Comments on: Fight AIDS in your Computer’s Spare Time!

By: Bong Breaker

Bong Breaker — Wed, 30 Nov 2005 19:31:09 +0000

Why would aliens be able to help us with medicine?

Deep space travel - sure. Quantum mechanics - possibly. Cure for cancer - nanoo nanoo.

Read the avert link about AIDS in India, very good. Update on AIDS in Asia here.

By: Pattie Kaur

Pattie Kaur — Wed, 30 Nov 2005 03:49:10 +0000

hmm….i’ll go for it.

if you don’t like a problem, it doesn’t help to sit and say why it’s horrid – go out and improve it. or find people who can. it’s more realistic if we put more effort into it.

By: brimful

brimful — Wed, 30 Nov 2005 00:30:54 +0000

franktank, maybe this will fall on deaf ears, but being distrustful of science and having a lack of faith in free enterprise (i.e. pharma companies developing chronic drugs) seem disconnected to me to begin with.

But to go a little further, AIDS vaccinations are incredibly difficult to develop because HIV mutates at a faster rate than most viruses. Therefore, any person infected with HIV has several different strains of HIV in their body, and those strains are different from another individual infected with HIV. Developing a vaccine that can handle all these different strains is what is keeping things back, not an interest in keeping profits up at drug companies.

Note that the cervical cancer example you cite is for Human Papillomavirus, which has a much more stable genome. Therefore, there are only about four strains that infect humans, and it's a lot easier to develop vaccines.

By: franktank

franktank — Wed, 30 Nov 2005 00:12:03 +0000

I dont trust science anymore. There is to much money to be made to go around curing things. AIDS is a gold mine, just keep people hooked on drugs they have to take the rest of there lives and you have a great sales quarter.

I did just read about a vaccine that shows like a 90% success rate for cervical cancer so maybe there are some decent people in the world.

By: Ennis

Ennis — Tue, 29 Nov 2005 21:32:34 +0000

Do you really think that (a) SETI@Home is an effective way to search for ETs and (b) that ETs could seriously help us with our medical problems? Why do you think they would have any knowledge of something practical if they existed, we contacted them, and they even wanted to help us?

By: SETI-Lover

SETI-Lover — Tue, 29 Nov 2005 21:29:51 +0000

Not to make light of this, but I would rather continue running SETI on my computer. Just in case we were to establish contact with an extra-terrestrial civilization, maybe they could help us solve many of our medical problems. You have to believe.

By: chick pea

chick pea — Tue, 29 Nov 2005 20:53:45 +0000

cool..there was an article in the WSJ a few months/years back (i can’t recall..) about an indian kid from MIT who recycled HIV drugs that were discarded here (since they were expired and such, although there isn’t a true expiration date perse) and sent them to India.. a really cool cause however, it might actually be detrimental and cause resistance to the virus itself…