Hrairoo’s 20 year old dream might finally be coming true.
Archive for January 4th, 2007
Ebola, out of your bloodstream in under 20 minutes.
Aethlon Medical, a small San Diego biotech company, is developing a portable device that removes viruses from blood. Known as the Hemopurifier, it filters not only smallpox but numerous other viruses, including Marburg and Ebola.
The Hemopurifier resembles a shrunken dialysis cartridge, the rolling-pin-size device that purifies the blood of patients whose kidneys have failed. Both use a filter to remove toxins from blood. But unlike traditional dialysis, the Hemopurifier also includes plant-derived antibodies, such as cyanovirin, that bind to a variety of viruses and eliminates them from the bloodstream. The plant solution can be modified to weed out even genetically engineered germs.
Not dying from Ebola or Marburg if infected will be nice, but I imagine that once the Hemopurifier becomes accepted we will see it more widely used to remove more mundane germs–like rhinoviruses–rather than the more exotic filo varieties.
“I got a sniffle coming on, honey. Gonna go down to the urgent care and change the oil.”
Not all viruses will be subject to the Hemopurifier. Herpes hides out in the lymph nodes between infections, for instance, but a large number of the more threatening microbes, including the always coming but never quite here avian flu would be caught by the filter, though it does not–as yet–remove 100% of of viruses present in the bloodstream.
In two of three patients from whom multiple cartridges were analyzed, 31% and 52% of the circulating plasma viral count prior to therapy was captured by the Hemopurifier. A third patient’s cartridges captured less than 10% of circulating virus.
Of course, once the process becomes more efficient, what you’ll have is a container full of concentrated viruses. Most of the used filters will be either safely disposed of or put to good use, as Aethlon predicts.
This technology is the first medical device application with the capability to separate, remove and concentrate viral types outside the body of infected individuals. Thus, the technology might provide a therapeutic reduction of circulating virus from the body, allow for the collection of immune plasma from recovering subjects and provide a means by which to isolate large quantities of “wild type” viruses and their mutations from the human population for research and characterization.
But when it comes to concentrated viruses, not all motives will be as savory, though the existence of the filter itself ought to prevent most of the obvious malign uses of such a collection.
Of course, it’s the un-obvious uses we have to worry about. As well, the Hemopurified viruses could be put to use in action against populations where the filter is not present in sufficient numbers to clean the blood of a critical mass of individuals, or in any other situation where a herd immunity cannot be established. The collected viruses could also be deployed against an individual who can be prevented from seeking or is too far from medical help–murder by virus, or viruses. One could assassinate with a singularly virulent virus like Ebola, or by exposing a target to so many viruses that their immune system is overwhelmed by the load and cannot respond.
Not that any of the above possibilities should prevent Aethlon from developing and selling the Hemopurifier, for <cliche> Change is always a double-edged sword </cliche>.