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Biotech

Possible Breakthroughs in Cancer and AIDS Research 403

Posted by Zonk from the good-things-come-in-sets dept.
FortKnox writes "Two possible medical breakthroughs have come to light in recent days. In Australia, it was discovered that pineapple extract can stimulate the body to attack cancer cells. And in Japan, Kumamoto University researchers have developed a drug that will block cells from the AIDS virus, thus making something akin to an AIDS vaccine." From the Australian news: "One of the molecules, CCZ, stimulates the body's immune system to target and kill cancer cells, the other, CCS, blocks a protein called Ras, which is defective in 30 percent of all cancers. QIMR researcher Tracey Mynott said her team had set out to find why the enzyme-rich bromelaine crush had such strong effects on biological material."
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Possible Breakthroughs in Cancer and AIDS Research More

Possible Breakthroughs in Cancer and AIDS Research

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  • Still no cure for cancer... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 08, 2005 @03:14PM (#13015753)
    Still no cure for can...er, never mind. Well, the people over at FARK must be really disappointed. They'll have to come up with a new tagline!

    • Re:Still no cure for cancer... (Score:4, Funny)

      by Aqua OS X ( 458522 ) on Friday July 08, 2005 @03:34PM (#13015956)
      Dude, what are you talking about. According to Slashdot, cancer and AIDs are cured every other month.

      • Re:Still no cure for cancer... (Score:2, Insightful)

        by Anonymous Coward
        A cure for AIDs has existed for quite some time, it's called abstinence (probably not a difficult thing for most of the geeks here).

        AIDs can spread through shared needles and blood transfusions, but predominately it is contracted from unsafe sex. Rather than worrying about a cure, stop the infection to start.

        • Oh sure (Score:5, Insightful)

          by A nonymous Coward ( 7548 ) * on Friday July 08, 2005 @04:16PM (#13016281)
          And there's a cure for ebola, measles, smallpox ... abstinence from society. Total abstinence. That'll knock 'em dead.

          There's a cure for auto accidents, too, called the M1 Abrams tank. Mileage sucks, maintenance sucks, cost sucks, but by god, if we only let those people drive who could afford Abrams, why, we'd cut deaths from auto accidents down to almost zero.

          Or maybe you'd prefer banning automobiles altogether. Yeh, that'd stop auto accidents. Yeh.

          Get real. Expecting humans to abstain from sex except with their spouse is about as real as expecting people to stop speeding on the honor system. Especially when the number of people with AIDS in the US is around one million; one in 300. And with the incubation period being on the order of ten years, it sure isn't on people's minds all the time, especially when they get drunk or just plain feel good. Are you going to ban alcohol and feeling good too?

          It's real nice to spout platitudes about morality and abstinence being the only known cure, but it isn't a known cure because it doesn't stop transfusions or needle sharing spreading AIDs, and there are far more practical methods like using condoms. Are you part of the crowd that turns your nose up at recommending condoms to stop AIDs because it encourages amoral sex outside marriage? Must be nice to not have shit that stinks.

          Better to have a solution, condoms, which is widely used, even if it is only 95% effective, than some psuedo cure, alleged to be 100% effective, which is unusable in practice.

          Perfect is the enemy of good enough. Moral twerps have their heads up their asses.
        • Abstinence... the boring cure for AIDS.

          I, for one would welcome the return of free love of the 60s and 70s with the vaccine.

        • A cure for AIDs has existed for quite some time, it's called abstinence (probably not a difficult thing for most of the geeks here)

          From dictionary.com:

          Restoration of health; recovery from disease.

          Abstinence isn't a cure, abstinence is a form of prevention. If abstinence was a cure all you would have to do if you got AIDS is not have sex for a period of time.

          The only thing abstinence cures is a marriage. If neither partner has ever had sex before, especially with each other, then it's a shot in

          • The quickest route to divorce is a bad sex life. The quickest route to divorce is money-related issues.
          • The quickest route to divorce is a bad sex life.

