Is It Time to Give Up the Search for an Aids Vaccine?
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Most scientists involved in Aids research believe that a vaccine against HIV is further away than ever and some have admitted that effective immunisation against the virus may never be possible, according to an unprecedented poll conducted by The Independent.
A mood of deep pessimism has spread among the international community of Aids scientists after the failure of a trial of a promising vaccine at the end of last year. It just was the latest in a series of setbacks in the 25-year struggle to develop an HIV vaccine.
The Independent’s survey of more than 35 leading Aids scientists in Britain and the United States found that just two were now more optimistic about the prospects for an HIV vaccine than they were a year ago; only four said they were more optimistic now than they were five years ago.
Nearly two thirds believed that an HIV vaccine will not be developed within the next 10 years and some of them said that it may take at least 20 more years of research before a vaccine can be used to protect people either from infection or the onset of Aids.
A substantial minority of the scientists admitted that an HIV vaccine may never be developed, and even those who believe that one could appear within the next 10 years added caveats saying that such a vaccine would be unlikely to work as a truly effective prophylactic against infection by the virus.
One of the major conclusions to emerge from the failed clinical trial of the most promising prototype vaccine, manufactured by the drug company Merck, was that an important animal model used for more than a decade, testing HIV vaccines on monkeys before they are used on humans, does not in fact work.
This has meant that prototype HIV vaccines which appear to work well when tested on monkeys infected with an artificial virus do not work when tested on human volunteers at risk of HIV—a finding that will be exploited by anti-vivisectionist campaigners opposed to vaccine experiments on primates.
Anthony Fauci, the director of the US National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), near Washington, told The Independent that the animal model—which uses genetically engineered simian and human immunodeficiency viruses in a combination, known as SHIV—failed to predict what will happen when a prototype vaccine is moved from laboratory monkeys to people. “We’ve learnt a few important things [from the clinical trial]. We’ve learnt that one of the animal models, the SHIV model, really doesn’t predict very well at all,” he said.
“At least we now know that you can get a situation where it looks like you are protecting against SHIV and you’re not protecting at all in the human model—that’s important,” he said.
The NIAID spends about $500m (£250m) on HIV vaccine research each year and despite calls from some Aids pressure groups for funds to be diverted to other forms of Aids prevention, Dr Fauci said this was not the time to stop vaccine research. “I don’t think you should say that this is the point where we’re going to give up on developing a vaccine. I think you continue given that there are so many unanswered questions to answer,” he said. “There is an impression given by some that if you do vaccine research you are neglecting other areas of prevention. That’s not the case. We should and we are doing them simultaneously.”
More than 80 per cent of the scientists who took part in our survey agreed that it was now important to change the direction of HIV vaccine research, given the failure of the Merck clinical trial, which was cancelled when it emerged that the vaccine may have actually increased the chances of people developing Aids.
Robert Gallo, a prominent Aids researcher in the US who is credited with co-discovering the virus in the early 1980s, likened the vaccine’s failure to the Challenger disaster, which forced Nasa to ground the space shuttle fleet for years.
At the end of last month, Dr Fauci convened a high-level summit of leading HIV specialists at a hotel in Bethesda, Maryland, to discuss the future direction of research. A group of 14 prominent Aids specialists had already written to Dr Fauci suggesting that his institute had “lost its way” in terms of an HIV vaccine.
He said that one outcome of the meeting was a refocusing of the vaccine effort away from expensive clinical trials towards more fundamental research to understand the basic biology of the virus and its effects on the human immune system.
“We’ll be turning the knob more towards answering some fundamental questions rather than going into big clinical trials,” Dr Fauci said. “I’m certainly disappointed that we’re not further ahead in the development of a vaccine but I don’t say that this year I’m more discouraged than I was last year. I always knew from the beginning that it would be a very difficult task given what we know about this very elusive virus.”
About 33 million people in the world are infected with HIV and some 26 million have died of Aids since the pandemic began.
