If you thought drinking reptile blood to gain an athletic edge was icky, you may be surprised how much medical value there actually is in the practice. Alligator blood has some pretty awesome infection-fighting abilities, and drugs made from it can even help treat AIDS and organ transplant patients. More details after the jump.

The Ebola virus is a fearful strain. Humans have a mortality rate of 90% with the virus. The threat of the virus was so great that it even became the model for the fictional virus used in the 1995 film "Outbreak." However, scientists are making fast progress in finding a vaccine to protect against it. Details in the full article.

Humanity is one more step closer to finding the cure against HIV, and as it turns out, it's been inside of us all along. Literally. Researchers at the University of Alberta has discovered a gene that actually blocks HIV, thereby stunting its spread from the onset. Read up on this wonder gene by clicking on full article.

When we think about improved quality of living, we also think about safety and security from diseases. But as it turns out, the more that  humans depend on modern medicine, the more they become more and more susceptible to diseases. Increased contact with wildlife resulting from increasing population also contributes to deadly outbreaks as well. Read more about it in the full article.

As if beer bellies weren't that big of a problem for humanity, the HIV virus had to make matters worse. Scientists have identified immune cells in the human gut to be the first to fall to the dreaded disease, making room for full-blown AIDS. All you need to know about it after the jump!

It might not be practically safe to feed babies with pre-chewed food. US government scientists have found out that the AIDS virus can be passed from infected mothers to their babies if they pre-chew the food.

Apparently, the pre-chewing of food occurs often in developing countries where they may have a lack on baby food or may not have a way to blend baby food. Details in the full article.

Scientists have found another tool which can be a powerful weapon in the fight against AIDS. According to microbiologists, an existing drug can disrupt the stealthy ways of the HIV virus, making the process of treating it easier. Full details after the jump.

Arizona State University Physics Professor Kong-Thon Tsen and his son Shaw-Wei Tsen might be holding the key for curing, if not totally eliminating, deadly viruses such as hepatitis and HIV. They reportedly found out that viruses can be destroyed by using ultrashort-pulse lasers or USPs.

According to them, we must find a way to remove these viruses from our system because vaccinations are sometimes insufficient. In the study conducted by the father and son tandem, it was demonstrated that this laser technique was able to shatter the protein shell (capsid) of the tobacco mosaic virus.

What was left of the mosaic virus after the experimentation was just a "harmless mucus-like mash of molecules." Interestingly, the Tsens mentioned that the energy used to destroy the mosaic virus was 40 times lower than the threshold for human cells. Surpassing the limit would cause harm to the human T-cells.

We ran a report back in June of this year concerning USPs and the company Raydiance Inc., which is planning to fully-developed the technology to be used in other fields aside from physics such as medicine and biology. Hearing about the Tsens' accomplishment, Raydiance Inc. President Scott Davison had this to say:

The extreme brevity of these pulses is creating a physical effect that traditional lasers and other types of non-laser approaches can't do. What we see is a new wave of exploration and discovery in applying USP in a whole bunch of industries and applications.

The medical science community has been having a lot of progress in the last few years on finding the elusive cure to HIV. However, latest reports say that these developments have brought more bad than good because specialists notice a steady rise in infection levels.

The said rise, doctors added, can be attributed to the belief among younger patients that the disease can already be cured. Portsmouth-based specialist Dr. Veerakathy Harindra, for example, reports that 25% of his patients wrongly maintain that a cure has already been created to counter the effects of human immunodeficiency virus.

While it is true that there are some medicines out there today that can somewhat keep the virus in check, it is not enough to cure HIV altogether. Charity for HIV sufferers Terrence Higgins Trust mentioned that their statistics indicate that the number of people with the virus this year is already around 70,000 from 30,000 only six years ago.

Medical science is always on the breakthrough to find cures for so many life-threatening illnesses these days. A recent project headed by University of Missouri-Columbia engineers based on nanotechnology aims to develop a small but powerful device capable of effectively delivering drugs to help treat these conditions.

So far, the project is in its testing phase and will be focusing on fighting various diseases on a microscopic level, such as destroying tumors, kidney stones, ulcers as well as hopefully treating cancer and HIV. Through a fusion of microchip-based technology and nanotechnology, the device triggers a reaction resulting in super sonic shock waves which will make infected cells permeable for drug interaction.

The project is headed by Shubhra Gangopadhyay, an electrical and computer engineering professor in the College of Engineering and the head of the University's International Center for Nano/Micro Systems and Nanotechnology.

Other practical uses of the technology include the dispersal of drug-carrying nanoparticles called the nanosponge into the body. This nanosponge will then target specific cells and areas that have been infected with disease. Also, through the delivery of gold nanoparticles, doctors can also track drug movement and the spread of disease throughout the body.

Such nanoparticles contain no harmful components and will be harmless to the body. The device will, however, need as many as three more years of additional testing before it can be made available to pharmaceutical companies. Nems/Mems Works, LLC will market the device and the various nanoparticles associated with the study.