"Virus Hunting: Tracking AIDS and Cancer-Midpoint Entry

Ahhh! I finally cheated my computer into letting me on to the sight! I'm sooooo sorry I'm late with my last two entries, but my computer kept telling me that I never recieved and invitation on to the sight in the first place and that I would be banned all together if I tried to post on the sight...but I figured it out!
So here is my belated mid-point entry, and I I will follow with my final entry.
~~~~~

From what I have read so far, I have learned alot about both cancer and AIDS. They are similar in many ways, especially in how they mature in the body. Still, they are also incredibly different.
One way cancer and AIDS are different is how they are treated.

Cancer treatment is often measured more by dosage of a few leading general treatments (such as chemothearapy, and radiation) , depending on type of cancer the patient has, the stage (generally ranging from stage 1-4, one being early onset, and 4 being likely terminal), and how agressive it is. For example, breast cancer can be alot more agressive than cancer of the pancreas, because breast cancer is more likely to become malignant (meaning able to spread to other parts of the body such as the back and brain). That is also a reason that breat cancer has a high risk of relapsing (coming back after it is "cured"). For patient that has breat cancer, they can be rid of all tumors in the breasts and be announced as cured, but two years later, it can come back and be in the patient's brain.

Treatment for AIDS varies tremendously from patient to patient. With AIDS, you are practially dealing with a completely new virus with every patient you treat. This is one reason why there is currently no cure for AIDS. One treatment might work for one patient, but not for another. This brings me to another reason why AIDS is so difficult to treat. An AIDS "strain" or "cell" has a special ability that no other virus in existance has. The ability to shapeshift. I have an analogy for you: The cheetah hunts the antalope (a deer-like animal). Imagine that the antalope is AIDS, and the cheetah is a treatment that a doctor has perscribed to one of his patients. Now, normally, the cheetah would easily be able to catch and kill the antalope because it is faster. But imagine that the antalope could transform into any animal that it wanted, say, an elephant. Now that the antalope is an elephant and much bigger and more powerful than the cheetah, the cheetah cannot harm it.

The AIDS virus is able to morph to resist any treatment that it is given. Therefore, it is virtually indistructable.

I hope, as I finish this book, to learn more about the experiments being done and the advances being made in finding treatments for both cancer and AIDS.

(NOTE: Please excuse any typos or words that are not spelled correctly, for some reason, I was unable to spell-check my post. I will try to edit it once it is posted, if I can.)