13-Year-Old Finds Fungus Deadly To AIDS Patients Growing On Trees 134
An anonymous reader writes Researchers have pinpointed the environmental source of fungal infections that have been sickening HIV/AIDS patients in Southern California for decades. It literally grows on trees. The discovery is based on the science project of a 13-year-old girl, who spent the summer gathering soil and tree samples from areas around Los Angeles hardest hit by infections of the fungus named Cryptococcus gattii.
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Proof that God hates tree-huggers.
Wonderful title (Score:4, Funny)
I did'nt know there were AIDS patients growing on trees...
Huh? (Score:5, Funny)
AIDS patients grow on trees now?
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All of California, west of the coast range is the land of fruits, nuts and flakes.
The rest is pretty normal.
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No. it must be 13 year-olds that grow on trees.
The Tools of Science (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:The Tools of Science (Score:5, Informative)
As great as that sounds, it's actually not the case here. The article states that the girl's father is an infectious disease researcher at UCLA and she was sending the samples to a lab at Duke to be DNA-sequenced. It seems like most of what she did was collect samples of the fungus for her father - an interesting summer project, but not exactly hard science.
Re:The Tools of Science (Score:5, Insightful)
Tenured professors at universities get their names on papers for less work than that.
Re:The Tools of Science (Score:5, Informative)
So why didn't the hard scientists already know where the fungus was coming from?
That's right, because they didn't do the science. The girl in TFA did.
Re:The Tools of Science (Score:4, Informative)
The student sampled 109 swabs of more than 30 tree species and 58 soil samples, grew and isolated the Cryptococcus fungus and then sent those specimens to Springer at Duke. Springer DNA-sequenced the samples from California and compared the sequences to those obtained from HIV/AIDS patients with C. gattii infections.
Oh look, the "hard scientists" actually did the science.
Dukeâ(TM)s chairman of Molecular Genetics and Microbiology, Joseph Heitman M.D., was contacted by longtime collaborator and UCLA infectious disease specialist Scott Filler, M.D., whose daughter Elan was looking for a project to work on during her summer break. They decided it would be fun to send her out in search of fungi living in the greater Los Angeles area.
The girl didn't figure out where the fungus was coming from, nor did she even come up with the idea to sample fungus herself. The scientists knew it was coming from somewhere in the environment and, since they had an offer of help collecting samples, allowed the student to assist them.
The girl did not do the science. She just assisted the scientists with the manual labor.
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You sound bitter.
Re:The Tools of Science (Score:5, Funny)
The girl did not do the science. She just assisted the scientists with the manual labor.
So she's, what, a grad student?
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Science is proper data collection, too. She did science.
Don't get me wrong, GP does seem to have a hate going for scientists -- Maybe there's an innocent reason; maybe they've got a bad case of the Mondays, or maybe they're just cromag antisci doofuses -- It sure seems like half the stuff that spins people up boils down to simple-minded people getting everything deconstructed and predigested down to shittily-written innacurate morality plays and 'ooga booga' sorts of us-vs-them scary narratives. One commo
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Or just pointing out that the girl did science and (in the same sense as saying Sir Issac Newton did not discover radium) the other scientists didn't do that particular science.
Re:The Tools of Science (Score:5, Insightful)
Since when is collecting samples and cataloging them not hard science? Not particularly difficult, but most definitely hard science.
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Since when is collecting samples and cataloging them not hard science? Not particularly difficult, but most definitely hard science.
It is part of hard science, but it's the technician part. The scientist part is figuring out what problem to address, thinking of hypotheses to test, designing a methodology to test the hypotheses, and then executing the experiment and analyzing the gathered data.
Finding a kid who has executed some scientific project is not rare. However, finding a kid who has done that without having the problem set up or at least directly motivated by a mentor (often a parent) is rare. Furthermore, it's even more rare
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As great as that sounds, it's actually not the case here. The article states that the girl's father is an infectious disease researcher at UCLA and she was sending the samples to a lab at Duke to be DNA-sequenced. It seems like most of what she did was collect samples of the fungus for her father - an interesting summer project, but not exactly hard science.