The majority of scientists who responded to The Independent’s survey said that a vaccine would be the most effective way of preventing the spread of the virus given the failure of many education programmes.
Winnie Sseruma, 46: ‘For me, the key has been not to give up’
Ms Sseruma says she believes abandoning research for a vaccine would mean a loss of hope for millions of people. “When I was diagnosed, nearly 20 years ago, it was when the first drugs had come on the market. A lot of people had said before then that there was no hope and that all efforts should be put into prevention. But look where we are now. We cannot lose hope; we need to invest in a vaccine.”
She says this latest failure needs to be seen as the first hurdle, not a signal to give up. “Yes, the scientists have not been very successful in their quest for a vaccine, but you can learn a lot from failures. Now they have realised they cannot use the normal routes used to develope simpler vaccines.”
Ms Sseruma lives in London, but was born in Uganda and says that the current climate of pessimism for the vaccine is not dissimilar to the initial doubts over the likelihood of treating HIV in Africa.
“I remember when treatment started being available in the West and people were saying it would be impossible to send it to Africa. But look what’s happened. We should always do whatever is humanly possible to fight Aids. It’s been a long journey, but for me, the key has been not to give up, and the scientists need to have the same attitude.”
‘Philippe B’, 42: ‘People are getting resistant to drugs’
“Philippe”, who wishes to remain anonymous, discovered he was HIV positive 11 years ago. The 42-year-old believes the search for the vaccination should no longer be a priority, but that it should not stop altogether.
“Unfortunately what’s happening now is that people are getting more resistant to drug treatment, and more money needs to be put into finding more drugs for treatment,” he said.
For people like Philippe, the fear of building an immunity to drugs and running out of options is a real one. He believes that as long as scientists are still pessimistic about the chances of successfully finding a vaccine, money needs to be invested in continuing to fund research into treatment.
“I’ve already become resistant to five combination treatments over the last ten years, and if I was on the last one available I’d be very afraid. HIV is not a death sentence in the way it once was, but we do need to fund further research into the drugs that treat it.”
Nevertheless, Philippe thinks it is not yet time to abandon all research into a vaccine. “In my lifetime I don’t think we’ll have a vaccine, but there’s no reason we should believe it isn’t possible,” he said. “But we should now be spending more on other ways of dealing with the disease.”
(Posted on April 25, 2008)
Comments
In the meantime, not being sexually promiscuous will go a long way into helping Africa and everywhere else. Ironically, successful treatments (not cures) for HIV/AIDS have only spread HIV/AIDS, because the ignorant black Africans can’t delineate between a disease being cured (which does not happen with current regimens) and a retrovirus being stalled. Since they think they’re “cured,” they engage in the same behavior which got them HIV/AIDS, and spread it even further.
Posted by Question Diversity at 6:46 PM on April 25
I’m posting this in the spirit that in general, disease ought to be cured, although I anticipate some disagreement on this particular disease.
As with many intractable situations, this shows that ideas are more important than money. If simply throwing money at this problem (or indeed any problem) were the key, a vaccine would exist by now.
As with that intractable and ever pesky “achievement gap”, living in a fantasy world simply allows the situation to go on forever without resolution. The “achievement gap” has persisted for over a century and shows no sign of ever ending, nor is there any reason to think it ever will.
In the case of the AIDS vaccine, I don’t think the researchers are quite so recalcitrant about coming to grips with reality as the multiculturalists are with the “achievement gap”, and certainly they are not willfully ignorant, as the multiculturalists always are.
If it is possible to create an effective vaccine, then perhaps it will eventually happen, but only after someone has the right idea.
Posted by at 7:04 PM on April 25
Why don’t the many brilliant African researchers take up the cause? Oh, right.
Posted by Cassiodorus at 7:33 PM on April 25
If the resources thrown away on AIDS research had been devoted to Alzheimer’s instead, millions of elderly Whites would be posting here instead of staring into space. By “resources” I don’t mean money, I mean people. Money can be printed, but training a medical researcher takes years. AIDS research has taken highly intelligent Whites and wasted their professional lives on trying to find a cure for a disease that is a threat mainly to fools. What a waste, a deliberate waste of White talent.
