Gene Found In Black Death Survivors Stops HIV 477
WindozeSux writes "According to research done by Dr. Stephen O'Brien, a mutated gene known as delta 32 found in Black Death survivor descendants, stops HIV in its tracks. In order to be immune both parents have to have the delta 32 gene. From the Article: 'In 1996, research showed that delta 32 prevents HIV from entering human cells and infecting the body. O'Brien thought this principle could be applied to the plague bacteria, which affects the body in a similar manner. To determine whether the Eyam plague survivors may have carried delta 32, O'Brien tested the DNA of their modern-day descendents...'"
Probably as close as we'll get... (Score:3, Insightful)
quite interesting (Score:5, Insightful)
we'll have fun galore when that happens. a true righteous moral civil war.
Re:Probably as close as we'll get... (Score:5, Insightful)
AIDS so far is a social disease, which means certain behaviors minimize risk and certain behaviors maximize risk; unlike, say, the flu, which is both airborne, transmitted by contact, and through animals.
So... (Score:5, Insightful)
Probably as close as we'll get...Abstenance. (Score:2, Insightful)
Wow! Guess that whole abstenance thing didn't work out. How about not sharing needles? Or screening blood donations. Maybe what we really mean is that we don't have a solution to AIDS that still allows us to engage in those destructive behaviours we all enjoy.
Things like this put an interesting spin on... (Score:3, Insightful)
The things that we are doing through science for money is going to become a wall that will stop us in the future, or can. Right now, it is unknown if our vegetable and foodstuffs are actually as valuable to the human body as they are supposed to be. I'm not talking about hamburgers, but raw vegetables. Pesticides and genetic modifications of crops is changing how they are used by the body.
Its not improbable that scientists could insert the immunity genes via foodstuffs in the near future, rather like making us all part of a super race... or rather the benefactors of the genetic makeup of superhumans. This process, in the course of history, has always wiped much of the world clean of the weaker specimens, leaving those with the stronger mutations to live on. That in turn drags down the rest of the population as genetic weakness is passed on.
This is a reasonable idea, just give the good genes to everyone.... but morally, that is the wrong thing to do. It will turn out that only those with an extra $150k will get the therapy... no insurance will cover it, 3rd world citizens can't buy it, and its not so different than what some of Hitler's folks were attempting to do (at least in some respects)
So, will it be superhumans or ginormous global conglomerates that run the future earth?
Re:Probably as close as we'll get... (Score:2, Insightful)
No, absolutely not! You cannot just leave hundreds of millions of Africans to die of AIDS without helping. We must not use "natural selection" (a.k.a. genocide) to solve our problems. These are human beings, just as much your own family are human beings, and we are all kin.
Maybe AIDS will never be eradicated, but it can be fought very effectively with just a few steps:
1. Carefully sanitize anything that comes into contact with blood, semen or other bodily fluids.
2. Don't have extramarital sex.
3. If you do have extramarital sex, be sure wear a good condom.
Unfortunately, the meaningless fighting over the relative importance of steps #2 and #3 have made AIDS prevention into a joke.
Re:Probably as close as we'll get...Abstenance. (Score:-1, Insightful)
Re:Probably as close as we'll get... (Score:5, Insightful)
1) Curtail sexual promiscuity
2) Practice protected sex
3) Encourage long term monogamy
All three of those things will render AIDS a harmless disease for 99% of the uninfected population.
A cure is necessary, of course, for the survival of the remaining infected population.
Comment removed (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Uh, not news? (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Things like this put an interesting spin on... (Score:3, Insightful)
Not to mention it's not a good idea to play with the gene pool on a global basis. A seemingly beneficial genetic fix might turn out to have unintended bad consequences that we don't realize until perhaps generations later. Imagine if we toyed with our genes to make the whole population AIDS-immune, and a few years later it turns out that this change made us highly susceptible to some other drastic and unpredictable issue. Imagine that the new issue quickly wiped virtually everyone who had the modification. This doesn't apply just to gene therapy (which would be almost impossible to do uniformly to every human alive on the planet), but also to unnatural genetic selection at birth. Gattaca-style screening to promote certain genes and discourage others could the same effect - tending over time to make the whole population a genetic monoculture (at least in the case of a few important genes, which might be all it takes to get us wiped out).
