Cancer, HIV cure nearer

[malaise]

http://jamaicaobserver.com/news/html/20080706T180000-0500_137583_OBS_CANCER__HIV_CURE_NEARER.asp

<snip>
To look at, this ball-shaped plant is something you'd ignore, or if actually taken notice of, you might just kick it. Yet the inconspicuous Jamaican ball moss was what Dr Henry Lowe announced two years ago as one of two plants endemic to the island and which he and his American research partner Dr Joseph Bryant found to have anti-cancer properties.
Jamaican Scientist Dr Henry Lowe shows the Jamaican ball moss plant which he and his research partner, Dr Joseph Bryant, found to have anti-cancer and anti-HIV/AIDS properties. (Photo: Ross Sheil)

Two years later, that work has gained preliminary approval from the United States Patent Office, where a backlog of applications could mean it takes several more years for final approval.

Lowe, the head of the Environmental Health Foundation (EHF), claims that following successful tests on tumours grown on rats, the ball moss extract has shown to be more potent than leading anti-cancer drug Taxol, and with reduced side effects. It was during ongoing tests by Bryant at the University of Maryland Institute of Human Virology (IHV) that something interesting happened, again.

Test tube tests have shown it to be successful at controlling the AIDS/HIV virus, Bryant reported back to Lowe.

[endarkenment]

1. Cancer cures: nearer for 40 years and counting. HIV cures: only 20.

[DS1]

2. Cancer AND Aids?

Sounds like Pfizer is about to buy/bulldoze an island.

[malaise]

6. LOL

not this one. :D

[sui generis]

3. so - it's not an antineoplastic if it inhibits viral transcription

unless it's trapping some messenger molecule common to both neoplastic tissue and the virus itself?

Curious. "Cures" and "treatments" are not the same thing. And cynical little ol' me, a treatment is much more profitable than a cure, once the big dollars start investigating it.

[Schema Thing]

4. "Bryant reported back to Lowe"

makes a great beginning for a limerick.



....or the story of the cure for cancer and Aids! Absolutely Dr. Bryant, positively, Dr. Lowe!



lol, of course I'd love for this to be something, but I've seen too many stories like it not to be skeptical.

[NorthCarolina]

5. The drug companies woul never stand for an AIDS "cure" because

there is WAY to much $$$ to be gained through only treating the symptoms.