Thanks James for posting this article:
http://www.cnn.com/2009/HEALTH/02/11/health.hiv.stemcell/index.html?eref=rss_latest
It is absolutely amazing that someone is apparently HIV free after a stem cell transplant, but he did have a relapse a year before this article was written. So technically, he had two transplants.
For some people, they may pounce on this as an act of God. I try to look at things like this with logic and reason. The article states that the mutation of the cell is found in one to three percent of people of European descent. I believe that there is potential (with my okay amount of scientific knowledge) to possibly work with this mutation, to hopefully eliminate HIV safely. The doctors state that getting a transplant to shut down your immune system and re-start it with new stem cells is too dangerous (a third of people die from it).
Now this question comes to mind: Is the risk worth the reward?
To me - Yes because if I had HIV, it won't be soon before long before it kills me.
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Just a little note-it's likely that this patient does still have HIV somewhere in his body, it's just not in his blood. So, there is potential that if there is HIV hanging around still it could cause problems in the future (of course, this is still better than his previous prognosis). Also, there are different types of HIV which don't involve CCR5 so this specific treatment wouldn't work for all HIV patients.
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