            Right. That must be why nearly noone used to get divorced at all when marriages were arranged and they only actually got to have sex *after* they were married.

            No, the basic reason for having divorce is when the couple loses patience. For a marriage to work, both need to concede on some things. People today do not wish to concede on anything, so marriages fail. Money usually being the problem.

      • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

        by account_deleted ( 4530225 )
        Comment removed based on user account deletion
        • THe HIV virus relies on a cell receptor molecule CCR-5 (cell chemokine receptor -5) that enables the virus entry into the white cell (CD-4 T cells to be precise). Certain people have a variant , or are defficient in that cell surface receptor, so that the HIV virus has nothing to "Grab" onto, and thus does not infect the person.

          Curent HIV vaccines rely on the fact that people seem to suffer no ill effects of not having this receptor and are currently a main focus of vaccine research.

      • According to Slashdot, cancer and AIDs are cured every other month.

        And probably again tomorrow when this story gets dup'ed.

  • Vindicated! (Score:3, Funny)

    by TripMaster Monkey ( 862126 ) * on Friday July 08, 2005 @03:15PM (#13015757)

    From TFA:
    Australian scientists have discovered pineapple molecules can act as powerful anti-cancer agents and said the research could lead to a new class of cancer-fighting drugs.
    Scientists at the Queensland Institute of Medical Research (QIMR) said their work centred on two molecules from bromelaine, an extract derived from crushed pineapple stems that is used to tenderise meat, clarify beers and tan hides.
    HA! I told my guidance counselor that all that beer drinkin' would pay off eventually... ^_^

    • Re:Vindicated! (Score:5, Funny)

      by RapmasterT ( 787426 ) on Friday July 08, 2005 @03:17PM (#13015778)
      dammit! I only drink cloudy beers.

      I guess it's going to be a long weekend of explaing WTF is up with the pinapples slices in my hefeweizen.

      • > I guess it's going to be a long weekend of explaing WTF is up with the pinapples slices in my hefeweizen.

        Scientists discover new substances that offer progress in the fight against cancer [fark.com] and HIV [fark.com].

        Still no cure for bartenders who put fruit in beer.

        Zonk submitted these stories to Fark many hours ago, with less-funny headlines?

      • dammit! I only drink cloudy beers. I guess it's going to be a long weekend of explaing WTF is up with the pinapples slices in my hefeweizen.
        VWOOOOOOOOOOOOSH!

        ...that's what I heard when your comment went over my head.

    • Re:Vindicated! (Score:3, Interesting)

      by MajorDick ( 735308 )
      It also fixes ruptured disks,

      Years ago I had a screwed up disk , oddly in between my shoulder blades , I dont remeber the number, It was the result or rotating with a 50 lb wrench in my hand around a ladder to catch myself from falling

      Sugery was the only option, then a doctor at Cleveland Clinic said they were doing trials with an enzyme extracted from papaya, the idea was they would "tenderize" the disk and manipulate it back in to shape and 48 hrs later the softeing effects would wear off and the disk w

  • Enzyme-rich bromelaine crush? (Score:5, Funny)

    by Ossifer ( 703813 ) on Friday July 08, 2005 @03:16PM (#13015774)
    Never tried it, but I do like Orange Crush...

  • Pineapple! (Score:5, Funny)

    by Evil W1zard ( 832703 ) on Friday July 08, 2005 @03:18PM (#13015789) Journal
    Time to go buy some stock in Dole!

    Oh I can see it now... Healthy, Tasty Pineapple Flavored Cigarettes that have no Surgeon General's Warning.

  • Cures and money. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by HillBilly ( 120575 ) on Friday July 08, 2005 @03:18PM (#13015791)
    Cures for a lot of diseases probably already exist but there is no money in curering people, just treating their symptoms. You really think drug companies care about your health?

    • Re:Cures and money. (Score:5, Funny)

      by team99parody ( 880782 ) on Friday July 08, 2005 @03:21PM (#13015824) Homepage
      "You really think drug companies care about your health?"

