On Nov 19, 2008, at 6:24 AM, Jed Rothwell wrote:
Horace Heffner wrote:
A marrow transplant cure, especially using gene therapy on the
patient's own cells to obtain the new marrow, is well within the
reach of US medical capabilities, both technically and financially.
I do not think so. A bone marrow transplant costs ~$250,000 and
there are 1.1 million people suffering from AIDS in the U.S. I do
not think we can afford $275 billion to cure them. I do not think
you could find ~1.1 million donors, or the hospital space, or
enough doctors. Also, hundreds of thousands of the patients would
die, whereas people may soon live indefinitely with conventional
AIDS treatments.
I don't have any idea what you are talking about. The source of the
transplant can be the patient himself. It is not even necessary to
wipe out the patent's immune system because AIDS will do that for
him. When the genetically modified marrow is injected it will grow
to take over the system. The patient is never without immunity.
This can be an outpatient procedure.
Best regards,
Horace Heffner
http://www.mtaonline.net/~hheffner/