Don't get me wrong, I think that genetic experimentation and modification are the only way forward for the human race in the long run. Natural selection and evolution simply move too slowly to give us a high enough probability of truly long-term survival, and the era is upon us now where we should be taking the reigns from mother nature and directing ourselves towards a new future. But I think it is important that the future of gene-control happen in a distributed, loosely-controlled, highly-localized and private fashion. In that way, each seemingly positive genetic decision we make (say, to turn on a certain normally dormant gene in newborns and gain 30% more intelligence on average) will probably only be made to a small portion of the population initially, and spread slowly over the course of generations based on observation of it's true long term worth and of course a form of natural selection whereby those that have it tend to succeed in human society. That way if it is found that the new intelligence gene mod turns out to make us more succeptable to some new form of mad cow disease, we won't be at risk of losing such a huge portion of our population while we correct that little problem.
the problem with your attitude (Score:3, Insightful)
do you see the parallel between their attitude and their attitude yet? the point is very simple: people were blaming each other, for what a virus does. no one is to blame for aids, no matter what they do, seriously, that's the most moral and honest and intelligent and wise position you can take on aids and human behavior. i'm 100% serious!
the point is to fight the virus, not fight other people (and, yes, your atittude promotes blaming people rather than the disease). you're whole "every body stop having risky sex" line is very pat, simple, and convenient. and absolutely useless against fighting aids. people have risky sex: all races, all classes, all types of moral upbringing, all attitutes.
need i demonstrate some recent trips from memory of moral demagogues loudly spouting out about moral behavior and then breaking their own rules?:
1. william bennett, sage of american morality: degenerate gambler
2. rush limbaugh, voice of personal accountability: drug addict
3. jim bakker, great religous authority: adulterer
4. etc., etc.
closeted gays, sex addicts, adulterers... they would be the first to pat you on the back and go "here, here" and clap to your words and smile at what you say... and then what would they do in their bedroom? do you see your problem yet? your words have no value. it's just a big public mass exercise in "do as i say, not as i do" and no one takes it seriously, because everyone is a hypocrit when it comes to something as complex about human sexuality, including, and most prominently, about their own sexuality. so your attitude is great lip service, but it doesn't translate into reality.
please, wake up: human behavior is complex, it doesn't fit your simple prescriptions. you fight the VIRUS, you don't blame people at ALL. because you know who wins when we turn on each other and blame each other?
the virus wins
and do you know what you get when you blame people for their disease? ("you deserve it") a cold heartless existence. is this compassionate conservatism you are esousping here? (snicker)
yu are not the first to make blanket overriding statements about how humans SHOULD behave, without any wisdom about how people DO behave, and then just say "you get what you deserve". but this doesn't make you wise, nor moral. it makes you part of the problem.
please, when you say the words you say, do not for the slightest bit think you are a moral or intelligent person. to be so willfully or naively blind of real human behavior, THAT DOES NOT CHANGE, AND IS CONSTANT ACROSS ALL UPBRINGINGS, is ignorance at best, evil at worst.
yes: you and your atittude. ignorant, or evil. personal accountability is important in life. but when it comes to disease, the punishment you are saying is acceptable for something so natural as sex only makes you out to be heartless or blind.
Re:Plague and religion (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:One man's mutation (Score:3, Insightful)
And comparison with bacteria isn't fair...we reproduce at their level all the time, constantly. Your cells that is.
Sure, there's perhaps some "waste" given for example simply the amount of nuclear material...but it gives us so much.
There are things in which bacteria aren't very effective. Sense of sight, for example, is first out of many things I could mention here...
Re:Probably as close as we'll get... (Score:5, Insightful)
1. Sex is *not* primarily for producing children... you'll produce a sprog maybe a couple of times in your life. You'll normally have sex at least a few times more than that (well maybe your church won't let you, but most people will). Sex is *fun*. Enjoy it while you're young.
