Essay on Hiv
Home reading. As my qualification paper is devoted to the global health, I decided to analyze 4 newspaper articles from BBC, The Guardian and the NY Times concerning the cure for HIV/AIDS. In all the articles the topic of possible existence of the cure for HIV is discussed. They scientists from different world laboratories share their opinion on the right way of creation of this vaccine. It is extremely hard to find the appropriate therapy for patients, because the virus has a tendency to a very rapid mutation.
So while the scientists are creating the drug for a patient according to his analyzes, the virus can change in a day and the treatment won’t be effective. Some scientists think that it’s necessary to create a cocktail of many steams of the HIV virus and then create one vaccine. But it will take a very long time and too much many. Moreover the reaction of the patient’s organism can be unpredictable. Other specialists presume that it’s important to pay attention to those patients who carry the neutralizing antibodies in their organisms.
Because the cells that produce antibodies have to go through up to 100 mutations before they make neutralizing ones, Dr. Fauci said, a vaccine to induce that would require many shots, given month after month, to “push” the cells through those mutations. But the problem is that only 20 percent of the infected have the neutralizing antibodies in their organisms. There are two officially registrated cases when a patient didn’t have a virus in his blood after medical treatment.
The first one was in Germany, when a patient with a destroyed immune system, induced by his cancer disease, was transplanted with a stem cell from a donor with a rare genetic mutation that resists HIV infection. The second case took place in the US with a new-born baby in a rural hospital, whose mother just received a positive HIV reaction. The treatment continued for 18 months from the first days of life of this little baby-girl. After the treatment the scientists were astonished not to find the signs of the virus in her blood.
But unfortunately not everything is so easy because this kind of treatment doesn’t suit to adults. The virus in the adult’s organism has already made a mutation and after several years of being infected the virus will infect all the cells in the body and then hides in the DNA, where it will be impossible to cure. On the other hand, 80 percent of all the infected live in the African countries where the possibilities to be cured and appropriate drugs are extremely poor. To conclude my essay I would like to say that an HIV pandemic has become a serious problem of our world.
No one is safe enough not be infected by the virus. Nowadays there’s still no single way of treatment that can heal every patient. But the only thing that the scientists wanted us to remember that HIV virus is easier to prevent than to cure. Scientists use the most sophisticated technologies for eliminating this disease all over the world, but many people still don’t know usual requirements for protecting their health. It’s necessary to understand that your momentary pleasure can worth you a long-life HIV treatment. Internet resources: ) http://www. bbc. co. uk/news/health-21653463 – Analysis: A cure for HIV? By James Gallagher. 2) http://www. bbc. co. uk/news/world-us-canada-21651225 – US HIV baby ‘cured’ by early drug treatment 3) http://www. nytimes. com/2013/04/04/health/aids-vaccine-path-suggested-by-study. html? ref=aids&_r=1& – Possible Path to Vaccine for AIDS Is Suggested. By DONALD G. Mcneil Jr. 4) http://www. guardian. co. uk/society/sarah-boseley-global-health/2012/jul/19/hiv-infection-infectiousdiseases? INTCMP=SRCH – A cure for Aids?
