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

Re:Cue objections from the religious right:

[Starlon]

Not all of us conservative Christians are superstitious like you illustrate. Some of us even believe in evolution. Some of us don't mind gays getting married. People want to believe that the stereotype is real though, and you don't help the situation.

No Optimism on HIV

[reporter]

I am not optimistic about this vaccine. HIV mutates at an astonishing rate, and I doubt that one brand of vaccine can prevent an infection.

Right now, we in America -- of all places -- have a silent crisis: an HIV epidemic. Read the shocking article published recently by "The Washington Post". About 3% of the residents of the District of Columbia is infected with HIV. That percentage is roughly the percentage in Uganda and parts of Kenya.

The only way to eradicate this virus is either (1) universal mandatory testing for all Americans and visitors to America (followed by tough enforcement of laws prohibiting unsafe behavior by those who are infected) or (2) a gene therapy that transfers the natural immunity enjoyed by a few Europeans to the American population. As for point #1, mandatory testing is taboo and would never be implemented. As for point #2, a small percentage of Europeans have a cellular mutation that prevents HIV infection.

Re:It's just phase I testing

[TheMohel]

Amen. The vaccine has showed animal immunogenicity, which is not a bad thing, but since the animals in question don't get AIDS from HIV, their immune systems don't react the same way that human ones do. Which means you need to proceed to human testing, and that takes a long time.

Phase I trials are important, and announcing them is not a bad thing. And nobody particularly expects cures in the HIV-positive population, although circulating HIV may be interesting (if the virus can cause a practical immune response in subjects with HIV but who have fairly normal T4 counts and you can show reduced circulating viral load, you have an interesting data point for efficacy).

My biggest problem with this kind of press release is that they don't include the details. I'd be interested in knowing why this vaccine is likely to work better than the last two hundred that have been tried, what the actual animal studies showed, and so on. Oh well. I'm not going to be waiting up this weekend to hear more. It will be a couple of years before we know whether this one works.

Re:how do you test it?

[religious freak]

That's very evolved of us, and I do agree with the practice. However, I've got to admit a part of me does say "Why don't we give this vaccine to ten creeps on death row, throw them a few hookers and see what happens".

We would have the answer so much quicker and in the end, if the vaccine turns out to be effective, we'll save so many more (important - yes, I said it) lives. Is it really moral to trade the lives of a few dozen creeps over hundreds of thousands of African lives to preserve OUR sense of humanity? Yeah... I guess so... I guess.

Re:Test on

[SlashDev]

Actually drugs trials did take place on African people with AIDS without their knowledge. The would inject them with supposedly malaria drugs, along with other drugs. And test them a few months later...