Well HIV is a retro virus, simply destroying every virus in an infected persons body is not enough since the virus literally inserts its own DNA into our DNA using a protein called reverse transcriptase. This means that even if you had zero HIV virus's left in your body, every surviving cell that once DID has the potential to encode more virus's and unless you kept taking the drugs extremely regularly youre still a potential risk for AIDS should the viral count become too high. You can functionally be free of HIV if you do wipe out almost every virus through the extensive use of expensive anti viral cocktails and then continue to eradicate every new virus your "infected" DNA produces (Magic johnson is a good example of someone who has managed to reach this quasi-ideal stage) but for all intents and purposes you still have HIV.Strazdas said:
What new research does is use enzymes to cut out the HIV DNA sequence from our DNA as well as simply destroying functional virus's. You have to attack both avenues at once VERY VERY hard. Leaving a single virus OR a single strand of infected DNA is more risk since either one can create the other. This coupled with the mutation rate means vaccination is horrifically hard and cures are even harder. Success can be found in newborn babies where the virus has yet to infect the DNA of many cells at all, which is why the recent HIV cure examples are newborns who have been hit with anti viral drugs immediately after birth to prevent the vicious cycle of DNA>VIRUS>DNA from starting up at all. Adult sufferers have a far more comprehensive infection assuming they dont immediately know from the second they are infected which is quite unlikely.
Ebola is not, as far as i know, a retrovirus. If you destroy every Ebola virus in a persons body they are clean 100% and should suffer no more infection unless reintroduced to ebola from a second source.
