[ ARC forum 2 ]

Re: Brief Summary 4

Written by chImp at 04 Jun 2003 00:36:53:

As an answer to: Re: Brief Summary written by Ivan at 03 Jun 2003 18:38:42:

I see your point, but this fact was mensioned in comparison with other deseases, where you'll find a LOT of virus! On the other hand (damn it, where is that PaulB, he probably knows this), don't the T-cells get reproduced as well?!!! Is the number of T-cells really a constant? If they DO get reproduced, then occupying a mere 0.1% of them isn't going to reduce their numbers! Besides, viruses are simple organisms. They can't "slow down". They take what they can get. All the other viruses cause damage by rapidly reproducing themselves until they are in such an abundance that the immune system goes down.

>>* In HIV/AIDS patients, at most 1/1000 of T-cells are infected with HIV.
>So what! If we had a flu (influenza) outbreak where at any given time 1/1000 of the population was infected, it would be a worse epidemic than the early 1900s outbreaks. If HIV shortens the lifespan of the T-cells by a considerable extent (in actual AIDS cases, not during the latency period),

Hmm...Where did you dig THAT theory up? It's a rather peculiar way of destroying the immune system- by keeping a constant number rather than multyplying like hell!

>only a few at any given time would be infected, but the population would be rapidly dwindling. If all the T-cells were infected at once, the victim would die within weeks if not days.

To quote Duesberg: "there are no slow viruses. There only are slow virologists!"

>It is a relatively slow-acting virus (actually retrovirus, but for these purposes that's a quibble).


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