Designer Virus cure for HIV

BERKELEY, California -- It took Adam Arkin and David Schaffer just $200,000 and a grad student to develop a potential treatment for AIDS. And that scares them.

That's because the therapy itself is a virus. The Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory assistant professors created a virus altered to latch onto HIV and mute its ability to become AIDS. They've tested the theory in a computer model, and in cells in a dish. The results have been promising, and if they continue in that vein, the researchers could begin animal testing by the end of this year

Arkin said this week at the International Biotech Summit at the University of California at Berkeley that it was almost too easy for him and his colleagues (Schaffer and then-grad student Leor Weinberger) to build the anti-HIV virus.

"If I can do it, anyone can do it," Arkin said. "That's going to be a problem."

The genie is out of the bottle, so we might as well study these things in earnest," Arkin said in an interview.

So a cure for AIDS might come from $200,000 dollars and a Grad student. Makes you wonder were all the millions have gone to fight this thing.

Do you think this might be the cure for AIDS people have been looking for?

Or could this cure become more dangerous then HIV itself if it mutates?

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