Posted by Schoolteacher at 7:41 PM on April 25
I feel some degree of compassion for these people but I get the impression that they hope for a cure so they can continue to indulge in their unhealthy lifestyles without any consequences. This isn’t like getting cancer. Barring some blood transfusion or acquiring it at birth, it’s 100% preventable.
Posted by at 8:26 PM on April 25
If you were to ask me ten years ago, I would have said the search for an AIDS vaccine was a scam (I’m a doctor, btw).
However, since then, use of vaccination technology has shown such great promise for other diseases. Not widely known yet but it looks like this paradigm may have lead to a cure for cancer. A hell of alot of cancer patients that should be dead, are still alive after experimental treatments based on this.
The most dramatic example was a group of 8 patients with oatcell carcinoma. A death sentence, usually. After treatment, every single patient went into remission. One would be a miracle. All 8 is a major breakthrough in a formerly untreatable disease of the worst type.
I wouldn’t count this out quite yet as a way to cure AIDS. Not yet.
Posted by at 8:42 PM on April 25
The best solution is to leave HIV/AIDS and other STDs to the discretion of natural selection. Of course, if that happened, pharmaceutical companies couldn’t rake in all of the money that western governments take from the pockets of Whites in the name of helping Blacks.
History teaches us that this will all end very badly.
Posted by at 9:47 PM on April 25
I feel some degree of compassion for these people but I get the impression that they hope for a cure so they can continue to indulge in their unhealthy lifestyles without any consequences. This isn’t like getting cancer. Barring some blood transfusion or acquiring it at birth, it’s 100% preventable.
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I am on the same page with you, but keep in mind in Africa rape is pretty much a routine occurance so I wouldn’t say it is 100 percent preventable—maybe for men, but even the president elect of South Africa is a rapist so for women not so much.
I am not exactly why this research would give hope to Africans. A vaccine doesn’t work after the fact, you are still going to die. I suppose it might mean that future generations would be spared but for every African who survives AIDS you are going to have another starving war refugee/child soldier/prostitute etc. so I don’t see the net profit there.
Posted by at 10:34 PM on April 25
There already is a vaccine for aids. It’s called celibacy before marriage and faithfulness in marriage. Oh and don’t shoot drugs into your veins or get tats from questionable shops. Seems simple to me.
Posted by Unemployed WASP at 11:20 PM on April 25
The reason they can’t find a vaccine for HIV is the same as the reason they can’t find one for the common cold: There are thousands of different strains and each strain is constantly mutating into even more strains.
There won’t be a vaccine or cure until medical science is so advanced that we can change the color of people’s eyes.
Posted by qwerty at 11:40 PM on April 25
I hate to be cynical, but do we really want to see a cure for AIDS. If blacks found out that AIDS was out of the picture, it’s likely that their birth rates would soar even more. It’s just like the article on abortion. It may not be pretty to say, but we may be better off with the ‘evil’ ways of nature.
Posted by wade in MO at 5:03 AM on April 26
Perhaps we all must now believe that there is a God who is now punishing those who cannot keep it in their trousers. As someone who lived in South Africa for 25 years, a place where rape is common and men expect to have a woman at least once a day, any woman if they are not married, the campaigns to stop HIV infections are failing. Much as I hate the regime, Fidel Castro’s Cuba (where we went for a holiday two years ago - we are allowed to - quarantines all who are HIV positive in a separate compound on the island, so maybe Africa must do the same with its millions of HIV positive people to end the scourge.
Our holiday there was disappointing for we felt bad about what the Cuban people have had to endure over the years. It most certainly is not the heaven on earth that Castro and the propaganad merchants say it is.
