Let's hope

The Toronto Globe & Mail for Sunday brought a little hopeful news.

Piscataway, N.J. — Researchers at Rutgers University have developed a trio of drugs they believe can destroy HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, according to a published report.

The drugs, called DAPYs, mimic the virus by changing shape, which enables them to interfere with the way HIV attacks the immune system.

Tests conducted in conjunction with Johnson and Johnson have shown the drug to be easily absorbed with minimal side effects. It also can be taken in one pill, in contrast to the drug cocktails currently taken by many AIDS patients.

"This could be it," Stephen Smith, the head of the department of infectious diseases at Saint Michael's Medical Center in Newark, said. "We're all looking for the next class of drugs."

The research team, headed by Dr. Eddy Arnold of Rutgers University, has focused on reverse transcriptase, HIV's key protein. The new drugs promise being able to inhibit reverse by interfere with an enzyme that the virus needs to copy and insert itself into a human cell. Do that, Dr. Smith said, and you stop AIDS.

"We're onto something very, very special," Dr. Arnold said.

Indeed they are, especially because working literally at a molecular level as they are would make it much more difficult for a mutant, treatment-resistant form of AIDS to develop. Although the article doesn't say, I imagine clinical trials are still some time off - but this is very hopeful news.

I wonder how long it will take for some right-wing fundamentalist to proclaim that this is "against God's will" because AIDS is punishment for sexual promiscuity?

("Why do you always find a downside?"

"Hey, I've got a reputation to protect.")

Footnote: For background on how the research developed over the years, illustrating some of the ups and downs of any such effort, try this link to the Newark (NJ) Star-Ledger.