Potential ‘Functional Cure’ for AIDS?

The only way this is really going to be useful is if they in fact completely replace normal T cells ultimately, because as long as you have normal cells getting infected and spitting out virus, you’ve got a problem, and you’ve got a problem because normal cells making virus give you that immune activation that’s a very deleterious part of HIV disease – the aberrant activation associated with virus replication.

Is this elegant science? Yes. Is it an important step in the right direction? Yes. Will this turn out to be a successful approach? I can’t tell you that right now. It might not be.

Dr. Anthony S. Fauci is director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases in Bethesda, Md.