By Staff Writer, PinkNews.co.uk

The homophobic Family Research Council has begun a campaign against efforts to repeal America’s ban on out gay soldiers in the military.

According to the group, lifting the ban will lead to higher rates of HIV infection among troops.

The campaign is titled ‘Mission Compromised: How the military is being used to advance a radical agenda’ and is being led by Dr Robert Labutta, a retired Army colonel.

In a video released last week, the FRC cited a study which claimed that HIV rates in gay and bisexual men are 50 per cent higher than in heterosexuals.

It added that “substance abuse, partner violence, depression and childhood sexual abuse” are also associated with homosexuality and are currently at “epidemic” level.

The video also featured Gen John Sheehan, who had to apologise earlier this year for suggesting that gay soldiers caused the 1995 Srebrenica massacre.

Gen Sheehan said that military chiefs are opposed to “active, open homosexuality” because it has a “corrosive influence” on cohesion.

An estimated 13,500 soldiers in total have been fired for being gay since the policy was implemented in 1993.

A review into how the ban can be repealed is currently underway.

Read more.

Advocates call new strategy a ‘wonderful development’

By Todd A. Heywood

Many HIV experts and advocates are applauding the nation’s first comprehensive National HIV/AIDS Strategy, issued on July 13 by the White House, because it calls for an end to state laws that criminalize the transmission of HIV.

Those laws date back to the late 1980s and early 90s, when the death toll from HIV infection was mounting and no medications were readily available to treat the viral infection.

“In many instances, the continued existence and enforcement of these types of laws run counter to scientific evidence about routes of HIV transmission and may undermine the public health goals of promoting HIV screening and treatment,” the report says, after acknowledging the rationale behind passage of such laws. “CDC data and other studies, however, tell us that intentional HIV transmission is atypical and uncommon. A recent research study also found that HIV-specific laws do not influence the behavior of people living with HIV in those states where these laws exist.”

Michigan is one of 32 states with HIV-specific criminal laws. In Michigan, it is a felony for a person with HIV infection to engage in sexual penetration “however slight” without first disclosing their HIV-positive status to the sex partner. The law includes the use of sex toys, which have never been shown to be a route of transmission for HIV. It does not, however, include sharing needles, which is an extremely effective way to transmit the virus, experts say.

National experts weigh in

“It is the first truly meaningful official statement on the issue of criminalization and the role of civil rights in addressing the HIV epidemic, and reflects both the advocacy of HIV civil rights advocates who consistently prioritized the issue, and the willingness of ONAP (Office of National AIDS Policy) staff to respond substantively and decisively,” Catherine Hanssens, executive Director of the HIV Law and Policy Center in New York.

Hanssens pointed out how the strategy’s implementation plan — which is a companion document to the strategy — goes beyond merely advising legislatures to re-visit their HIV-specific laws and contains specific goals to address HIV criminalization, including study by the Department of Justice.

“Individually and collectively, these actions can and should produce findings that HIV-specific criminal laws and prosecutions contravene prioritized public health goals; subject people with HIV to irrational, exceptionalist treatment and punishment solely on the basis of their known HIV status, and also consequently represent a violation of federal antidiscrimination laws created to protect those affected by HIV,” said Hanssens.

Bebe Anderson, director of the Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund’s HIV Project, echoed Hanssens, calling the strategy and its implementation plan a “wonderful development.”

But she says individual states may struggle with addressing the laws.

“I think it will depend on each state and the political environment,” she noted.

Michigan lawmakers divided on HIV-specific criminal law

Anderson’s statement is reflective of the political reality in Michigan today. With the state House controlled by Democrats and the state Senate controlled by Republicans, lawmakers say that while these changes might be necessary, they will be difficult to achieve.

“If they don’t work, then we have to revisit them,” said House Speaker Andy Dillon of Redford Township of the HIV-specific criminal laws.

“Absolutely, we need to revisit them,” said Rep. Joan Bauer (D-Lansing). “I am open to looking at what is working and what is not.”

Mark Meadows (D-East Lansing) chairs the House Judiciary Committee and he too said he would revisit the laws. He said he felt it was still important to revisit Michigan’s bio-terrorism law to clarify it after a 45-year-old HIV-positive Clinton Township man was charged with the law for allegedly biting a neighbor during a fight. Those charges have since been dismissed by Macomb County Circuit Court Judge Peter Maceroni.

Meadows said prosecutions such as the Macomb case increase stigma against the HIV-positive community. He previously has called that prosecution “silly.”

