No, doctors did not “inject HIV into a dying girl” to treat her cancer

I would be stupid for somebody to think they injected hiv virus to the little girl but as the dr. Explains is a different form of the virus hiv ( how ever you wanna put it is some form of hiv ) seems they are on the right path if 2 lived out of 12 well thats 1.75 % better than 0 % i would love to see more trails on people and i can bet all, that if 1 of 100 survives is better than nothing

what i don’t understand is why a treatment that could possibly cure cancer, has to be so expensive that it it isn’t even affordable. i understand that all the equipment used is costly but i wouldn’t have the heart to tell someone that because they aren’t able to afford the treatment, there’s not even a chance of them surviving.

So the Title is Incorrect, They DID INJECT It

If you knew what made HIV dangeous genetically AIDS would be no brainer to cure.. If hiv is the cause for AIDS.. and that one is stil open for debate… then the genetic modification supposedly made to these cells you have no way of knowing if it affects the cause of AIDS or not… All you can lean on is the fact that it was never peer reviewed if HIV causes AIDS or not and therefore the link is only speculatory anyhow. this whole defence of the speculatory knowledge of both cancerfigting tcells (which earlier were suspected to cause cancer) and HIV=>AIDS is the blunder of the century for the medical area of wisdom

This is amazing and has been used in Thailand for years with people that have detrimental cancer. Is it just that the US makes too much money from cancer that we don’t want to buy into that this works in most but not all cases? Of course not! It’s all about the profit behind cancer! It makes me sick to my stomache that people want to discredit things that actually work. These are human beings! Not dollar signs!

yes “LA”, it does change everything… as per clicking the link: “HIV, SIV, FIV, EIAV, and Visna are all examples of lentiviruses.” Also, a modified cell is not an infected cell. The T-cells can not spread any disease as they’re not carrying disease.

So doctors aren’t “injecting HIV to cure cancer”? Waaaaaa? Rather they are “using an engineered version of the HIV virus to modify the patient’s T cells”? Well…THAT CHANGES EVERYTHING!

Get over it! Who cares what the title is that little girl is alive and that is what counts!

I agree that the headline was used to catch your eye, I know that I probably would not have watched it if the title wasn’t so ‘crazy’. I watched my little sister go through hell as a child battling leukemia and i’m just happy that they are doing such awesome research so that someone may be saved from such a terrifying fate.

Thanks for clearing up, I knew it was “too good to be true”! Great strides indeed, but the facts are incredibly important, and the sensationalised video and the sites that host it do no justice to the truth. Science deserves much more than that.

Thank you for catching this article/ slash discussion. I am a Pediatric nurse and this topic just came up at work. We all want to feel good but it’s important to get the facts. Not sure if the person initiating the discussion had seen a video or only read a headline.

Titles matter. The title of this shortfilm is misleading. The article has explained very clearly the facts. Just by looking at the title, people may get the impression that getting HIV may help in preventing cancer. On the contrary, HIV infected persons are more prone for getting cancer. The principle of adoptive cell transfer used by the researchers is really promising. This principle was very well explained by this article. Great!

I think it’s shitty that because of this ignorant statement “experimental” in this and other studies will preclude insurance carriers from allowing their patrons to take part in this because most insurance carriers do not allow or pay for “experimental” treatments. So we should thank them for their bureaucratic statements. Conspiracy theorist…right? Well let’s think, aren’t there extreme dangers and risks involved with chemo and radiation therapy? Yet we as American’s will be denied the option to choose a risky treatment because it’s “experimental” and “expensive”. It’s simple…isn’t it? If someone chooses to have a treatment that has “cured” cancer in any patients but has potential side effects, knowing all the details and facts…shouldn’t they be allowed to choose? No you say? Then how is it that we can get vaccines and various other treatments and medicines that pose risk and sometimes cause illnesses greatly then the one originally sought to be treated?

Would the science be there without the AIDs virus? The point of the video is to show 85% of the world a scientific process that has found some good in a long history of sad.

Important and enlightening article. Thank you for clearing this up.

