now responsible for ensuring the care of all the poor people with HIV in my area. I have a masters degree in public health with a focus of HIV/AIDS epidemiology and biostatistics. I also have an undergraduate degree in education which is part of why I like explaining this stuff so much.

So if my opinion is flawed, the video needs addressing in full, and a new video issued by the medical establishment world wide.

There are a number of accurate videos out there, it is just hard for a lay person to sort through the crap and find helpful information. I will find some to share with you in a separate post.

If this is an epidemic, and the only way to stop it is education, then a video addressing all of those points would be the first thing they should do? Surely it would be irresponsible not to? Statistically it should bring the numbers down?

HIV is actually a pandemic (an epidemic that has spread around the world). Education is NOT the only way to stop it. If we can get individuals who have HIV on medication we can significantly reduce the likelihood that they will transmit the virus to others and this has been a significant break-through.

As for the statistics, let me better describe the current problem. Back at the beginning of the epidemic, people were getting infected at a certain rate. We can’t know what the rate was, but we could count the cases of AIDS. Keep in mind that AIDS was first identified in 1981 and we didn’t have a test for HIV until 1985. Once the test was available, they started testing people and the number of people infected exploded (they had been infected before, we just didn’t know it). At this time, AIDS was pretty much a death sentence and most of the people being identified with HIV didn’t last very long.

Once the new class of drugs came out in 1996, the picture changed dramatically. People stopped dying at the rate they had been. People were staying alive longer, but the rate of new infections didn’t really change much. So although new infections remain pretty steady (keep in mind there is a great deal of variability depending on which country or region you are looking at), if we kept people alive, it meant that the overall number of people actually living with HIV had to increase over what it had been when folks were dying.

I don’t recall ever seeing an advert, news article, or flyer posted through anybody’s door explicitly demanding that people with HIV should not breastfeed, or better still that all mothers/expectant mothers be tested for HIV, and then warned on testing positive that they should not breastfeed.

I don’t know where you live, but around 1986 in the US, the Surgeon General created a flyer explaining all that was known at the time and it was mailed to every household in the US. This was unprecedented and, as you can imagine, very expensive, so a mailing of updated information has never been done here. OB/GYNs in the US make a point to test pregnant women for HIV (in some US states, this testing is mandatory) and they talk to these women about the dangers of breast feeding. This is a much less expensive mechanism to get the right message directly to the people who need to know the message.

(just my luck, you’ll probably come back and tell me that all those points have been addressed…..)

I hope I have and if I missed something or wasn’t clear, let me know and I will try to explain it in a different way.

In any case, that information has never found me so the PTB aren’t doing their job properly.

I don’t know who the PTB are . . . so I can’t speak to that. Keep in mind that this problem has been going on for over 30 years and we learn new information all the time (as we do with so many areas of medicine). At any point in your life, you would only be able to get a snapshot of what was known at that time and nothing more. I appreciate that you are asking the questions because it is important to get regular updates on what is known about HIV today (rather than what was surmised 17 years ago). Seriously, feel free to get clarification on any question you have. If I don’t know the answer, I will tell you.

@Pazza Here are some videos that might be more helpful to you:

General information about HIV This is the first of a series of 4 videos that explains things pretty well.

More general information This is the second in the series.

Still more This is the third in the series.

Yes, still more This is the fourth video. This one does a really good job of explaining the different stages of the HIV life cycle and how new drugs work to interrupt the cycle. There is a new drug that works at a different stage that is not mentioned in the video (integrase inhibitors).

This video does a great job of explaining things but it is pretty medical and hopefully not too confusing. But I think you can skip the medical words and just watch what is happening to catch the drift.

Here is a video on vertical transmission (Mom to baby) and breastfeeding. And here is another video about it that is pretty simple.

Here is a video responding to Peter Duesberg. Watch the messages on the screen while Duesberg is talking. And here is the second in the series and shows more of the impact of HIV denialist theories and how mis-information is shared.

@Kayak8 – ACE. I’m almost convinced just a couple more questions which I’m sure you’l address. And anybody now coming across this fluther page will be put straight.
Compliments in full to the writer.

I haven’t watched the videos above yet, but from the descriptions, it would seem like showing these videos in schools could be a good idea.

Also PTB meant ‘powers that be’.

@Pazza Thanks on clarifying PTB! It would be tremendous to show videos such as these in schools, or to have comprehensive health education in schools that includes information about HIV/AIDS, but unfortunately, that has been disallowed in many school districts that insist on abstinence only education. This is exactly the kind of education my staff and I used to do, but are no longer permitted to do. Add on top of that the focus on children passing standardized tests in math, English, and a handful of other subjects and you will see that there is very little time or money left to cover health topics like HIV (because health topics are not ON the standardized tests) regardless of how important it might be to the students.

@Kayak8 – Sorry I forgot to clarify my ‘viral infection mechanism’ point (if thats the correct terminology?).

