MACGYVER%INDYCMS.BITNET@oac.ucla.edu (MacGyver) (12/05/90)
On Tue, 4 Dec 90 14:19:58 pst Support Account for SCI.MED.AIDS said: >ANY VIROLOGISTS OUT THERE???? I'm not a virologist, and I don't play one on TV. >This posting makes me submit these questions again for the third time. >No one has taken a stab at them yet. The question being why certain >people who have been exposed to tainted blood don't get Aids. These are my personal feelings and observations based intuitively upon what I read, not citations from medical journals, per se. 1) With regard as to why some develop AIDS more readily than others, you have to consider why many people develop other things differently than lots of people. I go barefooted all winter, rarely wear a coat, etc. yet I am almost never sick, even when everyone decides to bring their bugs into work to share them. That defies the old wives' tale of "wear a coat or you'll catch cold." Think about other people that just have to hear someone cough or sneeze and they're sick all winter. Look at cancer. Some people smoke all their lives, and try to use that as an exception to disprove the rule that smoking causes cancer. Some people are exposed consistently to carcinogens, and nothing happens, others develop cancer for unknown reasons. My point is this: there are a lot of things science & medicine don't seem to understand about activation of things, particularly the immune system. 2) Consider items like those mentioned in Discover several months ago (Genetic Time Bombs). Is it possible that some people are highly resistent to or immune to AIDS? I believe so. Look at what that article said about persons with sickle-cell and they are resistant to malaria. I think we will find a recessive gene strain somewhere conveying immunity or resistance to HIV. Now whether that can be used to aid (no pun intended) others is another story.