{"id":3220,"date":"2005-04-14T12:45:46","date_gmt":"2005-04-14T20:45:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mossback.org\/index.php\/archives\/2005\/04\/14\/study-describes-how-hiv-beats-bodys-defenses-virus-moves-in-as-t-cells-drop-protein-shields\/"},"modified":"2005-04-14T12:45:46","modified_gmt":"2005-04-14T20:45:46","slug":"study-describes-how-hiv-beats-bodys-defenses-virus-moves-in-as-t-cells-drop-protein-shields","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bennett.com\/blog\/2005\/04\/14\/study-describes-how-hiv-beats-bodys-defenses-virus-moves-in-as-t-cells-drop-protein-shields\/","title":{"rendered":"Study describes how HIV beats body’s defenses"},"content":{"rendered":"

\t\t\t\tA new study shows how HIV hijacks T-cells,<\/a> one of the great puzzles in AIDS research:<\/p>\n

\n

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. <\/p>\n

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. <\/p>\n

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. <\/p>\n

“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.” <\/p>\n

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. <\/p>\n

The shield is a naturally occurring protein known as APOBEC3G.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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

I happened to see a bit of their propaganda recently, a pseudo-documentary called The Other Side of AIDS<\/a><\/em> put out by Christine Maggiore and her husband<\/a>. 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. <\/p>\n

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 <\/a>in addition to being a professional AIDS dissident.<\/p>\n

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

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

Professor Irwin Corey would be proud.\t\t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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. … Continue reading “Study describes how HIV beats body’s defenses”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[19],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3220","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-science"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pbifyw-PW","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bennett.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3220","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bennett.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bennett.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bennett.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bennett.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3220"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bennett.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3220\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bennett.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3220"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bennett.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3220"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bennett.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3220"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}