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How is this case different? The baby would otherwise have been heavily at risk for AIDs because her parents have AIDS. Meanwhile people with the homozygous CCR5
by yhoneycomb 8y ago
How is this case different? The baby would otherwise have been heavily at risk for AIDs because her parents have AIDS. Meanwhile people with the homozygous CCR5 mutation are immune to AIDS.
- jcranmer 8y agoBecause a) AIDS is a manageable disease already, b) only one the father has AIDS, and c) in this case of fertilization, there are other protocols that can guard against spreading HIV to the mother and baby. In other words, the baby quite likely would not have had AIDS in the first place.
- quotemstr 8y agoHIV is "manageable" already, but only in the sense that it requires, for survival, a lifelong commitment to a daily drug cocktail that has serious side effects. And it's always possible that the virus might mutate and escape the antiretrovirals. The treatment under discussion is a cure. It would lead to a normal life, free of drugs. It's a sad return to the days of paternalistic medicine to withold superior treatment because, in the opinion of a third party, the inferior treatment is adequate.
- dwighttk 8y ago>The treatment under discussion is a cure. Actually it isn't. "Deactivating CCR5 doesn’t confer complete immunity to HIV, either, since some strains of the virus can enter cells via a different protein."