The Future for AIDS

Cures and Vaccines?
A cure for AIDS may be 30 years away, or may be never found. Even a vaccine is predicted to take at least 10-15 years if we are lucky. AIDS is a very difficult virus to work with because it is very tiny and it attacks the cells that are supposed to fight off diseases. All patients with AIDS suffer severely and eventually die. This makes human testing far too dangerous. A vaccine made with HIV particles is too dangerous to test out. If it is injected into a person, the person has a high risk of getting infected by the vaccine. Cures and vaccines look umpromising. Scientists are concentrating on finding cures for the opportunistic diseases and to prolong the lives of the cells of the immune system.

A Cure for Cancer?
Surprisingly, scientists have discoved a benefit from the AIDS virus. If scientists can tame an HIV gene called vpr, they may find the cure to cancer. This gene causes a cell to kill itself and may be a better alternative than chemotherapy for cancer. The gene was tested on tumors and all tumors were killed by the gene. More research is being done to understand how and why this gene kills so effectively. Furthermore, the gene vpr is just one of the many genes of HIV so it shouldn't be possible to get AIDS from it.

Conclusion
Several sources describe AIDS as the "black plague" of the future and I believe that they are correct in doing so. This is the disease that will wipe out a lot of people in the future. Public education is already in effect in most places but still the only cure to AIDS as of today is to prevent infection in the first place.

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