"functionally cured hiv" in humans and dogs

   Since HIV was found 30 years ago this week, 30 million people have died from the illness, and it continues tostretch at the rate of 7.000 people per day globally, the UN says.

There's not much good news when it comes to this damging virus. But that is maybe why the story of the man scientists call the "Berlin patient" is so wonderfull and has generated so much pleasure among the HIV advocacy community.
     Timothy Ray Brown experinced from both leukemia and HIV when he received a bone tissue marrow stem cell transfusions in Berlin, Germany in 2007. The transfusion came from a man who was immune to HIV, which scientists say about 1 percent of Caucasians are. (According to San Francisco's CBS affiliate, the trait may be passé down from ancestors who became immune to the plague centuries ago. This wire story it was more likely passed down from people who became immune to a smallpox-like disease.)
What happened next has suprised the dozens of scientists who are closely ckecking Brown: His HIV went away.

      "He has no repeating virus and he isn't taking any medication. And he will now probably never have any problems with HIV," his doctor Gero Huetter told Reuters. Brown now lives in the Bay Area, and suffers from some mild neurological difficulties after the operation. "It makes me very happy," he says of the incredible cure.

     The advancement of anti-retroviral medications in the 1990s was the first sign of hope in the epidemic, transforming the disease from a sudden destroyer to a more controllable illness that could be lived with for decades. But still, the miraculous cocktail of meications is expensive, costing $13 billion a year in developing countries alone,according to Reuters.. That figure is anticipated to triple in 20 years--raising the worry that more sick people will not be able to manage treatment.

      Even though Brown's story is remarkable, scientists were quick to point out that bone marrow transplants can be fatal, and there's no way Brown's treatment could be applied to the 33.3 million people around the world living with HIV. The discovery does emotivate "cure research," according to Dr. Jay Levy, who co-discovered HIV thirty years ago, something that many people did not even think was possible years ago.
You can watch Brown talk about his cure in CBS video report.