That's pretty common. Your dad helps you with your science project.
There's nothing wrong with that. It's actually a good thing. If you own a restaurant, you'd let your kid work there over the summer. If you're a medical researcher, you'd give your kid a little useful project to do over the summer.
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Did nobody at all think to go look for it before this 13 year old girl? Seriously?
Re: The Tools of Science (Score:5, Interesting)
Because honestly no one in medicine cares. There's not just one single environmental source of Cryptococcus, pigeons for example are known carriers. Getting rid of these trees is not going to prevent Cryptococcus infections anytime soon. What will prevent them is getting the HIV in the infected properly treated on a combination antiviral regimen so their own immune system can prevent the infection in the first place.
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Healthy people catch this to. My father is an example.
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pigeons for example are known carriers
All the more reason to get rid of these rats with wings.
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It's called Montessori School, and it's wonderful.
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Yes it is. I sent my daughter to an MS. It was a drain at the time but worth every penny. An aside - she now teaches mid-school physics and physical sciences with an elective in robotics. She's in heaven.
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Incorrect. She used her father's influence to get a position collecting samples. She was responsible for collecting the samples and sending them for analysis. After DNA sequencing, the results were compared against the profile of an AIDS patient and then sent back to her.
From the article..."She was surprised to find that specimens from three of the tree species were genetically almost indistinguishable from the patient specimens.".
That was several years ago. Since her initial findings, the researchers (
It's a right-wing government conspiracy! (Score:4, Funny)
2) Disseminate a fungus which grows on trees so we can target those left-wing tree-huggers. Check.
3) ???
4) Profit!!!
Damnit - I forgot the part where we nuke the whales. Oh, well - nothing's perfect.
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Damnit - I forgot the part where we nuke the whales.
Better to it from orbit. It's the only way to be sure.
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Missleading title (Score:2, Redundant)
I have not seen any AIDS patients growing on trees so this should not be an issue. :-)
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They've all already died from the fungus.
Terrible title... (Score:1)
How many AIDS patients grow on trees?
The rhyming tree (Score:1)
There's a fungus among us.
Fungus (Score:2)
Not just AIDS patients and not just in CA (Score:5, Informative)
My father in the mid-south had a 3 year long struggle with this infection. It has left him a completely different person (three tumors in his brain). This is a nasty disease that was previously sub-tropical and is making its way into North America. The treatment is really nasty.
Amphotericin B has terrible common side effects and the nurses had a nickname for it that was something like "Ampho the Terrible."
Flucytosine is also used and it has a dramatic effect on the mental state of the patient.
During the time my father was taking these medications he suffered kidney failure, massive weight loss, constant nausea and vomiting, poor impulse control (to the point that it was like he had no filter to stop him from saying or doing anything). I'm very glad my father is still alive but even two years removed he still is suffering the effects of this illness.
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I had something similar happen to me this year but the fungus was Blastomycosis instead. I was on ampoterrorist B daily for two months, the first month in a coma in ICU, I was lucky I tolerated it rather well. The blasto nearly killed me they told my wife there was only a 20% chance I would survive. I did suffer bad weight loss but I attribute that mainly to the disease, I lost 54 lbs total.
Umm. (Score:2)
Re:the cure for AIDS (Score:4, Insightful)
Yeah, it's people who have AIDS that spread it, not people with asymptomatic HIV, right?
I mean, I get that you're just trying to be funny by being a shitty person, but could you pretend to be a shitty person who also isn't completely ignorant?
Re:the cure for AIDS (Score:5, Insightful)
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You realize the huge fraction of HIV/AIDS in heterosexuals? This is not due to gays pretending to be straight to fit in, but because normal missionary style heterosexual sex can also transmit the virus.
