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Comment by Dilpil | Hacker News Reader

I think most AIDS patients would gladly take that 10% chance.

AIDS has actually become manageable, and most HIV+ patients in the developed world die of other causes (cancer, aging, etc.) instead of AIDS. So I wouldn't be too sure.

And now HIV patients have a choice between manageable and treatable. For most of us, I think the choice would probably be obvious.

That depends on what exactly manageable means and what the risks of the cure are. The choice seems by no means obvious to me.

Here is a hypothetical example (because I don’t know much about HIV): Getting rid of frequent headaches (the hypothetical side-effect of managing a hypothetical otherwise deadly disease) with a cure that has a 1:5 chance of death doesn’t seem like a good deal to me.

You're right. The article implies no side effects other than the strict (even aggressive, if you will) treatment regiment, which does seem somewhat fishy.

HIV may not be a death sentence anymore, but it's still a serious disease with profound implications in one's lifestyle, and as far as I'm concerned, a cure can't come soon enough.

No, patients do not have this choice because no licensed physician would give them said choice. People here are talking as if BMT were this mundane thing that you can just decide you want to do some afternoon.

I'm not really sure what's the point you're trying to make. Bone marrow transplants are not some unproven treatment. Stem cell research generally seems troubling to some politicians; this specific application is probably not approved but I don't see any reason why it shouldn't be in the near future.

The mortality of the treatment that you and I are talking about is far higher than the mortality of the disease. Orders of magnitude higher.

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