      Would it even be legal for them to do so if they wanted to?

      Wouldn't that violate their fiduciary responsibilities to their shareholders? It'd be like microsoft killing off their upgrade revenue by releasing a secure OS.

    • Re:Cures and money. (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Rei ( 128717 ) on Friday July 08, 2005 @03:24PM (#13015858) Homepage
      If you survive longer, you rack up more medical bills. Curing HIV might not be a big money-maker, but do you know how many drugs senior citizens take? Keeping them alive to continue their medications would be a gold mine.

      • Re:Cures and money. (Score:4, Funny)

        by Ingolfke ( 515826 ) on Friday July 08, 2005 @03:28PM (#13015897) Journal
        If you survive longer, you rack up more medical bills. Curing HIV might not be a big money-maker, but do you know how many drugs senior citizens take? Keeping them alive to continue their medications would be a gold mine.

        Exactly... here's you cure for AIDS and your free trial sample of Viagra... go get em champ.

    • Re:Cures and money. (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Right. Because none of the researchers for those drug companies have family members, friends or acquiantances that might be ill -- they're all in it for the money, even if it kills their parents.

      • Re:Cures and money. (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Rei ( 128717 ) on Friday July 08, 2005 @03:52PM (#13016092) Homepage
        Yeah. Because shareholders in drug companies vote their shares in a manner designed to help the employees families, as opposed to in a manner designed to maximize their profits. And because shareholders hand onto shares of stock of drug companies that aren't profitable because they're working for common benefit as opposed to profit (instead of dumping those shares and buying up shares of a profitable drug company).

        Sometimes, the interests of "profit" and "common good" overlap. But when they don't, in a market economy, who do you think wins?

        • Re:Cures and money. (Score:3, Insightful)

          by timster ( 32400 )
          I've never seen any evidence that shareholders vote in their own interest or in any logical fashion at all. Rather, it seems to be the norm to let the executive team run the company. Shareholders often vote with their feet, but this doesn't directly control a company's decisions, especially since the shareholders who hold (or buy) are likely to be those that have faith in the executive team.

          So individual choices might have more of an effect than you think. I remember an interview with an industry exec w

    • Re:Cures and money. (Score:3, Interesting)

      by DownTownMT ( 649551 )
      Cures for a lot of diseases probably already exist but there is no money in curering people, just treating their symptoms.

      As much as I wish that wasn't true I'm afraid it is. I'm dating an immunologist right now, and even she has told me that the pharmaceutical companies aren't interested in cures, only lifestyle drugs such as giving an 80 year old a woody, or helping people loose weight. Basically there's no profit in cures, only the drugs you have to keep taking.

      I just find it sickening that thousa

      • Re:Cures and money. (Score:4, Insightful)

        by Necromancyr ( 602950 ) on Friday July 08, 2005 @03:41PM (#13016013)
        Well, you'd better tell your immunologist friend to go work at a few of the companies, talk to some of the project managers, or hell - attend the BIO http://www.bio.com/ [bio.com] conference.

        It's disconcerting to me that an immunologist doesn't realize that treating symptoms are easy, and a HELL of a lot easier to get past the FDA, then something that causes issues in a persons system but cures them.

        Seriously, it's the biggest problem right now that has companies redefining what to make. People can't deal with a 1 in 20,000 chance they may have a higher chance of a heart attack if they take drug X, even though without drug X they are in constant pain every day all day.

        The american public refuses to accept any danger/risk at all from there medications - and because of this it takes a HELL of a lot longer to develop anything then it did before.

        The first vaccines available got people sick left and right - but people took them anyway, even with the 1 in 10000 or 1 in 1000 risk because once you actually got the disease, you had a MUCH lower chance of surviving.

