Timothy Ray Brown (aka, The Berlin Patient) is the first person to go from being HIV+ to HIV-. Usually, he’s described as the first person to be cured of AIDS. Scientists are a bit more circumspect about the situation. Brown got a bone marrow transplant using marrow donated by a person whose body has natural resistance to HIV. That was in 2005. Now off of anti-retroviral drugs, Brown’s HIV has (so far) not returned. Two other men have been through the same treatment with promising results, although they are still taking anti-retroviral drugs, so it’s impossible to say yet whether they are also actually HIV-.
Even if this is a cure, it is not the world’s most widely applicable cure. Yet. But it is very interesting and, obviously, an amazing story.
I’ve never heard Timothy Ray Brown speak before, so I wanted to post this interview video from Democracy Now. It probably won’t add much to the story that you didn’t already know, but it’s powerful to see the guy, himself, talking about it.
Via Samal Coff
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