Infectious Disease: What Can Evolution Do For Us? forum: topic
This is a public forum
Back to basics?
Kausik Datta
Monday, 27 October 2008 22:10 UTC
How about the basics of scientific research? Like scientific rigor? What I am about to say is absolutely my personal opinion, based on hearsay and unsupportable anecdotes. But at the end of it, I ask a legitimate question.
From the early to mid ‘90s, a lot of investigators had jumped into the ’HIV bandwagon’ – not only in the US, but in other countries as well. The HIV infected immunocompromised patients were live receptacles for many other infections, then considered ‘opportunistic’, and the focus on HIV research was so expansive and urgent (rightly, of course) that it encompassed easily ‘HIV-associated infections’. Which was fine. But gradually, perhaps, it resulted in the focus getting diluted, and among the first affected was funding. Many investigators found that their otherwise important disease research was in the danger of being under-funded or non-funded unless a link – however tenuous – was made with HIV. When they got the grants, they continued to work in their own existing areas, with just a passing nod to HIV. The big name Pharma companies were pushing money into anti-retrovirals and cocktails, once again, with barely a passing nod to basic HIV research. And then there were the so-called HIV researchers, who knew that their livelihood and continued funding depended upon tenaciously maintaining their link to HIV, and therefore concentrated on diagnostics, therapetics and such like, but less on the basic biology.
Some exciting discoveries did come about during this time through some enterprising investigators. But for myriads of others… Well, here is the hearsay. A friend of mine works in the lab of reputed HIV researcher in big city. When he joined the lab, he found that the research was extremely haphazard with no strictness in record/result keeping, and the scientific standards in that lab were low enough to accept arbitrary results from assays done with no controls if they jived well with the hypothesis, and disregard equally arbitrary results, if they did not, all without any further scrutiny.
Now that is a pretty serious accusation, to my mind, and for want of hardcore evidence, I would not want to make a case of it. But this, taken together with the current status of HIV research (read ‘repeated failures of testable hypotheses’), raises severe doubt in my mind as to the true direction HIV research has taken.
Now the question: Given the amount of money that has been put into it, the time spent and the number of people involved all over the world, why have we not yet been able to demystify HIV? Why have we not found a sure shot cure? Is HIV the bin Laden of the microbial world? Why do we fall back upon the same excuse that the virus mutates rapidly to avoid eradication? I find it unpalatable to accept that all the scientific minds focused on this crucial work still have not made too much sense of it.
Perhaps I am being too harsh. As I said, there have been several exciting discoveries of the mechanisms associated with HIV infection and AIDS. The availability of the multi-drug cocktails has enhanced the life-expectancy of the HIV infected, allowing many of them to lead nearly normal lives. But there is so much more that should have been done, that were not done… yet.
I guess I am just frustrated that mankind seems to be losing the battle with ONE elusive virus, given the unchecked AIDS rampage in Africa, Southeast Asia, and elsewhere. Compounding this outrage are the growing numbers of that evidence-starved, unscientific and frankly crazy gathering called ‘HIV deniers’. If 20-odd years of HIV research cannot provide a definitive knock-out answer to this type of wackaloonery, what will? And when?
Updated 27 October 2008 22:11 UTC
-
Replies
Jump to resultsResults
-
Sadun provided a link: Adenovirus antibodies assist HIV.
Sadun, I am sorry if I have not been clearer with my statement, but the findings of this paper does not apply to what I said. What I said was that even if certain antibodies to the HIV V3-V4 loop domains were not neutralizing for HIV,they could perhaps still be used to deliver therapeutics targeted to the virus. I was not talking about Adenovirus antibodies, but antibodies to HIV itself.As I mentioned, a similar approach has been successfully taken with other infectious diseases.
For the next part, Maxine is right. Perhaps it should be moved to its own forum/thread.
-
Kausik,
No, your statement was clear enough. But I thought that it still was interesting and related enough to mention at that moment.And here you can check out the new forum/topic I created:
Back to the very basics?I’d appreciate it if you can offer some serious feedback. Thanks…
-
I was disappointed that none of you left any kind of response. It’s not exactly something humanity can afford to be silent about. I updated that topic I created with a recently released video. Please make sure that you check it out. Thanks.
-
Maxine Clarke it is uplifting to see you can change your mind and re-enter a discussion you’ve already left, if only to tell someone he is off topic. However, your passionate defence of HIV science has left me scratching my head. You write:
“Maybe you would like to read that, or some other scientific literature/discussion such as the very good NIH AIDS information website, and formulate some more balanced, contextual suggestions, rather than making “pretty serious accusations that lack hard-core evidence” and various other vague assertions which are in your own words “hearsay”.”
I was therefore rather surprised to find this quality of argument from you immediately below:
“The “big name Pharma companies” that you denigrate were at the time focusing their efforts on what seemed to be the most productive approach given existing knowledge”
Ms. Clarke was there ever a time when pharma companies declared they had decided to focus on something that did NOT seem to be the most productive (did you mean “profitable”?) approach? If not, your defence of them inthis context is meaningless.
Immediately following, you write:
“If all HIV/AIDS research at the time, instead of just some of it, had focused on basic research, who knows how many more people would have died”
Most of the time, the distinction between basic research and applied science is meaningless, because the applications of the science grow out of basic research, just as experience gained in applying the science informs basic research. When we are talking about something as vast and vastly funded as HIV/AIDS research, the distinction is surely meaningless, because the truth is there has always been an overabundance of both, and always with spectacularly poor results.
It is not basic research we need but basic scientific method and rigour. No amount of politician’s waffle will distract from that point. You write:
“The fact that a disease is complex entity that has no simple “cure” along the magic bullet lines you describe (and which has echoes of a similar conversation here in which Richard Grant and others drew attention to the complexities and frustrations of cancer research) does not mean that there is anything underhand going on”
HIV is not a disease; it is a pretty standard piece of RNA (and proteins), so perhaps something underhand IS going on? Speaking of underhand, I see you referred to the Nobel Comittee as the ultimate authority on which papers should be viewed as the foundation of HIV research. You are of course aware, are you not, that the Comittee you are referring to is being investigated at the moment because of several allegations of conflicts of interest?
Since you complain about vagueness, I find it peculiar that you and others dismiss Sadunkal’s invitation to discuss key HIV papers as off-topic. If you consider Montagnier and Barre-Sinousi’s work the foundation of HIV science, you should welcome a review of it here.
Results
-