        Moral of the story? Get educated before you make comments - even if someone who's an 'expert' tells you something.
        • This was the whole issue with the recent case of the little girl whose parents refused to give her radiation therapy and her cancer came back... The radiation treatment doubles your chance of getting leukemia (though the chance is still like less than 1%), slightly raises your odds of breast cancer when you're 50+, and can cause heart damage equal to having one other risk factor (such as family history or high cholesterol).

          However, without radiation, the odds of the cancer coming back are 25-40%. (Well, i

        • Re:Cures and money. (Score:3, Interesting)

          by jejones ( 115979 )
          The american public refuses to accept any danger/risk at all from there medications - and because of this it takes a HELL of a lot longer to develop anything then it did before.

          Yup. Ironically, the litigious public provides an environment favoring quackery: for example, homeopathic "medicines," since they're all inert ingredients, are sure not to cause side-effects that would induce a lawsuit. (Never mind that they don't do any good...)

          • Re:Cures and money. (Score:3, Interesting)

            by dasunt ( 249686 )

            Yup. Ironically, the litigious public provides an environment favoring quackery: for example, homeopathic "medicines," since they're all inert ingredients, are sure not to cause side-effects that would induce a lawsuit. (Never mind that they don't do any good...)

            I think you are mistaken. Quack medicine has had a long and successful history in the US. Homeopathy is nothing new.

            Unfortunately, much of the population is missing critical thinking skills. Part of this may be due to evolution: We e

        • i think that's his point though. not so much the quality of medicines being produced, or the manner in which the pharmaceutical evolutionary process works, in as much as the choices of drugs that seemingly are being developed by drug companies.

          Your point about the FDA doesn't obviate the fact that pharmaceutical companies systematically seek to treat symptoms instead of developing promising long term therapies for successful eradication of conditions. What it means is that the system is fscked from the top
    • You're absolutely right in most respects; after all, americans can now afford a lexus with greater ease than their daily medication. However, there are a lot of people that cry conspiracy (I'm not claiming that you're one of them) that government X is keeping all the cures from people for the same statement you have made. Then again, with some of the bleeding edge and virtually restriction-free medical reasearch centers being built in places like Singapore and other countries than haven't been as tainted in

    • Re:Cures and money. (Score:4, Insightful)

      by OrionoirO ( 895515 ) on Friday July 08, 2005 @03:33PM (#13015944)

      Cures for a lot of diseases probably already exist but there is no money in curering people, just treating their symptoms. You really think drug companies care about your health?

      While drug companies are probably most concerned with profit, there is quite a bit of money to be made in curing people. Imagine company A has a treatment, and company B has a cure. People will buy company B's cure.

      Also, the HIV drug described in TFA, even if it worked perfectly, would probably require someone who was infected to use it for the rest of their lives to prevent cells that were already infected with the virus from becoming active and spreading it. This would make anyone who produced the drug quite a bit of money.

    • Re:Cures and money. (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      I don't think the cures "exist", it's just that the economic forces, the invisible hands, guide them toward looking for treatments rather than cures. It's just the nature of the business. They don't conciously go to work in the morning thinking "I better not find a cheap cure for cancer today".

      Kinda sad really. There is NO solution to this problem other than "try to stay healthy".. I.e. there is no incentive structure that would maximize the cures on the market.

      However reducing the strength of medical pat

    • Re:Cures and money. (Score:4, Interesting)

      by LurkerXXX ( 667952 ) on Friday July 08, 2005 @04:14PM (#13016270)
      Another tinfoil hat conspiracy guy eh? Here's some news for you. Much/most of the biology research done in the U.S. is paid for by the National Institutes of Health. That's the government, not drug companies. To the tune of $28 billion or so last year alone. That's your tax dollars at work.

      Most done by labs at Universities like mine. If I find a cure for a disease, I'd get famous in my field. Not only that, but it would pretty much ensure that I will have all the future funding for my research that I could want.

      Even besides all that, there are plenty of folks in my lab, in my department, and collegues at other Universities I collaborate with who know what I'm working on and how things are going. Hiding something major like a cure for a major disease just isn't going to happen. There is zero in it for me to hide my research, even if it were possible.

