I've started reading Greta Thunberg's "The Climate Book: The Facts and the Solutions."

While I'm only 8% into the ebook version, I can say that any fears it might be a "bash you over the head with a torrent of dense scientific data," and angry tirades sort of book have been laid to rest.

It's very readable, and the chapters are short, digestible essays by various science experts. It's interspersed with thoughtful, intelligent commentary by Greta herself.

The folks that worked on this LEGO age check text field (!!) are automatically the best web developers on the planet right

(Sound on for perfection)

Yesterday, the best news which has ever come out during my lifetime, did. There's going to finally be an HIV cure. It's a ways down the road, but this all but guarantees it.

https://medicalxpress.com/news/2023-08-treatment-based-gene-safely-effectively.html

Here's the original paper explaining what was done in detail. Again, it's going to be a few more years before this is on the shelf, but there's finally hope for the end of HIV.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41434-023-00410-4

Here's one of the two papers where the technology germinated about a decade ago. Note that the last paper was SIV instead of HIV, but it's such a good model, it almost always translates to humans.

https://www.nature.com/articles/nbt.2647

Here's the other one. If you don't like reading original source materials like this, or want to read the first announcement with the details on the good news, I'll sum up...

https://www.nature.com/articles/nbt.2623

This is a gene therapy which inactivates HIV/SIV by entering the virus itself and editing the genome. This is cool in and of itself, but it is meaningful because it does a thing called "draining the viral reservoir". This is what makes it a cure and not just a treatment.

The reason why you can only suppress, and not eradicate viruses, is because they will go into a dormant state and hang out for years and then re-deploy, and you're back where you started.

This is why, as amazing as antivirals are, you're generally stuck taking them forever.

This is also why Sovaldi is such a big deal: it actually *cures* Hepatitis C, which previously was only treatable. You take it (along with other things) for twelve weeks, and at the end you are free of the virus. This is a first. No other cures for viruses exist.

And now there's a method to drain the viral reservoir and inactivate HIV. And this isn't just the best news of my lifetime, but it also paves the way for therapies to cure Hep B, and any number of others.

I am so excited, so happy, so hopeful.

✨💖✨

Here's what I've seen since joining the #Fediverse.

Jewelry makers trying to earn a living. Writers who need others to know their tales are ready to be consumed. Trans people who need to be heard. Citizens who fear what their country has become, and absurdists who want to make me laugh.

This place holds the promise we hoped Twitter and Facebook promised us.

Keep posting. Keep sharing. Keep considering.