Hi everyone,
Thanks for your comments. Just to reiterate what we’ve said in the post, our concern is with the specific headline used by Upworthy to promote the video (“Doctors inject HIV into a dying girl”) and not with the content of the film itself, which accurately explains what the researchers have done.

In a world where headlines can be seen by thousands of people around the world in a few minutes thanks to Twitter and Facebook, we wanted to clear up any confusion about the research and explain a bit more about why it’s so exciting but still early days, and provide links to the fascinating scientific research behind the story.

This isn’t just arguing about semantics. We have seen many comments responding to the coverage of this video on various social media channels revealing that people think the doctors *are* injecting HIV to cure cancer, rather than using an engineered version of the virus to modify the patient’s T cells. There is a huge amount of misinformation on the internet about cancer and its treatment, which can mislead patients and their families. We feel it is important to play a small part in tackling it.

Kat
Cancer Research UK Science Information Manager

I agree with Alun. The film was designed to get more attention for research and bring light to the subject. Anyone who took a basic high school bio class understands the virus was genetically manipulated. June tells us how it is done, and it explains it in an honest manner that my grandma would understand. The film was short, sweet,and honest. This article is good because it clears up confusion one may have with out making a mockery of this new research.

Actually, I think the film was a pretty fair description considering A: it was only a few minutes long, B: was clearly aimed at the layperson, and C: did clarify the virus was highly modified before use!

Normally I’m the first to call bull**** on sensationalist rubbish in the internet, but as far as I’m concerned, yesterday was a much better day for watching that film!

Very informative thanks

THANK YOU. I had to go through a couple of pages of Google results to find a truly rational take on this video. The first page was littered with hype and Christian results. Pocketed and sharing. Thanks.

Well the video I saw on upworthy clearly stated it was NOT HIV, but something that turned on the Tcells.

Great article, well done!

Really very informative article. Thank you.

excellent follow up

Thanks for clarifying. This was fascinating reading and in no way does it diminish (or make less interesting) the work these physicians are doing. SEMANTICS MATTER.

This article is misleading. Writing about medical science is difficult, but this article’s title leads you to believe that the mentioned video is incorrect, taken out of context, or misleading. The scientists used a virus that was derived from HIV to reprogram a girl’s T-cells which went on to cure her cancer. And, as the article admits, the video explains all of this. Thanks for the explanation, Kat, but this article is more poorly delivered than the video.

So, you’re just playing semantics over their semantics. /eyeroll

Well you they explained all this in the video. I never once thought they injected the child with HIV while watching this. How this article is written is what I took from the Video.

I am all for this new science and approach . I understand it’s still experimental and doesn’t work on everyone but there’s not many medications/ treatments that do work the same on everyone and even if right now it’s only developed enough to cure 25-50% of people that’s still less people dying and it’s for people with no other options .

Now from what I’m still aware of HIV is not cure able so I’m confused if they know how to make it not harmful , how do they not know how to cure it

Either way if my options were wait and die painfully and slowly by cancer or take this treatment I would do the treatment in a heartbeat

The video was about a treatment for cancer. I understand what the above article is saying but for me, even as a layman I could understand the basics of the science involved, including the risks. What pains me is that any apparently successful treatment, discovered by one group is immediately criticised by other groups in the same field. I know the competition for funding is very important but this sort of article, which is more about protecting funding, than extending science demeans the organisation making it.

This is amazing research. It was a great video, with a misleading title. This is a great article,obviously written to give a little clarity to anyone who needed it. Also it elaborates on background and gives examples of some related research. I understood the video, and after reading this, I have more information than I did before.
I see no need for everyone’s crying and complaining about this article. You did not pay to read this. If you didn’t need to read it, then congratulations. That is no need to take the time to complain and bash it. I understand the need for some of you to have a “look at me, I’m smart enough to be condescending in order to show it off” … guess what, going around complaining about things does not make you look brilliant… it makes you look like an arrogant person, who believes that just because they didn’t need to read this, then it shouldn’t exist. There are people who will appreciate this, and enjoy it. If that is not you, there is this thing on your browser called a back button. Click it, and go in peace. Thankyou for the article Kat. I know there are many people who probably were misinformed by that title.. Or, if nothing else, there are probably more than a few facebook comment wars between green, holistic, overzealous dyno-moms that can benefit from a link to this.