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Yeah, that'll be my response to the next time that I choose to do something that clearly risks further spreading a pandemic that has killed millions, so my dick can feel good for a few minutes.
It's your fault, society. You should have pre-emptively done something about the consequences of my actions.
(Yeah yeah, "-1, Troll". Fire away at facts. FWIW, I don't primarily blame gays. I blame the heterosexual pre-murderers in Africa--regardless of skin color.)
Re:the cure for AIDS (Score:4, Insightful)
"our" [cdc.gov] methods have caused huge reductions in new infections. Your methods at work in places in subsaharan Africa(until recently at least) have led to ignorance, violence, and huge spikes in infections as people try to home remedy HIV away.
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Many Arab states are doing exactly as you suggest and claim to have no AIDs. Cuba is pretty close. We'll see how it turns out.
I'm predicting many unexplained deaths of 'lingering illness' (in the Arab world anyhow). They all use the prison definition of gay. Only the catchers are gay, the top fags are just normal Arabs.
Re:the cure for AIDS (Score:5, Insightful)
Assuming that society takes the moral hit and people buy into the concept by not hiding their infections from testing (basically society as a whole accepts self-sacrifice based on a test)...
Most infectious type of people are not discovered till it is too late. This is a very slow virus. You could be a carrier for months to years and be a vector without showing up positive in a test. Killing off an AIDS victim is kind of pointless, for the virus, the host is well past the diminishing returns curve. Even one that has tested positive for HIV.
Even if you do find and kill off every HIV patient, it won't kill off the virus. Its origins are from other mammals (this version being chimps). Unless you intend to kill everything that has this virus or a potential parent of it. At which point you would also start targeting other currently non-lethal immune system attacking viruses.
So the road above is fairly stupid, comes primarily from ignorance & fear, and in the end, doesn't work. If people don't commit to killing themselves based on a test, the above will actually make the HIV/AIDS situation worse as it will go underground.
The better solution is to let the people live and use them to find a cure. This way, we not only solve the current situation, but also similar mutations in the future. By letting people live, we have already discovered some folks who are immune to AIDS!
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Just for the record, this is not correct. While it is true that there is an eclipse period during which testing is not useful (as indeed, there is an eclipse period for any viral infection), for HIV that window is currently very small.
See:
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Oh shit, you mean there's gonna be something bad coming out of Scotland too? /sheep
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There is a lot of joking about sheep fucking in Scotland, but I don't think it's practiced much. And even if it is, it does not turn people into pure sheep only fuckers, who don't even get hard from a woman. Though there is such a thing as jaded, too much of women or too much pussy may make you lose your excitement over it after a while, and then something brand new and fresh and exciting, like sheep booty, may still get you excited, so it's all very complicated. Getting bored of the same old same old booty
Re: Nature is fighting against gays... (Score:1)
I got confused for a moment and thought I was browsing reddit.
Re: Nature is fighting against gays... (Score:1)
Bullshit. It's believed it infected humans because they *ate* the monkeys, you freak.
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There is no widespread practice of beastiality within the countries where HIV developed. Current operating hypothesis is that it came from improper animal handling procedures resulting in blood-to-blood contact between SIV-infected apes and ordinary humans, allowing the virus to jump hosts.
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There is no widespread practice of beastiality within the countries where HIV developed. Current operating hypothesis is that it came from improper animal handling procedures resulting in blood-to-blood contact between SIV-infected apes and ordinary humans, allowing the virus to jump hosts.
It doesn't have to be widespread. All it takes is one instance.
Current operating hypothesis is that it came from improper animal handling procedures resulting in blood-to-blood contact between SIV-infected apes and ordinary humans, allowing the virus to jump hosts.
Probably somebody cut themselves while butchering infected bush meat. Although, such accidents must have happened numerous times throughout history. Why is HIV only around now?
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Probably somebody cut themselves while butchering infected bush meat. Although, such accidents must have happened numerous times throughout history. Why is HIV only around now?
