] 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

Amazing....great idea. Of course, this has the potential to go horribly wrong once it hits a real mammalian system...but the fact that it worked on cultured cells is a start. Of course, this is gene therapy using a retrovirus...something that is *really* not supported at this time after the whole SCIDS fiasco. There was a SCIDS gene therapy using a retrovirus a few years back that made it to human trials - unfortunately, they found that althought the SCIDS (bubble boy syndrome) cleared up, the patients subsequently contracted leukemia due to the retrovirus affecting the expression of an oncogene. Needless to say, gene therapy using retroviruses is unfortunately, risky buisness.