I don’t personally think that the video was in anyway misleading. I am not sure why the uproar. Why do we have a need to make everything look pretty? They took an HIV cell, they modified it, renamed it, they attached it to a t-cell and they sent it in. The engineered/renamed cell put the cancer in remission;.I like the simple CHOPS researcher explanation. I get sick of the other doctors and researchers clarifying it. Its stupid, the first explanation was clear enough. If someone actually thought it was HIV, then they didn’t read the article or watch the video – Mom to a Childhood Cancer Survivor

I think we are all over analyzing the point. Who cares if actual modified HIV was used or some version of it? The point is, we learned this technique of treatment from what something bad (HIV) does to the body. We learned how to do something good from something bad.

That is a miracle to me. God needs to not be mentioned in the video for me to see God in it. Open your eyes and think outside of the box.

If something good is coming from our knowledge of something bad then we should praise that. HIV is claiming many lives in our world, can we even begin to believe that it might have a higher purpose? I think these doctors are brilliant and exploring new ground of treatment.

I’m living with HIV, maybe for now I can’t be cured… But maybe this amazing little girl can. Stop focusing on rather actual HIV is in her body or not, there is no doubt that HIV research is what led these doctors to start exploring this type of cancer treatment in the first place.

We need to stop this behavior of criticism, she is healthy now… Science similar to HIV based science led to that, and I am thankful for it. It was the knowledge surrounding HIV that led to this, period.

Amazing work doctors. Keep it up.

it looks like this is the same thing as on loiter.co. http://loiter.co/v/doctors-take-a-long-shot-and-inject-hiv-into-dying/

how is the hit virus being used to cure leukaemia?

People need to understand that this article isn’t out to bash the video or the scientists involved, they just want to make sure people understand you can’t just get HIV and cure yourself, as the one website’s title suggested. I think it was a very informative article that gave a little more background on the science that the video itself did not have time for, but the video was also very well made for describing the very basic theory of what happened.

Like Luke’s point, the title is deceiving and could lead to bad scenarios!

Does anyone know of any current studies using this same experimental technique to combat myeloma?
My previously very healthy and hard working step-father aged 64yrs has recently(Feb 2013), been diagnosed with having myeloma and amaloidosis.
Naturally this has devastated our family. He was told he probably only had 6 months to live and the chemo treatments have been intolerable.
Any information regarding current clinical studies against myeloma would be greatfully accepted.
Many thanks.

Michael Joynt.

The research is fascinating and inspiring to a young medical-research student like me.Please keep me posted on new developments on cancer research.

This verifies how HIV itself is a lab creation to begin with

To those criticizing THIS article, I have to wonder: did the video you watched have the same headline I just read? Namely, “Doctors Take A Long Shot And Inject HIV Into Dying Girl”

Because, as this article rightly clarifies, there is a VAST difference between that, and what actually happened.

I agree absolutely with Ardath and others who’ve cautioned about the mentality of certain people who would read a headline and think they knew the whole story.

Take for example a nation so rife with internet conmen, it has a whole class of scam named for it: Nigeria.

You know what else Nigeria has a lot of? HIV & AIDS. The second highest infection rate in the world.

Suppose one of these individuals who spends 18 hours a day online trying to part westerners from their nest eggs, reads a headline in passing, and now offers his newfound oncological expertise to anyone who’ll listen…

Can you really say that would never happen?

I found it informative.. children being used is a concern. Media is causing a lot of concern.

Personally, they need money to do their research and if a video helps so be it. They did not lie and they used their words right and even if one child survives with the treatment then it is all worth it. Even conventional treatments don’t cure everyone and they are not safe for everyone. But they do cure some and that is what counts. Saving peoples lives is what matters. The only way to learn is by doing.

