HIV Vaccine Ready For Clinical Trials

amigoro writes with the happy news that a possible vaccine against HIV is nearing readiness for clinical trials. The compound could provide a 'double whammy' by not only inoculating the patient against future infection, but destroying an HIV infection in progress. "The vaccine is an artificial virus-like particle whose outer casing consists of the TBI (T- and B cell epitopes containing immunogen) protein constructed by the researchers combined with the polyglucin protein. This protein contains nine components stimulating different cells of the immune system: both the ones that produce antibodies and the ones that devour the newcomer."

Comments

Always check the article source...

[Liberaltarian]

Anyone else rather skeptical of the origins of the article?

1. Google News isn't showing anything else on this (aside from this very /. post!)
2. The claims it is making about the vaccine are astounding and are, unless you have a paid subscription to the single medical journal article referenced, unverifiable. Neither are there any quotes attributed to anyone.
3. The site in question is not even a hard news site; it appears to however be chock full of dressed up press releases by non-profits.

As promising as this "article" may read, there's no evidence that we should take these claims seriously.

Re:hmm...

[chuckymonkey]

Look, I'm not being naive about this. When it comes to your run of the mill diseases such as restles legs, baldness, chronic heartburn, yeah Big Pharma is going to squeeze you for all your worth. However when it comes to the truly life threatening, the stuff that will, not may, but will kill you they aren't so stone hearted as you seem to believe. Case in point, my mother is dying from bone cancer. There is no cure and a very very very small chance that she is going to live long enough for her grandkids to get to know her. The oh so Evil money grubbing Big Pharma of your world gives her the medication that she needs to have a chance at surviving. They don't charger her a penny, and it's not cheap therapy. Each pill is over 50US dollars(we live in the US by the way), they know that there is going to be no return on that investment since she can't afford the medication but they give it anyway. Sure there may be some ulterior motive, but really I doubt it because no matter what angle I look at it I don't see how they are really going to get anything out of it whether she lives or dies other than the fact that if she lives it'll be one more statistic for their success charts which really don't prove that it was that medication that cured her. Why do you think that the medication is so expensive here in the States? They have to make money somehow so for the people that can afford it, even marginally they are going to charge you through the nose. However all that extra money you put in sometimes goes on to help someone that would not have received that kind of aid in the first place. So no, in cases with life threatening diseases they're not always about the money, sometimes it really is about helping someone who needs(not wants) it. If this works and that's a strong if the government is going to really pony up some money for it, because for some things they really don't have any other choice.