>(just out of curiosity) How is
>it that we have virtually
>eliminated other "natural" diseases just
>by bettering our hygiene/living standards
>or finding vaccines (e.g. cholera,
>dysentery, tuberculosis, malaria etc.) and
>we cannot easily figure out
>how to stop a virus
>that (supposedly) originated in a
>monkey???


I can answer that in two parts.

First off, we haven't eliminated any of those diseases, they're just not common where you and I live because of vaccinations. Tuberculosis affects the homeless and people with depressed immune systems, and malaria is still prevalent in places where there are warm climates (it's spread by mosquitos). Dikembe Mutombo had it earlier this year.

If you know how vaccinations work, you know that vaccinations are just weakened strains of viruses. Once that virus is introduced into your immune system, your immune system overruns it, and you become immune from that disease again; you can't have chicken pox twice, you can't have measles twice.

Once you've had a viral infection and get over it, your body becomes resistent to that virus again. The reason you can get the flu and colds repeatedly (both are caused by viri) is that there are dozens of strains of those viri.

That technique wouldn't work with HIV, because the virus attackes your immune system directly. It would be akin to letting someone breach security who doesn't intend to steal anything, just kill all the guards. HIV robs your body of the ability to ward off diseases. AIDS results when another disease (such as a common cold) come in, and overrun the depleted immune system.

Essentially, a vaccine for AIDS would do nothing more than introduce the virus into their bloodstream, which is exactly what you don't want to happen.

Secondly, while monkeys and humans are similar, there's no way to predict how an AIDS treatment that would be effective on a monkey (and none have been to date) would react in a human body. Also, viruses can mutate, so if you throw something at it, it may work once, but they have the capacity to become resistent to
medicines.

All viruses are tricky, AIDS is one of the trickiest.

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