![]() ![]() HIV cure research pioneer Dr Paula Cannon of the University of Southern California, chairing the session, said: “After several decades of effort and false starts, gene therapies now hold out promise for diseases that were previously untreatable.” We have cured HIV - twice Before entering (infecting) a CD4 T cell (that will become a “host” cell), HIV binds to the CD4 receptor and its coreceptor. CD4 T cells are called that way because they have a protein called CD4 on their surface. In cell biology, a structure on the surface of a cell (or inside a cell) that selectively receives and binds to a specific substance. Despite this, Fred Hutch and JCRC have embarked upon a joint research programme to develop within the next few years a genetic therapy treatment for HIV that could be realistically scaled up for use in lower-income settings. The latter talk was a sign of acknowledgement that, while the prospects for genetic medicine are brighter than ever before, their expense and sophistication do not fit well with the global epidemiology of HIV, which mainly affects the world’s poorest and most disadvantaged communities. The workshop opened with two introductory talks by Professor Hans-Peter Kiem, the chair of gene therapy at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle in the US (‘the Fred Hutch’) and, in a joint presentation, by the Fred Hutch’s Dr Jennifer Adair and Dr Cissy Kityo of the Joint Clinical Research Centre (JCRC) in Kampala, Uganda. This was what attendees at last month’s International AIDS Society Conference on HIV Science ( IAS 2021) heard at the workshop on curing HIV. Since HIV is a disease that results from a virus inserting such a piece of bad code into our genes, such therapies could be used to snip out that code and effect a cure. And, like Requiem for a Dream, it’s a one-and-done proposition: You’ll be happy you sat through it, and even happier that you’ll never have to again.Medical science is starting to license and use drugs and procedures that change the genetic code inside the body’s cells, and to correct the ‘bad code’ that can give rise to conditions such as cancer and the auto-immune diseases. Yet structurally-particularly during the many junctures when the actors break through the proscenium and talk directly to the audience-it’s meant to annoy you, an adroit commentary on our info-overloaded 21st-century culture. And the first half of Lisa Loomer’s 2007 play is positively grating resisting the urge to rush onstage and coldcock either Jesse (child abuse, but so worth it) or his mother takes more willpower than shunning the advances of Roger Sterling in a country-club lounge. This all sound a little dated? Well, it is. His folks (Heather Hawkins and Brandon Felker) are split over whether to zombify him with Ritalin or Adderall, a debate that threatens their marriage and is made all the murkier by the fact that seemingly every supporting player-including the family shrink-is on some sort of crack-like antidepressant. He includes a “fuck” in every utterance, tells his mom he wants to kill her, and cranks up Eminem in his room instead of going to bed. Young Jesse (real-life middle-schooler Cameron Lee), you see, is stricken with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). Snip, the famed vasectomist, were to hitch his wagon to the latest culinary craze and open a “pop-up” clinic next door to ArtsWest, and if he worked late enough to catch exiting male theatergoers, he’d have to auction off appointments, so robust would demand be for on-the-spot sterility. ![]() Centered on the pharmaceutical and behavioral travails of a quarreling couple’s only child, Distracted is a two-hour birth control pill.
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