http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2...in-patient_n_796521.html

Holy cow.

Well I guess we've got at least a couple more shots at another "Summer of Love" until the shit really hits the fan in December 2012. It's plain to see why fundies have opposed stem cell research so rabidly over the years...must've seen this possibility on the horizon.

"strongly suggest that cure of HIV infection has been achieved."

"While these developments by no means prove a cure for the virus has been found.."


perhaps it's just semantics, but these two statements seem to contradict each other;
technically, nothing in science is "proven" anyway, that's a catch-term used to sell you something.

a "cure" for HIV is nearly impossible, unless every infected cell is removed or destroyed.

stem-cell research is very promising as a treatment option, but i doubt, given the rapid mutation rates of gp120 and gp41, that a cure is possible.
this is also true with influenza because of the rapid mutation of HN spike proteins

Kind-of, but they say so because they have no clue about the mechanism that led from the stem cell transplant to the HIV cure.

In any case nice find!

Exactly what I was thinking

the key word here is "cure"
if the study shows that the virus was completely absent from the person, and not just dormant, then that is a cure.

the thing about retroviruses...replication occurs in the cell nucleus.
the viral RNA epitope can remain dormant in cell nuclei.

these retroviruses are about adaptive as human DNA, because of retrotransposon elements; oddly enough, the human genome is actually composed of 8% retroviral DNA.