But Republican law makers say not so quick.

State Sen. Tom George (R-Texas Township) chairs the Senate Health Policy Committee.

“I see these (calls to address specific laws– such as the HIV-specific criminal laws or nondiscrimination laws) as more of a political agenda and less of a public health issue,” George said. “I don’t think changing that or revisiting that is going to make a big difference like testing will.”

George, who is seeking the Republican nomination for governor and is a physician, is pushing legislation which will change Michigan’s law on HIV testing, which requires signed informed consent before an HIV test can be conducted. His legislation would make Michigan an opt-out state, meaning patients would give general consent for HIV testing when consenting for care and treatment. They could opt out of HIV testing, but only in writing.

Rep. Rick Jones (R-Grand Ledge) serves on the House Judiciary Committee. And while he has been a vocal critic of the HIV-as-terrorism prosecution, and previously said he was in favor of repealing the state criminal law on HIV disclosure, now says he no longer favors the move.

“After careful consideration and listening to the feelings of my constituents, I think you should have to disclose it,” says Jones. “Should it just be HIV? Absolutely not. It should include things that are much easier to transmit like Hepatitis and TB.”

Jones is the former sheriff of Eaton County and says he thinks that an HIV-positive person spitting at a police officer, and declaring the hope the officer is infected, should be criminalized, even though there is no known risk of infection from the act.

“It shows intent,” Jones said.

The National HIV/AIDS Strategy specifically cites criminalizing spitting as a concern.

“Since it is now clear that spitting and biting do not pose significant risks for HIV transmission, many believe that it is unfair to single out people with HIV for engaging in these behaviors and should be dealt with in a consistent manner without consideration of HIV status,” the report states.

Jones admitted it is a crime already in Michigan to spit on a police officer, noting that he vividly recalled while a road officer having a suspect spit at him. That man, Jones said, ended up serving 30 days in jail for the incident.

Regardless of the how debate starts shaping up in Michigan, don’t expect the Michigan Department of Community Health to step into the fray anytime soon, says Debra Szwedja, acting director of the MDCH’s Division of Health, Wellness and Disease Control.

“Really, at this point in time, that is something the legislature will have to initiate,” Szwedja said.

Read more.

An elderly gay man who was prevented from seeing his dying partner in the hospital social workers will receive $600,000 in a settlement, reports the Mercury News. Clay Greene, 78, of Guerneville, Calif filed a lawsuit against Sonoma County’s Public Guardian program earlier this year, claiming he was discriminated against because of his sexual orientation.

Greene accused the county’s social workers of denying him hospital visitation rights to see his partner, Harold Scull, despite medical declarations, powers of attorney, and signed wills that named each other as spouses. The couple was not married nor registered as domestic partners. The lawsuit also alleged that after Scull died, Greene was forced into a nursing home by social workers, who then sold many items of the couple’s personal property.

Gregory Spaulding, the attorney who represented the county, denied the discrimination claims, but he admitted mistakes in selling the couple’s property. According to the county, Greene was kept away from his partner because of previous domestic violence allegations. According to a sheriff’s report, Scull went to authorities with a black eye, claiming Greene threatened to kill him. However, no formal complaint was lodged against Scull.

“The county remains confident in its position that there was no discrimination in this case,” Spaulding says. Under the law, property worth $5,000 or less can be sold by officials to cover medical expenses, but the sale of the couple’s property brought in more than $25,000 at auction. “Errors in that case have led to revised policies at the Public Guardian’s office,” Spaulding says.

Spaulding acknowledges the county settled the case Thursday to avoid further expense. “It just made economic sense to stop the bleeding,” Spaulding says. “To end the case and avoid all expenses and costs.”

Read more.

By PinkNews.co.uk Staff Writer

One in seven men on the capital’s gay scene are thought to be infected with HIV – markedly higher than the rate for the general gay male population.

Although Health Protection Agency figures estimate that one in 20 gay men nationally and one in ten in London are living with HIV, a recent sample of 1,251 men in gay bars and clubs found that 15.2 per cent were carrying the virus.

Health experts believe that up to a quarter of gay men with HIV do not know they are carrying the virus and suggests that many wrongly think HIV-positive men can be identified through their appearances or how they act.

Alan Wardle, head of health promotion at sexual health charity Terrence Higgins Trust, said: “Men who have seen the campaign in focus groups have been genuinely shocked by the one in seven figure. Yet the reality is that, after Brighton, London has the highest HIV prevalence of any city in the UK.