A major factor in why we are so far behind and so slow in the battle against cancer today can be seen in the comments and arguments on this article. People caring more about their educated opinion and the purity of ‘science’. Your arrogance is appauling and you care little for patients and more about the process. The primary reason given for this cure being held back is ‘we need to make sure it’s safe’ ? The patient is already dying and when they get to a certain stage medical scientists will overdose them with morphine and end their life anyway. Chemo doesn’t work on 75% of people and is known to be poison, how long did they wait on rolling out that one ? There are a couple things these ‘intellectuals’ and doctors are more concerned with than morons injecting themselves with HIV, being sued and being WRONG !

CSC, are you serious? Reread your own comment. I counted 9 mistakes, although they were mostly grammatical, not spelling.

Hi CSC, We’re a UK-based research charity and use British English spelling on our blog. The correct spelling is leukaemia.http://oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/leukaemia

i loved that your challenging something, but can you do a proofread before you submit the article… this is usually the first sign of a credible article. Not only was it a typo, but you misspelled the main word of the article, Leukemia (not Leukaemia), even in this form is shows me this is a misspell. thank you.

Why would they use such a misleading title? They in fact DID cure cancer with hiv… Putting it simply. Most people would Google information about this topic, see “scienceblog” and “no, they did not cure cancer with hiv” listed at the top of their search results, and simply move on with their life.

A lot of the comment on this article comes from people who appear to be educated and well informed. They either praise the article for clarifying matters or denigrate it as unnecessary. A few just rubbish it for no good reason that I can see. I speak as a non-medical person, reasonably well educated and intelligent and with no axe to grind on the subject; I have no relatives or friends suffering with any of the diseases mentioned.
I saw the article mentioned in a Facebook post from a non-UK country. Most posters were well informed already and corrected the misconception that the headline implied but there were those that believed it and were suitably sceptical or horrified by it.
I’m in favour of accurate information being promulgated and am therefore grateful for the detail in the article. To those who already knew – why bother reading this article and more to the point, why bother trying to rubbish something you know to be accurate. This article was necessary and was interesting IMHO.

One more thing – CRUK’s press team attitude as evidenced here is paternalistic in that old fashioned medical sense and needs to change. Nothing wrong in clarifying the science. Lots wrong with the assumption in the headline that people will misunderstand the science, and in patting people on the head telling them not to get too excited about research they don’t understand.

I haven’t seen the film, but there is plenty of decent information about Carl June’s work in scientific journals published on the internet. CRUK seem to have a weird press team as obvious here – it is a shame if people are as stupid as they seem to think. Why on earth not write an inspiring piece of writing about how amazing Carl June’s work is rather than make this blog’s headline about an obscure film that most have never seen and assume people are going to get the science angle wrong? And why bang on [again] about how people shouldn’t get their hopes up and this kind of research doesn’t always work, when that is an entirely subjective attitude? Many in the field know that immunotherapy, and specifically, engineering antigen specific T cells to fight tumours is the future of cancer treatment. CRUK would do well to start funding more of this kind of research.

Everything in this article that is basically the same thing that was said in the original article. All I can say is I wish this treatment had been around when my husband died from the insidious disease know as cancer. He had Lymphoma. For the parents of this child, this is an amazing accomplishment. I did not find anything misleading in the original article. I Thought Prof. June was very forthcoming in as to the experimental nature of his work. Don’t most new cancer treatment start as experimental.

they never said they ‘injected the child with HIV’..they collected her T cells and then introduced the HIV virus into that specimen…they made the HIV virus so it could not infect her with HIV…they turned on the immune system by programming her white cells that had been treated with HIV, to attack her cancer cells…this story is remarkable…and there is no need to make it look like a lie..of course it’s experimental..that’s how any medical procedure is invented…by using trials……if this had been my child, I would have done the exact same thing…they had nothing to lose and everything to gain and it worked.

I think the people who are objecting to this article or calling it “nitpicking” are missing out on two very important points. First of all, science depends on accuracy, especially when you’re dealing with subjects as serious as potentially fatal diseases. Getting the facts “sort of” accurate is not good enough. The difference between an accurate understanding of the facts involved and an approximate one could be someone’s life or death.

