Comments on: Look at them Choppers!

Look at them Choppers!

fenriq — Tue, 16 Aug 2005 10:12:04 -0800

Crocodile Immune System Kills HIV
Because crocodiles fight amonst themselves and get seriously wounded from time to time they developed incredibly strong immune systems and natural antibiotics. So strong that they, well, let's hear from one of the scientists.... "The crocodile has an immune system which attaches to bacteria and tears it apart and it explodes. It's like putting a gun to the head of the bacteria and pulling the trigger," said Australian scientist Adam Britton.
Sounds like good news to me.

By: agregoli

agregoli — Tue, 16 Aug 2005 10:18:22 -0800

And bad news for crocodiles.

By: Pollomacho

Pollomacho — Tue, 16 Aug 2005 10:18:32 -0800

So is this how humans eventually evolve into the lizard people time travelers. Man, this tin foil itches.

By: delmoi

delmoi — Tue, 16 Aug 2005 10:19:48 -0800

"The crocodile has an immune system which attaches to bacteria and tears it apart and it explodes. It's like putting a gun to the head of the bacteria and pulling the trigger," Sounds like somebody had better call the hyperbolyyyyyaaambulance

By: Rothko

Rothko — Tue, 16 Aug 2005 10:20:38 -0800

Problems with this article: antibiotics don't kill viruses, viruses aren't considered life (organisms), and your body's immune system would forcibly reject any croc antibodies injected into you, assuming you had collected enough natural supply to reduce HIV counts to begin with... Well, at least the scientist didn't throw "crikey" into the description.

By: delmoi

delmoi — Tue, 16 Aug 2005 10:21:10 -0800

Also, I doubt that the human imune system would have many problems dispatching a virus that had evolved to infect a totaly diffrent Animal.

By: cavalier

cavalier — Tue, 16 Aug 2005 10:23:16 -0800

No wonder the lizards in Gilliam's adaptation of Fear and Loathing were so promiscuous!

By: Grimgrin

Grimgrin — Tue, 16 Aug 2005 10:26:10 -0800

I wonder how often crocodiles suffer from autoimmune disease?

By: fenriq

fenriq — Tue, 16 Aug 2005 10:28:29 -0800

Rothko, from the bottom of the article, However, the crocodile's immune system may be too powerful for humans and may need to be synthesized for human consumption. Damn, I wish I'd thrown a crikey into the post now.

By: Balisong

Balisong — Tue, 16 Aug 2005 10:30:15 -0800

Now..let..me..just..get...my...thumb..in..there... (/southpark) Between aligator immune system injections, shark cartalidge tablets, and eating monkey brains, I feel like a whole new person!

By: OmieWise

OmieWise — Tue, 16 Aug 2005 10:32:00 -0800

Um, kinda cool, but you know, the human immune system also kills HIV, and quite effectively. That's why it takes 10 years (on average) to progress from HIV infection to AIDS (as defined by a CD4 count of less than 200). If HIV did not attack the immune system itself, eventually weakening it, the virus would be controlled quite well by the human system.

By: grouse

grouse — Tue, 16 Aug 2005 10:33:41 -0800

Problems with this article... Well the reporter obviously has very little idea what he's talking about, but that doesn't mean that the scientists don't as well. your body's immune system would forcibly reject any croc antibodies injected into you, There is a long history of using neutralizing antibodies from other organisms therapeutically. Antivenom produced in horses for human use is the first thing I can think of. Unfortunately, previous studies have shown that using neutralizing antibody mechanisms alone will not neutralize an HIV infection.

By: selfmedicating

selfmedicating — Tue, 16 Aug 2005 10:34:56 -0800

This is cool. I'm also looking forward to crocodillin to treat antibiotic-resistant bugs, and the synthetic human blood made from crocodile hemoglobin.

By: OmieWise

OmieWise — Tue, 16 Aug 2005 10:35:24 -0800

Grimgrin writes "I wonder how often crocodiles suffer from autoimmune disease?" This is a really good question, unfortunately, there are several human autoimmune diseases that have common names that derive from crocodile (crocodile tears (associated with Bell's Palsy) and crocodile skin), so googling crocodile & autoimmune returns no hits about the actual animals.

By: CynicalKnight

CynicalKnight — Tue, 16 Aug 2005 10:36:18 -0800

attaches to bacteria and tears it apart and it explodes Crikey, that's a reeeeally agressive macrophage!

By: maxsparber

maxsparber — Tue, 16 Aug 2005 10:44:50 -0800

Now I feel so much better about eating all those crocodiles. You can't just stop at one!

By: Pollomacho

Pollomacho — Tue, 16 Aug 2005 11:03:07 -0800

Between alligator immune system injections, shark cartalidge tablets, and eating monkey brains, I feel like a whole new person! I can't tell if it's the rhino horn or the tiger penis soup, but my wife and I look like we belong in an Enzyte commercial!

