Scientific research is a complicated, lengthy process.
Patients with advanced AIDS are offered few options by the research establishment. Fifty thousand late stage AIDS patients die each year. Promising research which could lead to treatments and potentially a cure can be stifled by bureaucracies and fear of theoretical risks. Jeff Getty, a late stage AIDS patient and an AIDS activist of many years with ACT UP Golden Gate, followed the animal model research of Dr. Suzanne Ilstead of the University of Pittsburgh which had been presented at a Project Inform Think Tank on Immunology. Dr. Ilstead's work centered on engrafting immune systems from one species into another.