Holy Sh*^%, Man Cured of HIV Through a TRANSPLANT!!!

Sound the bells and whistles, people, this is big news!  Really, really big news.  For those of us who lived through the 1980s, when HIV and AIDS was just starting out, to those of close to some of the 30 million people AIDS has claimed since it was first discovered, a cure for HIV is MONSTROUSLY GOOD NEWS.  And to have it tied to transplantation, hot damn! I'm beside myself.

Timothy Ray Brown suffered from both leukemia and HIV when he received a bone marrow stem cell transplant in Berlin, Germany in 2007. The transplant came from a man who was immune to HIV, which scientists say about 1 percent of Caucasians are. (According to San Francisco's CBS affiliate, the trait may be passed down from ancestors who became immune to the plague centuries ago. This Wired story says it was more likely passed down from people who became immune to a smallpox-like disease.)

What happened next has stunned the dozens of scientists who are closely monitoring Brown: His HIV went away.

Liz Brown, First Man, Functionally Cured of HIV, Yahoo News, http://news.yahoo.com/s/yblog_thelookout/20110603/us_yblog_thelookout/first-man-functionally-cured-of-hiv, May 31, 2011 (emphasis mine).

A bone marrow transplant cured HIV in a man known as "the Berlin Patient."