      Now the drug companies would be the ones to actually produce the drug for sale. They might charge you an arm and a leg for the pill, but it wouldn't be hidden from you.

      That is all. We now return you to your regular worries about the aliens reading your brainwaves. And look out for the black helicoptors!

  • Great, one more thing for Spam to pimp. (Score:5, Funny)

    by doublem ( 118724 ) on Friday July 08, 2005 @03:19PM (#13015798) Homepage Journal
    Herbal Pineapple extract Spam in 5... 4... 3...

  • Pina Coladas (Score:3, Funny)

    by Bob Cat - NYMPHS ( 313647 ) on Friday July 08, 2005 @03:19PM (#13015802) Homepage
    I just KNEW they were good for me!

  • old news (Score:5, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 08, 2005 @03:20PM (#13015806)
    old news [nih.gov]

    1: Planta Med. 1985 Dec;(6):538-9. Related Articles, Links Inhibition of tumour growth in vitro by bromelain, an extract of the pineapple plant (Ananas comosus). Taussig SJ, Szekerczes J, Batkin S. PMID: 4095199 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE]
    1985.
    At least it's not a dupe.

    • Re:old news (Score:5, Funny)

      by The_Mystic_For_Real ( 766020 ) on Friday July 08, 2005 @03:35PM (#13015959)
      The news isn't the breakthrough, the news is that science is being done in Australia. No more 'Gator Studies' majors there anymore I guess.

    • Re:old news (Score:3, Informative)

      by carlcub ( 843533 )
      Sure, in 1985, they knew that bromelaine would suppress tumor growth. I don't think they had identified the particular molecules that were responsible, though, which is what will lead to future viable treatments. It's not like you can inject pineapple extract into a living patient.
    • The supplement people advertise it as good for digestion rather than as a substance which helps fight cancer though.

      It's interesting how much scientific evidence there is now for the medical effects of what are basically just food supplements. I started looking into this stuff when my finger joints began aching after 10 years worth of typing for 8 hours a day. (Sorted BTW)

      e.g. The following all have scientific studies backing up the claims.

      Glucosamine and chondroitin helps fight arthiritis, there's anima

  • Hopefully... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by rwven ( 663186 ) on Friday July 08, 2005 @03:21PM (#13015821)
    I just hope these don't fade into the background as a lot of these types of things do. i think the world is ready for some cures...

  • I dunno... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by vykor ( 700819 ) on Friday July 08, 2005 @03:21PM (#13015823)
    Maybe I'm getting jaded these days, but it seems that every other week we have an announcement about a revolutionary breakthrough that's going to cure all these terminal conditions. And yet, we don't really seem to see masses of cancer patients getting cured outside these laboratory studies, in the way that antibiotics swept away most bacterial illnesses. Survival rates are up, sure, but most people are still dying and these conditions are still considered more or less terminal. Are the Powers That Be simply sitting on a bunch of cures, or do these things never turn out to be as promising as they were in experimental trials?
    • Antibiotics were invented before the FDA and the 10 year process of testing medicine before making it available. That's why you hear about something and it fades away.
    • That's a very good question.

      I remember this story [slashdot.org] on slashydot a while back that got me all excited telling my co-workers and anyone on the street that would listen.

      Of course, they will be starting human testing soon. so let's just hope the reason we don't see these treaments used on people sooner is simply a result of the beaurucratic slowdowns of groups like the USA's FDA.

      (of course, it's unwise to just start handing out treatments like they are popsicles without testing - but sometimes 5 years before

    • Re:I dunno... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Otter ( 3800 ) on Friday July 08, 2005 @03:34PM (#13015947) Journal
      Are the Powers That Be simply sitting on a bunch of cures...

      Yeah, that's it. We're spending billions of dollars on research to find cures and not sell them. Then when patients die, we burglarize their homes during the funeral. Profit!

