http://news.sciencemag.org/sciencenow/2011/09/gene-therapy-may-thwart-hiv.html?rss=1
Timothy Brown, the first man to be cured of HIV, has driven scientists to find an effective way to end HIV. He was cured when he was diagnosed with HIV and received a bone marrow transplant from a donor who had defective CCR5 receptors on his T-cells, the receptors that HIV uses to infiltrate cells. Soon after, the HIV in his body started to decline. Scientists have tried to apply the same concept in very small clinical trials with minor success, but there is still a lot of work to be done.
While this is a small success in the battle against HIV, it also brings to attention a very large issue in healthcare: money. Even if this gene therapy were to be at a stage where it could be used outside of clinical trials, it's still technologically advanced and expensive. HIV has hit Africa the hardest, but Africa also has the poorest countries in the world. There is no way that this gene therapy could be supplied to the people who need it most. As we have discussed, the poor need this technology significantly more than the rich, yet they suffer even more without it. While the relatively well off at least have anti-retroviral medication to slow down the effects, the poor have nothing to use. When we applaud such discoveries, research, and advancements, we also have to keep in mind the people we end up helping, and those who we still are not bringing help to. We don't realize that although there is a big accomplishment here, many, many more are still suffering.
It is true that HIV had hit the poorest people the hardest, which had lead to hard for people to get this gene therapy. Although, we can not ignore the fact that when developing the new technology such as gene therapy, it costs enormous amounts of money. We can not develop the such technology without investing money and effort in it. It will be the worst if people do not try anything to improve the technology and as time goes on the cost of therapy will go down as the they keep improving their technology.
ReplyDeleteThis is a great find! However, in its current state it is infeasible to use as a treatment, and the most effective use of clinical trials is for research. It could be that a very cheap and easily deployable cure can be found from this discovery, and that would require lots of resources. In the mean time, it's important to prevent the spread of the disease. Condoms are very cheap, and very effective, but simply not enough resources are being invested into proper distribution, and some countries are simply too dangerous to try and help. In the end, however, a cure will still be needed even if prevention is widely deployed, as it would be impossible to completely eliminate the disease without a cure, so this discovery is fantastic and any research put into it would be worthwhile, as long as it doesn't suck resources from the already cheap prevention available.
ReplyDeleteThis is an issue that crops up regularly when discussing international health (and int. health policy). People will always complain that when promising advances (in medicine say) are made, that it is of little use to those that need it most – it is simply too expensive to be implemented in the developing world. This is usually true. But we have to remember that is simply the way the world works. It takes time for the technology to develop sufficiently to help all those in need. The point is we should be supportive of these, and all, findings - to do our best to help all we can, when we can.
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