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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.
2000 yuan AIDS you!
If this goes well we won't have to close the pools.
Does it work though? Have these people been exposed properly to HIV and did they really reist picking it up?
All it takes is one night in the wrong club at the wrong time and no matter what kind of protection you have -- it could be too late.
The dangers of knowledge trigger emotional distress in human beings.
"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," Doesn't it take a little longer to know if HIV is going to take hold? "Immune" is a little presumptive at this point.
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
Why not believe that they had 49 participants? Sure, people like round numbers -- but when you're deciding how many folks you can include in your study on account of your budget constraints, or looking at how many of the folks who signed up to participate qualify, reality sometimes rears its head and results in numbers which aren't so perfect.
Anyhow -- this is very good news.
Okay, smart person, what does cause AIDS if it's not HIV? Goa'uld symbiotes?
Please, for the good of Humanity, vote Obama.
Really, we're supposed to believe the study had exactly 49 participants? Not 50, or 150?
Pssst, there were 150 participants, but 101 of them died.
The Evidence That HIV Causes AIDS
HTH. IHBT. HAND.
Fuck!
It doesn't "mutate" into aids. It causes AIDS.
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"
We know that HIV is the virus which mutates into AIDS. Proof enough?
No, because, well, you know, viruses cause diseases, they don't mutate into diseases. Even if we're laymen and not scientists, we should choose our words more carefully so as to not spread bullshit and misconceptions.
The actual press release is more cautious than the excerpt that is quoted here; describing the result of the trials as saying that the vaccine is "safe and possibly effective." Apparently there were no ill effects, and if I interpret the text correctly, they detected antibodies against whatever these people were injected with. Which does not prove at all that the vaccine could be effective, because the envelope proteins of HIV are so variable that buidling up immunity is enormously difficult. However, it is probably as much as one could reasonably hope for in this first phase of trials.
That said, there is nothing in this press release to suggest that this vaccine trial will have a better outcome than the series of failed trials that have already preceded it. Mainly because there is very little information in this press release at all. Obviously, it was written by someone who did not have a clue about the science behind the trials; you can't tell from this what the vaccine consists of and how it is supposed to work. More worryingly, the "director of the National Institute for the Control of Pharmaceutical and Biological Products" is quoted as saying that "The HIV-1 specific cells injected into the recipients were the DNA fragments of the virus which don't cause infection." Which is nonsensical enough to suggest that the aforementioned director, who held the press conference, doesn't have a clue either. Probably he is more remarkable for his political skills than his medical ability.
But maybe these Chinese researchers are on the right track -- who knows? A vaccine against HIV is very much needed, and the hope that we will be able to create one seems to shrink with every new failure.
They probably had 50. (Well, more likely 100, with 1/2 in the placebo group.) One of the non-placebo patients dropped out of the study due to some exclusion criteria not related to the vaccine (such as getting hit by a car) and you end up with the 49. It could even be as simple as the patient having moved to another city. With any clinical trial, you're bound to lose some subjects to follow up.
It would be nice if someone did a control first to see if people infected with HIV actually die.
To this date, noone has managed to live forever (i.e. not die). Please post evidence that people infected with HIV life forever.
Man is a slave because freedom is difficult, whereas slavery is easy.
That this was a slow gestating virus that could lie dormant for years before going into reproductive mode. How does 180 days of "apparent" immunity (with no control group?!?) make a valid experiment?
Actually, that's not really the case. HIV actually replicates very quickly after infection. Even though one may not show symptoms for many years, that's unusual. Most people develop the first symptoms within weeks of getting the virus. But with or without symptoms, signs of the virus can be found very quickly, particularly in the lymphatic system.
Do not confuse HIV infection and symptoms with AIDS. One isn't considered to have AIDS until their T-Cell count falls below 200 cells per uL. This is usually the point where the person starts developing the kinds of diseases that normally don't affect healthy people. Before that point, you still has a tendency to get sick from a number of more common illnesses.
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?
