Gene Therapy Approach 'Completely' Protects Mice From HIV Infection 190
Pierre Bezukhov writes "Scientists from the California Institute of Technology have come up with a gene therapy approach that has proven effective in protecting mice (with humanized immune systems) against HIV infections. They used a genetically altered virus to infect muscles cells and deliver DNA codes of potent antibodies isolated from the blood of human HIV victims (abstract). The muscle cells then began to manufacture the antibodies in quantities that proved 'completely protective' against HIV infection. By contrast, traditional vaccines have not worked against HIV, as scientists have failed to find a molecule that induces the immune system to produce enough potent antibodies. The difficulties stem from the fact that HIV disguises some of its external structures from the antibodies."
How to conduct human trials (Score:5, Interesting)
How do you conduct a proper trial for HIV? "Here, this is either a drug that will work, won't work, or a placebo which works a surprising amount of time. At best you have a 50/50 shot of getting HIV" Who is going to participate in that trial?
Re:How to conduct human trials (Score:4, Interesting)
You'll never get a proper scientific trial. There are whole areas of medicine we only know because evil regimes like the Nazi Germany conducted experiments without care.
But you can certainly make a best effort. Inject 1000 random people with either drug, placebo...
They do whatever they do. They can engage in risky behavior. They can wear condoms. Whatever is. As an experiment, you just assume their behavior is randomly distributed among the 1000 people.
At the end of the trial, you call them back and see what percentage has AIDS/HIV.
If all those who received the drug don't have it, and SOME of the ones without it did have HIV/AIDS, then you can say there is a high probability the drug works.
As I said, statistically you just have to assume that behaviors were distributed evenly among the 1000 person sample.
If no one comes back with HIV/AIDS... by some miracle that 1000 person trial... everyone suddenly behaves nicely and stops having unprotected sex, no one gets raped... well then the experiment is a failure, but at least 1000 people are not living a good life... so it's a human success.
Re: (Score:2)
"There are whole areas of medicine we only know because evil regimes like the Nazi Germany conducted experiments without care."
Tragically that includes the US Government, three years _after_ it had beaten the evil Nazis:
"President Obama this afternoon spoke with Guatemalan President Alvaro Colom to “express his deep regret” and “extend an apology to all those infected” following the revelation that the U.S. Public Health Service conducted a study from 1946 to 1948 in which near 700 p
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
That is a very strange remark.
Re: (Score:2)
Scientific method, when people's behaviors are involved, has always been a touchy subject. There's a whole set of problems that you have to take into account, e.g. self-fulfilling prophecies and the Pigmalion Effect.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
As GGP said, just saying it's a test on HIV will definitely alter the results: they'll make people more cautious or promiscuous, blasting the test to hell. A double-blind test, and placebos, can't work in this scenario.
The only way to accurately test this is with a Mengele-style test (with the techniques you mentioned), with actual HIV injection on real humans. This is because we still have trouble finding reliable animal models for HIV infections.
Re: (Score:3)
Basic experiment design:
1) start large group of test subjects
2) randomly divide into two groups, one will receive placebo and the other the vaccine candidate
3) [double-blind] but you don't tell test subjects which they are receiving, nor the people administering the vaccines
4) let everybody carrying on as they have before. In a large group, whatever non-standard behaviour will be distributed more or less evenly across the two groups
5) wait a while
6) see which group has fewer cases of infection and wh
Re: (Score:2)
4) let everybody carrying on as they have before. In a large group, whatever non-standard behaviour will be distributed more or less evenly across the two groups
Those are your a prioris. The whole point I and scamper_22 are trying to convey: you must assume that non-standard behavior will be evenly distributed. And... why would you? Karl Popper has already worked on this issue: you can't expect people to carry on as before. If I say to you "I'm going to inject you something that may or may not protect you from HIV", I have tainted your behavior and can't expect you to act as you have before: maybe you'll be more aware and cautious, maybe you'll think you have a gre
Re: (Score:2)
Why would you not expect all of the participants to (statistically speaking) modify their behaviour in the same way? If the people who get the real anti-HIV drug modify, and the people who get the placebo modify then the chances are good that the modifications will be evenly spread with a large enough sample pool. If, given the modified behaviour, the HIV drug performs with statistically meaningful results then you have a positive result from the study.
