Stem Cell Transplant as Cure for HIV | 'Berlin Patient' cured of HIV

There's a recent medical breakthrough believing the stem cell transplant as cure for HIV. Doctors believe an HIV-positive man who underwent a stem cell transplant has been cured as a result of the procedure, as reported by The Huffington Post.

Timothy Ray Brown, also known as the "Berlin Patient," received the transplant in 2007 as part of a lengthy treatment course for leukemia. His doctors recently published a report in the journal Blood affirming that the results of extensive testing "strongly suggest that cure of HIV infection has been achieved."

This stem cell transplant as cure for HIV can give hope for those suffering from the virus, but wait. Here's another report showing another perspective from hotair.com:

The transplant appeared to wipe out both diseases, giving hope to doctors, but Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institutes of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, who has been studying HIV/AIDS for almost 30 years, said while this is an interesting proof of concept, it’s absurdly impractical.

“It’s hard enough to get a good compatible match for a transplant like this,” Fauci told FoxNews.com, “But you also have to find compatible donor that has this genetic defect, and this defect is only found in 1 percent of the Caucasian population and zero percent of the black population. This is very rare.”…

“This is not prime time to me at all,” he said. “This is a very unusual situation that has little practical application for a simple reason. This donor not only had to be a good compatible match, but the donor had to have a genetic defect of cells that do not express the receptor that the HIV virus needs to enter the cell.”

Fauci also pointed to the fact that this transplant process is not only expensive, it’s incredibly painful and complicated, and requires the patient to start a whole new regimen of drugs.

With that above, will other HIV patients want to go to the same procedures that Timothy went through? Read more about the stem cell transplant as cure for HIV and check out their comments. Just click on the link.