(Don't forget to mod me down - I said something bad)
No. You just said something that most intelligent people consider stupid, knowing that most Slashdotters (who, in all honesty, are not really as smart as they think they are) will consider it stupid as well. That's why you got modded down.
Man is a slave because freedom is difficult, whereas slavery is easy.
Right, because nobody ever caught aids without having unprotected sex with strangers first. Not one single person, nope. (/sarcasm off)
What about blood transfusions, broken condoms, infected partners that picked it up via adultery, rape victims and dumb kids who don't know any better (since we don't teach them safe sex, and they're too hormoned-up not to fuck)? That doesn't even get into the mess over in Africa. Are you seriously prepared to condemn every single infected person simply due to the fact that many of the dying got that way from carelessness?
An ounch of prevention is worth a pound of cure. That doesn't mean however that you can always prevent bad things from happening, or that we shouldn't care enough to try and find a cure.
And by the way, your arguement can be twisted for just about anything. Why should we try to develop a cure for cancer? Those people should have known to get themselves checked up (many cancers can be detected early, via screening, thereby removing the need for any miracle cure), and should have known to avoid carcinogens (do you check everything you eat?). Yet to take that stance both condemns people for honest mistakes, and condemns the blamelessly unlucky along with the careless by denying them a cure as well.
Erotic is when you use a feather. Exotic is when you use the whole chicken.
I didn't see a journal article that corresponds to this clinical trial but I'd be interested to know if the use of this vaccine precludes later HIV testing.
For the non-biologists: vaccines are often based on exposing the body to a protein from the virus (but not the entire virus). In doing so, the body produces antibodies that recognize the protein. The next time the body sees the protein (i.e. when exposed to the actual virus), the body will be able to quickly destroy the virus particles before the person becomes infected.
However, a lot of tests for viral infection is based on the presence of the antibodies in blood. So, if the person has been immunized using the vaccine, the person will have those antibodies in blood, and it becomes difficult to tell whether the antibodies came as a result of vaccination or infection.
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?
they are not dead, they are pining for the fjords
I'm a rabbit startled by the headlights of life
Those are some pretty bold statements to be making without sources. And no, wikipedia is not an acceptable source here, unless it cites some REAL sources.
First of all, this is only Phase 1 of 3.
Phase 1 in clinical trials is meant to make sure the drug in general is "safe" and to determine the maximum safe dosage.
Testing if the drug really works as expected, how effective it is etc. is done in Phases 2 and 3 with a much larger group, in double-blind experiments.
Still, before Phase 1 there were many other experiments - i.e. test with animals, computer simulations etc. - which must have shown some promise otherwise they wouldn't spend money on the human trials.
+++ MELON MELON MELON +++ Out of Cheese Error +++ redo from start +++
Hmmm, this was China... I think 8 is the lucky number there. Never mind.
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
I hate to be a dink, but we've had a way to completely control this infection for about 20 years now; it's called abstinence
No need to preach abstinence here; we at Slashdot have been abstaining from sex all our lives (not by choice though :)
Are you seriously prepared to condemn every single infected person
Yes, he is. He is a Christian.
I was overweight and embarrassed to go anyplace. AYDS helped me get back into a size 12.
Mod me off-topic, I don't care. That video is funny shit.
I hate to be a dink
Doesn't show.
Why is it important to develop a way to allow people who have little regard for their own health to remain healthy?
Because compassion is one of the things that makes us human?
(Leaving aside cold-blooded economic arguments about how you'd much rather have healthy productive workers contributing to your economy than sick people who are draining it. AIDS doesn't make business sense.)
I cannot be the only one to have noticed that the results of this trial do NOT indicate that the vaccine is effective in protecting against the HIV virus. The trial patients were not ever injected with live HIV viruses.
All that has been demonstrated is that the vaccine doesn't have an immediate lethality in a small group of (presumably) ethnically similary people. They placed HIV virsues in blood samples obtained from these people, and the blood mounted an immune response. I'd like to point out that even people dieing of AIDS demonstrate an immune response to the HIV virus -- this is the very nature of the ELISA test used to diagnose the disease! Further, a demonstrated "immunity" in a small sample of blood is nothing; the body demonstrated immunity to the disease, often for the better part of a decade, before dying of it during the normal course of HIV/AIDS.
