[extropy-chat] The Hidden Luddite was Re: peak oil debate

[Gary Miller]

I can see how the major drug companies who currently have anti aids drugs on
the market may not have the management backing to pursue lines of research
that may disrupt their lifetime cash cow but surely there must be other drug
companies who currently do not have income from the protease inhibitors and
reverse transcriptase inhibitors.  

If so then these companies would seem to be the logical entry point for your
research.

Also as these drugs begin to enter into the point of their patent process
where they go begin to go generic most of the profit will be squeezed out by
their generic competition if they don't have improved drugs waiting in the
wings.

I don't doubt what you're saying about the difficulty of getting neglected
areas of research investigated.

Sometimes it might require winning over a respected researcher in the field
who has the credibility to champion your research and get it the attention
it deserves.

Also have you tried publishing a paper about your model?  Even if you don't
get published, just the process of going through the peer review process of
publishing may help you shore up your arguments enough to get them
considered seriously.



-----Original Message-----
From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org
[mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of The
Avantguardian
Sent: Thursday, September 08, 2005 10:02 AM
To: ExI chat list
Subject: Re: [extropy-chat] The Hidden Luddite was Re: peak oil debate



--- BillK <pharos at gmail.com> wrote:

> 
> More than 20 million people have died of AIDS since 1981.
> AIDS deaths in 2004, estimated at 3.1 million.
> 
> You *really* think some people are deciding not to bother finding a 
> cure because they can make a bit of money on the deal?

Well, Bill, I wish I could think differently. I will tell you one thing for
certain. Reverse transcriptase inhibitors like AZT were invented about 19
years ago, protease inhibitors like Sequinovir were invented 10 years ago.
Since then about the most anyone has done is when David Ho figured out you
can slow down the evolution of drug resitant virus within a patient by
giving them both at once. Hardly a leap of genius but he got Time's "man of
year " award and lots of grant funding out of it. 

Every couple of years, the pharmaceuticals tweak their RT and protease
inhibitors a bit to overcome drug resistance and that's about it. HIV is
just 9.8 kilobases of RNA that contains 8 genes that encode a little over a
dozen protein products. Of those, only reverse transcriptase and protease,
both of which operate AFTER infection takes place, have been targeted by
drugs.

The end result of these drugs is that the virus goes into latency, and hides
in the patient's cells. It remains hidden away until the person stops taking
the drug and voila out pops the virus, left unchecked will go on to kill the
person. The AIDS patient is now hostage to his drugs.
  
There are plenty of other HIV proteins that COULD be targeted with drugs.
There are several inhibitors of the virus integrase protein in the pipeline,
but apparently they have some bad side effects because they have been in the
pipeline for about 5 yrs now and I don't know when or if they will ever
become available. Integrase however is another example of a virus protein
that operates AFTER the virus infects a cell. 

HIV makes a little over a dozen protein products (which is amazing
considering that it is a single 9.8kb RNA, making it the most
informationally dense organism that has been sequenced to date) including
some that operate BEFORE or DURING infection. Yet nobody in the U.S. is
trying to target any of these despite the fact that they would kill the
virus BEFORE the virus can hijack the host cell. If these other proteins had
been tried and failed due to technical problems that would be one thing, but
nobody in the U.S. is apparently even curious about inhibiting any of these.

I would not believe it myself except that for the last
7 yrs (essentially my entire career) I have been studying both HIV virology
and immunology and I have a pretty thorough understanding of the virus. I
think I have identified its Achilles` heel and have computer models of a
potential inhibitor for an essential viral protein that not only allows the
virus to get into cells, but also sows chaos and confusion amongst the
antibodies and whiteblood cells that are supposed to kill the virus. Yet
unbelievably, I have had several rejections from different university labs
without the professor so much as wanting to see my model.

That is when it hit me. You can't give hundreds of millions of dollars to a
bunch of "experts" to poke and prod the virus and expect them to cure it
because they know that if they do, the grant money stops.
We've poked and prodded the virus for over 20 years now. We know every bit
of its genome, we know what all its proteins are and what cellular proteins
they interact with, we know its life cycle, we know how it evades the immune
system, and we can even take the virus apart and reverse engineer the thing
into a gene-therapy vector. 

We have over 1500 publications regarding mechanism for every gene the virus
has, which is an order of magnitude more than we have for the genome of any
other organism on earth. Yet amazingly we can't KILL this one piece of RNA?
You do the math. I went into AIDS research hoping to cure the virus. Instead
what I found is that wracking ones mind to figure out new and innovative
ways to poke and prod at the virus are rewarded and sincere ideas aimed at
just plain killing it are shunned. Its a lesson, I hope my career can
recover from.
     


The Avantguardian
is
Stuart LaForge
alt email: stuart"AT"ucla.edu

"The surest sign of intelligent life in the universe is that they haven't
attempted to contact us." 
-Bill Watterson