Ok I looked up a more detailed report. So apparently the patients went off the drugs because it was either they still had the infections and it was controlled by the drugs or they no longer had it. So they weren't taking risks of getting the infections again when they got off because either they had it or they didn't. And their blood was checked regularly.
The second guy insisted to stay off the drug after the first guy got his HIV back and that is his right, but if the doctors advised that he stayed off then that would be unethical. Informed consent is about the patients' rights to their own body. The doctors' treatments of patients however is still subjected to ethical constraints, and the oath to do no harm, which includes not giving advice that unnecessarily jeopardizes patients' health.
http://gizmodo.com/hiv-reappears-in-two-...socialflow
Minimalist, I'm not talking about the transplant, talking about how they decided to stay off the drugs.
The second guy insisted to stay off the drug after the first guy got his HIV back and that is his right, but if the doctors advised that he stayed off then that would be unethical. Informed consent is about the patients' rights to their own body. The doctors' treatments of patients however is still subjected to ethical constraints, and the oath to do no harm, which includes not giving advice that unnecessarily jeopardizes patients' health.
http://gizmodo.com/hiv-reappears-in-two-...socialflow
Quote:The two patients in the Boston study had battled HIV for years. They agreed to stop taking their HIV medications earlier this year to test whether the medicine was holding the infections in check, or whether it was the transplant of healthy donor bone marrow cells each received that was vanquishing signs of the virus in their bodies. Both had received the transplants after chemotherapy and other treatments had failed to stop their Hodgkin’s lymphoma, a cancer of the blood.
For weeks, Henrich’s team carefully tested the patients’ blood, searching for signs of HIV. In July, with one patient off the HIV medications for seven weeks, and the other patient off for 15, the scientists reported their early, encouraging results: They could find no trace of the virus in their blood cells.
But in August, the scientists detected HIV in one of the patients, who then resumed taking medication. The other remained seemingly HIV-free. Concerned about the ethics of continuing the study, the scientists gave the patient the choice of going back on the drugs. The patient opted to stay off the medicine.
Last month, after eight months with no HIV detected, signs of the virus reemerged and the patient went back on medication, too.
Minimalist, I'm not talking about the transplant, talking about how they decided to stay off the drugs.
