60 Minutes (CBS-7:00 PM EST) just had a very positive feature describing a physician and of the success of combination therapy including protease inhibitors. It was the last feature, so should still be on Central and Pacific time.
Working on a Miracle
A doctor tells 60 Minutes he contracted the AIDS virus, treated himself, and now shows no trace of it in his blood. Dr. Mahlon Johnson may not be cured, but his story offers hope for all AIDS sufferers. He was a neurosurgeon who became infected while doing an autopsy on an AIDS patient. He convinced doctors to treat him when the standard practice was to wait till the virus loads were high and the patients were symptomatic. He took AZT, ddI, delavirdine, and IL-2. When he added IL-2 his CD4's rose from 300 to 900 in two weeks. He is now taking a protease inhibitor as well and is undetectable. Mahlon Johnson felt it was better to die fighting than to start fighting while dying. He has written a book
"Working on a Miracle"
They show how HIV uses three enzymes to reproduce, and AZT attacks only one of these. Protease inhibitors attack one of the others and it is this one-two punch given in a combination of drugs that is having such promising results.
They interview David Sanford, an editor of the WSJ, who contracted HIV in 1982. Last year he was dying, then he was put on a potent regimen including a protease inhibitor.
These drugs are not only helping Johnson and hundreds like him become undetectable, they are also helping thousands who were dying from the disease.
They interview physicians and another patient who was treated early and became undetectable at 24 weeks and remained so for 89 weeks, even undetectable in lymph nodes. However when he was taken off, his virus rebounded within a week.
Fauci is interviewed, says we know we are doing really well, but we don't know yet., if resistant virus will emerge, or if toxicity will result in patients withdrawing from treatment.
Johnson thinks HIV can become a chronic, manageable disease. |
