From: DaveACTUP@aol.com Date: Fri, 9 Feb 1996 08:24:39 -0500 Subject: Baboon bust...can you say "spin control"? Well, the results are finally in and the much touted xenographic transplant procedure has been deemed a complete failure in curing AIDS. Project Inform, ACT UP Golden Gate, Ron Baker of SFAF and the rest of San Francisco's pathetic AIDS establishment who wasted time and money fueling the media sensationalism surrounding this experiment in futility must be stopped. We're dying while they play expensive Dr. Frankenstein games. Of course, even in the face of failure, Getty and his cronies in the AIDS industry refuse to give up. Now they are saying that high doses of radiation therapy kills HIV and, therefore, points to a potential new direction in research. The logic is simple: destroy the patient's immune system and the virus can't survive. Of course, neither can the patient. Murderers like Volberding, who advocate that people with compromised immune system undergo therapies that further suppress cellular immunity, need to be exposed as profiteering quacks whose advice circumvents any kind of scientific logic. This whole sick, twisted baboon joke might be funny if millions weren't dying tragic deaths from AIDS every day. When will this horror story end? ======================================================= Transplant Fails, Patient Thrives Preparation, not baboon marrow, may be reason By Sabin Russell San Francisco Chronicle Staff Writer Reprinted with permission. San Francisco -- Baboon bone-marrow transplant recipient Jeff Getty is feeling better than he has in months, but the AIDS activist and his physicians now believe the controversial operation failed. Researchers revealed yesterday that sophisticated tests were unable to detect any clear signs of the baboon bone marrow infused into his system on December 14 Presumably the foreign cells were destroyed by Getty's own defenses or died without multiplying in his own bone marrow. But the Oakland man's unexpected rebound has intrigued and excited the San Francisco General Hospital doctors who have been carefully watching his progress. For reasons not fully understood, the blast of radiation Getty endured prior to the transplant may have somehow knocked down his HIV infection. And Getty's experience suggests a new line of research into treating the disease. "He's looking better than he did before the procedure," said Getty's physician, Dr. Steven Deeks. Getty has gained weight, a number of AIDS-related skin conditions have improved, and asthma that has bothered him for years has virtually disappeared. "My immune system is doing wonderfully," Getty told the Associated Press. "My immune cell numbers are back to where they were in 1992, and I actually feel better than I did when I went into the hospital." Getty's good health has driven aside disappointment that the baboon bone marrow apparently didn't take. "This study has thus far been far more successful that we could normally expect in a small, first step like this," said Brenda Lein, director of Project Inform's advocacy program. The 38 year-old Getty battled the Food and Drug Administration and critics in the medical research community for more than a year to win clearance for the bone marrow transplant. His doctors hoped to replace part of his AIDS ravaged immune system with that of a baboon, a primate that for unknown reasons appears to be able to fight off the AIDS virus. If Getty's body could accept the co-existence of a baboon immune system, the theory went, the foreign cells might confer that same protection against AIDS to his own system. Critics had objected to the transplant because they feared that a baboon disease could be transmitted to humans-but doctors say there is no evidence yet that Getty has been infected by any harmful viruses. While the initial tests suggest that the baboon cells are gone, doctors hold out hope that some may have evaded the test. "It's a little bit like planting a seed in a garden" said San Francisco AIDS physician Dr. Paul Volberding, part of Getty's medical team. "It is definitely possible that there are some cells growing in the marrow, but there is no evidence of anything there now." Doctors said that even if there are a small number of engrafted baboon cells still hiding out in Getty's body, they could not account for his improved health. "It's intriguing that there may be unexpected benefits from the process. He's given us a number of interesting avenues to explore,' said Volberding. When doctors weakened Getty's immune system before the transplant-a necessary and dangerous medical step needed to avoid an allergic reaction to the baboon marrow-they may have at least temporarily tripped up his HIV infection. Doctors have speculated for years that AIDS may be a kind of autoimmune disease, like arthritis and diabetes, where the body is fooled into attacking itself. Many autoimmune diseases are treated with drugs, such as steroids, that suppress the immune system and relieve the symptoms. Researchers in France have used steroids on AIDS patients with some modest success, but other tests using immune-suppressant drugs have not worked. Another thought-provoking possibility, said Volberding, is that the AIDS virus itself feeds on the immune system, and that a sudden destruction of immune cells by radiation deprives the virus of its host. Getty's experience suggests a new strategy of starving the virus, and then suppressing its return with anti-viral drugs. Months before the transplant Getty began taking a combination of antiviral drugs-including an experimental protease inhibitor-that have shown promise in recently released test results. The combination of radiation therapy and the three drug cocktail may be keeping Getty's infection in check. Getty may also be benefiting from a kind of placebo effect, the well-documented phenomenon in which subjects in drug trials show a temporary improvement whether they take the active experimental drug or an inactive sugar pill, known as a placebo. "Fighting for this procedure, fighting this disease, has clearly energized Jeff," said Deeks, "but I think there is more to it than that." Information mined from Getty's case will be used to perform another baboon bone-marrow transplant, Deeks said. But it won't take place for a while, and it won't involve Getty. "Once exposed to baboon cells, he is more likely to reject them in the future," said Deeks.