Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!mailrus!cs.utexas.edu!sdd.hp.com!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!usc!ucla-cs!jay@banzai.PCC.COM From: jay@banzai.PCC.COM (Jay Schuster) Newsgroups: sci.med.aids Subject: Re: About AIDS cures Message-ID: <36025@shemp.CS.UCLA.EDU> Date: 6 Jun 90 14:00:34 GMT References: <35957@shemp.CS.UCLA.EDU> Sender: news@CS.UCLA.EDU Organization: The People's Computer Company, Williston, VT Lines: 33 Approved: ddodell@stjhmc.fidonet.org (David Dodell) Note: Copyright 1990 by Daniel R. Greening. Permission granted for Note: non-commercial reproduction. Archive-number: 2147 In <35957@shemp.CS.UCLA.EDU> ames!ames!claris!portal!cup.portal.com!thinman@uunet.UU.NET writes: >On the subject of overheating the blood: why not cool it instead? >The human body has a vestigial survival reaction to being doused in >freezing cold water. Most viruses and bacteria survive at colder temperatures far better than multicellular organisms. Heat can denature essential proteins, or change the reaction rates for important biochemical reactions. This (as far as I know) is one of the standard reasons given for why your body generates a fever when it is sick -- it hopes to make the environment even less hospitable for the invaders than it is making it for itself. Cold slows reactions, and stabilizes proteins. The slowed reactions probably harm you more than the virus (which isn't really alive, remember), and stabilizing the viral proteins isn't going to do much in the way of inactivating them, most likely. If HIV has a very heat sensitive protein in it, then something like this would have a chance of working. Also, many latent viruses have a tendency to express themselves when the cells they are in are shocked (through chemicals or heat). If the latently HIV infected blood cells are shocked and the HIV is expressed, it might kill the cells (removing the latent infection) and then, if the virus is heat sensitive, permanently inactivate the virus. This is all pure speculation, of course. -- Jay Schuster uunet!uvm-gen!banzai!jay, attmail!banzai!jay The People's Computer Company `Revolutionary Programming'