HIV/AIDS Vaccine To Begin Phase I Human Trials

An anonymous reader writes "An HIV/AIDS vaccine developed in Ontario has applied for Phase 1 human trials. Safety and immunogenicity studies of the vaccine, dubbed SAV001-H, have already been completed on animals. Phase 1 human trials will check the safety of the vaccine on HIV positive volunteers. Phase 2 will then test immunogenicity."

Comments

Which is It?

[sexconker]

Is this a vaccine for the virus, as one with half a brain would assume?

Or is this a magic serum that cures you of AIDS while not dealing with HIV?

HIV/AIDS is stupid.
HIV and AIDS are separate, though related, things.

Think of the confusion:
Person with AIDS gets vaccine and thinks it's okay to have unprotected sex willy-nilly.

Re:Which is It?

[Excelcia]

HIV/AIDS is stupid

Are you trying to promote the HIV doesn't necessarily cause aids point of view?

The vaccine in question does as any viral vaccine does, which is to help prevent an exposure to a virus from turning into an infection. In this case, it is intended to help prevent exposure to HIV from becoming AIDS. Once exposure has progressed into an infection, vaccines have little, if any, efficacy.

Re:Which is It?

[Ian Alexander]

If you have AIDS you're probably better-educated about your syndrome than your average bear.

I find it highly improbably that anyone could confuse AIDS and HIV that badly; I was educated on the difference in middle school as part and parcel of the health curriculum.

Re:Which is It?

[Anonymous Coward]

Everyone confused by what you wrote? Maybe it's you!

Re:Which is It?

[Excelcia]

Are you trying to promote that they are the same thing?

Of course not. No more than the common cold is the same thing as the enterovirus that causes it.

There has always been a differentiation between illnesses and the viruses that cause them. Partially because sometimes there is more than one virus that causes a given named set of symptoms, but mostly because of the simple fact that knowledge of illness predated knowledge of viruses. Because people think of HIV in terms of the illness it causes, we are going to hear about this vaccine that way - as an AIDS vaccine, rather than an HIV vaccine. Just like the smallpox vaccine was just that, and not the variola vaccine.

Re:Which is It?

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, that link is explaining that the cause of rape in Africa is not in any way linked to the myth that sex with a virgin would cure AIDS.
Read the whole page.

Re:Which is It?

[unifyingtheory]

Surely you realize AIDS is a progression of HIV. So naturally if you get the vaccine prior to HIV exposure you cannot get AIDS, assuming the vaccine works of course. Thus the vaccine does protect against both (in a unexposed host).

Similarly we have the "flu vaccine". We don't bother listing all the viruses that cause the flu because they don't really matter; the disease is the important part. HIV by itself never killed anyone.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Is this it?

[davek]

From TFA:

"We hope this vaccine is it, and hopefully this vaccine will prevent HIV infection and save millions of lives." University of Western Ontario professor Chil-Yong Kang.

Human trials are necessary to test the efficacy of the vaccine in protecting against HIV infection because the HIV virus does not cause AIDS-like symptoms in animals, says Kang. However, the immune responses in the animal trials have been promising, he says.

Sounds like if this is for real, HIV will go the way of smallpox and polio. Is this as huge as it sounds?

Re:Is this it?

[geoffspear]

No, because parents will refuse to let their children get vaccinated because that would encourage them to have premarital sex.

Re:Is this it?

[BlueBoxSW.com]

Phase I is really too early to get any hope up. Most "promising" drugs that enter Phase I don't make it to the end of Phase III (FDA approval).

Re:Is this it?

[im_thatoneguy]

I assume that depends on the level of immunity it provides. Are we talking Flu Vaccine or Small Pox vaccine level of protection?

Re:Is this it?

[Opportunist]

Could some mod drop some insightful on that post?

It was pretty much what I was thinking. Vaccine for a highly mutating virus. Good for how long? A day?

What we should wait for before rejoicing is whether the vaccine is still working a year from now.

Re:Is this it?

[rumblin'rabbit]

It wouldn't have to be 100% effective to eradicate HIV. Slowing the spread of a disease can be enough to make it (eventually) disappear.

Re:Cue objections from the religious right:

[Anonymous Coward]

you sound more like an enlightened christian than a conservative christian

Re:Cue objections from the religious right:

[RelaxedTension]

People want to believe that the stereotype is real though, and you don't help the situation.

