AIDS: A Second Opinion by Gary Null

Author:Gary Null
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2013-04-23T04:50:00+00:00

Biotechnology and AIDS

Although this will be a brief detour from the subject of viruses, to get a broader view of the manipulation and study of genetic material we might mention that such work has also played a role in the study of AIDS itself-for example, in attempts to identify a gene whose presence would make one particularly susceptible to AIDS, and in splicing HIV, as we saw against Dr. Gallo's better judgment, into transgenic creatures.

Taking up the latter subject first, we need to begin by discussing lentiviruses. Although some biologists dispute the existence of these types of viruses, even if they are accepted as realities, they pose problems for those who believe AIDS has moved from an animal species into man. "Lentiviruses are highly species specific in nature, readily transmissible only to closely related species of mammal."28 However, we went into species specificity in the previous chapter. A trait more relevant to the genetic manipulation of lentiviruses that has been carried on is that "all known naturally occurring lentiviruses [including HIV] are exogenous, being transmitted by infection and not in the germ line [as are some birth defects."29 Although this is a plus for the health of mankind, in that these lentiviruses will not be passed down to children of the infected in the genetic material of their parents, scientists engaged in the form of research Dr. Gallo discouraged have been seeing whether genetically transferable HIV can be produced. "Recently... a breeding colony of transgenic mice was created in which the genome of HIV-1 had been integrated artificially into the chromosomes of fertilized mouse ova. HIV-1 proviral DNA was present in all cells of the offspring, and in some mice infectious virus was expressed."30

Mice seem far enough away from humans, species wise, that their diseases pose little immediate danger; but note of this experiment indicates that while potentially hazardous attempts to create hardier viruses or ones that have new transmission pathways may have been curbed by the warnings of individual scientists and scientific groups, they are still on some agendas.31

What can be taken to be a more positive direction of genetic research into the immune-related disease is the inquiry into whether specific genes make one immune to or liable to AIDS. As Gina Kolata reported in the New York Times in September 1996, "Scientists have long suspected that some people might be immune to the AIDS virus. But now they are accumulating powerful evidence of the extent and strength of such immunity."32 One piece of evidence is a study published in Science at the time of Kolata's story, which presented data on whites indicating one in a hundred have immunity to HIV infection, while one in five whites have an inherited resistance to the disease's progress. More depressingly, "almost no blacks have the particular protective mutation investigated in this study"; however, the study continues, "scientists say that other forms of genetic immunity almost certainly exist in both blacks and whites."33 The existence of these further forms of genetic protection are

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