Second, there are a vast number of people out there who mistrust the medical system and would rather self-diagnose and self-treat based on (mis-)information found on the internet than rely on actual medical treatment. If the idea that injecting people with HIV cures cancer, as the Upworthy post’s title implies, is allowed to fly all over the internet unchallenged, how long before people start deciding to try that on their own, with fatal results? You’ve already got parents out there who deliberately expose their kids to vaccine-preventable diseases because they’re convinced it’s safer than getting them vaccinated – this might just be seem like a logical extension to them.

While this article is interesting, I feel it’s unnecessary, as all of this information is explained in the film. Also, the author seems to have a penchant for starting sentences with ‘And’, which gets a bit distracting and has the same effect as verbal fillers in a speech. If you are going to publish an article, please clean it up, proof read it, and have someone else proof read it, as well, so you can avoid such annoyances.

That’s where I have to disagree, Tim Hill. We are surrounded by people who want to believe in quick fixes and are convinced that scientists are running games on them. Just listen to someone spouting off about “Big Pharma” sometime. In fact, earlier today, a man at a bus stop started trying to tell me how an herbal tea was supposedly a known cancer cure that doctors had been suppressing for more than a century. People like these are NOT going to examine the video with a critical eye, and are going to assume that their first impression of what it means is absolutely correct. The result: a continuation of what happens. every. day. already in the world — people falling for “miracle cures” that worsen their illnesses instead of helping them, and people choosing quackery over careful research. Apparently you haven’t seen some of the insanely dangerous treatments that people in late stages of cancer are already subjecting themselves to, if you think they wouldn’t go bug-chasing for HIV. Many of them would; many of them WILL.

A video which claims that HIV injections saved a child’s life — whether or not it later mumbles the facts in a video’s equivalent of small print — is nothing short of homicidally irresponsible.

This article, while informative, underestimates the intelligence of those who have seen the video, and even of those who made the video. This particular viewer, a lay-person with regards to medical research, nonetheless readily understood all the explanations in the above article just from seeing the video, weeks before having read the actual article.

However, it is understandable that the article’s writers would want to be careful about making clear what was and wasn’t done concerning the treatment of the patients and the process of altering the HIV virus. There has been so much misunderstanding of the scientific process in general, and of medical research in particular, that such caveats as stated in the article are not unwarranted.

I think, however, that at this stage of the game, no one with leukemia will likely go out bug-chasing for HIV as a cure.

Wow! What a relief to have that explained in terms that a lay-person can understand instead of the voodoo video Video’s Shock value? Yes! Educative & Informative? No!!!

I couldnt’ agree more with Jayce… All those who thumbed him down have no clue and won’t admit it…

To the people criticizing THIS article for correcting the other one, you need to stop and think for a second. Elsewhere in the world, there’s already the horrible belief that AIDS can be cured by having sex with a virgin, something that has resulted in an epidemic of rapes and, consequently, an increase in the number of people infected with the disease. And that was just based off of superstition and rumor. Imagine what could happen if people started spreading the word — without actually paying attention to the video or its accompanying article — that you could cure your cancer by deliberately infecting yourself with HIV?

This article points out that it’s NOT HIV that is used, at all, but another, related retrovirus that reprograms T cells; HIV itself is never involved in the treatment. This is ESSENTIAL information that people need to know, because that whole song and dance about saving a cancer patient by “injecting HIV” into her has the genuine potential to kill people who decide to try it at home — and way too many of those people exist (see the example above). We live in a world where people were also stupid enough to stop vaccinating their children when a gastroenterologist, with no expertise in autism or vaccines, fraudulently published a paper claiming that the MMR vaccine caused autism; hundreds died as a result. Let’s not have a repeat in the wars on HIV and cancer.

Setting the record straight, as this article does, is NEVER hypocritical.

Very nicely broken down. There’s a lot of hope in this area, but it certainly has a ways to go yet.

Although the intention of the video is good, disseminating false information can corroborate for the development of erroneous thoughts about the true science. Furthermore, disseminate misinformation can exalt pseudo-sciences.

