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?

[eneville]

Michael Jackson beat you to it.

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]

What about GNU/HIV/AIDS?

Re:Which is It?

[Flea of Pain]

Researcher1: Are you sure this will work? Researcher2: Not only am I sure, I'm HIV positive! Sorry, had to throw a South Park joke in there...

Re:Which is It?

[Hojima]

I would use my mod points to help you, but I think it's best to post a reply telling future moderators that the above is not a troll. That is what I thought before clicking the link. This is in fact a post spreading the awareness of child abuse in South Africa (at times resulting in gang-rape of an infant) because of the foolish and terrible myth that having sex with a virgin infant can cure your AIDS. Click on the link and help with the petition if you are interested

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?

[lazy_playboy]

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

Common cold is most commonly caused by rhinovirus.

Re:Which is It?

[martas]

since this post is 4 insightful, i'm going to assume that having sex with a virgin infant (as opposed to a slutty one) really is going to cure my AIDS.

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.

Re:Which is It?

[TheoMurpse]

I've never heard of GNU/HIV.

I have heard of GNU/leprosy, what with the open sores and all...

Re:Which is It?

[polymeris]

It seems that it is possible. I don't know if this vaccine works that way, but a couple years a story got posted on slashdot about a compound that "could not only inoculate the patient against future infection, but destroy an HIV infection in progress.":

http://science.slashdot.org/story/07/07/22/0437213/HIV-Vaccine-Ready-For-Clinical-Trials

Re:Which is It?

[quadrox]

While your statement is technically correct, vaccines can and do help with existing conditions as well:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vaccination

"Some modern vaccines are administered after the patient already has contracted a disease, as in the cases of experimental AIDS, cancer and Alzheimer's disease vaccines. Vaccinia given after exposure to smallpox, within the first four days, is reported to attenuate the disease considerably, and vaccination within the first week is known to be beneficial to a degree."

My father - who is a doctor - has confirmed this to be true. Apparently some infections (not only HIV, any infection) ARE treated with a vaccination, although it is not the only part of the treatment.

Test on

[Kryptonian Jor-El]

Phase 1 human trials will check the safety of the vaccine on HIV positive volunteers

Well, at least they're not doing drug trials on animals anymore, better to use those damn AIDS people. Finally good for something

/Sarcasm

Re:Test on

[Monkeedude1212]

PETA will be happy.

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...

Re:Test on

[Anonymous Coward]

Haven't you heard, we humans are monkeys! This is clearly PETA's jurisdiction.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

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.

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?

[Jason Levine]

Or because they fear it'll cause autism (ala Jenny McCarthy). Combine the two and you have premarital autistic sex! We can't have that! Won't someone think of the children?

Re:Is this it?

[dunezone]

The question is really if this is a vaccine or therapeutic vaccine, I couldn't find that in the article. The difference being a regular vaccine will prevent the virus from infecting you while a therapeutic will either prevent the virus from spreading in your body but you might still be a carrier or eradicate the virus from you completely thus destroying it.


Just a side note since a lot of discussion on HIV and AIDS. HIV is the virus, the virus attacks the immune system destroying your white blood cells, when your white blood cell count falls below a certain amount per 1mm of blood or some measurement you have AIDS or auto-immune deficiency syndrome caused by HIV.


The virus wont kill you, what will kill you in the end is a basic infection that your body cant handle, even the common cold.

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:Is this it?

[Anonymous Coward]

This is a phase I test.

The huge one is phase III

http://www.iavi.org/RESEARCH-DEVELOPMENT/DEVELOPMENT-CYCLE/Pages/review-process.aspx

Other vaccines passed phase I and failed after that.

These are good news because scientists doesn't start human trials if they don't feel good about the vaccine developed but it isn't the time to celebrate yet.

Re:Is this it?

[haeger]

Except that the kids can't help that their parents are thick as bricks.

Re:Is this it?

[Anonymous Coward]

A few points;
 
1: While you can inject the HIV virus into other animals, the virus will not enter their cells due to the variations between human CD40 and the animals' copy. They can get the virus in them, but it won't do anthing.

2: There are animals whose cell surface ligands are similar enough to the human ones that the virus *does* infect them. if I recall correctly, HIV is capable (though much less efficiently) of entering the cells of certain apes, cats, and armadillos (an eclectic combination to be sure).

3: Of those animals that will play host to the virus, none of them develop symptoms of AIDS. They will host the virus, spread it around, but will not suffer immunoinhibition. This really isn't that uncommon; humans carry several viruses with no measuarble histological effect. This means that there are no suitable animal models for vaccine testing; human testing really is the only viable option.

4:It has long been theorized that the difference between being HIV positive and having AIDS is merely the amount of virus spreading in the system. i.e. if you can keep the viral load low enough, you won't get AIDS. If this is indeed the case, then even a therapeutic vaccine will be a huge step forward in the mortality rates of those infected.