So, while any development towards a vaccine for the HIV virus is unquestionably a good things, lets not read too far into this.
On the other hand, what kind of idiot argues that a safety measure shouldn't be developed?. The "let 'em die" attitude is rather uncivilized.
Becuse all those Africans living on "$1 a day" can afford drugs. Sure...
Isn't that your position regarding HIV/AIDS? That a bunch of TV stories told you so, so it must be right?
That's not his logic. His logic is that reasonable tests of the HIV/AIDS theory have shown it to be most probably true, and there is a high correlation between seropositivity for HIV and the development of and eventual death due to AIDS related illnesses. If your argument is that we shouldn't trust *any* fact that we are handed, you are correct: no fact is 100% true. But that makes life unviable, and there are reasonable, recognized criteria for distinguishing between truthful claims and deceptive ones. One of those criteria is the amount of scientific evidence furnished to prove a claim. There is a ton of such evidence for the HIV/AIDS correlation, just like there is a ton of evidence for evolution and global warming.
Your only other response is that smart people aren't to be trusted.
Please take a look at his logic again. You are deliberately changing the sense of his statement. All he said was that smart people shouldn't be trusted just because they have a history of being smart. That is, intelligence is a necessary but not sufficient condition for being correct about intellectual or scientific questions.
Funny, all the people I listed say they've been looking for that link in the science journals and have never seen it.
The link is implied by the amount of data supporting it and widely recognized. There is no scientific paper that is *simply* about the link between HIV and AIDS, but the statistical supporting the accepted link is overwhelming. My other post details why it is these scientists' burden of proof to challenge what is seen as a reasonable conclusion about the relationship between HIV and AIDS.
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.
Ummm... the same reason we talk people down off bridges and high buildings? Compassion, maybe? Not to mention the fact that these people end up with others who are more responsable, and simply don't know their partners are infected. Really though, even though you're being modded Troll, you've got a point; but just leaving people to twist in the wind isn't moral from my point of view. We really need to eliminate the attitude of fatalism that some people have, especially young people. You see a lot of articles where people have the attitude of "it's only a matter of time before I get it". Before we can use any of the methods you describe to stop HIV, we need to figure out how to stop fatalism. We also need to stamp out arrogance. You hear a lot of people who think that HIV is a manageable illness like diabetes or herpes. It isn't. Like all successful vices, it buries those who would testify otherwise.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
Homophobes - The evil gays are spreading disease!
Alternative therapy peddlers - I can cure AIDS with homeopathic medicine!
Politicians - AIDS was made by white men to kill black people!
Jackasses - Sure I'm HIV+ baby, but it doesn't cause AIDS!
Oh, forget it. This is too easy.
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.
"I dunno how much AIDS scares y'all, but I got a theory: the day they come out with a cure for AIDS, a guaranteed one-shot cure, on that day there's gonna be fucking in the streets, man."
should be fun.
(ps. I know this is a vaccine, not a cure, but it kinda amounts to the same thing)
'This writing business. Pencils and what-not. Over-rated if you ask me. Silly stuff. Nothing in it' - Eeyore
Imagine being willing to be shot up with a dead form of the AIDS virus. Which, for all you know, might well end up giving you AIDS.
For the equivalent of $250.
Damn.
Editor Emeritus and Senior Writer, TeleRead.org
However, upon reading the article, it states:
and that makes a lot more sense now.
