Originally posted by st200 at 16-7-2012 22:35
He was cured because of a transplant of blood to treat lleukemia, his aids was cured as a side effect.
Correct. The article also ignores the full body radiation he got before the stem cell/marrow transplant. They have to irradiate your whole body to kill your existing bone marrow, then keep you in quarantine since the simplest germs will kill you. They replace your marrow with a donor's marrow or stem cells and in this case they went looking for someone with the rare mutation that defends against HIV infection. It's uncertain if it was the new gene that did it, or more likely the radiation, and they don't know if this can be replicated. In any case, the risks are high but it is an intriguing case.