5: Yes, HIV mutates quite quickly. For this reason, the approach that has long been favored is a competitve virus that targets the same cell types as HIV, yet does not have the same level of virulence (a latent infection rather than an actively spreading one). This is the same strategy employed with polio; the original polio vaccine was an actively spreading infectious virus that simply didn't cause the same disease symptoms. It also spread from person to person just like the disease it was meant to treat. This "similar but safer" strategy is likely the only way to have the 'treatment' evolve quickly enough to keep in step with the target. This is also the most difficult type of vaccine for which to acquire testing approval (for obvious reasons).

6: Other vaccine types are much less likely to be effective against a quickly mutating target like HIV. While they may prime the immune system effectively enough against a single strain of the virus, it's much less likely to work against other strains (same reason that you have to get the flu shot every year rather than just once).

7: It was recently shown that HIV can spread through cell:cell junctions. This being the case, it is unlikely that typical vaccines (other than live virus) will be effective, because there is no chance for antibodies (the typical immune system mediator) to interfere in this infection process. Now, it is unlikely that cell:cell spread is sufficient to get viral load to the point of causing AIDS, but it is still a factor to be considered when making predictions about vaccine efficacy (viral clearance is extremely unlikely).

8: This is a phase 1 trial. It's a small scale trial where they're testing for toxicity, not efficacy (phase 2/3). In other words, this trial is designed to answer the question, "is it safe?" It will not answer the question, "does it work?"

Re:Is this it?

[geoffspear]

Most of them are easily curable with antibiotics or not deadly. HPV is the other big deadly sexually-transmitted virus, and there are parents who refuse to get their daughters vaccinated for the same reason.

how do you test it?

[mofag]

If I take the vaccine and I only sleep with my wife and in 10 years I'm HIV free does it work?

Or is one of the pre-requisites of joining the trial that you commit to sleeping with as many sleeezy whores as you can find?

These are the questions that keep me from being a productive member of society.....

Re:how do you test it?

[Ian Alexander]

Geez, can't people even be bothered to read the summary anymore? From the summary:

Phase 1 human trials will check the safety of the vaccine on HIV positive volunteers.

Presumably this is a therapeutic vaccine intended to equip the immune system to fight HIV before it trashes your immune system irreparably. I didn't bother to read the article (but I was able to finish the summary) so I wouldn't really know.

Re:how do you test it?

[TheRaven64]

This is a phase one trial, which doesn't test whether it works, it tests whether it is harmful. The vaccine will be administered to a number of people who already have HIV to see if they have any adverse reaction to it. Presumably the next phase of the trial will be to give it to some people in high-risk demographics and see whether any of them still manage to contract HIV. If they do, then the vaccine doesn't work, although if a smaller number of them contract the disease than would be expected to statistically then it may be worth bringing to market anyway. The final stage will almost certainly involve injecting someone who has been vaccinated with blood from an HIV-positive patient to see whether it really 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:how do you test it?

[bugnuts]

If I take the vaccine and I only sleep with my wife and in 10 years I'm HIV free does it work?
Or is one of the pre-requisites of joining the trial that you commit to sleeping with as many sleeezy whores as you can find?

Wouldn't that also depend on how sleazy of a whore your wife is over those 10 years?

Re:how do you test it?

[thesandtiger]

One of the studies we're doing in my lab is an intervention with (currently) HIV- youth who engage in frequent risk behaviors (most are sex workers, a little under a third are IV drug users, a very small portion just have risky sex because that's what they do). As part of the study, we do HIV testing every 3 months. We have an "expected" rate of conversion (obtained from other studies) and then we compare our actual rate of conversion to see whether our intervention is having an impact. While I'm no biostatician, I imagine the process is similar for a vaccine trial as for an educational intervention - you get people who are extremely likely to convert, vaccinate them, and if fewer convert (hopefully none of them!) despite engaging in risky activities, you can say that there's very likely been an effect.

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.)

Re:how do you test it?

[all_the_names_are_ta]

This is a bad idea not only because trialing things on death row inmates seems to be a cruel and unusual punishment but also because it creates a perverse incentive. Specifically, suppose that testing on prisoners provides a noteworthy improvement in development speed for this vaccine. There will then be the motivation to use this model again in the future (surely we should use these death row inmates to speed the development of a malaria vaccine, etc). If this keeps providing benefits there will then be a demand for death row inmates to provide a source of test candidates. If this seems far fetched, consider the example of China which (at least until recently) has likely been selling the organs of prisoners http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/5386720.stm and has an unusually broad number of crimes for which the death sentence applies.

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:No Optimism on HIV

[Yold]

(3) Abstaining/reducing risky sexual behaviors. For slashdotters, this shouldn't be a problem.

Re:No Optimism on HIV

[TheMohel]

Unfortunately (OK, it's not unfortunate at all, actually), option #1 isn't just taboo, it's impossible in any human society. Even if we had a completely accurate test (which we certainly do NOT have), and even if you could somehow prevent all positive contacts from continuing their infectious behavior (and I'm not sure anything short of summary execution would be reliable), you'd still have leakers, avoiders, corruption, and resistance. Not even North Korea has managed to avoid HIV, although they're close, at least by report. Largely, I suspect, because summary execution is a routine thing for them.

