Slashdot Mirror
First Phase of AIDS Vaccine Trials Successful
rbarreira writes "Xinhua online is reporting on the success of the first trial phase of an AIDS vaccine, which was started on March 2005. From the article: '"Forty-nine healthy people who received the injection showed no severe adverse reactions after 180 days, proving the vaccine was safe," said Zhang Wei, head of the pharmaceutical registration department of the SFDA. "The recipients appeared immune to the HIV-1 virus 15 days after the injection, indicating the vaccine worked well in stimulating the body's immunity," he told the press conference.' After the results are further analyzed, 800 more voluntaries may be needed for the second and third phases of the vaccine's trial."
"Forty-nine healthy people who received the injection showed no severe adverse reactions after 180 days, proving the vaccine was safe,"
Okay, success is good, but...
This is not proof. It isn't even close to it.
How long was Fen Phen tested? Thimerosal? RotaShield? Whoops.
I hope that this does work but stating that the vaccine has been prooven safe is very misleading.
It could be worse, it could be Monday.
According to the article, "The recipients appeared immune to the HIV-1 virus 15 days after the injection." Maybe someone can help with this, but how do you test immunity with fatal illnesses? Obviously you can't simply expose the subjects to the pathogen causing the disesase (not ethically, anyway). Does anyone in a medical field happen to know how this works?
quia potentia mens mentis
I'm curious if this vaccine is being set up for one-time immunizations with possible booster shots, or if it'll be a more frequent thing like the flu shots. One of the vexing traits of HIV is it's rapid mutation rate. The flu and cold viruses are pretty much the same.
"Spring break is coming up! Get your annual HIV immunizations here!"
The only real downside is that if this (or another) vaccine is effective and reliable, then there's the risk of other STDs becoming more prevelant again as people relax their safe sex practices. That includes unplanned pregnancies. Some people really do need a hypothetical gun to their heads to think about using condoms or monogamy.
"Common sense will be the death of us all"
I'd be more interested in genuine scientific proof of the link between HIV and AIDS. There isn't one you know. I've never unterstood this scientific war. People readily believe that a virus causes the common cold, but for some people, there's doubt that HIV causes AIDS?
Could someone with more insight please explain why there are scientists who deny there's a link?
Biology is not my forte, but since the HIV-1 virus was made to NOT cause an infection, how would they know if the vaccine actually worked?
Both are just minor passengers. The former goes away with treatment, the latter after 9 months or less. Reminds me of an old joke: "Life, an STD that's 100% fatal in all who contract it".
This is the one I'd worry about. It's still incurable and more contagious than any of the others in your list.
However, stop and think about this for a second. If we can cure HIV/AIDS, then we've found a way to expunge the body of a retrovirus. Compared to that, how hard would it be to get rid of something like herpes? They're both viral, and AFAIK herpes doesn't have the immune system complications, or the tendancy to mutate, that HIV does.
Erotic is when you use a feather. Exotic is when you use the whole chicken.
To clarify what this very eloquent yet seemingly retarded contributor previously wrote: The director clearly knows what he is talking about. Test subjects were injected with parts of the virus that don't cause infection so as to NOT INFECT THEM!!! with the virus. Instead, they were given non-infectuous parts of it so that the body would be able to recognize the virus if it were to come into contact with the system later. This is the whole point of vaccines.
I am willing to bet these patients would be somewhat unhappy if they were given the infectuous portions of the disease.
"i stand on the edge of destruction" -shai hulud
I used to works as IT support for a radiotheraphy group that developed particle accelerators "mods" for cancer treatment.
So it could perfevtly be that the 50th patient died of something else, like car accident, work accident, etc etc.It turns out that the cure worked, it got rid of the optical nerve cancer that was killing the patient. Too bad the patient was had diabetes and died 1 week later. She was 80 as well.
Even the article says: " The ongoing tests in China include 29 in phase I, four in phase I and II, three in phase II and one in phase III."
So there are hundreds of Phase I trials going on right now around the world. It means very little. Phase I just shows that the vaccine is safe enough to be used in humans fora Phase II trial.
There have been Phase I AIDS vaccines for many years now. A few have made it to Phase III, where they test for efficacy, and none have been shown to be effective, which is why we're still trying new ones in Phase I.
I'm all in favor of these trials but a vaccine going into Phase I is not news. It is something that happens once a month or more often. Phase I is the easy part.
Regarding herpes, the negativity of this is more socially imposed rather than from a health standpoint or true medical concern.
The fact of the matter is that a majority of us have herpes of some type (cold sores)- except that infection is not on our genitals.
Personally, I fail to see the alarming hysteria regarding herpes as anything other than social stigma. Social stigmas can be pretty strong, but not life threatening. So my guess is that the herpes stigma these days, is about as powerful as the inter-racial marriage stigma of the 50's.