By: The Cardinal

The Cardinal — Tue, 16 Aug 2005 11:04:51 -0800

I hope this doesn't turn into a repeat of Ol' Doc Connors.

By: elendil71

elendil71 — Tue, 16 Aug 2005 11:17:05 -0800

This is actually kinda old news. Well, REM wrote a song alluding to it anyway, back in '96'. 'Course, Michael Stipe may have been a bit closer to it than mainstream media at the time.

By: Drylnn

Drylnn — Tue, 16 Aug 2005 11:18:18 -0800

Man, those Australian scientists love their descriptions. I can only assume the mixed scientific language (antibiotics being linked with viruses as well as bacteria, etc) is due to the reporter writing the article, not the scientists themselves. Even though the crocodile's immune system is much stronger than the human one and we can't just port over what we need, I still would have hope that this information and research could be used to speed along a vaccine of some types (although with a retrovirus like HIV, that's a difficult prospect). Either that or the drug from Japan that was mentioned on here about a month ago. I'll leave without a "Crikey" joke, although it seems to be the price of admission to this thread.

By: Kickstart70

Kickstart70 — Tue, 16 Aug 2005 11:29:14 -0800

Now I feel so much better about eating all those crocodiles. You can't just stop at one! Yeah, and I feel so much safer about screwing them, now that I know I won't get HIV!

By: LinemanBear

LinemanBear — Tue, 16 Aug 2005 11:30:13 -0800

Bring on the Visitors

By: OmieWise

OmieWise — Tue, 16 Aug 2005 11:50:01 -0800

By the way, fenriq, props for the Romancing the Stone post title.

By: rxrfrx

rxrfrx — Tue, 16 Aug 2005 12:16:33 -0800

The crocodile has an immune system which attaches to bacteria and tears it apart and it explodes 1. What does this have to do with HIV? 2. People have this functionality too, it's called the Membrane Attack Complex.

By: rxrfrx

rxrfrx — Tue, 16 Aug 2005 12:17:48 -0800

(And by cranky comment #1, I mean why did they bring up bacteria)

By: dash_slot-

dash_slot- — Tue, 16 Aug 2005 12:28:57 -0800

I feel like copy & pasting the whole friggin' article here. rxrfrx: Initial studies of the crocodile immune system in 1998 found that several proteins (antibodies) in the reptile's blood killed bacteria that were resistant to penicillin, such as Staphylococcus aureus or golden staph, Australian scientist Adam Britton told Reuters on Tuesday. It was also a more powerful killer of the HIV virus than the human immune system. "If you take a test tube of HIV and add crocodile serum it will have a greater effect than human serum. It can kill a much greater number of HIV viral organisms," Britton said from Darwin's Crocodylus Park, a tourism park and research center. Obviously there's hope in these results. The real crux of it is in whether it prevents HIV attacking the immune system, as earlier posters have said.

By: corranhorn

corranhorn — Tue, 16 Aug 2005 12:41:02 -0800

Does anyone know of links to a more scientific presentation of this information? The description of the immune system tearing apart bacteria and making it explode just sounds like a dramatic description of the human complement cascade. (rxrfrx astutely referenced the final step of the cascade, attachment of the Membrane Attack Complex).

By: Aknaton

Aknaton — Tue, 16 Aug 2005 12:56:55 -0800

I can't find it on the net now, but I read a year or two ago that AIDS is rampant in lions, that basically they're swimming in it. But their immune system is so overpowered that they can handle it (evidently they adapted to AIDS some time ago). I would have thought that hippos would have even better immune systems than crocs, insofar as they wallow in their own filth. (Nothing quite like it for cooling the blood!)

By: fenriq

fenriq — Tue, 16 Aug 2005 13:06:00 -0800

OmieWise, thanks, I was wondering if anyone would notice or get it.

By: grouse

grouse — Tue, 16 Aug 2005 13:27:09 -0800

I would have thought that hippos would have even better immune systems than crocs, insofar as they wallow in their own filth. (Nothing quite like it for cooling the blood!) I really need to try that sometime.

By: DarbyMac

DarbyMac — Tue, 16 Aug 2005 13:55:50 -0800

Now, it's been a while since I took immunology, and I'm being lazy and not looking things up, but I don't think we're even talking about antibodies here. Fish, reptiles, and amphibians, last I knew, use chemical antibiotics as their primary defense systems rather than the "flag-and-call-in-a-response" approach of mammalian antibodies. The antibiotics should be of use against bacteria, and there very well could be antiviral molecules as well, but they won't be the same chemicals and won't have universal applicability. I wonder what the actual original studies were? Merchant has done works with croc blood for its anti-amebal (neither bacteria nor viruses) qualities, and he and Britton have studied anti-bacterials (always called antibiotics in those sources), but no anti-virals that I can find (although there appears to be a Mark Merchant that works with computer viruses). This looks like a reporter who, typically, has no clue of the differences between antibiotic and antibody or bacteria and virus, and is extrapolating based on ignorance.

