Stem Cell Transplant Yields Unintended Success..

Man Appears Free of HIV After Stem Cell Transplant. The transplant which involves intentionally destroying "a patient's immune system, leaving the patient vulnerable to infection, and then reintroduce a donor's stem cells (which are from either bone marrow or blood) in an effort to establish a new, healthy immune system." The patient was being treated for Leukemia, and had a rare form of HIV along with the cancer.

"Before undergoing the transplant, the patient was also found to be infected with low levels of a type of HIV known as X4, which does not use the CCR5 receptor to infect cells. So it would seem that this virus would still be able to grow and damage immune cells in his body. However, following the transplant, signs of leukemia and HIV were absent."

"There is no really conclusive explanation why we didn't observe any rebound of HIV," Hutter said. "This finding is very surprising."

So, almost thirty years into the conventional research of the "AIDS virus" and thirteen years into work on embryonic stem cells, it seems that scientists keep stumbling upon findings they had not anticipated. And that's great, but there might be more to be learned from following the unconventional paths that aren't AMA approved..