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From: denbeste@spdcc.com (Steven Den Beste)
Newsgroups: sci.med.aids
Subject: Re: AIDS
Message-ID: <32464@shemp.CS.UCLA.EDU>
Date: 1 Mar 90 23:46:57 GMT
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In article <32362@shemp.CS.UCLA.EDU> ned@h-three.UUCP (ned) writes:
>
>Well, would it be possible to clone non-infected, activated AIDS fighting
>T-cells in the lab, and then inject the patient with so many of them that
>the AIDS virus is destroyed?  For example...
>
>1) Extract healthy T-cells from high-risk individuals and store them in culture.
>
>2) When an individual becomes infected, expose part of the individual's stored
>   T-cells to the infecting strain of the AIDS virus.
>
>3) Select activated but non-infected T-cells from the exposed culture and
>   clone a bunch of them using interleukin II.
>
>4) Inject the individual with so many of the cloned T-cells that the AIDS
>   virus is destroyed before it has a chance to infect the clones.
>

Consider the lesson of Herpes Simplex. It has the capability of crossing the
blood-brain barrier and hiding in ganglia near the base of the spine. Every
once in a while, for reasons we don't understand, it comes boiling out into the
blood, and the person has a flareup of the disease.

The immune system begins fighting the virus - and wins! It destroys all the
virus in the blood, but doesn't affect that reservoir in the nerves, so months
or years later, out comes another invasion. That's why Herpes Simplex (or
any other kind of Herpes, for that matter) is for life.

HIV unquestionably crosses the blood-brain barrier - that's how it causes
"AIDS-related dimentia". Even if you could eradicate all the virus in the
blood, you'd have virus in nerve tissue, and you'd have infected T4 cells,
both waiting to reintroduce the virus into the blood.