2. There are plenty of healthy well adjusted people who are the children of unmarried parents. There are plenty of screwed up dickheads that are the children of married parents. Get with the late 20th century please at least... marriage is just a contract - if you really can't stay with someone without that then maybe you've not really found the right person. Marriage does *not* guarantee a lifelong relationship - there's a 50% divorce rate... fuelled by people like you who think that a bit of paper is a free pass to lifelong bliss - two people working hard at a relationship can do, and you don't need a contract for that.
before we all get excited.. (Score:2, Insightful)
There is quite a few methods currently being researched that could cure HIV. It's not a done deal til HIV is actually cured in infected people right now.
Another possible method is:
Crocodile's Immune System Kills HIV [slashdot.org]
nope (Score:3, Insightful)
- siblings and their children
- children you may already have, and their children
- nephews, nieces, aunts, uncles, etc.
They share more of your DNA than some random person, so it counts. You could babysit your brother's grandkids so that both parents can support the family better. That counts.Re:Plague and religion (Score:3, Insightful)
Or maybe that as society became monogamous, more STDs evolved to keep the population down...
No, they were always there... we didn't always call them that (syphillis was confused with leprosee for a long time).
Promiscuity ensures more offspring -> greater survival. Monogomamy is an evolutionary dead end (humans are the only animals that seem to practice it).
Re:May I be the first... (Score:5, Insightful)
Idiots.
I feel like beating the editors with repeatedly with a cluebat. All the birds have *bird* flu. Not human flu. Humans are not birds. We do not have feathers, and cannot fly. Neither are we parrots. Which are also birds. Even dead parrots.
If/When the virus:
(a) jumps the species gap (which there's evidence it has done already a few times),
and (here's the kicker...) (b) the mutation can not only survive, but transfer to other human hosts (this hasn't happened yet) then there will be an issue.
Then it won't be bird flu any more. It'll be human flu.
Caveat to (b) - it may lose virulence in the tranfer, and end up just like all the other flu outbreaks that the press don't like to talk about because they're not scary enough, like 1967.
Oh, and (c) we know *just* a little bit more more about disease prevention than we did in 1918...
Re: Plague and religion (Score:5, Insightful)
Given that some of the oldest known religions practiced temple prostitution, I think your otherwise interesting speculation may be based on a false premise.
Re:Probably as close as we'll get... (Score:1, Insightful)
He said the child you *may* produce. Condoms have a 0.01% chance of not working and I think a lot of types of pill are higher than this. If you're being responsible, you should think about the "what if" of this happening, in which case you shouldn't take the risk unless you're willing to accept the consequences if the pair of you do conceive. As a result you should be willing to bring the child up together.
2. Nothing wrong with giving them the best chance possible though.
Re:Probably as close as we'll get... (Score:3, Insightful)
Marriage should be an indication of the love and commitment the interested parties have for one another, and agreement that should it break down things are handled amicably, and legal protection should that not happen. If you're religious then you can have it recognised in the church, synagogue, temple, mosque, wood, stone circle or what ever, but that is separate.
Have sex before hand if you want but like everything else, mind your manners. Be thoughtful, considerate, safe and use your common sense.
Re:Probably as close as we'll get... (Score:1, Insightful)
The fact that sex exsists primarily for reproduction is of no concern to me, especially when discussing having sex only after marriage (or are you suggesting at least a shotgun wedding?).
Re:Cure for HIV. . . (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Cure for HIV. . . (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Plague and religion (Score:2, Insightful)
And how's the empire doing these days?
Re:Cure for HIV. . . (Score:5, Insightful)
I agree with the AC who also replied to this saying "There is no 'above' in the evolutionary scale. There is only the dead and the living (-and reproducing)."
It might be beneficial against HIV, but what if it has side-effects?
For example, the gene that helps defend against malaria (and is prevelant amongst many of African origin) is the same gene that causes sickle-cell anaemia. The benefit probably outweighs the problem, but it shouldn't be assumed that there is "better", "worse", "above" and so on.
People tend to view these things in a very short-term manner, when evolution is a long-term game.
Re:Plague and religion (Score:1, Insightful)
The original article was really interesting as a more reasonable explanation for high HIV infection here in Africa. Black Death was a European epidemic. The surviving European population will have a higher proportion with this gene. Black Death didn't come to Africa, so we'll have the "average" proportion.
Yes, Aunty Maud, its natural selection.
Steve
Re:Cure for HIV. . . (Score:2, Insightful)
Re: Plague and religion (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:May I be the first... (Score:2, Insightful)