The Molecules of HIV
entice the immune system to recognise HIV
www.mcld.co.uk/hiv
"Passive immunization" or vaccination has often been important in preventing people from beoming victim to specific viruses. People are exposed to weakened or killed strains of a virus (or a bacterium), and their immune system develops a response - it learns to recognise and destroy the foreign substance, so that when the dangerous version of the virus comes along, the immune system will already know what to do.
This would be a dangerous thing to try with HIV. Although it's possible that a live but "attenuated" form of HIV might work as a vaccine (with emphasis strongly on "might"), the majority of the scientific opinion is that the virus would be likely to either revert back to a virulent form (by mutation, for example), or could cause malignancy (tumours). A preventative treatment which could cause AIDS or cancer is, of course, really very dangerous, and so trials of this kind of approach would probably only be a desperate measure, if all else fails.
Written by
Dan Stowell
(©2002-2006)