Re: (Score:2)
yes. Especially what extreme cold/heat does to the human body.
Re: (Score:2)
Really, like what? Most of the items cited known from studies of accidental exposure cases and animal studies.
The Nazis were just pricks who assumed humans to be a special creation from animals, thus didn't think the animal research was relevant. Given the main intent of their research was to kill Jews, it is not surprising their 'studies' involved killing Jews.
It was studies of accident victims in Russia and studies in dogs which revealed why it is a person dies from the cold. Certain transmembrane ion
Re: (Score:3)
Both the Nazis and Japanese used prisoner populations to undertake medical studies, and not just for sake of cruel curiosity. The Nazis are known to have subjected prisoners to both heat and cold experiments. These were done to provide data on survivability for soldiers, and the cold studies were especially important to them because German armed forces faced harsh mountain conditions and the very real possibility of having to survive in the North Sea or the Atlantic if their ship was sunk or their plane w
Easy (Score:3)
You are thinking about proving it works. This won't be tested at first. What will be tested at first on humans whether the innoculation itself doesn't kill you. After that it is a matter of simple statistics. As long as the shot doesn't kill you, the rest don't matter. Simple record the patients success at not getting HIV versus non-innoculated patients.
They are NOT going to shoot up humans with AIDS just for a test. Well. Not officially anyway. This is the medical industry after all. Nazi's would gag.
Re:How to conduct human trials (Score:5, Informative)
There have already been trials. You give the treatment to one group of at-risk individuals and a placebo to another group. You make sure that they understand that they aren't to rely on this as a cure/certain protection. Then you follow them over the years and see what the infection rate is. If 30% of the control group is infected with HIV at the end and only 5% of the treatment group is infected, you've got a good result. If they are both about the same, your treatment doesn't work.
Re: (Score:3)
There have already been trials. You give the treatment to one group of at-risk individuals and a placebo to another group. You make sure that they understand that they aren't to rely on this as a cure/certain protection. Then you follow them over the years and see what the infection rate is. If 30% of the control group is infected with HIV at the end and only 5% of the treatment group is infected, you've got a good result. If they are both about the same, your treatment doesn't work.
Isn't it also acceptable under some circumstances to give one group the experimental treatment and to give another an existing treatment, and to measure how this experimental treatment works compared to existing alternatives?
Re: (Score:2)
It would be, but in this case there IS no existing treatment.
We have ways to stop people who have HIV from dying, but not a lot of ways to stop them from contracting HIV (aside from the obvious, of course).
Re: (Score:2)
This would not be the first time we developed a vaccine against a deadly disease.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
I don't think this could be called a vaccine. It's intent is not to stimulate the immune system, but rather to supplement it. And the cells generating the supplementation are muscle cells.
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
As I understand it, the way to do a trial with this is to try it in an area where AIDS infection/transmission is common. For instance, test it on a group of prostitutes who don't have AIDS. When you come back a few years later, you check to see if any of your group have acquired the disease, and how their infection rate compares to others in their cohort.
Also, it's not uncommon to consent to acquiring a disease in the name of research (though they're not typically the lethal variety). I have a c
Re: (Score:2)
You take a bunch of people who belong to a known group with a known average risk. Preferably high risk, because then you need fewer subjects. You give half the the treatment (it's not really a vaccine) and half the placebo. Then you followup and compare the infection rate in the treatment group with that of the placebo group and the known average infection rate.
But in this case they're using mice.
Re: (Score:2)
An alternative scenario is to conduct the trial in a high risk population, such as sex workers or people living in sub-Saharan Africa. If you treat enough people, there will be a portion who become
Re: (Score:3)
To do this in todays times... Guantanamo anyone?
Re:How to conduct human trials (Score:4, Informative)
Nah, we just have to find blind corners of human civilization that nobody cares about. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guatemala_syphilis_experiment [wikipedia.org] , http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuskegee_syphilis_experiment [wikipedia.org]
To do this in todays times... Guantanamo anyone?