“Many gay men wrongly believe that you can tell someone’s HIV status by what they look like, how they act, or who they’re friends with. But you can’t tell whether someone has HIV by looking at them, and with a quarter of gay men who have HIV currently undiagnosed, he may not even know himself.

“The assumption that HIV is visible is almost certainly affecting whether men use condoms or not. Forty-seven per cent of gay men surveyed reported having unprotected anal sex with at least one partner, and a quarter reported doing this with more than one casual partner. With this in mind, it’s vital this campaign reminds men that the best way to protect themselves and others is to use condoms.”

To highlight the figure and encourage men on the scene to use condoms, THT is running an advertising campaign in London gay magazines, bars, clubs and sexual health clinics over the next three months

Read more.

By The Associated Press

(Buenos Aires) Argentina legalized same-sex marriage Thursday, becoming the first country in Latin America to grant gays and lesbians all the legal rights, responsibilities and protections that marriage brings to heterosexual couples.

After a marathon debate, 33 lawmakers voted in favor, 27 were against it and 3 abstained in Argentina’s Senate in a vote that ended after 4 a.m. Since the lower house already approved it, and President Cristina Fernandez is a strong supporter, it now becomes law as soon as it is published in the official bulletin.

The law is sure to bring a wave of marriages by gays and lesbians who have increasingly found Buenos Aires to be more accepting than many other places in the region.

The approval came despite a concerted campaign by the Roman Catholic Church and evangelical groups, which drew 60,000 people to march on Congress and urged parents in churches and schools to work against passage.

Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio said “everyone loses” with gay marriage, and “children need to have the right to be raised and educated by a father and a mother.”

Nine gay couples had already married in Argentina after persuading judges that the constitutional mandate of equality supports their marriage rights, but some of these marriages were later declared invalid.

As the debate stretched on for nearly 16 hours, supporters and opponents of held rival vigils through the frigid night outside the Congress building in Buenos Aires.

“Marriage between a man and a woman has existed for centuries, and is essential for the perpetuation of the species,” insisted Sen. Juan Perez Alsina, who is usually a loyal supporter of the president but gave a passionate speech against gay marriage.

But Sen. Norma Morandini, another member of the president’s party, compared the discrimination closeted gays face to the oppression imposed by Argentina’s dictators decades ago.

“What defines us is our humanity, and what runs against humanity is intolerance,” she said.

Same-sex civil unions have been legalized in Uruguay, Buenos Aires and some states in Mexico and Brazil. Mexico City has legalized gay marriage. Colombia’s Constitutional Court granted same-sex couples inheritance rights and allowed them to add their partners to health insurance plans.

But Argentina now becomes the first country in Latin America to legalize same-sex marriage nationwide, granting gays and lesbians all the same rights and responsibilities that heterosexuals have. These include many more rights than civil unions, including adopting children and inheriting wealth.

Gay rights advocates said Argentina’s historic step adds momentum to similar efforts around the world.

“Today’s historic vote shows how far Catholic Argentina has come, from dictatorship to true democratic values, and how far the freedom to marry movement has come, as twelve countries on four continents now embrace marriage equality,” said Evan Wolfson, who runs the U.S. Freedom to Marry lobby.

He urged U.S. lawmakers to stand up “for the Constitution and all families here in the United States. America should lead, not lag, when it comes to treating everyone equally under the law.”

Among the opponents were teacher Eduardo Morales, who said he believes the legislation was concocted by Buenos Aires residents who are out step with the views of the country.

“They want to convert this city into the gay capital of the world,” said Morales of San Luis province.

Ines Franck, director of the group Familias Argentinas, said the legislation cuts against centuries of tradition.

Opposing the measure “is not discrimination, because the essence of a family is between two people of opposite sexes,” he said. “Any variation goes against the law, and against nature.”

The president, currently on a state visit to China, spoke out from there against the Argentine Catholic Church’s campaign and the tone she said some religious groups have taken.

“It’s very worrisome to hear words like ‘God’s war’ or ‘the devil’s project,’ things that recall the times of the Inquisition,” she said.

Some opposition leaders have accused her of promoting the initiative to gain votes in next year’s presidential elections, when Fernandez’s husband, former President Nestor Kirchner, is expected to run again.

The vote came after Sen. Daniel Filmus urged fellow lawmakers to show the world how much Argentina has matured.

