Virus May Help Fight HIV — GBV-C, or “hepatitis G”, discovered in 1995, infection with which does not cause any apparent ill effects, occurs in around 2% of the general public, and co-infection with it may be part of the mystery of why some HIV-infected patients can survive decades after contracting the infection. It is not clear how it has this effect. Because the longterm outcome of hepatitis-G infection is not yet known, researchers are cautioning that people not deliberately infect themselves. New York Times