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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."
...not HIV but full blown aids?
So Skulldilocks threw acid on the schoolchildrens' faces, cause somebody from the bible told her to do it!
http://vrc.nih.gov/clintrials/clinstudies.htm These are ongoing safety trials at the National Institutes of Health.
People are just making crass jokes and whining rather than actually recognising that this is a great step in the right direction for finding a cure/prevention for AIDs. I hope that all the cynicism about drug companies ensuring it never gets out is unfounded...
which is totally what she said
This isn't a cowpox vaccine -- it does not contain any living or dead viral material. Read the article, please. You won't get HIV or AIDS from a synthetic protein.
What virus? if what the article says is correct (and im understanding it properly), the vaccine is a "virus-like particle" which has the major HIV protein markers and coatings, that are common across all strains of HIV (but lacks any actual RNA to inject into cells). The marker's will hopefully trigger the immune system to build resistance. Now that thats out of the way, this sounds kinda fishy. It's one thing to come up with a vaccine, but it also claims to be a cure for HIV infections that have already taken place. As much as I wish that was true, it seems so improbable that the first 'cure' for a viral infection that we ever develope is not only vaccine, but also against what is possibly the deadliest virus lying around.
America isn't the world. With HIV being such a high profile disease, there is no way an effective vaccine will be slowed or stopped by politics and bullshit.
"What lies behind us, and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us." Ralph Waldo Emerson
Anyone else rather skeptical of the origins of the article?
/. post!)
1. Google News isn't showing anything else on this (aside from this very
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.
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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.
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Slashdot: Curing AIDS once a month since 1997.
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An HIV vaccine would, depending on price and risks, most likely be distributed to those who do not yet have the disease but may be at high risk. Since some of the highest risk patients (people who engage in unprotected sex and IV drug users) are less likely to go tell their doc they need it, let's hope it gets cheap and safe enough to make it a mandatory childhood shot!
My other sig is funny.
How about we begin by naming a effective vaccine that was killed by the drug companies? How about in reporting on an AIDS we link to something more persuasive than a blog? National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases: Ongoing HIV vaccine trials
Tell that crap to a medical worker who got aids from an accidental needle prick or the woman who got it from her husband. Sanctimonious SOB.
I'm not going to badmouth them, and I think that providing medicine to those who cannot afford it is a good thing.
As for an "ulterior motive", there may be some tax advantages to it, and at the very least, it's not much of a cost. R&D and advertising are a good part of the cost of a pill; there's no profit in selling to those who can't afford it. Many drugs have a very low cost per-pill to produce, and by not passing on the advertising/R&D costs, the free medication won't make much of a difference on the bottom line. Accordingly, it makes sense from an ethical standpoint to provide those for free, especially if it's possible to get tax deductions for doing so. If not, there are intangible benefits to be had as well.
Of course, from a macro standpoint, _everyone_ does things for their own gain (including "pure" charity) - sometimes the reward is simply knowing that the world is more as you would like it (i.e. a better place). I'd also say that "you can't put a price on goodwill", but in accounting, they most certainly can.
US has one of the most restrictive laws in the world in relation with Pharmaceutical patents. The Pharmaceutical Industry (PI) get the patents for so long that you have to pay great amounts of money because there are no generic alternatives. The governement authorizes abusive practices.
In fact WTO tries to impose protections for the pharmaceuticals in "third world" countries. Any time US negotiate a new commerce treaty with any "third world" they impose those conditions.
But has been some changes, in Africa some drugs can be declared a "priority" for the Health System so the Lab HAS to give the patent to the gobernement so he can produce a low price drug to be distributed.
Another Thing is that de PI dont make trials in US, they do it on other countries and when the drug is safe to be sold, they come to the FDA in the US and the ask for permision. Of course those "other countries" are South America or Africa and of course not always the drugs are safe to be sold but the PI can pay very well to the FDA guys.
Being gay doesn't increase your chances of AIDS... And there are still other STDs, so your out of luck for bringing back the "glory days"...
what?
According to Wikipedia, there are 17 candidates in phase I trials, four in phase I/II, and one in phase III.
That same article mentions that there is a great degree of diversity in HIV, meaning one HIV vaccine won't protect against all strains.