Because the people who got it were only traveling around the world on airplanes now.
Also because it spread through gay anal sex and IV drugs.
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always be careful with bush meat.
one wrong move, and a portion of your paycheck will be commandeered for 18 years.
Re: Nature is fighting against gays... (Score:1)
Seems gays made their own mess by causing AIDS to be identified with homosexuality. It took a kid dying of AIDS (Ryan White) to get the public to realize that it wasn't just a gay disease. Some asshats had even beat the kid to death because they assumed that he had to be gay.
It is so sad that the general public can be so stupid. Simple logic says that AIDS has nothing to do with homosexuality. Consider that AIDS is a crossover virus from apes. That means that a gay disease was prevalent among apes. Th
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Incidentally, "improper animal handling procedures resulting in blood-to-blood contact" may include chopping up an infected animal for dinner (as most people envisage it), or digging bits of splattered bat out of the radiator of your car or from your clothing after the bat has become road kill. Which is ce
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Because the incurable disease comes after the infectious period begins, numbnuts.
I'm sure you have magic moron powers that will let you detect people infected with HIV who don't yet have AIDS, but the rest of us depend on science and medicine to solve health problems.
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Oh, right, so your plan is to implement the (unreliable, which you'd know if you weren't a moron) HIV test across the entire population, in order to commit mass murder for the high crime of having caught a disease.
Please kill yourself next time you catch a cold.
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You can test for HIV, but the patient becomes a vector for infection prior to the test working.
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For other STDs, public health authorities engage in contract tracking. But AIDs has lobbiests. If the syphilitic can't get it together to buy a congress critter or two, why is that AIDs patient's problem?
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Re:Aids not the problem (Score:5, Informative)
We have spent a ton of money on prevent education and detection. And it has done a lot of good.
Infections are way down.
http://www.cdc.gov/nchhstp/new... [cdc.gov]
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Sorry but your mom was begging for it, and without protection. So there you are.
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IDGAF about burgers either. I'm a halfass vegetarian, meaning I eat burgers sometimes, but most of the time, not. Burgers are too much of a luxury item, I prefer frying my own rice instead, it's pretty cheap. A whole lot of the world survives on a cup of rice a day, and I'm blessed that I get many cups a day, and can add things like carrots and spices. In Indonesia - or old Dutch Indies colonies - , for instance, a country that usually does not show up on the spotlight of top population charts like China, I
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Hey, at least the AIDS infected homos are not consuming welfare money with their sexual exuberance, the rest of us don't have to pay for them not being able to keep their dicks out of each other's pants.
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The article hinted at containing and controlling the pathogen and the ecosystem. IMO a wholesale waste of effort for a few people who, really are more of a symptom of our medicine and cultural practices. No they don't deserve to die, and yes it's good they know not to go to California, but that is not how the article nor the slashdot summary was spun.
Re:English isn't my native language, but... (Score:5, Interesting)
English is a naturally ambiguous language, and there are two gramatically correct parsings of that headline.
It's a bit like "fruit flies like a banana"
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Only two? I think that grammatically any of the three nouns could be the one that's growing on trees. The 13-year-old growing on trees is even more semantically problematic than the AIDS patients.
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Subject verb agreement kills that parsing.
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What an odd thing to say. It's not any more or less ambiguous than almost any other language.
You do, however, need to apply a modicum of effort to make sure that whatever word slop you just barfed on the page is readable to others. Slashdot "editors" notoriously refuse to do so, though.
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Now you've got the trees being deadly.
A fungus deadly to AIDS patients was found by a 13-year-old to be growing on trees.
The passive voice has it's uses.
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I am an African American (not by choice)
Really? Not by choice? Weird. Where I live, we all get to choose our skincolor right up to our birthdate. After that it's set in stone, though. But thanks for clearing that up for me. Otherwise I'd have thought you'd volunteered or something.
Oh, and by the way? Get help. You obviously cought Trollitis from a tree that snuggled up close.