AIDS Vaccine Study Results Are Questioned
4 CommentsBy Ed Silverman // October 12th, 2009 // 7:41 am
Questions over undisclosed study results, as it turns out, aren’t confined to companies that make medicines. An interesting piece in The Wall Street Journal reports that researchers from the U.S. Army and Thailand didn’t publicly disclose a second analysis of the first vaccine that provided some protection against HIV, and this analysis suggested the results may have been a fluke.
Why? It showed the results weren’t statistically significant, meaning they may have been due to change and the vaccine may not be effective. The additional data were available to the researchers on Sept. 24 when they announced the results, but they chose not to disclose them, Jerome Kim, a scientist with the U.S. Army who was involved in the study, told the paper.
News of the second analysis was first reported on the web site of Science magazine, but the story didn’t provide specific data. Full trial details will be conveyed at an AIDS meeting in Paris that starts Oct. 19, the paper continues, pointing out that the incomplete disclosure raises the question of whether the Army, the Thai government and the U.S. National Institutes of Health - which helped fund the study - rushed to give a positive spin. Keep reading….
Anonymous
AIDS is more of a threat to the human race than the Taliban. Be nice if the world got behind the fight against it like they did with polio..
Lisa Van Syckel
There was more honesty and integrity back in the polio days,..Docs really cared about patients, today its the almighty dollar that prevails.
Peter
Interesting that industry is making lots of strides to full transparency and the government has its own skeletons in its closet. I didn’t read any big accusations and inquiries from Grassley or the NYT.
criticnyc
The fudging reflects the failure of vaccine research in AIDS, which follows failure to develop microbicides and the refusal to admit that it was drugs that killed people initially, not HIV. AZT came in and lives were lost, AZT was reduced and lives were extended, AZT (and now protease inhibitors) was eliminated and patients thrived. Instead of concluding so conveniently that this proved “drugs work” AIDS scientists should have admitted that year after year all the evidence is that HIV is not causing AIDS, and AIDS is not infectious. Instead, they continue this failed story in AIDS year after year instead of treating ailments appropriately and without damaging drugs directed against a cause now thoroughly disproven.
As an example of bad science supported by politics there is no more egregious example of gross waste of public money and lives lost.