Study describes how HIV beats body’s defenses

A new study shows how HIV hijacks T-cells, one of the great puzzles in AIDS research:

One of the first hurdles facing AIDS researchers in the early understanding of the disease was that they could not grow the virus in a dish of T-cells until they learned to put in chemicals that activated those cells.

The latest research, conducted by Dr. Warner Greene and colleagues at the Gladstone institute, provides a plausible reason why HIV can only infect T- cells when they are active.

Greene said most scientists had assumed that resting T-cells were missing some crucial element that HIV needed to get inside them. Instead, his laboratory discovered that resting T-cells have a powerful anti-viral defense wired into their genes.

“Resting T-cells deploy an anti-viral shield that is amazingly effective against HIV,” Greene explained in an interview. “Unfortunately, the shield ‘goes down’ when the T-cell is activated.”

Once the mechanics of this “shields up-shields down” response are fully understood, researchers may be able to design drugs to keep the natural defenses deployed, or turn on similar shields in other cells vulnerable to HIV.

The shield is a naturally occurring protein known as APOBEC3G.

This is interesting if you’ve been watching the arguments put up by the so-called AIDS dissidents who argue that HIV is either non-existent or has nothing to do with AIDS.

I happened to see a bit of their propaganda recently, a pseudo-documentary called The Other Side of AIDS put out by Christine Maggiore and her husband. The film was actually quite hilarious because it was not only utterly non-persuasive, it actually put the the star Maggiore in an extremely bad light. Most of the footage was shot while she was holding forth on a radio program, but the highlight was a presentation she gave to a very bored Willie Brown while cuddling a kid who looked to be about 4 or 5 years old.

Most of us know that If you’ve got an important message to deliver to an important public official, it’s probably a good idea to get yourself a baby sitter, but Maggiore is an attachment parenting fanatic in addition to being a professional AIDS dissident.

The Other Side is very much like a Michael Moore film, but even more like the infamous What the Bleep do We Know? classic of stupidity put out by followers of JZ Knight, the alleged channel for the 35,000 year old warrior spirit Ramtha.

These films hope to capitalize on the fear of religion and ignorance of science that are rampant in our culture by offering perfectly ridiculous claims wrapped-up in scientific terminology.

Professor Irwin Corey would be proud.