“Society has grown up. We aren’t the same as we were before,” he said.

Read more.

By Staff Writer, PinkNews.co.uk

A US survey has found that lesbians and gay men are among nation’s heaviest users of internet blogs and social networking sites.

The study, conducted online by Harris Interactive, asked 2,412 adults, including 341 LGBT people, about their internet habits and oversampled lesbian and gay people.

It found that 54 per cent of lesbians and gay men read blogs, compared to 40 per cent of straight people. The figure for gay people had risen from only 32 per cent in November 2006.

Thirty-six per cent of lesbians and gay men said they read news and current affairs blogs, compared to 25 per cent of heterosexuals. A quarter (25 per cent ) of gay and lesbian adults also read entertainment and pop culture blogs, compared to 16 per cent of heterosexuals.

This trend continued with politics and travel blogs, while one-third (35 per cent) of gay readers said they looked at lesbian and gay news and interest websites.

More than half (53 per cent) of these readers also say they visit gay and lesbian websites weekly, and one in five (19 per cent) do so daily.

PinkNews.co.uk is the largest LGBT news service in the UK and the second largest globally, with 650,000 unique users a month.

The survey also found that social networking sites are more popular with gays and lesbians than they are with heterosexuals.

Seventy-three per cent of gay and lesbian adults said they were on Facebook, compared to 65 per cent of heterosexual adults. Also, 32 per cent of gay and lesbian respondents report being members of MySpace, compared to 22 per cent of heterosexual respondents.

On LinkedIn, the business-oriented social networking site, 22 per cent of gay and lesbian respondents report being members, while just 16 per cent of heterosexuals said the same.

Finally, nearly three out of ten (29 per cent) gay men and lesbians report they are members of Twitter, compared to just 15 per cent heterosexual adults.

Read more.

By Celeste Lavin, 365gay.com
07.12.2010 4:30am EDT

The White House has announced that it will release a National HIV/AIDS Strategy tomorrow.

According to a press release from the White House, the strategy will focus on reducing the number of new HIV infections, increasing access to care and health for those already living with HIV and reducing health disparities related to HIV.

AIDS activists have been pushing for a national AIDS strategy for years. The Bush administration was the first to implement a global AIDS plan, with the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), but no administration has yet to tackle the domestic HIV/AIDS crisis with one cohesive strategy.

Christine Campbell, a spokesperson for Housing Works, the largest community-based AIDS service organization in the nation, said that the strategy is a good start.

“Were excited that it’s coming out, but our work is just beginning. The challenge will be in the implementation.”

Read more.

A judge in Boston, Massachusetts, has ruled that America’s federal ban on gay marriage is unconstitutional as it interferes with the individual rights of states.

The ruling means the estimated 16,000 married gay couples in Massachusetts have the right to the same federal benefits enjoyed by married straight couples.

Massachusetts was the first US state to legalise gay marriage in 2004 and is the first to challenge the controversial Act, introduced in 1996.

President Barack Obama promised to repeal the Defence of Marriage Act (DOMA) in his election campaign, calling it “abhorrent”.

It states that only a marriage between one man and one woman will be recognised for federal purposes, thus barring gay married couples from a number of rights, including federal healthcare benefits.

In his ruling yesterday, US District Judge Joseph Tauro said that “irrational prejudice plainly never constitutes a legitimate government interest”, and that DOMA violates the Fifth Amendment.

He ruled simultaneously on two separate lawsuits brought to challenge the ban. One was filed by the Gay & Lesbian Advocates & Defenders (GLAD) on behalf of eight gay married couples and three widows and the other was filed by Massachusetts Attorney-General Martha Coakley.

Ms Coakley said the decision was “a victory for civil rights”.

Mary Bonauto, GLAD’s civil rights project director, who argued the case, said: “Today the court simply affirmed that our country won’t tolerate second-class marriages.

“I’m pleased that Judge Tauro recognised that married same-sex couples and surviving spouses have been seriously harmed by DOMA and that the plaintiffs deserve the same opportunities to care and provide for each other and for their children that other families enjoy. This ruling will make a real difference for countless families in Massachusetts.”

Nancy Gill, who was a plaintiff with her wife, Marcelle Letourneau, said: “I am thrilled that my family will now be treated in the same way as those of my married co-workers at the post office.

“Marcelle and I married out of love and commitment to each other first and foremost, but federal recognition of our marriage means that we’ll have equal access to important protections for our two children and for ourselves.”