      Look. Killing certain human cells while not killing all the rest of the cells is hard. It's a lot harder than killing a foreign pathogen without killing the human, which is already a lot harder than, say, rebooting a server or modifying a Perl script.

      ...or do these things never turn out to be as promising as they were in experimental trials?

      Also, please note that the cancer treatment here hasn't been in human trials. (The AIDS treatment has.) It hasn't even been in animals yet. Will it fail to be as promising as the hyperventilating press release makes out? There's a 99.9999% chance that it will.

    • Re:I dunno... (Score:2, Informative)

      by CornfedPig ( 181199 )
      The path from interesting research to safe, efficacious therapy is a long funnel with a verrrrrry narrow outlet. Many things that look interesting in vitro don't work in animal models (rats, dogs, etc.), much less people -- there's a lot more going on in a living body than in a petri dish, so even compounds that show promise early on can disappoint later. I was a venture investor in biotechnology companies for nearly nine years; one of our most promising portfolio companies had a drug candidate blow up in

    • Re:I dunno... (Score:5, Informative)

      by ebuck ( 585470 ) on Friday July 08, 2005 @04:02PM (#13016165)
      Perhaps it's a fundamental flaw in news reporting and how it rarely interacts well with scientific researchers that explain your jaded state.

      For a number of years, I worked in biological research, and twice I had the (dis)pleasure of interacting with reporters.

      If you tell them there is an observed improvement in 15% of all cases, then it's a cure. If you tell them there is a statistical corelation, then it "causes". If you tell them about the science, they will latch onto the most trivial detail and make it the entire point of your research effort.

      It's because most Science doesn't make good news. Good news (at least as it seems to be presented these days) gives the audience the aura of understanding without any actual understanding. In other words, good news asks the audience to learn almost nothing, but be entertained nonetheless.

      To prove my point, cancer is the misbehavior of the patient's own cells, yet nearly everyone refers to it as an item that is "caught" like a transmittable disease, and "cured" like a bacterial infection. Non-scientists rarely differentiate between the reasons why our cells misbehave, instead they concentrate on where the misbehaving cells are located. Finally, people tend to totally ignore the effects of known carcinogens because they have been bombared with so much bad news that started off as:

      When rats eat a diet of 80% fat, they have a 12% higher risk of contracting a cancer over a 3 year lifespan, 40% of those cases are self-arresting producing only benign tumors.

      becomes:

      Scientists find that diets high in fat significantly increase the risk of cancer. People who eat pizza, french-fries, and mayonnaise are at risk, and are 60% more likely to die. So it's time to stock up on those veggies.

      No mention that it's rats, not people. No mention that it's a lifetime diet of 80% fat. No mention that it only affects 12% of the rat population studied. No mention that 60% of the affected die, leading to an increase of mortailty of only 8% or so.

      Sometimes (just like in my example) they do it so badly that they have internal logical errors in their own reporting. 60% more likely to die (as opposed to 100% certainty that we will eventually die).

      So be skeptical, but please don't be skeptical of the science, unless you are one of the few people who actually bother to read the publications without the mind-numbing news filter placed on top of it.

    • Re:I dunno... (Score:3, Informative)

      by Dread_ed ( 260158 )
      "And yet, we don't really seem to see masses of cancer patients getting cured outside these laboratory studies"

      Many more people are being helped each year than the last. Unfortunately, new ideas are sometimes deadends that end up helping no one or having such bad effects that they are worse than the disease. Other treatments are so narrow in their aplication that you have to have certain kind of cancer for it to be expected to work. Progress is being made though, more and more each year.

