Cure for HIV!

Roedecker

Banned
The background used for this is taken from the novel Ninth Day of Creation by Leonard Crane.

In the year 2000, Dr. Richard Kirby, a biochemist working for a San Diego-based biotech company named Immunological Technologies (or Imtech), created a drug called Triphylactin (or TPL), a long-sought cure for HIV.

The Science:

The trouble with the antienzyme approach to combat HIV is a problem in structural chemistry. Usually doctors design these drugs to have a particular shape that allows them to glom directly onto the enzymes and 'glue up the works.' But by making small modifications at the level of the gene, a virus can effect relatively large structural changes in the enzymes it codes for. Large enough changes to eventually render drugs useless.

Currently, the first line of defense for HIV infection is usually a drug to inhibit reverse transcriptase, an enzyme HIV uses to convert its single-stranded RNA into double-stranded DNA, which is then incorporated into the genome of a host cell to begin the cycle of infection. The drug is often coupled with a second one that inhibits protease, a scissors-like enzyme that works inside infected cells to cut up strands of genetic material used by the established virus to replicate itself.

About a dozen companies currently market a few dozen HIV drugs or drug combinations. The antienzyme drugs have had some success in slowing down the progression of HIV/AIDS, but none of them is free from sometimes debilitating side effects and none so far is completely effective because of mutating strains of HIV.

Structural chemistry can only take us so far. What was needed were drugs that work at the level of the gene, not the protein. Instead of structural chemistry, what must be dealt with was the informational chemistry of HIV. Meaning, designed drugs that recognize the viral gene sequences directly, and not the products of host gene sequences, as doctors had been doing.

Triphylactin works directly on the gene coding for an enzyme to stop the enzyme from being built in the first place. To achieve this, Dr. Kirby had to design a set of man-made nucleobases that could be incorporated into a third strand of material that could bind to DNA to form a triple helix. These artificial bases--designated L and O--combine with the natural bases cytosine (C) and thymine (T) to produce a four-letter alphabet called CLOT in recognition of what it does. Strands of synthetic DNA made from these four bases can wrap around any selected gene sequence.

The resulting drug doesn't rely on a single molecular interaction, as enzyme inhibitors do, that can be foiled by a mutating HIV strain. Instead, it contains artificial genelike segments that are programmed to home in on and wrap around the corresponding HIV gene sequences. For HIV, Triphylactin literally presents the virus with a molecular straitjacket against which even mutation provides no hope of defense.

Question:

What exactly would be the effects the cure has had on the world stage by today. Obviously millions of lives in Africa would be changed for the better. But what about other things, such as terrorism and the global economy.

How would the governments in Africa change after the end of the AIDS epidemic.
 
Three questions:
-How expensive is this cure?
-What are the side-effects (if any0 of the cure?
-How long does it take to work?

Assuming that it's available world-wide and has few side-effects and is relatively fast acting:

-Africa is still a basket-case of problems but now it's a basket-case of problems that actually has a chance of coming back from the brink. There has been so many deaths and disruptions from the disease that it will take years of dedicated work by agencies and governments to get it back to something approaching normality.

-A new sexual revolution starts up in most of the developed world. AIDS is no longer a guaranteed death sentence and after a few years all of the paranoid safe sex habits that have been developed are going to be slowly forgotten by people.

-Whichever company invented the drug will be a billionaire within a few years; what effect that will have on the economy depends on the company.

All I can think of at the moment....
 
Immediate results of announcement of cure for HIV

The Miracle would immediately undergo a 20 year, mandatory testing by the USDA, costing $20,000,000,000 to ensure that zero side effects and that zero casualties result from the use of this drug. (It will take 20 years too, thanks to restrictions on the use of animal testing imposed by friends of PETA). The final result will be that untold THOUSANDS WILL DIE while awaiting clearance by the USDA, and that the final resulting medicine will cost $59/dose and that 2-3 doses ill be required PER DAY! Twenty years from now, after the "new" drug is finally released and has been on the market for six months, lawyers will be lining up to sue the manufacturer over imagined shortcomings. Several $Billion dollars worth of lawsuits WILL BE FILED within the first year of usage!

The Government will demand that the Drug manufacturer provide very low cost drugs to indigent poor people or that the Drug manufacturer accept really low government payments for the drug! Canada, for example, will offer the drug manufacturer 0.05% of cost as payment for drugs used in Canada at the Canadian National Health Service, and in France, a European manufacturer will hijack the manufacture of the new drug, without payment of royalties, with the full blessing of the EU!

Yes, it is easy to see why Pharmaceutical Companies are really rushing to develope and introduce these new "miracle cures"!
 
JLCook,

Unfortunately, what you're describing might happen.

Political pressure might force the FDA to fast-track it or simply decide "something is better than nothing" and let it out quickly.

Or the scientist involved could take the formula and make a nice little business trip to Eastern Europe or South Korea and start cranking it out there.
 
MerryPrankster said:
Or the scientist involved could take the formula and make a nice little business trip to Eastern Europe or South Korea and start cranking it out there.

Singapore's your best bet :D
 
Doctor What said:
-A new sexual revolution starts up in most of the developed world. AIDS is no longer a guaranteed death sentence and after a few years all of the paranoid safe sex habits that have been developed are going to be slowly forgotten by people.

Already happening in the UK with several commonplace STDs coming back into prevalence amongst both the gay and straight communities, supposedly as the AIDs 'message' wore off in the mid-late 1990s. The biggest worry (outside of HIV and hepatitis) seems to be things like clamydia, which can make women infertile; unwitting carriers of these diseases not bothering to get tested; and new strains that are ever more difficult to treat with extant antibiotics.
 
I'd expect the drug to be marketed outside of the US long before the FDA-mandated testing period was up. Canada, in particular, would be selling it in job lots as soon as a one-year testing period was done; after all, in twenty years you'll likely have died from AIDS if untreated.
 
Roedecker said:
The background used for this is taken from the novel Ninth Day of Creation by Leonard Crane.

In the year 2000, Dr. Richard Kirby, a biochemist working for a San Diego-based biotech company named Immunological Technologies (or Imtech), created a drug called Triphylactin (or TPL), a long-sought cure for HIV.

Question:

What exactly would be the effects the cure has had on the world stage by today. Obviously millions of lives in Africa would be changed for the better. But what about other things, such as terrorism and the global economy.

How would the governments in Africa change after the end of the AIDS epidemic.

While it's a very implausible cure or HIV, it does present an interesting scenario.

The result of this change, IMO, would be the following:

Kirby would win a Nobel prize, and become the most famous man on Earth, and possibly in history. Some may even worship him as a god on earth.

Imtech would rake in billions of dollars in profit, probably becoming the wealthiest corporation in the world, with international political power to match.

Those countries with the most HIV cases stand to benefit most. These are in Africa. Even though the drug would probably be expensive in the beginning (the company has to pass along the research expenses to the customer), it would eventually be sold either at discount or through charitable funding. These countries would end up with improved economic conditions after about a generation, as well as an increased population and more stable governments. This may turn countries that were in civil wars into peaceful states.

The overall global economy would increase over a generation as more productive and living people would add to it. Again, this would be especially prevalent in Africa, where HIV is most prevalent. Developed nations would probably not feel as much of an economic impact.

Socially, there would be minimal difference, as there are plenty of other STDs that are far more widespread than HIV, just as there was socially little difference after HIV became well known.
 
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