Controversial Poster Thursday at Vienna Conference:GcMAF

[Bobitalia]

 Let us know what you think. Use the new "Reactions" vote at the end of each post, below. Just click the 'Good' or 'Bad' box. (Added July 19, 2010). 

 July 17, 2010Controversial Poster Thursday at Vienna Conference: Call for Information on GcMAF
by John S. James

We will not be at the big Vienna conference starting tomorrow (International AIDS Conference, July 18-23), and would like to hear from anyone with a scientific background who can visit the poster below, on Thursday, and the presenter.

A separate paper published last year by N. Yamamoto and others (see the abstract and link to full text at http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19031451) claims to have cured 15 patients in Japan. "In the present study GcMAF therapy was given to nonanemic HIV-infected patients and found to be highly curative."

About 130 peer-reviewed papers related to this work can be found at http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/entrez?db=pubmed&cmd=link&linkname=pubmed_pubmed&uid=19031451. The proposed mechanism seems plausible -- that HIV produces a substance that shuts down immune responses in monocytes and macrophages, helping HIV infection to continue. The treatment appears to restore the response.

The research is controversial because it claims to have cured HIV infection, and also prostate cancer. The connection is not outlandish, however; for example, U.S.-government funded research at Yale is looking at a possible immune-based potential treatment for the same two illnesses (http://opa.yale.edu/news/article.aspx?id=7061).

Also controversial, the poster presenter at the International AIDS Conference, M. Ruggiero, is an accomplished molecular biologist -- but also a leading HIV denialist (Google: "Marco Ruggiero" HIV -- or see his 14-minute lecture uploaded January, 2010, to http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Sh03lqTsJw -- or see the abstracts of the denialist conference being held in Vienna on the two days before the International AIDS Conference there, http://www.science-and-aids.org/e/abstracts.html). However, Dr. Yamamoto is clearly not a denialist -- and apparently has not published with Dr. Ruggiero before the Vienna conference starting Sunday.

There are lots of mysteries here. For example, how has Dr. Yamamoto been publishing this HIV work extensively for at least 15 years in peer-reviewed journals, recently reporting excellent results, with almost no attention from most other HIV researchers?

We are concerned because we have heard that funders of research are not seeing new ideas for curing HIV being proposed. But there are lots of ideas, some credible, and no way to know in advance which ones will work out. Many human groups close themselves off and become increasingly narrow in focus, until they are irrelevant. In that case, new ideas cannot come forward. It would be tragic is this is happening in AIDS.

Here is the reference to the poster on Thursday:

THPE00 51 Gc protein-derived macrophage activating factor (GcMAF) stimulates activation and proliferation of human circulating monocytes
M. Ruggiero (Italy), S. Pacini (Italy), N. Yamamoto (United States)
Program of the XVIII International AIDS Conference, July 18-23, 2010, Vienna, Austria, page 306; Thursday July 22.
http://aidsnews.blogspot.com/2010/07/controversial-poster-thursday-at-vienna.html


Gc PROTEIN-DERIVED MACROPHAGE ACTIVATING FACTOR (GcMAF) STIMULATES
ACTIVATION AND PROLIFERATION OF HUMAN CIRCULATING MONOCYTES
M. Ruggiero*, S. Pacini**, N. Yamamoto§
*Department of Experimental Pathology and Oncology, University of Firenze, Italy
**Department of Anatomy, Histology and Forensic Medicine, University of Firenze, Italy
§Division of Molecular Immunology and Immunotherapy, Socrates Institute for Therapeutic Immunology, Philadelphia, PA, USA
http://pag.aids2010.org/PAG/EPosterHandler.axd?aid=6536

[Hellraiser]

How interesting.  I have to wonder why anyone who co-author something with Ruggiero who is at best a crackpot and at worst...scum of the Earth.

[Snout]

There are a few things that would make me a bit skeptical here, aside from Dr Yamamoto's association with Ruggiero.

Firstly, Dr Nabuto Yamamoto is 85 years old.*

Secondly, his position is listed as "Division of Molecular Immunology and Immunotherapy, Socrates Institute for Therapeutic Immunology".

The address given for this Institute appears to be a private dwelling in suburban Philadelphia. The Institute has no website of its own. It is registered as a non-profit organization, and has no paid employees.

Internal Revenue Returns (Return of Organization Exempt From Income Tax) show little evidence of much actual research work over the past few years - no more than a few hundred dollars in expenses per year. By far the largest expense incurred by the Institute is "publication costs" in several medical journals.

http://nccsdataweb.urban.org/PubApps/showVals.php?ein=232834414

*I wonder if there has been some confusion with Dr Naoki Yamamoto who is the Director of the HIV/AIDS research center of the National Institute of Infectious Diseases in Tokyo.