by John S. James
As we noted here recently, a new approach to treatment and possible cure of HIV has been caught up in unrelated controversy.
Dr. M. Ruggiero, who is presenting a scientific poster on Thursday at the Vienna conference, was interviewed this week (2010-07-19) in English on Russian TV. See it at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n4eMkdYhaZE. Some of his opinions about AIDS are controversial.
But the Thursday presentation is on the work of Dr. N. Yamamoto and others, who are not part of the controversy. The poster is # THPE0051, titled "Gc protein-derived macrophage activating factor (GcMAF) stimulates activation and proliferation of human circulating monocytes" (page 306 of the conference program book); it lists both researchers among the three authors. Dr. Yamamoto has been working on this project for about 15 years, and has reported that the treatment has eradicated HIV in a small clinical trial in Japan (see Immunotherapy of HIV-Infected Patients With Gc Protein-Derived Macrophage Activating Factor (GcMAF) (Journal of Medical Virology, January 2009).
Dr. Yamamoto and his team have been publishing on this project for about 15 years. Dr. Ruggiero has not published on GcMAF until this week, to our knowledge. But he is better known, and hopefully will bring this work to wider attention.
The presentation tomorrow in Vienna is an excellent opportunity for interested scientists to learn more about this research.
History shows that most proposed treatments fail. But sometimes, important advances can come from unexpected directions. These can be lost, because conventional wisdom reflexively says "No." It would be tragic if that happens in HIV.
Note: To see all our posts on this topic, search for "gcmaf" (search box at upper left of this page).
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