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3 December 2011 | NewScientist | 3
LAST week, the United Nations released what are probably the most optimistic figures on AIDS since the disease was first identified. New infections have fallen drastically, mainly through the use of drugs that can stop people passing on the virus.
Sensing that HIV is finally on the run, AIDS experts have argued strongly that these preventive programmes should be scaled up as rapidly as possible.
A week can be a long time in the politics of AIDS. On the eve of World AIDS Day, news emerged of savage cutbacks in global programmes to supply the drugs.
At a meeting last week in Ghana, one of the biggest programmes, the UN’s Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, warned that donors are retrenching. Overall it has only $11.7 billion of the $20 billion it
needs: Italy and Spain have failed to pay up for two years. With no choice but to scale back operations, we may lose our best opportunity yet to turn the tide against HIV.
Against this gloomy backdrop comes some unexpectedly good news that serves as a reminder of what is at stake. One of the big
disappointments in the three-decade fight against HIV is that we don’t have a reliable vaccine. So far only one, called RV 144, has shown any sign of working.
Now encouraging experiments in mice and monkeys suggest that a non-traditional vaccine may work. The idea is to bypass the
immune system by injecting muscles with genes that turn them into factories for pumping out potent antibodies against HIV (see page 8).
It will take a year or two before the treatment can be tested in humans and there is no guarantee it will work. Even if it does there will be obstacles, as moral panics over the HPV vaccine and religious scaremongering over polio eradication in parts of Africa have demonstrated.
Still the promise is tantalising. It is conceivable that a combination of drugs and vaccine could eradicate HIV altogether. The task will be a lot easier if we keep up the momentum with the tools already at our disposal. A world that bailed out the banks to the tune of trillions surely cannot let AIDS off the hook for the want of a few paltry billion. n
Finally, AIDS is on the run
EDITORIAL
We can’t let the recession undo years of steady progress against HIV
TWO degrees Celsius. That increase in global temperatures has become synonymous with “dangerous climate change”. Lobbyists haggle over it, scientists build models around it and Greens wring their hands over it. So it is dispiriting to learn, with the next round of United Nations negotiations under way in Durban, South Africa, that many
climatologists feel it is a target we are almost certain to miss.
Is it time to set a new target? Two degrees was not selected by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which merely set out the effects of different temperature changes. Rather, it emerged as a political consensus in 2007, culminating with its inclusion in documents produced
at the UN negotiations in Bali, Indonesia. For some, such as the residents of low-lying islands, 2 °C is already too much. For others, it will be expensive but manageable (see pages 6 and 7).
We should proceed with caution. Discarding or relaxing the 2 °C target would set the wrong tone for future negotiations. Every further fraction of a degree by which the temperature rises represents a failure of political will. It should feel like it. n
Degrees of responsibility
“It is conceivable that a combination of drugs and vaccine could eradicate HIV altogether”
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THEY are our go-to pranksters. No sooner has online skulduggery been spotted than all fingers point to hacker group Anonymous. Like modern-day Scarlet Pimpernels, it is tempting to infer their
presence behind every episode of cybernetic mischief-making.
DARPA’s Shredder Challenge is the latest locus for Anonymous-spotters. A mysterious team has stormed into the lead, even as its name has turned up in an email purportedly sent by the saboteur of a competitor’s efforts (page 26).
The emailer claims to have
support from a favoured Anonymous haunt. Are the lead team connected too? Perhaps. But for all we know, they could just as well be reclusive jigsaw fans for whom the challenge is reason enough to take part.
That’s not so different from the Anonymous ethos anyway. Doing it for the lulz, indeed. n
Puzzled by puzzle pranksters
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