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As someone who has actually worked on an HIV vaccine (a plasmid-based DNA vaccine), I have to caution that the field is a graveyard of failed attempts, ranging from traditional vaccine methods a century old, to exotic cutting-edge variants. There is considerable skepticism that an HIV vaccine (even given a very elastic definition of "vaccine") is even possible, in part based on the apparently complete absence of any "natural" sterilizing immunity. At best, there exists a small population of non-progressors who are able to hold the virus at stalemate due to genetic variations in certain receptors, a mechanism that seems unhelpful as far as vaccines goes (although relevant to drugs, specifically entry-inhibitors).
While VLPs (virus-like particles) are certainly a promising vaccine technology (the cervical cancer vaccine that's been in the news recently is VLP-based), I really am pessimistic that it is the solution to the substantial problems that any working HIV vaccine would have to overcome. At this point, I don't think anything will work short of somehow granting a patient's immune system innate resistance to HIV through some kind of gene therapy approach (there actually are people working on this sort of approach, but gene therapy as a whole has a long way to go).
Peer Review? It preliminary research was published in a peer reviewed journal. I found it in PubMed and gave it a read. I didn't understand much though, but on first glance it looks legit...as far as it goes. I mean, the results are promising but preliminary.
A Good Troll is better than a Bad Human.
AIDS and HIV were once considered separate. The definition of AIDS was modified to require HIV.
That sucks. What about all the people with Aquired Immunodeficiency Syndromes from other causes? There are chemicals that can do it, and many other causes as well. Now that the definition of AIDS has been modified, do these people no longer have Aquired Immonodeficiency Syndromes? They're all healthy and OK now?
Furthermore, if that's all AIDS means anymore, why do we even need the term? For other infections, we don't have a separate name. If you are infected with tuberculosis and then start coughing, we don't change the description to Aquired Coughing Syndrome (ACS).
Mumble mumble making a vaccine for a polymorphic virus mumble - wish I hadn't bought that company's stock...
"Double whammy", of course, being a professional immunological term.
Don't put advice in your sig.
The pharmaco can be guilty of violating the DMCA if they can be shown to have puzzled out the inner workings of a virus Nature has created then circumvent it for monetary gain.
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Tell that crap to a medical worker who got aids from an accidental needle prick ...
Or, indeed, to someone who got AIDS from having some fun and sleeping around. WTF is wrong with that?
"When I first heard Daydream Nation it quite frankly scared the living shit out of me." -- Matthew Stearns
Indeed. This strikes incredibly close to home, actually. My mother is currently a nurse. Once while drawing blood from a lady, the lady went psycho and blood ended up spraying into my mother's eye. Why were they drawing blood? She had common symptoms of AIDs. Those next few days were hell for the entire family (First, the lady refused to give blood again for testing, and second the labs still process it at the normal rate, despite the fact it happened on the job), thankfully it turned out said crazy lazy did NOT have AIDs or HIV. Could you fairly have cursed a faithful wife and mother to AIDs through such a silly claim? Furthermore, what's wrong with sleeping around, anyway? I shouldn't just have to defend it with my own mother...
I can't speak about the specifics of this vaccine, but one of my initial concerns would be that it would destroy the usefulness of the antibody-based HIV test--the one that is most commonly used to screen for HIV.
This has been one of the controversies with tuberculosis for quite awhile (where antibody-based tests are also the most efficient), where being vaccinated with a partially effective vaccine you essentially destroy the ability to easily see if you are infected or not (I believe more sensitive tests, like PCR-based tests, are required).
If this is going to be another TB vaccine, you can leave me out. I'd rather know easily if I had HIV.
That is false. I think that you mean that the first cases detected were with gay's. The first cases were shown to come from Africa and traveled around via hetro sexuals. It was seen first in the gays, because of the liberal attitudes in bath houses of the 70's and our attitudes of gays back then (most were married).
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Just a question, what do you think AIDS means? AIDS is not plural of AID, and thus calling it AIDs is wrong. AIDS expands to Acquired Immuno-Deficiency Syndrome, so either capitalize every letter or capitalize nothing.
but there's everything wrong with doing so irresponsibly. HIV isn't the only STD out there, after all.