Posted by Brian Deller at 7:33 AM on April 26
http://www.nytimes.com/specials/women/warchive/961203_1950.html
Dr. O’Brien’s current obsession is with a genetic mutation, reported earlier this year, that can confer immunity to the AIDS virus. Dr. O’Brien discovered that 1 percent of whites, but essentially no blacks or Asians, have two copies of this mutated gene.
Posted by William Hope at 7:58 AM on April 26
But the point is we already have a safe,cheap and very effective vaccine - it’s called the condom.
Posted by Kenelm Digby at 8:39 AM on April 26
Breaking news: The World Bank is floating a trial balloon in southern Tanzania. It is going to pay people for avoiding unsafe sex. Wouldn’t all of you like to be paid for avoiding unsafe sex?
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/c391a1ce-12ee-11dd-8d91-0000779fd2ac.html?nclick_check=1
Posted by Question Diversity at 11:49 AM on April 26
Does anybody remember when Oprah predicted at least 25% of the U.S. will get AIDS, 1992 perhaps?
Posted by Lars at 1:54 PM on April 26
Dear Kenelm Digby…..you don’t seem to understand that blacks and condoms do not go together…you see if the female parner gets preggie….they collect more money per child…you can’t get it through those thick heads of theirs that…all those nasty diseases can kill…all they think about is their pleasures and the extra dough per child that us whites fork over thanks to the idiots in washington who feel sooooooooo sorry for them….now we have the full picture!!
Posted by lydia at 1:54 PM on April 26
AIDS is (to a considerable extent) a desease of lifestyle CHOICE. Why should we be rewarding people who CHOOSE poorly with massive amounts of money for medical research when there are so many other people who are sick and DID NOT CHOOSE to engage in a lifestyle that caused their desease? What if all the money poured into the sinkhole of AIDS had been devoted to research for Multiple Sclerosis? Leukemia? Who knows? A cure may have been found perhaps? The BRUTAL FACT is there is only so much money available for medical scientific research. Every dollar that goes to AIDS research is one LESS dollar available for other sicknesses, illnesses and deseases.
Posted by at 2:08 PM on April 26
Aids is a terrible plague that, while it may not be eradicated, it CAN be contained and kept from spreading if people would practice safe sex and self-control!…as for the Africans…I feel no pity for people who have sex and procreate…KNOWING they have this disease and KNOW and DON’T CARE that they will spread it…they only care about THEIR pleasures and urges!…though they may be African and not well-educated…they are NOT stupid, deaf, dumb or BLIND!…
Posted by Suzan Donoghue at 2:23 PM on April 26
Someone mentioned Alheimer’s disease.
There may, in fact, be a cure for this disease. Over the last couple of years, alot of research has been done on the role of tumor necrosis factor in alzheimer’s. These patients have 20 to 50 times the normal level in their brains. It plays a major role in the development of plaquing but, more importantly, it plays a major role in the acute disruption of higher brain function. In other words, it is a major factor, if not THE major factor in both the symptoms of the disease and the degeneration that happens to the brain as the disease progresses.
Some bright guy got the idea of using the rhuematoid arthritis (another disease where TNF is centeral) drug, Enbrel. This drug binds tumor necrosis factor. They injected it into the venous plexus around the thecal sheath at the base of the skull.
The results were…startling. DRAMATIC improvement in symptoms happened within minutes.
This treatment is being offered right now by the technique’s creator, Edward Tobinick. His website is here:
Posted by at 2:48 PM on April 26
The bottom line is that untold fortunes, time, and effort have been expended in efforts to (a) change the nature of irresponsible people to that of responsible people, and (b) correct or minimize the damage irresponsible people cause to themselves and others. It represents an utter waste of time and resources.
Posted by at 6:53 PM on April 26
One third of people in Botswana have AIDS or are HIV positive. Incredibly, even with such high infection rates, these people are still having unprotected sex and the population is still growing!
Billions of dollars are being sunk into Africa for prevention programs and antiviral drugs. People afflicted with AIDS are too sick to have sex. Antiviral drugs won’t cure the disease but it will restore the person’s health and libido to the point they’ll start having sex again and infect more people. It’s only making a bad situation worse.
