A CURE FOR AIDS!!

That’s a pretty provocative statement…. but after reading the curious story about the “Berlin patient,” some people are wondering…

To simplify the story: this Berlin patient, who is an American expatriate living in Germany, was HIV-positive and suffering from leukemia when his doctors intervened with a stem cell transplant that was genetically resistant to the HIV infection.

After a relapse and some really intense treatments, Timothy Ray Brown no longer lives with those afflictions (yet deals bravely with the aftermath of the treatment).

The doctors who engineered this exciting discovery have published their work in the medical journal Blood (read the abstract here) proclaim within the article:

It is reasonable to conclude that cure of HIV infection has been achieved in this patient.

The patient has spoken to the media and is sure to remind that this progress was not easy; he experienced temporary blindness, speech issues, relapses, surgeries, tough chemotherapy, and rigorous treatments. When asked about whether all of these complications might not outweigh living with HIV, Brown responded,

Perhaps. Perhaps it would have been better, but I don’t ask those sorts of questions anymore.

Commenting on the trials of the patient and the marvels of the science that saved him, Andrew Sullivan of The Atlantic writes,

All I’d say is that this is an extreme and difficult procedure and impractical on any general level – at least right now. [...] Sometimes we really ought to take stock and comprehend the sheer magnitude of the current successes of science. I literally live and breathe because of them.

This blogger isn’t such a science-y type, so you should really click here to get the in-depth story on how impressive this discovery is. There’s plenty of research to be done, no doubt, but a “W” is a “W”, right?