If you're one of those people who 'sleep around', do so cleanly, do so safely, keep track of who you sleep with, get tested regularly; and if you do get tested positive for any STD, tell those who you slept with since the previous test (+ some time, due to incubation times) to get tested as well, as it is likely that 1. you got it from one of them* and 2. you gave it to some of them.
If you can't bring yourself to act responsibly, then I'm sorry - I can't bring up much sympathy for you when you do get an STD.
* assuming you didn't get the STD through blood contact/kissing**
** yes, the virus involved with a cold sore ( herpes labialis / HSV-1 ) will happily live in those other mucous warm areas, albeit extremely rare for it to travel southward. Similarly, genital herpes ( herpes genitalis / HSV-2 ) will happily nestle in the mouth.
Your mother wasn't offered PEP? I thought that was standard practice now for anyone coming into possible contact with HIV, since if taken with 72 hours offers an 80% reduction in the chance of contracting the disease. Also to reliably find out the crazy lady's HIV status reliably would have taken around a month after the last known possible infection. There are tests that give results in around a week - but they are known to have a much higher risk of false positive/negative.
... "unprotected sex". Yea. And rape. And being born to a mother with AIDS. Stupid kid. Shoulda been born in Sweden, not sub-Saharan Africa, which has 72% of the world's AIDs/HIV cases (HIV & AIDS Africa). It's hard for the light of compassion to shine through the cloak of prejudice.
The Russians have won. They have made the world a cesspool of distrust, greed, fear and hate.
Then they'll have their own native factories churn out a generic at dirt cheap prices while paying the patent holder a fraction of the original asking price.
This is 100% legal under international laws/treaties.
Clinton was the one who signed TRIPS into law.
http://www.wto.org/english/tratop_e/trips_e/tripf
Brazil, South Africa, India and Thailand are all countries that have relatively recently done this... much to the USA's dissappointment.
Brazil is the 12th largest economy, but they insisted on a 60% price cut from Merck for an HIV drug (to match the price given to Thailand). Merck offered a 30% discount and Brazil forced a compulsory license the same week.
Developing countries will never become 'first world' if commercial exploitation drains them dry.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
1. selling an exorbitantly expensive treatment which does not cure the disease for 5-10 years
2. selling a single shot It is in the pharmaco's interest to keep patients alive, as dead customers are not repeat customers. If the pharmaco sells a single shot that can cure or prevent an STD, then it can continue to sell Cialis and other "lifestyle drugs" to the couples who are now free of STDs. Third, what makes you think governments would subsidize it? Apart from those whose medications are already subsidized, that is. People would emigrate to those countries and live there for the requisite number of years to get immunized.
There's some good arguments to support your claim - yet I doubt it.
Pro: The classic argument for survival of the fittest religion is Circumcision for the early Hebrews. Other area religions sacrificed their first born sons to the various Bels (Baals in the OT spelling) and Tiamat types. The Jews made it a symbolic sacrifice, their populations grew faster, and they won a series of wars by it, or so the argument goes.
Con: A sexually transmitted disease is a half-assed infectious disease that can't spread by any better means. Sex will transmit even very sensitive germs, easily destroyed by a few seconds exposure to the rest of the environment. Germs that will die from a little cool air or a few seconds exposure to solar UV will manage to pass through intercourse. The real professional infectious diseases have developed methods such as surviving long term in dirty drinking water, exploiting fast multiplying insect species as intermediate hosts, or even the aerosol spread of some plagues, that make them literally billions of times more efficient than STDs at surviving and multiplying. So if a religion tended to survive by discouraging the spread of STDs, One could have done a lot better by discouraging the spread of other diseases.
"Cleanliness is next to Godliness" would have really caught on. The movement by the dark ages Europeans to reduce bathing (supposedly started to conserve increasingly scarce firewood) would have faltered quickly and not lasted for over 500 years. Similarly, bad beliefs, such as believing that black cats are unlucky and so hunting down animals that slowed the spread of plagues by killing rats, would have died off swiftly as people who believed otherwise tended to survive. If the selection pressure from the black plague and a dozen other major epidemics wasn't enough to make the old black cat superstition die out, then the selection pressure from STDs would just about have to be pretty minimal.
Who is John Cabal?
Apparently vows do break much more often than condoms.