Posted by at 8:06 PM on April 26
The most humane thing would be to let the disease burn itself out. To keep infected people alive with AIDS drugs allows them to cause more and more infections, that will lead to more and more deaths. GW Bush’s $30 billion “feel good” giveaway to the AIDS programs will kill more people than he knows….including, eventually, some Americans (see the last paragraph).
Even a AIDS education program is a waste with these people. If a person will not change his life style after seeing people all around him dying horrible deaths how will a four color brochure make a difference??? This is assuming that the person can even read the material.
And what is worse is when these HIV infected people immigrate to the Western nations to further spread the plague of AIDS.
Posted by Skipper at 11:25 PM on April 26
Why is the western world devoting so much money to what is essentially an African desease? Shouldn’t western money be spent on deseases westerners are more likely to catch? It’s our money after all. AIDS is largely spread by promiscuity, irresponsibility and indifference to others. These are character and moral defects that no amount of medical knowledge can change.
Posted by at 12:06 AM on April 27
There is NEVER going to be a cure vaccine for AIDS or any other disease - only expensive treatments. Because the pharmaceutical companies will never allow it. There hasn’t been an actual cure for any disease since Jonas Salk came up with a cure for polio in his laboratory after his wife contracted the disease.
All you ever hear is treatment, treatment, treatment and after they hook you with the treatment and all it’s side effects, then the low life attorneys step in with their fancy, expenseive advertising that you can sure the drug company.
It’s a joke and truly amazing the amount of people who are drug induced on legal drugs. My mother-in-law takes 21 pills a day and I would bet that if I replaced half of them with a placebo, she’d never know the difference but she has been convinced by her doctors that she needs every one of them.
Posted by Gayle Sollenberger at 11:01 AM on April 27
To Lars:
Oprah Winfrey predicted on the Oprah Winfrey Show on February 18, 1987, that by 1990 one in five heterosexuals in the United States could be dead from AIDS.
Posted by Scott Wilson at 11:57 AM on April 27
Why is it our responsibility to protect Africans from the consequences of their own behavior?
Posted by Michael C. Scott at 7:10 PM on April 27
Ms Sseruma says she believes abandoning research for a vaccine would mean a loss of hope for millions of people. “When I was diagnosed, nearly 20 years ago, it was when the first drugs had come on the market. A lot of people had said before then that there was no hope and that all efforts should be put into prevention. But look where we are now. We cannot lose hope; we need to invest in a vaccine.”
What I like most in the piece is the word WE. The African Lady cannot keep her legs together, and WE, the white hard working people, “need to invest in a vaccine”.
Posted by alex at 9:30 PM on April 27
There is NEVER going to be a cure vaccine for AIDS or any other disease - only expensive treatments.
Never say never. 200 years ago, If I told people that there would be flying machines one could get in that would transport one across the Atlantic in a matter of hours, they’d call me a madman. Yet today, people do just that and it’s considered commonplace.
History is littered with technological advances that everyone knew were impossible.
Posted by qwerty at 11:52 PM on April 27
Reply to Gayle Sollenberger;
There is a good deal of truth to what you say. Call it the Pharmaceutical-Industrial complex.
Posted by at 11:52 PM on April 27
Does this “loss of hope for millions of people” mean they were hoping to continue “business as usual” and dreading there would come a day when they had to own up to some responsibility?
Cry me a river!
Posted by Michael C. Scot at 3:18 PM on April 28
Even were a vaccination program possible, it would not work the way the smallpox and polio vaccines did. Neither polio nor smallpox had any animal reservoir, which meant that once the entire human population had been vaccinated and were immune, these diseases were extinct (except for a few samples stored in freezers in the US and Russia.) The immunodeficiency viruses obviously have animal reservoirs: other primates. Natural genetic drift in the virus constanty produces new strains, to which a hypothetical vaccine might or might not provide any resistance (I encountered this with whooping cough, a.k.a. pertussis. I had been vaccinated as a child, but caught a strain that appeared to have made it to Australia from somewhere in Asia.) With Africans continuing to eat other primates, these new strains of immunodeficiency viruses would constantly be introduced into the vaccinated population, and we’d eventually end up right back where we started, with people who *don’t* eat monkeys and who *are* responsible about sex suffering very little in comparison to those who do and aren’t, respectively.