      Case in point:

  • I love "almost no side effects"... (Score:5, Funny)

    by JargonScott ( 258797 ) on Friday July 08, 2005 @03:25PM (#13015862)
    That's such a great cover. I wonder what the "almost no" side effects are, like "all life as you know it stopping instantaneously and every molecule in your body exploding at the speed of light".
    • Important safety tip. Thanks, Egon.
    • May cause drowsiness, stomach ache, dizziness, uncontrollable movements of the mouth, tongue, cheeks, jaw, arms, or legs; fever; muscle rigidity; sweating; irregular pulse; or fast or irregular heartbeats. Avoid exposure to sunlight or UV rays. Use caution in hot weather and during exercise. Drink plenty of fluids. Use caution when driving, operating machinery, or performing other hazardous activities. Some patients have experienced depression (including feelings of sadness, irritability, unusual tire
    • I think "almost no side effects" in this case is about the equivalent effect of taking sugar pills.

      Well, a lot of sugar pills.

      About 890,450 sugar pills (appx. 80 lbs 7 oz), to be exact.

      Taken rapidly, with no water.

      Over the span of approximately 3 minutes 12 seconds.

      It's not pretty, sort of like an explosion from within.

  • Skepticism is in order (Score:2, Interesting)

    by jvagner ( 104817 )
    Anyone interested in AIDS science, who wonders why HIV is so misunderstood, would do well to start here and read a bit:

    http://aliveandwell.org/ [aliveandwell.org]

    • Re:Skepticism is in order (Score:5, Informative)

      by cbnewman ( 106449 ) on Friday July 08, 2005 @03:52PM (#13016094)
      yikes. having personally seen the effects of HIV infection and AIDS in people who subscribe to the AIDS Denialist school of thought, i felt compelled to reply to this posting.

      bottom line:

      1. CD4+ T-lymhocyte counts and HIV viral loads have been negatively and positively (respectively) correlated with survival in virtually every patient population ever studied.

      2.highly active anti-retroviral therapy (HAART) has been shown to significantly reduce mortality in HIV-infected individuals.

      we practice evidence-based medicine in the united states. you can try to poke holes in the virology if you want to (i'm not a virologist) but you can't argue with epidemiology.

      the theory that HIV is the causative pathogen in AIDS has not been disproven in any peer-reviewed publication that i have ever seen.

      we know how to treat these patients and turn AIDS into a chronic rather than a fatal illness.

      here [nih.gov] is a more complete resource on the debate.

  • Pineapple molecules (Score:4, Funny)

    by crimoid ( 27373 ) on Friday July 08, 2005 @03:27PM (#13015890)
    "pineapple molecules"

    Pineapples have molecules of their own?

  • AIDS is not a virus (Score:2, Informative)

    by mikeormike ( 632517 )
    "AIDS virus"? AIDS is not a virus

    HIV - Human Immunodeficiency Virus
    AIDS - Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hiv [wikipedia.org]
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AIDS [wikipedia.org]

    • Re:AIDS is not a virus (Score:5, Insightful)

      by geon ( 7807 ) on Friday July 08, 2005 @04:06PM (#13016196)
      So, I guess the flu virus ain't a virus either, under the reasoning you exhibit above?

      AIDS is not a virus, but "AIDS virus" simply means "the virus that causes AIDS", just as "flu virus" means "the virus that causes the flu". Of course, the actual _name_ of the "AIDS virus" is HIV.

      The person writing the phrase "AIDS virus" knows what he means, as does everyone reading the phrase. There's not even anything misleading about it: AIDS referes to a syndrome which is caused by infection by HIV, and the phrase AIDS virus is just a reference to human immunodeficiency virus - nothing misleading about it. While I would prefer that someone refer to HIV as simply HIV, calling it the AIDS virus is not wrong.

      "AIDS vaccine" is slightly misleading, for the reason you give, but it is also a case of everyone involved knowing precisely what is meant, and no actual confusion is likely to result.

      +5 informative my arse. The above is not unlike complaining about the usage of who versus whom in some random sentence.

      (This post brought to you by a lack of coffee and a distaste for grammar fascism and related disorders.)

  • If we're going to express our support for getting this research funded do we all have to wear little paper umbrellas on our lapels?

  • Aids Vaccination? (Score:3, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 08, 2005 @03:34PM (#13015955)
    Bad news for Trojan good news for Hasboro.
  • shares of Dole [dole.com] will skyrocket on this.