The Obama administration may appeal the ruling, although legal experts believe that if upheld by a higher court, the case could have far wider implications.

Boston College professor Kent Greenfield, a constitutional law expert, told AP today that the rulings could encourage other attorney-generals to challenge DOMA in their states,

“One thing that’s going to be really interesting to watch is whether the Obama administration appeals or not,” he said.

The Department of Justice has not yet said whether it will appeal.

Read more.

In a significant step toward an AIDS vaccine, U.S. government scientists have discovered three powerful antibodies, the strongest of which neutralizes 91% of HIV strains, more than any AIDS antibody yet discovered.

Looking closely at the strongest antibody, they have detailed exactly what part of the virus it targets and how it attacks that site.

The atomic structure of a powerful new antibody, called VRC01 (blue and green) shown binding to HIV (grey and red).

The antibodies were discovered in the cells of a 60-year-old African-American gay man, known in the scientific literature as Donor 45, whose body made the antibodies naturally. Researchers screened 25 million of his cells to find 12 that produced the antibodies. Now the trick will be for scientists to develop a vaccine or other methods to make anyone’s body produce them.

That effort “will require work,” said Gary Nabel, director of the Vaccine Research Center at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, who was a leader of the research. “We’re going to be at this for a while” before any benefit is seen in the clinic, he said.

The research was published Thursday in two papers in the online edition of the journal Science, 10 days before the opening of the large International AIDS Conference in Vienna, where prevention science is expected to take center stage.

More than 33 million people were living with HIV at the end of 2008, and about 2.7 million contracted the virus that year, according to United Nations estimates. Vaccines, which are believed to work by activating the body’s ability to produce antibodies, eliminated or curtailed smallpox, polio and other once-feared viral diseases, so they have been the holy grail of AIDS research.

Last year, following a trial in Thailand, results of the first HIV vaccine to show any efficacy were announced. But that vaccine reduced the chances of infection by only about 30%, and controversy erupted because in one common analysis the results were not statistically significant. That vaccine was not designed to elicit the new antibodies.

The new discovery is the latest in what Wayne Koff, head of research and development at the nonprofit International AIDS Vaccine Initiative, calls a “renaissance” in HIV vaccine research.

Antibodies that are utterly ineffective, or that disable just one or two strains, are common. Until last year, only a handful of “broadly neutralizing antibodies,” those that efficiently disable a large swath of HIV strains, had been discovered, and none of them neutralized more than about 40% of known HIV variants.

But in the last year, thanks to efficient new detection methods, at least a half dozen broadly neutralizing antibodies, including the three latest ones, have been identified in peer-reviewed journals. Most of the new antibodies are also more potent, able to knock out HIV at far lower concentrations than their previously known counterparts.

Dennis Burton of the Scripps Institute in La Jolla, Calif., led a team that discovered two broadly neutralizing antibodies last year; he says his team has identified additional, unpublished ones.

Some of the new antibodies attack different points on the virus, raising hopes that they could work synergistically. In unpublished research, John Mascola, deputy director of the Vaccine Research Center, has shown that one of Dr. Burton’s antibodies neutralizes virtually all the strains that are resistant to the strongest new antibody, called VRC01, and vice versa. Only one strain out of 95 tested was resistant to both antibodies, he said. Dr. Mascola is one of the authors of Thursday’s papers.

In the latest research, the antibody was found to attack a spike on the virus that attaches to cells the virus infects. Because this spike has to attach to a specific molecule on the cell surface, it is one of the few parts of HIV that don’t mutate much.

Scientists tested 32 patients to see which ones had sera—clear fluid in the blood—that neutralized HIV. The sera contained unknown antibodies. Donor 45 had promising sera, so they focused on him.

Researchers say they plan to test the new antibodies, likely blended together in a potent cocktail, in three broad ways.

First, they could be given to people in their raw form, somewhat like a drug, to prevent transmission of the virus. However, they would likely be expensive and persist in the body only for a limited time, perhaps weeks, making that method impractical for all but specialized cases, such as to prevent mother-to-child transmission during childbirth.

The antibody could also be tested in a “microbicide,” a gel that women and receptive partners in gay male pairings could apply before sex to prevent infection.

The antibodies might even be tried as a treatment for people who are already infected. While the antibodies are unlikely to completely suppress HIV on their own, say scientists, they might boost the efficacy of current antiretroviral drugs.

Dr. Nabel said that the Vaccine Research Center has contracted with a company to produce an antibody suitable for use in humans so that testing in people could begin.