HD Trailers
"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 know this is an odd story. AIDS is a very odd story. I clipped this from this website:
http://aliveandwell.org/
According to the 1999 World Health Organization (WHO) report, the total number of actual diagnosed AIDS cases on the African continent is about equal to the total for AIDS in America even though Africa, with its 650 million people, has more than two times the population of the USA. (61) Africa is often cited as a worst case example of what could happen in America despite figures that demonstrate that 99.5% of Africans do not have AIDS, and among Africans who test HIV positive, 97% do not have AIDS. (62)
Unlike in the United States, AIDS in Africa may be diagnosed based on four clinical symptoms -- fever, involuntary loss of 10% of normal body weight, persistent cough, and diarrhea -- and HIV tests are not required. (63) The four clinical AIDS symptoms are identical to those associated with conditions that run rampant on the African continent such as malaria, tuberculosis, parasitic infections, the effects of malnutrition, and unsanitary drinking and bathing water. These symptoms are the result of poverty and other problems that have troubled Africa and other developing areas of the world for many decades.
The idea that AIDS originated in Africa remains popular although there has never been scientific or epidemiological evidence to substantiate this notion. News reports suggesting that HIV began in Africa as Simian Immunodeficiency Virus (SIV) are based on elaborate speculation about species-jumping viruses rather than reliable evidence.
SIV induces only flu like symptoms in some experimental laboratory monkeys and does not cause any of the 29 official AIDS-defining illnesses. Unlike HIV infection which is said to cause illness only years after exposure and despite the presence of protective antibodies, SIV will cause illness within days of infection or not at all, and wild monkeys retain SIV antibodies throughout their lives without ever becoming ill. Only monkeys in unnatural circumstances -- lab animals with undeveloped immune systems who are injected with large quantities of SIV -- become ill. (65)
spoonerize "magic trackpad"
Okay, then let's put your bullshit to the test:
Let's inject you directly with some blood from an HIV+ person.
I'm sure we can find someone of your blood-type, with no other known pathogens - just HIV. Heck, if you're scared of contracting something else that we can't test for, I'm sure we could get some purified samples of HIV to inject you with.
After all - if it's lifestyle choices and not the virus, you'd have nothing to fear, right?
Since I can't tell them apart, I treat all ACs as the same person.
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
Well, it's that time of the year again. We haven't had an AIDS cure post in a few months.
"Things are more moderner than before- bigger, and yet smaller- it's computers-- San Dimas High School football RULES!"
Just because you can't get pregnant through your normal sexual conduct doesn't mean you can't ever do so. There are Lesbian's who opt for fertilization through donated sperm, etc etc. In your case, however, my guess is that you have no such plans. Still, people do change their minds, so I guess that as recommended by others a letter of absolution or something along those lines might reduce your docs worries enough for him to prescribe the treatment. That, or finding a doctor who gets your situation a little better.
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
I'm a study patient in a Phase II trial of an HIV vaccine and I personally know of at least one other vaccine in Phase II. This web page seems to confirm that. The Merck Gag-Pol-Nef study started Phase II testing in January 2005 and has positive results. I thought I remembered my study doctor saying is was going to phase three, article on the current HIV vaccine landscape indicated two studies in Phase III. Phase III is where they get 800 people of high risk and give half the vaccine and half placebo and see if the vaccine group stays uninfected.
Either way, there have been quite a number of Phase I trials.
I also question this quote:
How did they determine that? Certainly they didn't infect these people. I think this whole article is just some China-PR person's belch.
I hate to be a dink, but we've had a way to completely control this infection for about 20 years now; it's called abstainence.
I can reassure you, you aren't a dink. You're an ignorant asshole.
Ever heard of the hundreds of ways you can get infected without sex? Blood transfusions were a common vector in the early days, before everyone got paranoid about them, for example. You can still get the virus through blood, for example during an accident (with you as the victim, or you as the helper who doesn't wear protective clothes). Lots of kids are infected, and unless you believe they had sex at 3 or so, I'll go with the more reasonable option that their parents were infected.
There are other, less common ways as well.
So no, abstinence isn't a solution. It's just some meme that some people want to spread and they use every opportunity to sell it. If you ask the right people, abstinence probably cures acne and cancer as well, and leads to better eyesight and higher salaries.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
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.
abstinence probably cures acne and cancer as well, and leads to better eyesight and higher salaries
I can personally attest that the last two are not the case. :(