this might be a stupid question - Immune Disorders Message Board

KannD86 · 12-10-2005, 05:22 PM

this is a totally random question. i'm just asking out of curiosity. you know the movie the boy in the plastic bubble? john travolta's character was born without a functioning immune system so he couldn't come in contact with anything that could possibly get him sick. we're learning about AIDs in health class and that is a virus that causes your immune system not to function by lowering the amount of the type of blood cells needed to fight off diseases. my professor said as strange as it sounds, nobody's ever died of AIDS, it's always something else that technically kills them. if that's the case, wouldn't someone with AIDS benefit from whatever they did to the boy in the plastic bubble? i know that's no way to live, but surely stuff has advanced enough to make it more bearable. now i know it's a stupid question. basically i want to know the difference between the two diseases (or whatever they technically are).

also, this is sort of unrelated, but since i'm already here, i was wondering something else. a few times in the past i've heard of people who don't believe that the HIV virus causes AIDS. there was a 20/20 segment a few years ago about a woman with HIV who didn't believe it. she had unprotected sex with her husband and breastfed her children for years and they were all fine. and on ER a few weeks ago there was a woman with HIV who also didn't believe that it lead to AIDS, and refused treatment for herself and her son who she passed it on to while in denial about the whole thing. what makes people believe this? is there any evidence behind it, or are they all just conspiracy theorists? thanks to anyone who can answer my random questions.

pambyboo · 12-12-2005, 10:31 AM

You have a very good question. The problem is that they are two different diseases. The "boy in the bubble" was born without any immune system at all. It is a genetic disease where his body was unable to make the cells needed for immunity. HIV however is a virus, and a virus works by injecting it's DNA into our own body cells and tricking our cells into making copies of the virus' DNA. A virus cannot replicate on its own. It needs our cells to do that for it. That's why antibiotics do not work for virus'. In order to kill the virus, we'd have to kill our own cells. If they did a stem cell transplant, it wouldn't work because the virus would still be there, and would start all over again.
As far as AIDS being a conspiracy, that is just simply not true. The 1 million orphans in Africa would tell you the same thing. I have seen many people die from AIDS. Most people with HIV develop antibodies within 3 months of contracting the virus. Some people take up to a year, and for some reasons they don't understand, some people take up to ten years to develop the antibodies. That is rare. AIDS happens when the count of T-cells (the cells needed for immunity) fall below a certain level. Just like some people fight colds, flu, or cancer better than others- some people fight the HIV virus better than others. Some people simply take longer for the virus to wreak its havoc before seeing symptoms, which are the "secondary infections"- the diseases that would normally be harmless in a normal immune system.
Children breastfed from mothers with HIV have a 1:3 chance of developing the virus from breastmilk- that is why some children are fine after being breastfed, the odds were simply on their side.
Hope that helps.
Pambyboo

pambyboo · 12-12-2005, 10:32 AM

Forgot to tell you that's it's very hard for a man to catch HIV from a woman- much easier for a woman to catch it from a man. (But the odds are still lower than needle sharing, blood exposure, etc...)
Pambyboo

KannD86 · 12-12-2005, 09:00 PM

thanks. that does help. i've always wondered about the 20/20 interview since i saw it. i see that the odds were in favor of her family not developing the virus, but i can't see that lasting forever. thanks for the information.