The hope was that exposure to the genes would prompt an immune response in the body so that cells containing HIV virus would be recognised and destroyed.
After that, the study subjects were quarantined for six days and given cold-virus-containing nose drops at a dose about 125 times the amount that it takes to infect cells in a laboratory.
This would change when the virus crossed paths with cells containing a very specific DNA sequence, a sequence that would act as a molecular key to unlock secondary functions that were not so benign.