> a previous commitment from the National Institutes of Health to support a clinical trial of the novel therapy in HIV-infected children being withdrawn
When seeking funding as a scientist, do they have to only ask their own government or is it possible to get a different country to foot the bill?
Probably way harder to convice govts to give their limited amount of grants to foreign universities instead of their own. It is not like this is the only important science to be funded. If you choose to fund this - then it means you need to not fund something else.
Depending on the institution they work for, different rules may apply. But in general, scientists would be encouraged to seek funding from wherever it is available.
There are some cooperation grants, where you must have researchers from two countries (where you are and where the money comes from) and perhaps part of the money must be used to pay travel and stays of some of the researches in the other country, in both directions.
It is certainly possible to try to get another government to fund it, but the NIH is the largest source of funding for health science research in the world, both for domestic U.S. research and also international research.
So is it theoretically possible? Yes. Is it likely, especially for expensive clinical trials? Not really.
That’s a big flaw. The US needs to stop being at the center of everything, and now we can really see the vulnerability it causes. I hope this becomes an impulse to diversify research funding more.
The US has a /lot/ of money and people. Several other countries put together wouldn't be able to match it, especially not ones with any comparable standard of living.
I believe it is. We've had vaccines for the common flu for a while and routinely create new vaccine formulations that are effective against the current strains. Nothing like that exists for HIV.
The ways the flu and HIV work are radically different. Most of the time your body can fight off the flu/colds, etc and once we do we're mostly immune. HIV specifically infects and then spreads by invading the body's white blood cells. You die because eventually it gets at all of them and you have no natural defences (full blown AIDS). Our body can't fight it off with our natural defences, no matter how well trained.
We've actually been able to "kill" the virus in our bodies with drugs for awhile. The "AIDS cocktails" first developed in the 1990s did work (but originally required constant pill taking, even all night and had bad side effects) eventually were iterated (via new drugs and new timed-release pills) into essentially a single, daily pill that will now keep your viral load to zero - meaning you can have unprotected sex and not spread the virus. In theory, you could give these pills to sex workers to take every day and its significantly reduce the risk of the virus establishing itself.
The issue with HIV is that it can settle and lay dormant in various places the drugs won't get to (herpes and chickenpox/shingles do a similar thing). So we can't technically cure it, outside of very extreme procedures - IIRC a bone marrow transplant has cured somebody, but that is a dangerous procedure that has a high enough mortality rate that we only do it for otherwise deadly cancers.
I read that some other apes have the simian version of HIV (SIV) endemic in them and it doesn't kill them. Other apes don't typically have exposure and it gives them AIDS. This suggests that in the long term, a species can develop natural immunity.
IIRC there have always been these stories about HIV about these unusual cases where a rare set of humans actually beats the virus. (Googling, I found the term "elite controllers") The first time I remember reading of something like that was around 1996. It's always been discussed with cautious optimism as something needing more study. You could see TFA along these lines.
Yeah, I remember about some people being immune or at least have something that keeps them alive. This is true for a lot of viruses. Some people were resistant to the black death and most of us are their descendants, for example.
We can inject and train our body to produce antibodies, but the nature of HIV infection means (significantly) changing how our white blood cells are produced if they are going to be resistant, which is not trivial (and would likely mean actual DNA alterations with who knows what side effects). This is why an HIV vaccine is so difficult - it attacks and uses the body's immune system to spread.
The details are fuzzy, but I recall the avenue of those people's resistance/survivability being mostly a non-starter; the majority of them had a lot slower progression of the virus, not outright immunity.
> In theory, you could give these pills to sex workers to take every day and its significantly reduce the risk of the virus establishing itself.
It's not a theory. This mode of HIV antiviral drugs use is called PrEP (pre-exposure prophylaxis), and it's used by millions of people. Including sex workers, LGBT people, etc.
Also, it's hard to comprehend how much the virus changes within one infected person. It's a common talking point in HIV seminars: the diversity of HIV strains in one infected individual exceeds that of flu worldwide in any given year [1]. Additionally, the parts of the virus that are more or less universally conserved (and thus are good targets for a vaccine) are hidden except for the moments where the virus binds the target cell. If I wanted to fabricate a difficult to vaccine pathogen, it would be very similar to HIV-1.
Vaccine does not exist, but there are pre-exposure drugs that will keep you safe while engaging in risky activities. Also, if you have HIV, there are drugs you have to regularly take that prevent both spread and development into AIDS.
Archive link: https://archive.ph/DtYEQ
> a previous commitment from the National Institutes of Health to support a clinical trial of the novel therapy in HIV-infected children being withdrawn
When seeking funding as a scientist, do they have to only ask their own government or is it possible to get a different country to foot the bill?
Probably way harder to convice govts to give their limited amount of grants to foreign universities instead of their own. It is not like this is the only important science to be funded. If you choose to fund this - then it means you need to not fund something else.
