Holy Bullies and Headless Monsters: Jul 9, 2010

Friday, July 09, 2010

Know Your LGBT History - Making Love

Anita Bryant returns to plague us again and other Friday midday news briefs

Anita Bryant returns to the 'culture wars' - Judging from the company she is keeping at the event in question, it will be like she never left.

Obama US Attorney expected to stand behind federal gay marriage ban, plaintiffs say - DON'T YOU DARE, PRESIDENT OBAMA!

Welcome to the Andrea Lafferty offense boat, entire state of Massachusetts! - And where would the religious right be without an offensive comment on yesterday's anti-DOMA ruling by Andrea Lafferty and the Traditional Values Coalition?

NOM Is Furious — Just Furious! - And of course the National Organization for Marriage is extremely upset over the ruling. It's been a good day ;p

The Palm Center releases the DADT survey - Some of these questions are interesting, to say the least.

Woodstock benefit for lesbian teen raises $30K - And Constance McMillen continues to kick ass. Way to go, girlfriend!

Cure for HIV around the corner?

No comments on the religious right this morning. Just a focus on some good news:

American scientists are touting a major stride toward a vaccine that can ward off HIV, after finding two key proteins that neutralize 91 percent of the virus' 190 strains.

The team of researchers with the National Institutes of Health's Vaccine Research Center hopes the antibody discovery can spur successful work toward a method of preventing HIV, which already afflicts an estimated 33 million people worldwide.

The discovery, published in this week's Science, is courtesy of Donor 45, an unidentified African-American man whose body produced the antibodies, called VRC01 and VRC02.

Scientists have already identified the 12 cells in his body that produced the proteins. If they can harness the mechanisms by which the antibodies were made, they might be able to create a vaccine that would spur anybody's body to make the HIV destroyers.

"We're going to be at this for a while," Gary Nabel, director of the center and a leader on this research, told The Wall Street Journal.

The last few years has seen a flurry of effort -- much of it futile -- toward creating a vaccine for HIV, much like those that helped eradicate small pox and polio. Until now, however, single antibodies only appeared to block one or two HIV strains.

Trials on the first promising vaccine, AIDSVAX, were largely a disappointment. In American and Thai trials, the vaccine yielded success rates that varied from statistically insignificant to 30 percent.

In this case, researchers seem to have found a sweet spot on the surface of the human immunodeficiency virus.

"The antibodies attach to a virtually unchanging part of the virus, and this explains why they can neutralize such an extraordinary range of HIV strains," Dr. John Mascola, one of the study's researchers, said in a statement.

Turning these newly discovered antibodies into a useful HIV vaccine remains a tall order. Scientists would need to isolate the specific part of the virus that the antibodies latch onto, then craft a vaccine using that viral snippet to train the body to produce VRC01 and VRC02.

More here.

HIV/AIDS affects all of us. I've lost a few friends to disease, including my older brother. This is definitely a step in the right direction. Let's hope that progress continues so that one day, HIV/AIDS goes the way of the dinosaur.