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Strategies & Market Trends : Ask Vendit Off-Topic Questions -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Vendit™ who wrote (3886)	1/15/2005 3:43:21 AM
From: Walkingshadow	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 8752

That's a rather odd product.... I can't really understand the rationale. Seems to me something like this will not get a huge market. Besides, there are very significant things going on in the HIV vaccine world. I think we'll see news in the coming year or two that will obviate the need for such gels and things. Most people are not aware of it... but in the last 5 or 10 years there has been profound, groundbreaking progress in understanding (and manipulating) how the body senses infection and fights against it. You cannot underestimate the importance of this work---Nobel prizes are being born as we speak. Remember, infection has always been the single greatest cause of death and disability. Always. That is still true, except in developed nations. In the 20th century, probably the greatest advance in medicine came about because we began to understand one of the two major aspects of how the body fights infection---that is, what these "antibody" things are all about, how they come into existence, and how we can manipulate that system to protect us. The result---the eradication of smallpox, polio, and other diseases that once took an unbelievable toll on humans. Tuberculosis, for example, has killed 100 million people since 1900. My guess is that there are probably 500 or 1000 people TODAY who die of infection for every one that dies of HIV. At least. HIV and heart attacks and cancer get all the press, but infection takes the world's biggest toll, far and away. So, bottom line, the really big advances (and opportunities for investors) in HIV will come not from creams and things, but from technology that applies the basic emerging understandings to therapeutic innovation. Where? Vaccines is one area. But another is RNA interference. A third is tissue and cellular engineering. A fourth is the intersection of these. This is not a story that will unfold in the next several months, but this is the long-term road ahead, very clearly. It's gonna be exciting, too! T