Depending on the institution they work for, different rules may apply. But in general, scientists would be encouraged to seek funding from wherever it is available.
I think it's rare without strings.
There are some cooperation grants, where you must have researchers from two countries (where you are and where the money comes from) and perhaps part of the money must be used to pay travel and stays of some of the researches in the other country, in both directions.
It is certainly possible to try to get another government to fund it, but the NIH is the largest source of funding for health science research in the world, both for domestic U.S. research and also international research.
So is it theoretically possible? Yes. Is it likely, especially for expensive clinical trials? Not really.
That’s a big flaw. The US needs to stop being at the center of everything, and now we can really see the vulnerability it causes. I hope this becomes an impulse to diversify research funding more.
The US has a /lot/ of money and people. Several other countries put together wouldn't be able to match it, especially not ones with any comparable standard of living.
This may be true, but what I said remains true and it’s a vulnerability that the world needs to fix. Too much power is centralized in the US.
The only reason there is a ebola vaccine, is because the USA made it baby! Made in the USA at its best
I suppose there's always the private sector, but there's much more money in diet pills than children with lifelong illnesses.
[flagged]
How is that the opposite? It is exactly the same. A govt funding research in another country.
Opposite in the sense of researching how to make and then stop extreme (in some axis) viruses.
[flagged]
[flagged]
I believe it is. We've had vaccines for the common flu for a while and routinely create new vaccine formulations that are effective against the current strains. Nothing like that exists for HIV.
The ways the flu and HIV work are radically different. Most of the time your body can fight off the flu/colds, etc and once we do we're mostly immune. HIV specifically infects and then spreads by invading the body's white blood cells. You die because eventually it gets at all of them and you have no natural defences (full blown AIDS). Our body can't fight it off with our natural defences, no matter how well trained.
We've actually been able to "kill" the virus in our bodies with drugs for awhile. The "AIDS cocktails" first developed in the 1990s did work (but originally required constant pill taking, even all night and had bad side effects) eventually were iterated (via new drugs and new timed-release pills) into essentially a single, daily pill that will now keep your viral load to zero - meaning you can have unprotected sex and not spread the virus. In theory, you could give these pills to sex workers to take every day and its significantly reduce the risk of the virus establishing itself.
The issue with HIV is that it can settle and lay dormant in various places the drugs won't get to (herpes and chickenpox/shingles do a similar thing). So we can't technically cure it, outside of very extreme procedures - IIRC a bone marrow transplant has cured somebody, but that is a dangerous procedure that has a high enough mortality rate that we only do it for otherwise deadly cancers.
I read that some other apes have the simian version of HIV (SIV) endemic in them and it doesn't kill them. Other apes don't typically have exposure and it gives them AIDS. This suggests that in the long term, a species can develop natural immunity.
IIRC there have always been these stories about HIV about these unusual cases where a rare set of humans actually beats the virus. (Googling, I found the term "elite controllers") The first time I remember reading of something like that was around 1996. It's always been discussed with cautious optimism as something needing more study. You could see TFA along these lines.
Yeah, I remember about some people being immune or at least have something that keeps them alive. This is true for a lot of viruses. Some people were resistant to the black death and most of us are their descendants, for example.
We can inject and train our body to produce antibodies, but the nature of HIV infection means (significantly) changing how our white blood cells are produced if they are going to be resistant, which is not trivial (and would likely mean actual DNA alterations with who knows what side effects). This is why an HIV vaccine is so difficult - it attacks and uses the body's immune system to spread.
The details are fuzzy, but I recall the avenue of those people's resistance/survivability being mostly a non-starter; the majority of them had a lot slower progression of the virus, not outright immunity.
> In theory, you could give these pills to sex workers to take every day and its significantly reduce the risk of the virus establishing itself.
It's not a theory. This mode of HIV antiviral drugs use is called PrEP (pre-exposure prophylaxis), and it's used by millions of people. Including sex workers, LGBT people, etc.
Good to know! My spouse used to work in HIV treatment, but at the time they were only considering it's use as such.
Also, it's hard to comprehend how much the virus changes within one infected person. It's a common talking point in HIV seminars: the diversity of HIV strains in one infected individual exceeds that of flu worldwide in any given year [1]. Additionally, the parts of the virus that are more or less universally conserved (and thus are good targets for a vaccine) are hidden except for the moments where the virus binds the target cell. If I wanted to fabricate a difficult to vaccine pathogen, it would be very similar to HIV-1.
1. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/11714622/
Yes, HIV is actually called a "quasispecies", it's so varied that multiple genetic viral lines compete with each other within a single patient.
> multiple genetic viral lines compete with each other within a single patient
Sometimes reality is scarier than fiction.
Vaccine does not exist, but there are pre-exposure drugs that will keep you safe while engaging in risky activities. Also, if you have HIV, there are drugs you have to regularly take that prevent both spread and development into AIDS.
[dead]