Not too off the mark. Prior trials on HIV prevention have been done on high risk populations in Thailand and Botswana. And these are studies sponsored by the CDC, not a rogue evil scientist as with the Guatemala experiments (whom, it should be noted, had absolutely no oversight even though he was using US tax dollars as these checks weren't required back then).
http://www.cdc.gov/hiv/prep/resources/factsheets/pdf/prep.pdf [cdc.gov]
Overseas trials do bring up a whole host of ethical concerns (especially when dealing with populations that have little or no access to healthcare - making participation in a trial perhaps the only way to see a real doctor). This is a real issue because usually the control population gets "standard of care" which is very different in the US vs the developing world. What's even shadier is that there have been allegations of drug companies secretly hiring shady doctors in the third world to enroll patients in highly risky studies that would never be approved in the US, and the patients often don't even know they were in an experimental study, they thought they were getting a proven treatment.
At least, with the CDC trials, one can be assured that the participants are actually volunteers who gave explicit consent and had the risks explained to them (unlike those Guatemalan prisoners who had no choice), that the trial protocol passed review by external ethics boards both in the US and by the local governmental authority (again, unlike Guatemala where outside of a few prison officials the local gov't had no idea what was going on). Not that these are fool-proof checks in countries with unstable or nonexistent public health infrastructures and highly corrupt officials, but at least it's something.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
So, the trials for this are going down in San Francisco?
Can't Wait For The Peer Review (Score:2)
I wanna see some peer-review output. I hope I'm wrong, but this sounds too good to be true, like cold fusion or the like.
Maybe, though, I'm just getting skeptical in my old age...
But still, I hope I'm wrong.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
why would you want to produce a boatload of HIV antibodies after your years of promiscuous sexual activity are over?
Older people have sex too, and they are not strictly monogamous. HIV infections can also be dormant for long periods time, so a person who was promiscuous 10 years ago may find themselves presenting symptoms of HIV infection.
Re:Can't Wait For The Peer Review (Score:4, Interesting)
So muscle and heart cells are likely not getting the vector, nor would they be expressing antibodies. Similarly, your body wont continue to raise the antibody if the infection is gone (it will not be ad infinitum).
This is my understanding
Re: (Score:2)
Sounds like a lot of speculation based on a minimal amount of information. The less you know, the more you can make up. Rest assured, nobody is going to be injected with this stuff until we know more about it.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
Turning off Gene Therapy? (Score:5, Interesting)
The article expresses a concern that once the gene therapy is started it can't be turned off if the person has an allergic reaction to the antibodies. Maybe somebody more informed can explain why:
1) You couldn't test for an allergic reaction in advance of the gene therapy.
2) You couldn't just do more gene therapy to turn off your original gene therapy.
Re:Turning off Gene Therapy? (Score:5, Insightful)
1: Allergic reactions tend to develop over time. You may not be allergic at first, but as a result of constant exposure, you may become so over time. Antibodies are small and soluble enough that this isn't usually a problem, but with a non-self fC region, they can be. We've seen this occasionally with the purification tags used in many common biotherapeutics; if your immune system begins to recognize the tag (his-6 is common) from one therapeutic, any other biologic with the same tag will cause an allergic reaction. Note: this doesn't normally occur with antibody-based therapeutics since they can be efficiently purified without being tagged.
2: The thing about turning it off is that the off switch has to be hit in the same cells that are producing it; i.e. millions of separate sites. More gene therapy is unlikely to hit *all* of the same cells, and will potentially cause some unintended consequences in non-target cells. The solution is to use a molecular switch. If I were designing it, I'd flank the antibody promoter region and the transcription start site with loxP recognition sequences. Add a cre recombinase gene under the direction of an antibiotic-activated promoter. Basically this would allow you to reverse at least a portion of the gene therapy at will. Take an antibiotic and the affected cells would actually cut out the antibody producing region they introduced. Unfortunately, if you wanted to again have protection, you'd have to undergo the gene therapy again. You could do a similar setup using siRNA under a controlled promoter, but this scheme also has its drawbacks (repression of the transgene therapeutic would only be temporary - which could be better or worse depending on your goals). Anyway, whichever scheme you use will have to be introduced in conjunction with the original treatment; adding it afterwards won't work nearly as well due to the difficulty in getting the treatment to all of the affected cells.
MOD PARENT UP (Score:2)
Damn, you seem to be a smart mother fucker.
I'm curious though. In your example, you kill the gene therapy with antibiotics, like a permanent off switch.