Option #2 is science fiction for now. The genetic resistance to HIV is conferred by the lack of a particular cell-surface receptor, so you'd have to find a way to effectively eliminate that piece of genetic material from every genome in the body. And since T cells are quite long-lived, you'd have to mess with a lot of quiescent DNA to do it. Maybe some day, but not soon.

Which leaves vaccination. I'm in agreement with your skepticism on this one, not because it's impossible but because HIV, due to its unique targeting system, has been very intractable. You do have to target relatively stable regions of its proteins or its DNA, but this isn't unique to HIV, and we've solved it with polyvalent vaccines elsewhere (think Menactra, or the recent HPV vaccine, or even the flu shot). HIV is a pretty wimpy virus from a spread perspective, so a good polyvalent vaccine would seem possible. The problem is practical immunogenicity, and that's the issue that has torpedoed previous vaccines.

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:

[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.

It's just phase I testing

[Animats]

Don't get too excited. A few other promising AIDS vaccines have made it this far. Phase I testing is just testing for safety, not effectiveness. Phase II testing is for effectiveness, and phase III testing is for effectiveness in a larger population. VaxGen's vaccine made it to Phase III before it turned out not to be very effective. 95% of the new drugs that make it to the beginning of testing in humans don't turn out to be useful.

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:Yay!

[TheRaven64]

Thalidomide.

Hicks

[WilyCoder]

When they find a cure for HIV there will be fucking in the streets.

-Bill Hicks

Re:Hicks

[TheRaven64]

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

Re:Cue objections from the religious right:

[Anonymous Coward]

"Not all of us conservative Christians are superstitious like you illustrate...."

Actually, I think you'll find that the definition of your religion REQUIRES superstitious belief.

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:

[SlashDev]

The Christian religion clearly states that the world and humans were Created and did not evolve before then, they may have evolved afterward, but not prior. Can you please clarify your position as a Christian who believes in Evolution?

Re:Cue objections from the religious right:

[mevets]

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

Re:What kind of injections? (Rim shot)

[Elder Entropist]

A vaccine is usually a weaker version of the original virus, right?

If HIV is spread sexually, does the vaccine spread sexually as well? This really puts a wrench into sex education.

No, a vaccine is usually a DISABLED version of the original virus - one that has the protein coat that the immune system would use to recognize and create antibodies for, but has the part that creates copies of the virus disabled so it can't make any more to overwhelm the host or to spread.

Uganda & Kenya

[vondo]

When the article says "Some parts of Kenya" that means the good parts. The overall infection rate in 2003 was estimated at 6.7%. Uganda is the birthplace, as I recall, of the ABC strategy.

This article makes it sound as if DC is as bad as "Africa" when it comes to AIDS. Unfortunately (for most of sub-Sahara Africa, not DC residents), this just isn't true.

3% may be bad, but 3% with decent health care is a world away from the 15+% infection rate and poor health systems that some countries are dealing with.

Re:RTFA

[sexconker]

No, it isn't, but it IS safe to assume that YOU are ignorant of the situation in Africa.

A lot of people there ACTUALLY BELIEVE having sex with a virgin will cure you. Or that you're supposed to cut the tip off of the condom.

Education has to be the priority there.

Re:Cue objections from the religious right:

[schmiddy]

Preposterous. I for one trust my husband completely. When he says he's out on a hiking trip, I know he's out hiking the Appalachian trail, not up to mischief. Perhaps you should be more trustful of your spouse instead of worrying about contracting AIDS.

Sincerely,
Jenny Sanford

Re:How does this work?

[Artifakt]

HIV mutates a lot, but a whole lot of that is thought to be stochastic mutation. The most basic version of this would be where type A becomes type B, but type B also mutates back into type A just as fast, so after a few dozen generations, the population reaches an equilibrium, half of each type. The point is, it's not evolutionary mutation - you have the random mutation part, but until there's some sort of selection pressure, you don't have evolution. There's a difference between having to deal with non directed mutation (which is what stochastic means in this context) and actual evolution. HIV mutates a lot - HIV is NOT evolving rapidly.
      HIV appears to have four types (in this case, of outer protein coats) which are usually called A, B, C & D, but again, nothing is selecting for one type over the others and there's theoretically no pressure for HIV to evolve because of this particular mutation. Some flus have a lot more than four types. Right now, the swine flue that has people worried is type H1N1, and there are six or seven types just for the N part of that classification, and maybe 30 or so total type combinations possible.
      A highly effective vaccine in this case would probably require it make the body's immune system target some part of HIV's protein coat that doesn't usually mutate, just so it doesn't have to fiddle around dealing with the cycle of forward and backwards mutation.

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:Cue objections from the religious right:

[thesandtiger]

I'm an evangelical agnostic. I'll come to your door for no particular reason.

Re:Test: How?

[unifyingtheory]

Why was the parent modded down? In phase II and III trials they vaccinate large numbers of people (more in phase III) and after a couple years they compare the rate of infection in the vaccinated group versus a control group.

Re:Cue objections from the religious right:

[atraintocry]

You realize that you're insulting both conservatives and Christians, right?

They should pray for thicker skin.