Who’d want to eat a monkey, anyway? First, just about anything it might have is something a human could catch. Secondly, they’re omnivores, and unlike pigs and chickens, they are not raised on clean farms, being fed clean food, so the disease and parasite load in a monkey is bound to be fairly high. Third, they’re active, atheletic creatures, which I suspect would make them tough and stringy. Maybe as stewmeat a monkey might work, but smoked? Forget it!
Sorry for not consolidating those into one post.
Posted by Michael C. Scot at 3:42 PM on April 28
It’s very unlikely Africans catch the HIV virus from eating monkeys. Cooking the meat would destroy the virus and eating it raw, the saliva would kill the virus in the mouth. Scientists came up with a theory some years ago that the only feasible way this virus could have been transmitted from monkeys to humans was through “intimate contact”.
Posted by at 9:25 PM on April 28
Sorry, 9:25 PM, bu that turns out not to be the case. They aren’t always cookng the meat. The operative word in “rainforest” is “rain”, which means the bushmeat is usually only smoked.
British health services identifed a new strain of immunodeficiency virus in African immigrants there - a few years ago - at approximately the same time the same new strain was found in a illegally-imported shipment of smoked chimpanzee meat that was confiscated by British customs agents.
Eating primtes also spreads ebola. The last big outbreak in Kikwit, in the Congo happened after some of the locals found a dead chimp. They didn’t know what it had died of, but they butchered it and ate it anyway. Everyone who ate the meat or even helped prepare it died.
Posted by Michael C. Scot at 4:09 PM on April 29
AIDS is a hoax, just another tool used to gain control, I urge anyone interested to Google Dr. Peter Duesberg
Posted by at 7:42 AM on May 1
“Bush meat” in Africa usually means primates. There are many other deseases then AIDS that this African propensity for has caused. Simian foamy mouth virus is also spread in this way. Some experts think about 5% of black Africans may be infected with this.
Posted by at 7:58 AM on May 1
The USA should be spending what little money it has on cures for cancer, diabetes, and heart disease. The only reason we send billions for AIDS research is because of racist Africans, racist white anti-white Bolsheviks, and racist white anti-white Busheviks who are warped and crazy and support the advancement of racist non-whites and the genocide of whites.
Posted by Elrey Jones at 11:22 PM on May 1
“…the saliva would kill the virus in the mouth.”
‘Fraid not. HIV enters the body via the mucous membranes, including the ones in the mouth, and the only thing spit destroys is starch by converting it to sugar. Many, many people get HIV from oral sex, which is why condom use is recommended during ALL sexual activity, not just vaginal/anal.
“AIDS is a hoax, just another tool used to gain control, I urge anyone interested to Google Dr. Peter Duesberg”
I wouldn’t be a bit surprised, since it is the only virus/germ that violates the “exposure = antibodies = immunity” claims. In this disease, antibodies supposedly herald impending death from AIDS. I think there is a lot we are not being told about this condition.
Posted by at 5:54 PM on May 2
“Ms Sseruma lives in London, but was born in Uganda and says that the current climate of pessimism for the vaccine is not dissimilar to the initial doubts over the likelihood of treating HIV in Africa.”
She no doubt gets anti-retrovirals free of charge thanks to the British taxpayer. Interestingly, Uganda is a notoriously xenophobic country that expelled it’s Asian population in 1972. Strange that Ms. Sseruma seems so comfortable in including herself in the collective “we” as though she is British, when her country of origin would not tolerate non-blacks living there.
Posted by at 12:10 AM on May 6