Iran unveils herbal remedy against AIDS

[Atlas]

Agence France Presse | February 3, 2007

Health Minister Kamran Baqeri Lankarani has announced that Iran's scientists have produced a herbal medicine that boosts the human's body immunity system against the HIV/AIDS virus.

"The herbal-based medication, called IMOD, serves to control the AIDS virus and increases the body's immunity," Baqeri Lankarani was quoted as saying by the official news agency IRNA.

"It is not a medication to kill the virus, it rather can be used besides other anti-retroviral drugs," Baqeri Lankarani said on state radio.

The drug, made after five years of research, has been tested on 200 patients, IRNA said, adding that it is considered the fifth generation of medications helping control the HIV/AIDS virus.

"This is a substance good for both AIDS patients and those who carry the virus without showing the symptoms," the director of the project, Mohammad Farhadi, told state television.

Farhadi said the medication will now be tested on some 3,000 to 5,000 Iranian patients in the next year to monitor its efficacy.

Health Minister Baqeri Lankarani said that the number of HIV/AIDS cases in Iran stands at around 14,000 while 1,700 people have died of the disease.

Last June, Iranian officials warned about the rapid spread of HIV/AIDS infections in the country due to a surge in intravenous drug usage.

"If no action is taken against the spread of this disease as quickly as possible, the number of those infected will reach 100,000 by the end of the next Iranian year (March 2008)," said Iran's deputy health minister, Moayed Alavian.

Iran is believed to have at least two million regular drug users -- and possibly as many as 3.5 million. Alavian said addiction is growing by around eight percent a year.

Intravenous drug use is believed to be the main cause of HIV/AIDS infection at 62.3 percent, followed by "unknown causes" at 27.9 percent and sexual contact at 7.4 percent.

[aries]

Astounding

[coffeeseven]

Another unannounced reason to attack.

[Lex]

If this remedy really works and it spreads to America it will be hard to justify going into Iran to blow stuff up. Well, it won't be hard to justify per se but it will be difficult to make the PR work in Pentagons favor.

[Dreepa]

You guys really believe this report?

[error]

You guys really believe this report?

Not for a minute.

When they publish some scientific papers on their "study" and it can be duplicated by researchers elsewhere, THEN I'll consider it.

[Rocketman]

You guys really believe this report?

I believe everything the press tells me, especially the French Press! 

[ladyattis]

Sounds like more quackery to me. 

-- Bridget waits for more 'free energy' drivel too.

[error]

Are you kidding? I invented a perpetual motion machine from miscellaneous old parts that accumulated in my closet over the past year!

[ladyattis]

Is it Time Cubic? 

-- Bridget

[Pat McCotter]

The herb is called hemlock.

[coffeeseven]

Seems to me the nuance of the beginning of the story leans towards it's a pharmaceutical based upon an herbal, like all pharmas. How do you guys read it?

[Ruger Mason]

The Iranian AIDS "cure" claim is of course not credible, and I don't believe it for a second, mainly because the Iranian government is not a credible source of information on, well, just about anything.

And of course there's the little problem that AIDS as it is commonly understood is likely a complete fiction.

[Dreepa]

The herb is called hemlock.

Socrates loved that.

[coffeeseven]

The herb is called hemlock.

Socrates loved that.

Yeah he did:thumbsup:

There has been a cure for AIDS/HIV for a long time. This is just something new.