Quote:
Originally Posted by 'Hamas' Jenkins
In the mid 80s there was a belief that patients took a long time to display clinical signs of AIDS because HIV entered a latent period after primary infection. David Ho (the same guy who pioneered HAART and won Time's Man of the Year) ultimately found that the immune system puts up a hell of a fight for years upon years, and it is only after nearly a decade (in most individuals) that the constant assault begins to exhaust its defenses.
That was part of the reason behind the initial theraputic push called "hit it hard, hit it early."
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Ok. I know that HIV can incorporate its DNA into the human genome and go latent (no active virus particles) for many years. Anti-viral drugs aren't effective because there are no viruses. That DNA can come out of latency and reactivate into new active virus particles under certain conditions. The latency coupled with a propensity to mutate are the key reasons why HIV is so difficult to eradicate from the human body. I thought Austin was claiming that this model of the HIV virus had recently been disproven. I would have heard about that.
I'm not familiar all the dismissed theories of HIV from the 1980s.