By: monkeyboy_socal

monkeyboy_socal — Tue, 16 Aug 2005 14:27:07 -0800

Waitasecond. Some Crocodiles are gay? Huh.

By: dances_with_sneetches

dances_with_sneetches — Tue, 16 Aug 2005 15:07:41 -0800

I agree with those who say this article makes no sense. If the crocodile is producing antibodies to HIV then he is being challenged with HIV or a part of it. Those antibodies are supposed to be more powerful than human HIV antibodies? The problem with human infection doesn't lie in weak human antibodies in the first place. If it's not antibodies what are they comparing it to for human antiviral serum response? Are crocodiles supposed to be making a natural antiviral compound that works non-specifically (unlike antibodies which have a specificity)? That's hard to imagine given the extreme diversity of viruses out there. It just happens to act on HIV -- which is an extremely diverse virus in itself. It's not just the reporter who seems unclear. "If you take a test tube of HIV and add crocodile serum it will have a greater effect than human serum. It can kill a much greater number of HIV viral organisms." This statement is wincingly bad. Human serum without antibodies doesn't kill HIV. Human serum with antibodies doesn't kill HIV either, it would present it to the leukocytes for the killing which aren't present in serum. Of course HIV isn't considered alive.

By: shoos

shoos — Tue, 16 Aug 2005 19:08:27 -0800

The most dubious part of this is that it's science by Reuters. Journalists are far from being the most qualified group of people for evaluating scientific work. Has any other doctor/scientist sort of person looked at their results, or was it just Michael Perry? It's not that hard for scientists to get press in the nonscience media if they want it, especially regarding big-news issues like HIV. Adam Britton's publication list also doesn't indicate any background in immunology, virology, microbiology or medicine.

By: clevershark

clevershark — Tue, 16 Aug 2005 19:39:43 -0800

Now let's kill all the crocodiles and get all the cure at once! Does that remind anyone of a certain fable?

By: shoos

shoos — Tue, 16 Aug 2005 19:44:20 -0800

Here also is Mark Merchant's page at McNeese State University. It's strange, I tried looking up his three most recent listed publications on PubMed, and none of them was there. And the only references to them I could find using Google were from his own web page.

By: snwod

snwod — Tue, 16 Aug 2005 19:47:02 -0800

Kinda OT, but I just love it when scientists explain things in everyday English. The quote from the OP, reminded me of an article on building an exoskeleton for soldiers I read a few years ago. One of the developers was talking about the efficiency and power of human muscle: "Muscle is so damn good at this stuff. If you took all of the muscles off of a healthy adult male and put them in full contraction, they would lift 20 tons. And they run on carrots."

By: dances_with_sneetches

dances_with_sneetches — Tue, 16 Aug 2005 19:58:47 -0800

Reuters publishes a lot of good science articles. This isn't one of them.

By: gsb

gsb — Wed, 17 Aug 2005 04:27:08 -0800

shoos, I think his page is a bit out of date, according to this PubMed search.

By: emf

emf — Wed, 17 Aug 2005 04:33:56 -0800

Here's a chap who applied his croc externally. Unfortunately, it was still alive.

By: OmieWise

OmieWise — Wed, 17 Aug 2005 07:33:28 -0800

I can't find it on the net now, but I read a year or two ago that AIDS is rampant in lions, that basically they're swimming in it. But their immune system is so overpowered that they can handle it (evidently they adapted to AIDS some time ago). Just a couple of clarifications, since the terminology is fairly important here: 1) If the lion immune systems are killing the virus, then the lions do not have AIDS. AIDS comes after the body's defenses have been overwhelmed. 2) In any case, no animal need worry about HIV, which is a Human virus, hence the H. There may be a FIV, for feline, just as there is an SIV for chimpanzees (simian).

By: norm

norm — Wed, 17 Aug 2005 09:33:11 -0800

It was also a more powerful killer of the HIV virus than the human immune system. I shall go to the ATM machine and get money to contribute to this research! I hope I can remember my PIN number. Can I get the study information in PDF format?

By: shoos

shoos — Wed, 17 Aug 2005 14:53:31 -0800

gsb, true, but it should raise a little concern that the only citations or mentions of his work are from himself and Reuters. Look him up at Science Citation Index.

By: gsb

gsb — Wed, 17 Aug 2005 16:05:09 -0800

This is not an endorsement. There's a long history of articles that receive very few or no citations, initially, because the research was not 'trendy/useful/applicable/good for grant writing/nice for high-impact journals' instantly. In some cases, science takes time to be heavily cited... etc. As a useful metric, citations are good, but one needs more than a single measure for these things.

By: shoos

shoos — Wed, 17 Aug 2005 17:58:20 -0800

There's also a much more vast history of articles that received little or no attention because they didn't merit it.

By: gsb

gsb — Thu, 18 Aug 2005 02:37:20 -0800

shoos, of course there's a vast history of shite, and I understood that from your earlier comment. And I guess this comment is further equivocation to your equivocation, ad nauseum.