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Researchers Discover Gene That Blocks HIV

At Slashdot
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Read one guys comment as he tries to explain the other techies why this is not yet a cure for AIDS:


*sigh* he’s saying that this is one thing we might change on the program. A patch for the human code, say.

We only have a small problem … the program is stored in a few trillion copies (all of which need to be changed), of extremely complex molecules (which we can’t reliable modify (we can’t even reliably read them) even when we have only 1 outside of the body).

Let’s say it’s this way. We have a patch for a flaw in your windows. Except it’s on paper. And the computers won’t boot until the patch is applied, so we need to take out the hard drive and *manually* change the bits on it. We have an electron microscope that *sometimes* has been used to change some random bits on the harddrive, which has once or twice resulted in a “mostly” correct change. Oh yes, and we have a billion computers, all of which still need to be operational after the change.

That’s where we are. We know what to change (or so we hope), it’s just … “a bit” hard to get to the bits.