CHAN: An AIDS patient is apparently free of HIV after receiving a bone marrow transplant during leukemia treatment. He received stem cells from a donor with that a genetic mutation, making him immune to HIV, the virus that causes AIDS. Here's more. STORY: These German doctors have witnessed what could be a medical breakthrough. They've been treating a leukemia patient - at the Benjamin Franklin clinic in Berlin - and part of the therapy was a bone marrow transplant. But the man, a 42-year-old American living in the German capital, also has AIDS. After receiving the transplant - amazingly it seems he is no longer HIV positive - a story that's made front-page news in Germany. Dr. Gero Huetter - who's a leukemia specialist - is the doctor who treated him. He replaced the patient's bone marrow cells with stem cells from a donor who has a genetic mutation that prevents them catching HIV, the virus that causes AIDS. [Gero Huetter, Doctor]: "The treatment, the stem cell transplant, was carried out to treat the leukemia, and not to treat the HIV infection. If you like, that was a side-effect, we would have carried out the stem cell transplant anyway, even if we hadn't found the suitable donor with the mutation." The patient hasn't taken anti-retroviral AIDS drugs for almost two years. But the doctors still haven't been able to detect HIV in his blood. But the unusual medical side-effect of this case won't change treatment for HIV sufferers: [Gero Huetter, Doctor]: "This is ...
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