Recently, a child was cured of HIV. This is the second known time that someone has been effectively cured of the disease, and although scientists say that you need 3 points of data to show a trend, many are hoping that this shows that the first case wasn't just a fluke. This toddler was born the the disease, but suddenly stopped taking medication for 5 years, and when she was tested again, there was no signs of the disease, and no longer needs any kind of special care for the disease. The other known case of treating this disease is when another man also had lukemia, and so had to have a full bone marrow transplant, after which, he was cured. This is not a practical solution for someone with HIV to get, since it is risky and very expensive, and a lot of the places where HIV is most common are very poor. The little girl being cured of this may show hope for the future though.
The themes of the nature of science that are present in this article are:
-It is based on evidence; the reason why this is so important is because it just now offers new evidence for a cure to HIV.
-It is subject to debate and tentative; not everyone believes that this will lead to a cure for HIV, since there have only been 2 recorded cases of cures ever.
-Importance of repeatability; this evidence is very tentative, because right now they are trying to figure out if it is going to be repeatable or not.
-Role of chance; this may have just been some genetic fluke, and may not be repeatable. Right now they are trying to figure out if it is luck, or if it is going to be recreated.
-Role of motivation and curiosity; the scientists who are looking into this wouldn't have accomplished anything if it wasn't for motivation and curiosity, and the reason that this is such an important finding is because of the curiosity of the scientists.
posted by: Cameron Kurisko
Wow! Mistakes do lead to great findings. If this is actually true, and works with everybody, then they kind of found the cure to HIV, right?
ReplyDeletehttp://abcnews.go.com/Health/mississippi-baby-born-hiv-functionally-cured-doctors/story?id=18645410
Here is also a link to an article talking about this case, and a video along with that.
Very interesting post, to bad the cure can't be applied to adults just yet.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.tulsaworld.com/news/article.aspx?subjectid=732&articleid=20130306_11_A11_Thegam394174
Maybe I didn’t read the article thoroughly enough, but was there anything that gave a hint as to what might have caused this cure? I went over the article again and found very little evidence as to what could have cured this child. I understand that the main point isn’t what the cure is, but the fact that there could be a potential cure, but has there been any further research done on this case?
ReplyDeleteI’m pretty sure that anti-retroviral drugs are used in an attempt to control the infection, so what could have caused this sudden cure? There’s so much information missing, but I understand the need for privacy. I just hope that the doctor has a record of what happened that can be provided for further study.
The article mentioned Timothy Brown as well. As far as I know, there’s no relation between the two cases, so this could very well be just another fluke. I really hope this will lead to a cure, and it’s amazing for the girl, but I’m not all that optimistic.