African researchers are working to cure HIV
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Patrick Arbuthnot was browsing his emails on what seemed like a normal workday in his lab in Johannesburg when he saw a strange notification pop up.
For two years, the researcher had worked on developing an HIV vaccine to possibly help put an end to one of Africa’s most deadly diseases for good. His lab at South Africa’s University of the Witwatersrand (Wits) had already spent thousands of dollars in US funding on experiments. Now, all of that crucial work had to be paused – or worse, permanently halted.
“We had the pasta in the boiling water, and we were just waiting for it to [cook],” the scientist said, illustrating how far his vaccine trials had gone before the stop-work order was issued. “There was still work to do to get the pasta ready. You still had to mix it with your sauce, so it wasn’t quite ready to eat yet, but we already had the pasta in the water. We were getting there.”
Read more on Al Jazeera.