Scientists Image an HIV Particle Being Born

FiReaNGeL alerts us to a huge development in virology and microscopy: by using a specialized microscope that only illuminates a cell's surface, scientists at Rockefeller University have watched, in real time, hundreds of thousands of molecules coming together in a living cell to form a single particle of HIV-1. A video is available on Rockefeller's front page. "By zeroing in at the cell's surface, the team became the first to document the time it takes for each HIV particle, or virion, to assemble: five to six minutes. 'At first, we had no idea whether it would take milliseconds or hours,' says Jouvenet. 'We just didn't know.' 'This is the first time anyone has seen a virus particle being born,' says Bieniasz, who is an associate professor and head of the Laboratory of Retrovirology at Rockefeller and a scientist at the Aaron Diamond AIDS Research Center. 'Not just HIV,' he clarifies, 'any virus.'"

Re:Only one problem

[Anonymous Coward]

It took Reagan until 1987 to give his first speech on AIDS. Neither he nor Nancy gave a shit about the disease, but they could probably give a dissertation about Jelly Bellies. It was just the gay disease and it didn't affect normal people. Normal people care about Jelly Bellies and not gay cancer. It wasn't until 'normal' people started getting the disease that he allowed decent emergency funding for it. Fuck Reagan. Half a million Americans are dead due to his homophobia.

Re:Only one problem

[aproposofwhat]

Which killed more AIDS or Communism?

I'm sure I could hazard a guess as to the annual death rates caused by the two factors - as of 1997, it was estimated that Communism had caused 97 million deaths - so around 1 million per year on average.There's not much Communism around anymore, so we'll take 1 million per year as a reasonable figure.

AIDS currently kills about 2.1 million [avert.org] people a year (as of 2007). If AIDS carries on for another 30 years, it will overtake Communism and then some.

So who's the partisan hack now, fuckwit?