Week-10

Tall with dark green pointy leafs, the neem tree from India is known as the village pharmacy. As a child Sonia Arora recalls visiting India and seeing villagers using the neem bark to clean their teeth. Arora's childhood memories have developed into a scientific fascination with natural products and their power to cure illnesses. An assistant professor at Kean University in New Jersey is helping Arora to fight AIDS. Arora and the assistant presented their data at a postersessio at the Experimental Biology 2012 meeting in San Diego. Her results indicate that there are compounds in neem extracts that target a protein essential for HIV to replicate. If further studies support her findings, Arora's work may create a cure for HIV.
http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/releases/244439.php

Week 9

For the first time U.S scientist have shown that HIV-fighting cells made from human stem cells can supress the virus in living human tissue in mice. A team from UCLA had already shown that it was possible to create cells that seek out and destroy HIV, but this is the first time that they showed it can be done in a living organism as well, according to what they wrote in the 12th April issue of the online open access journal "PLoS Pathegens, the researchers suggest that it may be possible to use human stem cells to create tailored cells to target and eradicate viruses like HIV, and thereby "engineer the human immune response to combat viral infections". However, there is still alot of work to do before what happens in mice can be replicated in humans.


http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/244108.php

week 8

The Supreme Court will be hearing arguments from lawyers representing a quebec woman who is being accused of having unprotected sex with her spouse without informing him that she was HIV positive. A publication ban prevents naming the woman, she is referred to in Supreme Court documents as "D.C"
The woman was found guilty of sexual assault and aggravated assault but the charges were later dropped on the basis that her viral load was undetectable during the period that she was charged.