This week a little girl who appears to have been 'cured' of HIV made a lot of news around the world. If you haven't had a chance, check out the story at NPR here. She's only the second human in the world to enjoy the title 'Cured of HIV.' I like that the last one, The Berlin Patient, was a rich old white dude and this one is young, likely of a low socio-economic class considering her mom's behavior, and who knows what race. Maybe God is balancing out his favors.
But what does this actually mean for normal people? It means little but it should be appreciated for what it is: an extraordinary occurrence that shows us how little we know about diseases. It's not a far leap from there to being optimistic that if we know so little there is still so much to learn and so much opportunity for what we learn to completely change the way we treat people living with HIV.
I am incredibly skeptical about this natural experiment ever being replicated on a large scale. Afterall, her mother first infected her with HIV without knowing herself she was positive (rare in the USA) and then stopped giving the infant the ARVs that were sustaining her life (incredibly shitty parenting). These sorts of things do happen naturally but can we identify those situations? Manufacturing that kind of situation is out of the question.
Anyway, the Berlin Patient still appears to be cured of HIV so he and this baby do offer a lot of hope. I just doubt that either of them actually holds the key to the cure. Though I clearly hope to be dead wrong. And I hope they end up being friends, which sounds like fodder for an awesome documentary or book.
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