  • Double Benefit (Score:3, Funny)

    by Foolomon ( 855512 ) on Friday July 08, 2005 @03:51PM (#13016085) Homepage
    Not only does it attack cancer, but by drinking pineapple juice I can taste better too!

    I wonder how my imaginary girlfriend will feel about this...

  • >if it succeeds it will seek a commercial partner to develop a drug that could be used in human clinical trials.

    What they are saying is, "Unless we find a patentable and highly profitable way to secure this discovery, We won't bother."

    I welcome the return of more natural remedies. These drug companies aren't happy until they turn a natural remedy into something with side effects.
  • This just in: SpongeBob is celebrating quietly with Tinky Winky at his home in Bikini Bottom.

  • In the Petri dish, it's very simple (Score:4, Insightful)

    by paiute ( 550198 ) on Friday July 08, 2005 @04:04PM (#13016182)
    Back in the day, when one wrote a NSF grant proposal to fund the isolation, identification and synthesis of natural product, one always included prominently the fact that in vitro - in a Petri dish, the desired compound killed cancer cells. Hey presto - now it's an NIH grant proposal as well. The keywords antitumor, anticancer, etc. in the title were magic.

    Of course, these never became actual medicines. One realized over time that a sledgehammer will kill cancer cells in a Petri dish. As will a stick of dynamite or a teaspoonful of sodium cyanide or just driving over it with a Buick.

    Once you take into account that human biological system is slightly more complex than the Petri dish system, you will be less excited by the breathless prose of headline writers.

  • C'mon folks, get real (Score:5, Interesting)

    by yeastbeast ( 553311 ) on Friday July 08, 2005 @04:08PM (#13016219)
    As a biomedical researcher who has worked on cancer mechanisms in the past, I speak with some authority: these "breakthroughs" are a load of hooey. The popular press really loves it when some dinky little research group at Bumblefuck U. discovers a modest effect on cancer cells, HIV, etc. by some commonplace natural molecule. We've heard it about pineapples, green tea, broccoli, red wine, you name it. Usually these studies are conducted under extremely artificial conditions using tiny sample sizes and ambiguous assays. To be cynical, if researchers want to get a positive result, they can usually contrive some experimental condition where they'll observe said result. I read Slashdot for interesting technology items but I have been very disappointed with the caliber of the biomedical coverage. There have been a number of stunning discoveries over the last few years (two that leap to mind are microRNA-mediated viral immunity and gene regulation or epigenetic memory in plants) that never made it to Slashdot because they require more than a high school level education in biology to appreciate. Evidently, mod points don't go to people with an advanced knowledge of biology. How would you feel if all of tech stories were press releases from Microsoft?

  • Ouch (Score:3, Funny)

    by DrKyle ( 818035 ) on Friday July 08, 2005 @04:57PM (#13016652)
    I don't know how popular those pineapple suppositories are going to be.....

  • Supplements (Score:4, Interesting)

    by OverCode@work ( 196386 ) <[moc.liamg] [ta] [edocrevo]> on Friday July 08, 2005 @05:11PM (#13016749) Homepage
    I'm going to go buy some of the pineapple extract (bromelain) tonight and start taking it daily.

    I have a bad case of melanoma (stage 4), and while there's still some hope in traditional treatments and clinical trials, I need every advantage I can get. If bromelain slows the growth of the tumors even a little, it's a huge help in combination with the other things I'm taking. And if it doesn't help, it probably won't do any harm. It's just natural pineapple extract, and it's been consumed for years.

    I'm taking artemisinin (sweet wormwood extract) for similar reasons, though I do have to be careful with my dose of that because it's somewhat hard on the liver. I'm also waiting for an order of Vitamin B17 (amygdalin/laetrile) to arrive. The latter was somewhat hard to track down because of a stink the FDA raised about it a few years ago.

    Dietary supplements alone won't cure me, but they just might help, and as such it would be ridiculous for me not to try them.

    -John

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