AIDS Vaccines: A ‘Catastrophe’ Like The Challenger
The two-decade search for an AIDS vaccine is in crisis after two field tests of the most promising contender not only did not protect people from the virus but may actually have put them at increased risk of becoming infected, The Washington Post writes. The results of the trials, which enrolled volunteers on four continents, have spurred intense scientific inquiry and unprecedented soul-searching as researchers try to make sense of what happened and assess whether they should have seen it coming.
Both field tests were halted last September, and seven other trials of similarly designed AIDS vaccines have either been stopped or put off indefinitely. Some may be modified and others canceled outright, the paper reports. Numerous experts are now questioning both the scientific premises and the overall strategy of the nearly $500 million in AIDS vaccine research funded annually by the US government.
“This is on the same level of catastrophe as the Challenger disaster” that destroyed a NASA space shuttle, Robert Gallo, co-discoverer of the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), which causes AIDS, and head of the Institute for Human Virology in Baltimore, tells the Post.
The recently closed studies, STEP and Phambili, used the same vaccine - made from a common respiratory virus called adenovirus type 5 that had been crippled and then loaded with fragments of HIV. Both studies were halted when it became clear the STEP study was futile and possibly harmful. And now, the Post writes, many researchers are questioning the scientific premises on which all those studies were based and are wondering, along with AIDS activists, what effect this near-worst-case scenario might have on tests of future vaccines.
None of the products currently in the pipeline has any reasonable chance of being effective in field trials,” Ronald Desrosiers, a molecular geneticist at Harvard University, declared last month at an AIDS conference in Boston, the Post writes. “We simply do not know at the present time how to design a vaccine that will be effective against HIV.”
Here’s the rest….
Dr. Sal Giorgianni
When will folks realize that discovery research is simply not a matter of taking and idea, adding money, turning on the heat and watching the results you want bubble up? That is just not how it works. Many of the world’s greatest discoveries and creations came about because of a “Eureka!” moment, a touch of serendipity and tincture of time. This is one of the fundamental concerns many of us have about the unrealistic pressures exerted on biomedical research (both public and private) when well meaning but shortsighted policy makers and advocates inappropriately influence the true process of discovery.
Rob Taylor
It took years to move from the solid ball model of the atom to plum pudding. It took years for quantum mechanics to be accepted enough for it to be taught in high school. It will take years to find an AIDS vaccine. A failure, even a spectacular failure, is nothing more than an unfavorable result. We now know that this does not work. We need more basic research on the AIDS virus to better know how it works so we can develop the next possible set of vaccines. Once we know, we will be able to try again, and try again, and try as often as it takes to get one that works. Scientists are not magicians. We cannot pull a vaccine out of the hat. It takes time, research dollars, and perseverance to succeed.
Former pharma Marketing Exec
The problem with AIDS and with other disease, is that it is hard to hit a moving target…
So, with all due respect Dr. Giorgianni, this particular article highlights the problem with AIDS vaccines and should not be used as a deterrent for patient and patient advocates to closely watch, monitor and in some cases instigate continued research.
It is a mutual gain situation. You need patients, patients need cures…
You need to adjust your US/WE mindset.. We all do!
DISSIDENCE-101
This coupled with all the other complete and utter failures within the HIV/AIDS meme show quite profoundly that AIDS science has missed the mark and will continue to do so from now until eternity. These scientists in bed with the great high powered pharmaceutical industry with a big fat monkey on their back, will continue to squander our resources until there comes a time when we say; enough is enough. One does not have to look very far to find out how seriously flawed this paradigm really is. All one has to do is remove one’s self from the AIDS Zone, which, is that little box within where ‘HIV’ causes ‘AIDS’, AIDS is always fatal, and poison can prolong your life.
Bobby C
Help me understand this:
Most everyone starts with the assumption that HIV causes AIDS.
To determine whether a person has HIV, you take a blood test that detects antibodies. So, the presence of anti-bodies (assuming you have no symptoms is the BEGINNING OF THE DISEASE.
Now, if you were to develop a vaccine for HIV, you would inject an attenuated HIV into a person, who would develop anti-bodies to HIV. So, the presence of anti-bodies would signify the END OF THE DISEASE. You would be immune from getting.
How are these two scenarios compatable?
Sepp
Good question, Bobby C
I always wanted an answer to that one as well. Why are antibodies good when we get any vaccine (antibody titer actually measures whether the vaccine is now “protecting” us) and they are soooo bad when we find them in people who are said to be infected with HIV?
Doesn’t make any sense now, does it?
harpy
Sepp and Bobby C - HIV has a very high genetic variability, a high mutation rate and very fast replication. As FPME says, it is hard to hit a moving target. By the time the antibodies are developed to fight the virus, the virus has changed. Other viruses, like measles, don’t change nearly as rapidly and antibodies can be developed to fight them off. Vaccines teach your body how to fight. So far, HIV’s kung fu is better than ours.
Bobby C
Harpy,
No, that’s just ad hoc bullshit. HIV is a conventional retrovirus with 9,000 base pairs and merely 8 genes. You’re ascribing unheard of super powers to it.
Former pharma Marketing Exec
Bobby C:
You might want to read this….
“HIV differs from many viruses in that it has very high genetic variability. This diversity is a result of its fast replication cycle, with the generation of 109 to 1010 virions every day, coupled with a high mutation rate of approximately 3 x 10-5 per nucleotide base per cycle of replication and recombinogenic properties of reverse transcriptase.[57] This complex scenario leads to the generation of many variants of HIV in a single infected patient in the course of one day.[57] This variability is compounded when a single cell is simultaneously infected by two or more different strains of HIV. When simultaneous infection occurs, the genome of progeny virions may be composed of RNA strands from two different strains. This hybrid virion then infects a new cell where it undergoes replication. As this happens, the reverse transcriptase, by jumping back and forth between the two different RNA templates, will generate a newly synthesized retroviral DNA sequence that is a recombinant between the two parental genomes.[57] This recombination is most obvious when it occurs between subtypes.[57]“