View full lesson: https://ed.ted.com/lessons/why-it-s-so-hard-to-cure-hiv-aids-janet-iwasa

In 2008, something incredible happened: a man was cured of HIV. In over 70 million HIV cases, this was a first, and, so far, a last, and we don’t yet understand exactly how he was cured. But if we can cure people of various diseases, like malaria and hepatitis C, why can’t we cure HIV? Janet Iwasa examines the specific traits of the HIV virus that make it so difficult to cure.

Lesson by Janet Iwasa, animation by Javier Saldeña.

A New York woman may be the first to have been cured using a new paradigm of treatment.

From 1981, when the first patients with HIV were identified, to 2007 – a cure for the deadly virus would have been a miracle. And then, Timothy Ray Brown – known as “The Berlin Patient” was cured. And just like that, a miracle became science.

Mr. Brown had been diagnosed with HIV in 1995. In 2006, he was diagnosed with acute myelogenous leukemia which would require a donor bone marrow stem cell transplant for treatment. But this wasn’t just any donor. His donor was one of less than 1% of the world’s population, with a unique genetic mutation known as the CCR5-∆32 mutation. This rendered the donor’s immune cells resistant to HIV.

It was a gamble, to be sure, but it proved to be a successful one. Mr. Brown lived from 2007 to 2020 without the need for anti-retroviral therapy. He died from a relapse of AML. No HIV was detected at the time of his death.

The question, of course is simple: why can’t more people be cured of HIV?

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