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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.
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?
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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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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.
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.
Mumble mumble making a vaccine for a polymorphic virus mumble - wish I hadn't bought that company's stock...
Abstinence is not 100% effective.
Coupled with:
- not being born to an HIV positive mother
- not sharing needles when injecting drugs
- not receiving tainted blood product transfusions
- not being bitten, scratched or otherwise suffering an infectious injury from a carrier
- not sustaining a needlestick injury if you are a healthcare worker from an HIV carrier
- not partaking in lower (but still not zero-) risk sexual activities (e.g. oral sex)
- not being exposed via other means (e.g. blood injuries in sports)
there are probably a few others I haven't thought of, but stop being so sanctimonious. There are a lot of people out there who contracted HIV through no fault of their own - one of the largest groups were haemophiliacs before the disease was even known about.
This idea was invented by Shampoo.
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...