Would it be possible to create gene therapy that is only active in the presence of some external chemical? Forgive my bad example, but could you make it so the gene therapy only activates in the presence of, say, aspirin? That way, after the gene therapy nothing happens, but once you begin an aspirin regimen it would activate, and if there was some allerg
Re: (Score:2)
Just for future thought, "smart" and "educated" are not the same nor always co-located.
MOD PARENT UP (Score:2)
I too think this should be ranked higher.
Re: (Score:2)
Someone who is more into biotech could probably do better than I could with this, but here goes...
1) You could. The problem is that the person wouldn't necessarily have been previously exposed to the antibody that would cause the reaction. Sensitization is a lot more likely once your body's been in contact with the stuff for a while. If someone had some sensitivity to the antibodies[1] before gene therapy even began, it's entirely possible that they've got bigger problems in front of them than getting vacci
Promising, but... (Score:4, Interesting)
Gene therapy is a preventive measure (Score:3)
And there are already much better ways to prevent getting infected with HIV.
Re:Gene therapy is a preventive measure (Score:4, Informative)
The reality is that a vaccine or cure for HIV is needed in order for the disease to be eradicated. There is no other way to solve this problem. You will never be able to convince millions (let alone billions) people to be monogamous and to wait until marriage.
Re: (Score:2)
Now even if we only discuss the practical side of the problem, I would say convincing millions is still more plausible then treating said millions with ridiculosly expensive gene therapy every few years.
Re: (Score:2)
In some countries, that is more plausible. But in Asia and Africa, where the growth of AIDS is much more prevalent and distrust of drug companies even higher than it is in some Western countries, it's proven to be nearly impossible. There's even a widespread belief in Africa that having sex with a virgin will cure a man of AIDS. This results in a great deal of rape, and when a man is not cured, he often believes that the woman (or very often the young girl) that he raped was not a true virgin and goes lo
Re: (Score:2)
condoms substantially reduce the pleasure men feel while having sex (and I even know some women who do not like the feeling of a condom).
I never understood why so many people believe this. Sex is so much more than "penis in vagina"; there's a lot more to kiss, touch, grope, and caress. With a condom it's like 90% as good as without a condom. 90% of awesome is still pretty awesome.
Re: (Score:2)
I never understood why so many people believe this.
Perhaps you lack points of comparison? Perhaps you just have different preferences? Perhaps you use some super-awesome brand of condoms (if so, I am going to demand that you tell me which)?
For me, wearing a condom during sex is like putting seran wrap on my tongue while I am eating.
Re: (Score:2)
Don't get me wrong, I have a long-term monogamous partner and we never use condoms anymore, so I always get that last 10% of enjoyment. Sex is without a doubt better when there is no condom. But if I wasn't long-term and monogamous, I would rather lose 10% of the pleasure to ensure that I don't get a disease.
That said, my point was that there is so much focus on "penis in vagina" that it seems like that's all there is to sex, for some people. To me, penis in vagina is about maybe 30% of sex (hence, the c
Re: (Score:2)
Added to this: in Africa, a significant portion of children are born with HIV. How are they supposed to prevent getting infected?
And a preventive gene therapy wouldn't be of much use in this case.
Re: (Score:2)
When it's given to the infected mothers, it could make a significant difference.
"Scientists from Caltech"? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
This is a huge relief (Score:4, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
These weren't normal mice, but ones with altered "human-like" immune system. Normal mice can't even catch HIV, so don't worry.
Re:Billions (Score:5, Insightful)
Are you from 1982?
Most people who get AIDS today are young heterosexual females. They are not "fucking random strangers in the ass without protection."
AIDS is a disease that any sexually active person can get, even if they use protection. I don't sleep around a lot, but I have sex and unprotected oral sex. Why do you think my partners and I deserve to die? Because we are violating your personal moral code? Or because you are driven by resentment of your more sexually successful peers?
No... they are taking it in the ass (Score:3)
Lets face it, there once was a big scare about aids and then it dropped off to the point that a lot of people believe the weirdest things and fuck around and with no protection.
It isn't just AIDS, there are a lot of STD's and some of them are way easier to catch then AIDS and have a devestating impact on women especially as it makes them infertile.
It is good news that a vaccine MIGHT someday work on humans but in the meantime, it doesn't hurt to be a bit more careful. Just because one day they might make pe
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
Sadly I haven’t conducted much research on this myself, having only gotten my hands dirty one or twice, but I don’t see that it would be nearly as much fun with a condom, and I’ve no idea how lesbians would have protected oral sex.