Conservative christians are doing just fine at reinforcing that stereotype by themselves. Oklahoma-Morality-Proclamation-blames-gays-porn-abortion-for-economic-woe

Influenza Vaccine

[Anonymous Coward]

The influenza vaccine works extremely well against the strain of flu it's developed for. The problem being that there's so many strains of flu, and they're constantly mutating.

Course, that's also true of HIV. So I'm going to guess it's going to be more like the influenza vaccine.

Re:Cue objections from the religious right:

[localman57]

If you're dumb enough to contract HIV in any way other than a clinical fuck-up, then frankly, I hope you die, and I hope you never managed to reproduce.

Nice sentiment. Until you find out that your husband/wife was not, in fact, on a hiking trip. Suddenly you need an urgent blood test, despite never having done anything more risky than trusting your spouse.

And, just for the record, you should care because empathy is one of the things that separates you from lower species.

Re:Cue objections from the religious right:

[dyingtolive]

Yeah, but I know plenty of atheists who are douchebags as well. Correlation != causation, again, even in this case.

Re:Yay!

[TheRaven64]

Thalidomide.

Re:No Optimism on HIV

[Anonymous Coward]

It's a case of stupid people doing stupid things, getting a chronic and fatal disease

Sadly, such ignorance is helping spread the virus. You can get infected from tainted blood transfusions, as happened before screen blood donors for HIV was routine. You can get infected if you're faithful to your partner, but unbeknownst to you, they are not being faithful in return. You can get infected through rape or other assaults involving exposure to bodily fluids.

While abstinence and faithfulness are the best way to contain the disease, they're not going to eliminate it completely. Hence it's still worthwhile to look for a vaccine.

Re:Cue objections from the religious right:

[Calithulu]

Good plan. The next time an atheist comes to my door to preach at me I'll just tell them to go away. Oh, wait, that never happens.

On the other hand, evangelical religious folk do come to my door and try to convert me or, as has happened int the past, try to convince neighborhood kids to join their church when they think the parents aren't home.

Re:Cue objections from the religious right:

[mevets]

Sorry, it is the rotten millions that spoil it for the good few.

Re:Hicks

[TheRaven64]

Right until people realise that there still isn't a cure or vaccine for herpes...

Re:Test: How?

[Tom DBA]

Actually, there are tons of people available for the Phase II and III trials. There's a whole generation of young gays who are catching HIV left and right because they don't use protection.

A great Boon for anyone in the medical field!

[jameskojiro]

Now they won't have to worry about catching aids from trauma patients if a glove fails or if they accidentally nick themselves in the O.R. while working on a AIDS patient.

This should help lower the cost of Healthcare as Doctors may need slightly less hazard insurance once inoculated.

Re:how do you test it?

[Anonymous Coward]

So when you run out of test subjects on death row will the drug companies begin lobbying for harsher sentences and halting the abolishment of the death penalty? Perhaps people with life sentences should get bumped up to death sentences for the betterment of medicine which could save thousands, perhaps millions? There are a number of reasons to ensure that society doesn't benefit in any way from executing people (besides the obvious permanent removal of them from the general populace).

Re:how do you test it?

[tehfrr]

not necessarily. Perhaps older people who are late in life that want to help benefit humanity. Not that they would be lining up to volunteer, but certainly someone would. I would think its safe to assume if the did in fact contract HIV, they would probably get the best health care available to keep it in check for the rest of their lives.

Re:how do you test it?

[avilliers]

Well, we could also start cutting up death row inmates for organs, which is a much more certain benefit than what you describe. In terms of utilitarian logic this makes more sense. One of the many reasons not to be a strict utilitarian, IMHO.

Ignoring ethics, the proposal is, I suspect, pretty weak practically. I don't know enough to do hard numbers. But the number of death row inmates (especially with exhausted appeals) in the US is pretty low, HIV transmission rates are naturally low, and if you try to make up by lots of sex (or even worse, direct injection) your experiment environment wouldn't model the real world system at all.

So it's quicker result, but not a quicker answer. Barring a very strong signal, and possibly not even then, you'd have nothing until you do the full size study anyway, and actions taken on interim results from prisoners could cause harm (by, e.g., encouraging risky behavior in recipients, or exposing people to side effects that have no benefits.)