ps418

First HIV hybrid formed in a human revealed

Patrick

Tom Sawyer

In regards to this article, I have a question for the scientists here.

Would it be possible to create an HIV-like virus that would be relatively harmless to an infected person, but become the dominant virus in their body, the same way the new hybrid of the virus became the dominant strain in this women's?

Basically, something about this new hybrid caused it to be more dominant than the original strains of the infection. Could whatever caused that be replicated artificially, yet in a strain of the virus that is more benign than the other strains of HIV? Then it could take over the infection of the person's body, but they wouldn't suffer as many ill effects from it.

Is something like that even possible?

Stiletto One

I doubt it. Viruses don't dominate each other the way bacteria can; they would just work concurrently.

HOWEVER, that's an interesting idea for a binary attack: work up a synthetic bacterium that consumes virus particles, and is susceptible to a specific chemical. Eat up all the virus, and then mass kill.

Tom Sawyer

In the article it says:

I don't know anything about the specifics of how viruses work, but there was apparently something about this hybrid that caused it to become the dominant infection in the women's body, at the expense of the other strains of HIV that she had. There must be some reason for this and I imagine that, theoretically at least, that characteristic can be mapped onto a lab-created hybrid who's other characteristics make it less harmful to the infected person.

Edit: Unless, of course, the reason that it is more dominant is because it's more dangerous and the two characteristics are not inseparable. I don't see why that would be, though

Roland98

But HIV is so mutable, I don't know that anything currently could be engineered that would force it to maintain the "less harmful" pattern of virulence.

Corona688

That, and the new strain probably displaced the old because it WAS more harmful and virulent.

NZAmoeba

The idea of 'Anti-HIV HIV' would be interesting... but i think its way beyond our means at this point in time...

[fundy]
oh and btw, this is in no way proof of evolution, god made this change happen so he could smite more sinners, god hates anti-hiv medication
[/fundy]