The second way to use the new research is to deploy classical vaccine approaches. Traditional vaccines work by using a weakened or dead virus, or a viral fragment, to train the immune system to recognize the invader and produce antibodies. Because the new HIV antibodies are extremely specific, attaching tightly to particular parts of the virus, scientists have to show the immune system an exact replica of the parts of the virus that the antibodies attack. That’s a tall order—for example, it can be hard for such a replica to hold the correct shape—but different teams are trying different ways to achieve this goal.

One potential pitfall: There is evidence that Donor 45’s cells took months or possibly even years to create the powerful antibodies. That means scientists might have to give repeated booster shots or devise other ways to speed up this process.

Finally, there are experimental methods that employ tactics such as gene therapy. Nobel laureate David Baltimore, with funding from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, is working on one such approach.

His team at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, Calif., has stitched genes that code for antibodies into a harmless virus, which they then inject into mice. The virus infects mouse cells, turning them into factories that produce the antibodies.

Using one of the old antibodies, Dr. Baltimore said his team was able to protect mice from getting infected when injected with live HIV. Those experiments are not published. Recently, his lab has begun working with Dr. Burton’s antibodies and the strongest antibody from Donor 45. Even if it proves successful, this strategy is years away from the clinic, Dr. Baltimore cautioned.

Write to Mark Schoofs at mark.schoofs@wsj.com

By Randy Dotinga

(HealthDay News) — Research in mice suggests that scientists may have a new lead on using gene therapy against the virus that causes AIDS.

The researchers tinkered with human stem cells and then inserted them into mice where they multiplied into immune system cells that provided protection against infection with HIV, according to a study released online July 2 in Nature Biotechnology.

The results are unlike typical research in animals because the mice have been “humanized”: They have human immune systems and resisted a human disease. Still, until research is conducted on humans, there’s no way to know if the treatment will work in people. And it may be years until that happens.

But there are high hopes. “It’s a one-shot treatment if it works,” noted study co-author Paula Cannon, associate professor of molecular microbiology at the University of Southern California.

In gene therapy, doctors try to coax the human body into doing something differently by tweaking its genetic structure. To treat HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, scientists have been experimenting with using gene therapy to boost the immune system.

In the new study, researchers engineered human stem cells — cells that create other cells — to lock a kind of “door” that allows HIV to enter.

The door, a “receptor” on immune cells linked to a gene known as CCR5, is disabled in a very small percentage of people, and those people appear to be virtually immune to HIV.

“That’s like nature telling us how to cure AIDS,” Cannon reasoned. The idea of the experimental treatment is “to engineer a patient’s own cells so they’d be resistant to HIV” in much the same way.

The researchers did this by “cutting” a gene in the stem cells. These genetically manipulated cells did try and repair the injury, Cannon noted, but they didn’t do a good job and HIV’s way in was essentially disabled.

The researchers inserted these tweaked stem cells into the humanized mice and other mice, then tried to infect them with HIV.

According to the scientists, the genetically engineered stem cells went on to create mature immune system cells, such as T-cells, in the humanized mice. After a couple of weeks, these new immune cells appeared to provide protection against HIV. The cells grew greatly in number, offering fewer targets for the virus to attack.

Meanwhile, the virus made its usual successful attack on other mice that had not undergone the procedure.

Rowena Johnston, vice president of research with the Foundation for AIDS Research (amfAR) in New York City, said gene therapy is starting to show “real promise,” and this study reveals a new side of its potential.

“One of the doctrines of gene therapy in the context of HIV has been the assumption that every relevant cell must be transformed,” she said. “This research demonstrates that need not be the case.”

But could this approach work in humans? The answer to that is yet to come, Cannon said.

“We want to make sure that this works, and a good place to start is in a patient population who already have their stem cells taken out,” she said. Cannon and her colleagues would like to test it by piggybacking on a gene therapy treatment in which the stem cells of HIV-positive lymphoma patients are removed, tinkered with and then put back into their bodies.

Cannon doesn’t know how much the gene therapy will cost, but one estimate puts the expense of this type of treatment for HIV at $100,000. But if it allows HIV patients to avoid taking drugs for the rest of their lives, she said, it should be cost-effective over time.

Whatever the case, the treatment isn’t around the bend. Cannon said it could be four years before research in humans can begin. But another treatment that uses a similar strategy on a type of immune cell is already being tested in people.

Read more.