Are you fucking kidding me? I'm an abstinence promoter who's never "gotten my hands dirty", and I can tell you about dental dams [pamf.org], which are (or at least should be) just as useful to heterosexual couples as lesbians. Hell, I'm even willing to undo moderation on this story to get the information out, since it's apparently not as common sense as I thought.
Re: (Score:2)
Good for you, I'm not.
Dental dams are not commonplace in Ireland, I've never seen them for sale anywhere, I don't recall ever seeing one on TV either. They sound lovely.
Re: (Score:2)
Just because one day they might make perfect safe cars, you don't skip putting on your helmet when you go drive a motor cycle
Worst. Analogy. Ever. What does car safety have to do with motorbike helmets??
Re: (Score:2)
If you are a a Gold Medal-winning bedroom gymnast, your partner will never need to sleep around for satisfaction! Everyone's a winner.
Re: (Score:2)
There's only one sure-fire way to be sure you won't contract HIV / AIDS sexually: Be spectacular in bed.
If you are a a Gold Medal-winning bedroom gymnast, your partner will never need to sleep around for satisfaction! Everyone's a winner.
And don't forget to practice! practice! practice! Have sex with anybody and everybody, so that you can develop your skills to the fullest. Then, once you are having port-star quality sex with actual porn stars, they will love you enough to never have sex with anybody else!
Re: (Score:2)
His response: "A 6 I hadn't slept with yet."
Re: (Score:2)
[Citation needed]
Moreover, if most is raw numbers than divide by about 20 to get equivalent per capita numbers.
Re: (Score:2)
UNAIDS 2011 World AIDS Day Fact Sheet [thebody.com]
The proportion of women living with HIV has remained stable at 50% globally, women are more affected in sub-Saharan Africa (59% of all people living with HIV).
Also, more than 10% of those infected with AIDS in 2010 were children who got the disease from their mother. Are you going to blame those children for their loose morals and homosexual adventures?
Re: (Score:2)
That is factually wrong.
Gay and bisexual men remain the population most heavily affected by HIV in the United States. CDC estimates MSM represent approximately 2% of the US population, but accounted for more than 50% of all new HIV infections annually from 2006 to 2009 –56% in 2006 (27,000), 58% in 2007 (32,300), 56% in 2008 (26,900) and 61% (29,300) in 2009.
Source [cdc.gov]
Re:Billions (Score:5, Informative)
... in the United States.
That's where you go wrong: compared to southern Africa, where about 1 out of every 5 adults currently infected, the 50,000 per year in the US is almost negligible. And in that population, about 60% of all adults with HIV are women and girls.
source [avert.org].
Re:Billions (Score:5, Informative)
1) Most people getting infected with AIDS aren't in the United States. They are in Africa and other underdeveloped regions.
2) AIDS prevalence is not the same as the infection rate. The total AIDS prevalence is high among gay men for historical reasons. But young heterosexual women are now the most at risk demographic.
AIDS exists outside US (Score:3)
I was talking about the global AIDS pandemic when I said:
"Most people [ie not just Americans] who get AIDS today are young heterosexual females"
So it doesn't matter what CDC estimates for HIV in the US because that is only one place on the globe. For the full information read the UNAIDS 2011 World AIDS Day Fact Sheet [thebody.com]
The proportion of women living with HIV has remained stable at 50% globally, women are more affected in sub-Saharan Africa (59% of all people living with HIV).
Also, more than 10% of t
Re: (Score:2)
I'm a 30 year old man who has had several girlfriends and has been serially monogamous. My question is: How much sex are you having that you consider this entirely modest amount of sexual activity "fucking a bunch of skanks and behaving like a dog."? Probably none, which is why you are lashing out.
Re: (Score:2)
I said "I don't sleep around a lot, but I have sex and unprotected oral sex." Only somebody seething with sexual resentment could even consider such a bland factual statement to be "crowing about how much of a stud [I am]".
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
All diseases are easily prevented. Just stop people from having children and all humans will be perfectly healthy in a hundred years or so.
Re: (Score:2)
Yeah? How about those who caught it from a blood transfusion? Or the people who made the mistake of sharing a syringe? Or those who were infected during plain, ol' heterosexual sex?
