HIV, AIDS Cure News: Arthritic Goat's Milk Does Not Cure HIV, Expert Says
Hope for HIV continues to spread around the globe, especially after Charlie Sheen came out, telling infected people that he will try to help find the cure, but as it turns out, not even the arthritic goat's milk that he used as a replacement for his medication cured the virus.
Australian doctor Samir Chachoua made a name among HIV cure supporters when he claimed earlier this year that he was able to eradicate the virus in Sheen's body. He insisted that the caprine arthritis encephalitis virus (CAEV) that he has been using to erase the disease among the people of Comoros was able to heal Sheen.
While Sheen admitted that he stopped medication and tried Chachoua's treatment, he reported shortly that he is back on medication after HIV was back up in his blood.
For the most part, a lot of experts are doubting Chachoua's claims, especially since he is not licensed to practice medicine in the United States. The doctor said he totally eradicated HIV in the Comoros islands in 2006, but statistics reveal that there were 7,900 cases in the area in 2012.
According to PolitiFact, senior scientific consultant for programs at the Foundation for AIDS Research (amfAR), Jeffrey Laurence said, "We have no cure for AIDS and it's certainly not going to be anything related to goat's milk."
While CAEV has been known among scientists and experts to cross react with HIV, there has been no official confirmation that it can actually destroy the virus present in a patient's blood. The CAEV antibodies have the power to identify HIV, but it has no proven study that will link the virus to a cure.
Also, CAEV cannot be transmitted to humans, meaning Sheen, who reportedly took in arthritic goat's milk, couldn't have developed the antibodies, slamming Chachaoua's claims, and making it clear that when the doctor injected himself with Sheen's blood, he has become open to the strains of the virus.
Despite the sad news that there is still no proven cure for one of the world's biggest health scares, a team is working on a CAEV-based vaccine at the Joseph Fourier University in Grenoble, France. However, further studies need to be performed, in order to come up with a solid foundation for a possible cure.