SMWS 3-4

Over the weekend news spread quickly of a baby girl that was apparently cured of HIV. The infant girl was born HIV positive, and over the course of 2 years it turns out she was cured. This is a rare case, as infants in the US usually aren’t born with HIV because of all the testing done before the birth. However, doctors were unaware this mother was HIV positive until she was undergoing labor, and as a result the little girl was born with HIV as well. The baby was put on anti-retroviral treatment at 18 months, and after 5 months of treatment she was cured. While the story is crazy and interesting in itself, I found it interesting the way it was spread around. I initially found the story on Twitter, when someone was making a joke about the child being Magic Johnsons daughter. Ironically enough this is how I learn about some of the big news stories now. Someone will make a joke or mention something on Facebook or Twitter and it’ll make its way to my newsfeed. Because of the trending topics on twitter, I think the story got a lot of publicity and shot up to be a lot more prominent. As a matter of fact as I was writing this, my friend commented about seeing the story on Facebook. It’s amazing how stories can spread around so fast on the internet now. This could be a monumental medical breakthrough, and the fact that it is being spread around like this can only be good. Hopefully doctors can build off this and cure more cases of HIV.