So I don't see herpes as much of an issue at all. It might be nice to be able to clear an infection medically, but living with it is not a heavy burden. Unless of course the generally held opinions of society (which are wrong) really bother you.
So while one might hope to avoid herpes (and should), herpes is one disease that needs to have it's demonization removed. The only reason the infection get's any play in people's minds is because it's on your genitalia.
So in effect herpes gets stigmatized for the same reasons that some people laugh at "penis jokes".
Another consultant who stuck it out.
"We are the Priests, of the Temples of Syrinx..."
"This is useless" would say-the Health Minister for South Africa, Manto Tshabalala-Msimang.
w sid=50037
She has her own "very effective" approach against AIDS/HIV. She sais it is vital for people to build up their immune system so she strongly
believes in giving people the choice between antiretroviral drugs and taking traditional remedies, such as lemons,
garlic and beetroots. In fact she promotes mostly the second while her boss, never acknowledged that HIV is the cause of AIDS.
http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/healthnews.php?ne
I've lived here for more than three years now. It's hard to explain without sounding like a dick, but the threshold for what is an acceptable 'white lie' is a lot lower here than in other places. I'm not saying that everything you hear from a Chinese person is a lie, but you just need to be careful. They're not less honest than Westerners -- I lie all the time about stuff. But it's about stuff that it's you'll understand as culturally acceptable to lie about. Different culture, different idea about what's 'true'.
The United States, via government agencies like NIH/NIAID or USAID, funds and performs extensive research on HIV/AIDS, malaria, and tuberculosis in situ throughout Africa and Asia. When you get a free moment, take a look at CHAVI or NIAID, maybe do a few Google searches on the scientists' names. And all of these projects' participants, all the way down to admin staff and IT types like me, realize the current heavy burden of these three diseases on Africa and Asia (both socially and economically). I realize you have issues with large pharmaceutical companies, but please don't think that they are the only ones who do medical research here and abroad.
I'm proud of my Northern Tibetian Heritage
Looks like you don't know how HIV works if you think 5 years is plenty of time to say that guy is all in the clear.
Here is a page with some details, but I'll snip out the important part that I thought was common knowledge to anyone who had done any sort of rudimentary research into this topic.
Quite frankly fives years ain't jack, especially if you're a healthy specimen in the first place. Sorry, not convinced, even if the website you continually link to in almost every comment on this thread has supporting statements from various experts. People can be wrong and very often are, no matter what background they come from, and people can very often have underlying reasons to say what they do (I'm not saying anyone there has such incentives, I'm simply saying that it's a very bad idea to just say oh that guy's an 'expert', he must know what he's talking about!).
"We invented personal computing." - Bill Gates
I still think that's a rather skewed viewpoint of American/European research efforts, but you're right: I'm an IT guy, not a scientist. It is pretty sad that profit-driven research seems to give us yet another treatment for erectile disfunction. I'm glad that biomedical research isn't just the province of Big Pharma, and as much as I don't like how Bill Gates got his money, I really like this part of what he's doing with it.
I'm proud of my Northern Tibetian Heritage
They do have a control group and they most certainly do not test it by infecting people with a live virus. This article is full of shit, basically. Evidence of the fact that Slashdot is not in any way real journalism. Zero fact checking.
The article talks of a successful Phase I. It's not till Phase III that they get to test the actual effectiveness of the vaccine. In Phase III They get ~800 high-risk people and give half of them vaccine and half placebo and tell them to live their lives as if they didn't get the vaccine. Then they wait and watch to see if any of the vaccinated show signs of infection, and if so was there any significant difference from the control group.
And in my study it's more like $2500 dollars over the life of the 5-year study.
You also are never exposed to the HIV virus, unless you do it yourself. The standard disease vaccine that uses weakened forms of the virus has been tested and does not work for HIV. For the new vaccines they took a clue from the 2% of the human population that, although regularly exposed to the HIV virus, never develop symtoms. It turns out, these people have antibodies to some of the protiens on the inside of the HIV virus. The new vaccines take these protiens and insert them in a cold virus. The vaccine is a weakened form of this cold virus. The hope is that the immune system will react to this virus and develop antibodies to these protiens and then recognize them in the HIV virus if you get exposed.
So for it's showing promise. I was told that the white blood cells of those on my vaccine study that got the vaccine show a reaction to the HIV virus when exposed to it in the lab. Which is not proof of a vaccine but is something interesting. As far as I understand, one of the big problems with the vaccine I'm a study patient for is that it's 3 doses, which renders it fairly impractical to deal with the current situation in developing countries. I believe there's a Phase III study of it ongoing and they've started another Phase I & II study to see if it will work in 1 or 2 doses.
Caveat: I'm a patient, not a doctor, so I could have my shit messed up.