In the video it is stated that a virus infects the body to a point, and that once the body recognises the virus and starts to produce antibodies to fight it off, the body will either win that battle or loose depending on how many viral particles are in the body, and that a ‘rule of thumb’ time period would be about a month from infection to either death, the point of no return and pending death, or the start of recovery and or recovery hence my statement:

“That the retro-viral infection mechanism means that if you are not dead within a month or so, you should be immune?”

But I can now see where you are coming from with your sheep analogy, since if your saying that the antibody markers do not latch onto the white blood cells and only the viral particles ‘out in the open’ as it were, or in the blood stream, it would lead to constant reinfection? (would that be a fair way to put it?)

I do find it strange how the human race as lasted so long though if all it took was a virus to target white blood cells?, but then again, if it had, then I suppose we wouldn’t be here as a species now.

I think I just answered one of the other questions I had. I can’t think of any others right now, but if I do I’ll try and remember to post them.

I know I can be a pain in the bum sometimes, but I think it has led to a very informative thread.

Lastly whilst the topic of antibodies and markers came up, it jogged my menmory about a video on TED.com, which I thought I’d post:

Kary Mullis’ next-gen cure for killer infections
Filmed Feb 2009 • Posted Jul 2009 • TED2009

In the TED talk, he only mentions bacteria. Don’t know if he also got this method to work for virus’s? I’m still waiting to see this on or in the main stream media?

But I can now see where you are coming from with your sheep analogy, since if your saying that the antibody markers do not latch onto the white blood cells and only the viral particles ‘out in the open’ as it were, or in the blood stream, it would lead to constant reinfection? (would that be a fair way to put it?)

You answered your own question correctly! :) Essentially, HIV turns the white blood cells into little virus factories that sends new virus particles out into the blood stream seeking new white blood cells to infect (your idea of re-infection). The good news is that the body is always making new white blood cells, but the tipping point comes when there is more virus than these important white blood cells.

I do find it strange how the human race as lasted so long though if all it took was a virus to target white blood cells?, but then again, if it had, then I suppose we wouldn’t be here as a species now.

You have to take into account a great deal of change over human history. If the original person who became infected had a spouse and infected that spouse at some point, it likely happened at a time when monogamy was the norm. In some places in the world, after a woman loses her husband, the husband’s brother must marry her and take her in (this is especially true in places where women can’t inherit property). Now the woman will infect her new husband (completely unwittingly) who will likely infect his own first wife, etc. This is a very slow start for a virus.

HIV likely lurked for many, many years until the social circumstances were perfect for it to grow out of control which is what we witnessed in the early 1980’s.

TED Talk

Your TED talk linked video was very interesting and let’s me explaining something even more interesting about HIV that I thought was too much to add to the stuff above. If you understood the TED talk, then you will get this.

For the sake of discussion, let’s say there are four basic types of pathogenic organisms: bacteria, fungi, protozoa, and viruses. The first three are celled organisms which means they DO NOT need a host cell like a virus does. This is part of why Kary Mullis was able to attach something to the bacteria—it is a complete celled organism.

OK, step two, he talks about the immune system liking to eat things and taking advantage of this particular trait to address the treatment of rampant bacterial infections. There is a very specific cell (called a macrophage, which translates from the Greek to mean “Big Eater”). Macrophages live in the blood stream and eat anything that comes along its path that shouldn’t be there (including things flagged with the chemical structure Mullis’ showed in the video). That is why his idea would work so well with bacterial infection!

So, back to the immune system . . . in a healthy person, macrophages hang out and eat stuff in the blood stream (this is very much like watching a teenage boy interact with the contents of a refrigerator—they really EAT stuff). The important role of the macrophage is to physically carry the invading pathogen to another cell in the system to help identify the invader. The cell the macrophage goes to is a white blood cell called a T-lymphocyte (a white blood cell that matures in the thymus gland which is where the “T” comes from in its name). This T-lymphocyte is specifically called a CD4+ T-lymphocyte. This T-cell then sends a chemical message to the B cells indicating the type of antibodies that should be created to fight the new invader.

OK, now let’s put HIV back into the story. The macrophage eats the HIV in the bloodstream and carries it to the CD4+ T-lymphocyte (like it would with ANY invading pathogen). The problem is that CD4+ T-lymphocytes are HIV’s preferred type host cell!

So, even if we could attach something like Mullis’ chemical “flag” onto HIV, all we would do is speed up what is already a bad process.

I know I can be a pain in the bum sometimes, but I think it has led to a very informative thread.

When someone honestly wants to know more about a topic you truly care about, they are never a pain. You have asked thoughtful questions that have shown your interest and I can totally respect that. You just unwittingly landed on just about the only topic that I know this much about (and care this much about)! People like you are my secret weapon in fighting ignorance others (those who don’t ask questions) perpetuate about HIV.

I would say a GA here or there WOULD be appreciated based on the amount of time I have spent on this . . . LOL!

@Kayak8 Feel the Luuuuuuurrrrve brutha.
You’ve gone a long way to sway my personal view.
I’m now glad I’m married and monogamous.
Hopefully anyone now googling “What exactly is AIDS?” is going to stumble accross this thread. I think you’ve done your cause a great justice.