Sure, doing IV drugs is stupid, but it doesn't rise to a level deserving a death sentence.
Besides, if being stupid was a punishable by death, you wouldn't have been here to write what you did.
Ignorant moron.
Re:Billions (Score:4, Insightful)
Jeez - and here I thought Slashdot to be a haven from this sort of nonsense. Seriously, you and your fellow 'Anonymous Coward's should have your human license revoked.
Re: (Score:2)
Reminds me of this short story I read the other day:
http://eidolon.net/?story=The%20Moral%20Virologist [eidolon.net]
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Interesting, has an ending that really makes you think...
Re: (Score:2)
Interesting, has an ending that really makes you think...
Well, then I consider it to be a success - science-fiction is supposed to be about the effect of fictional science, not so much about the workings of it. Hope you posted a review ;-)
Re: (Score:2)
Are you literally suggesting that a vagina is an inappropriate place to put a penis? I'm guessing your mommy never gave you "the talk".
Re: (Score:2)
I believe you don't realize that there's two very similar words in use in American vs. British English.
http://www3.telus.net/eddyelmer/Tools/BritDict.htm [telus.net]
Re: (Score:2)
Yeah, those babies infected with HIV should have taken more personal responsibility for their actions. Those babies are just a bunch of big babies who want to be freed from the consequences of their rampant breast-feeding.
Re: (Score:2)
We bet on the wrong stocks and lost a lot of money, the government should bail me out.
I stole a lot of money and people want to kill me, the police should stop them!
I got a lot of money by exploiting other people and someone robbed me, someone should go out and find them.
The government gave me some rights when I bribed them, and now people are infringing on them - they should all be put in jail.
I want to preach my religion to other people and they keep beating me up. People should be forced to listen to me.
Re:Gay Mice (Score:5, Interesting)
I love how you decided to keep this comment anonymous. 'It's as if' you are scared to actually back up your opinion. Seriously, in the 'playground' version of being a fag, you are the biggest one I've seen.
Gravity - 'It's as if nature doesn't think' humans should fly, but we do (planes).
Fun fact - nature isn't CONSCIOUS. It doesn't really give a crap what you think or do. Nature didn't wake up one day and think 'hey, I think I hate queers today!'. Unless you're religious, then of course why I even waste my breath is beyond me.
Re: (Score:3)
... then of course why I even waste my breath is beyond me.
I'm guessing that the Slashdot post isn't a big breath-user, but your fingers probably need the exercise, anyway.
In any case, your post made me smile, so I think it was worthwhile.
Re: (Score:2)
Your post is anonymous as well...
Re: (Score:2)
After clicking on your name, I take it back. Carry on!
Re:Gay Mice (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
Or: never swap sides on the double-ended dildo...
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
{{citation needed}}
Re:Trouble is (Score:5, Informative)
It can't be cited other than by checking every single scientific study in all of history and seeing that nonw of them proof that ADIS is caused by HIV.
it can be trivially disproved by showing the proof of course.
For that we basically have Koch's Postulates.
1. The germ must be found in every host with the disease
There have been cases of of AIDS like symptoms without HIV:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8093633 [nih.gov]
They are very rare though, and just because something that isn't influenza can cause flu like symptoms doesn't mean influenza doesn't cause the flu.
Essentially everyone with AIDS tests positive for HIV, and >99% of people without AIDS test negative for HIV.
2. The germ must be isolated from the host and grown in pure culture
This is done routinely .
3. The germ must cause the disease when introduced into a susceptible healthy host.
4. The germ must be re-isolated from the infected host
Ethics prevent us from doing these steps for things we think will kill you.
However, there have been a few lab accidents in which workers have been infected with HIV (cultured HIV, not just say blood from an AIDS patient getting into their bloodstream, which would carry more than just HIV). All of them showed T-cell depletion. And HIV was then isolated from them and matched the one they had been infected with exactly.
http://gateway.nlm.nih.gov/MeetingAbstracts/ma?f=102203749.html [nih.gov]
Plus the dozens of health care workers who have contracted AIDS from mistakes with HIV+ blood/etc - clearly not as good as isolated HIV infection for showing it is HIV, but more volume.
Re:Oh internets. (Score:4, Funny)
It would be sweet if AIDS were no longer a threat.
They day they announce the cure.....I'm guessing if you can't get laid that day...you're never gonna get laid.