Stop being so “British”… They got our attention, and now, hundreds of thousands of people have new hope. Do you think if the trials worked just as well with “real” HIV injections, the cancer patients wouldn’t do it? Perspective people…

You’re nitpicking on a very inspiring video. The title is a classic shock journalism technique, and while I may not be a fan of shock tactics, they work very well for making people read an article who would not otherwise be interested in reading it. While I applaud your quest for the truth and your obvious love of science, you should probably learn to appreciate the art of journalism a little bit more and to take things with a grain of salt.

Thanks for this blog post. Though I think your worries are a bit of a classic clash between art and science. Either way, I now know a lot more about this treatment and hope we can get more films in the futures about future discoveries!

Well, the title was obviously to tie it in with the piece that this article talks about. And it is their opinion, but that is what this is, it is a blog after all…

Also, I think the point was the title of the movie was misleading (as well as the description for the movie), and this piece was written to clear that up. I am a PhD student, too, but I’ll be the first one to say that I know PLENTY of people who would see the title, description, and even watch the movie and STILL either come away thinking she was infected with HIV or wanting to know more, which this article does a good job of.

Yes, the main point of the movie was to show this treatment as the innovative, “miracle”, that it is. And if you want more science, you can come here.

I am somewhat confused about what phd student said at the end, but that’s cool. Anyway, I’m pretty sure they can just remove the harmful viral part and then it is set up just to deliver the new DNA and not cause HIV. Also, they are trying this with other lentiviruses too so it’s not like HIV is the main importance here, mostly that they used a viral carrier to reprogram T-cells. Really cool in my opinion, and the article was a good read.

Hypocritical much? You spout off about how they are misleading with statements, when your title is ‘No, doctors did not “inject HIV into a dying girl” to treat her cancer’, then you proceed to admit that yes, it was HIV, but IN YOUR OPINION, it shouldn’t be considered HIV ‘given how much it has been altered.’

Yes it was HIV, heavily modified and engineered to reprogram the T cells, but HIV nonetheless. This was very well explained by the doctor in the video.

I kind of disagree with Joyce and PhD-student above. Clearly of course, there is a difference btw “injecting HIV” or “injecting a HIV-derived” and “injecting a T-CELL MODIFIED BY A HIV-derived”. The point is that the virus is not been injected it self.

I kind of agree with Joyce above. Clearly ofcourse, there is a difference btw “injecting HIV” or “injecting a HIV-derived” virus, but if youd like to point out that HIV has given humanity several new tools to battle other diseases such cancers – it makes some sense to state it as “injecting HIV”. And while the modified HIV-virus is in theory safe, there is nothing that guarantees integration 100% free of oncogene activation, dont you agree?

I would like to complain… You state “doctors are injecting “HIV into a dying girl”, and that she received a “deadly disease”.
This is untrue…
Is the science in this video over simplified… YES… But how else do you expect people from many backgrounds to understand it…
What is actually said by the DOCTORS not the interviewer…. Are….
“Patients that we are treating on this clinical trial have absolutely no other options left for them”
“the virus has been engineered so it can’t cause disease anymore but it still retains the ability to reprogram the immune system so that it will now attack cancer cells”
The INTERVIEWER stated “so you’re taking the HIV virus and infecting healthy cells with it to help kill cancer”
This is far from the claims made in the article you point to. I tried to post something similar to this on the article and it was rejected… So I find this whole thing slanderous and anti science.

This is really amazing and fascinating…and it’s interesting to think that should this treatment become ‘the’ cure for cancer, humans will evolve to have these T-cells in their genes…so the generations who are best able to fight cancer would be those whose ancestors had the disease and were cured for it this way :)

Think I’ll go link this in the comments on the upworthy video I posted a week or so ago on my Facebook then..

Hope is what U give humanity, Docs . God bless and TQ. Forward March!

Thank you for this friendly and informative read. :)

Together these results suggest that incorporation of the CD137 signaling domain in CARs should improve the persistence of CARs in the hematologic malignancies and hence maximize their antitumor activity.

Above excerpt can only be beneficial and hopefully sustain the anticipated economies of scale in terms of long-term surviving patients.