We surely live in remarkable times, when, only a month after Time magazine won the war on cancer, The Telegraph has now cured HIV.
"Researchers believe that there will be a breakthrough in finding a cure for HIV 'within months,'" the paper screams under the headline "Scientists on brink of HIV cure."
Danish scientists "are conducting clinical trials to test a 'novel strategy' in which the HIV virus is stripped from human DNA and destroyed permanently by the immune system," writes Jake Wallis Simons. Well, we can't ask for any more than that–HIV permanently destroyed.
The idea, Simons reports, is to release HIV from "reservoirs it forms inside DNA. Once it comes to the surface, the body's natural immune system can kill the virus through being boosted by a 'vaccine.'" Why "vaccine" is in quotes is unclear.
One of the researchers, Ole Søgaard, of Aarhus University Hospital in Denmark, says he is "almost certain that we will be successful in releasing the reservoirs of HIV. The challenge will be getting the patients' immune systems to recognise the virus and destroy it."
Wait a minute. Almost certain? The challenge? I thought the cure would be here "within months."
Now we get a few more details. The study that cured HIV has a mere 15 patients in it. And we get this:
“When the first patient is cured in this way it will be a spectacular moment,” says Dr. John Frater, a clinical research fellow at the Nuffield School of Medicine, Oxford University, and a member of the CHERUB group.
“It will prove that we are heading in the right direction and demonstrate that a cure is possible. But I think it will be five years before we see a cure that can be offered on a large scale.”
Simons was wise to seek comment on the story. But unwise to completely ignore it. How could he write that a cure was expected in months when an expert tells him it is at least five years away?
Then we learn that the astonishing "cure" that Danish scientists are only months away from is also being pursued "by other laboratories in the United States and Europe."
The story itself tells us any "cure" is years away, and that the Danes have no exclusive claim on it.
Breathtaking.
-Paul Raeburn
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