4 ms·
New research in cows that were immunised against HIV
- theprotocol 9y agoThe dissonance between that title versus the actual contents completely destroys what would otherwise be an interesting, albeit not especially remarkable read. The article itself makes no attempt to live up to the title, and in fact downplays it throughout the whole thing, almost as if admitting "yes, I got you to click, now here's a fairly normal article." edit: 2nd paragraph is my mistake, it's the HN title that I'm critical of, not the article title.
- timthorn 9y agoThe article title seems quite measured: "Could cows be the clue that leads to an HIV vaccine?"
- scotu 9y agoThe HN title is "Cows have shown an 'insane' and 'mind-blowing' ability to tackle HIV" as I post this comment, which is probably why @theprotocol had that impression
- theprotocol 9y agoYep, it was my mistake. I believed when I wrote my response that it was the article title.
- jasonkostempski 9y agoHN title is not the article title.
- theprotocol 9y agoI stand corrected. I mistook it for being the title of the article.
- whiddershins 9y agoWhy was the article title changed on submission?
- danso 9y agoMaybe because the submitter thought the question-type headline was even more clickbaitish?
- dang 9y agoIt's the first sentence of the article, which can often be used as an alternative title, though obviously in this case the baitiness is so strong that the title itself becomes the story. In such cases it's better to look for a representative phrase from the article text that's both accurate and neutral. I've changed the title above to one of those.
- autokad 9y agomakes sense, i believe the current understanding is that HIV spread from bovines to felines, so they would have the longest history of fighting the virus
- mabbo 9y agoCow. Singular. > One cow in particular showed an impressive immune response to most of the lab strains of HIV The other 3 had a mild immune response. This is first steps, not breakthrough.
- rimliu 9y agoArticle feels somewhat weird when you remember that H in HIV stands for "Human".
- Protostome 9y agoHi, that's an interesting study. Cows are known to have antibodies with unique conformations, probably since their metabolism involves bacterias much more than other mammals, such as ourselves. Antibodies are molecules that are generated by B-Cells and upon exposure to an invader, some antibodies go through rapid evolution. The unique conformation of a cow antibody allows it to bind to deep pockets and places that human antibodies may have some difficulties reaching. With that said, while this research is interesting, the implications for human therapeutics are mostly negligible. Cow's antibody cannot be transferred safely to humans since they will elicit an immune reaction and will probably be considered a foreign invader. Also, there's no shortage in human origin broadly neutralizing antibodies for HIV. Those are still not considered the best line of defence.