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I'm not saying they could transmit though sex, I'm saying they could be caused to transmit through what is essentially viral cloning, by taking either a cell (o
by Vecr 4y ago
I'm not saying they could transmit though sex, I'm saying they could be caused to transmit through what is essentially viral cloning, by taking either a cell (or probably many cells, because the recipient has an immune system) containing proviral DNA (i.e. the DNA created by HIV's reverse transcription mechanism), and putting it into the recipient, or by taking the HIV proviral DNA from that cell and transfecting cells of the recipient with it, similar to how you can clone a polio virus by transfecting a cell with the DNA of polio, even though polio is an RNA virus. This has been done by Vincent Racaniello using early DNA sequencing techniques, and could be tested in an animal because of the Gain of Function'd mouse model he made. I can't remember anyone being able to create an animal model for HIV though...
- elil17 4y agoWell in that case I hope no one is out there transplanting cells from these people into other people. I can’t imagine why anyone would do that. It seems to me like this should still count as curing someone.
- Vecr 4y agoWell, I think being precise in virology is a good thing. For example being infected with SARS-CoV-2 and having the disease COVID-19 are not exactly the same thing, and matter quite a bit when writing a prescription for Paxlovid. You can't (or aren't supposed to) write off-label prescriptions for EUA drugs, so it does matter. Apparently they changed the EUA recently though, and Internet rules lawyers think they can prescribe it to people who don't have COVID-19 at all, so it might not matter at this point.