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Finnish HIV Vaccine Testing To Begin
First time accepted submitter ultranova writes with news of a new phase in trials for an HIV vaccine. From the article: "Some 1,000 patients throughout France and Switzerland will take part on the trials, with the first phase involving hundreds of HIV sufferers. Participant numbers will increase as the program progresses. ... According to Reijonen, the GTU technology developed by FIT Biotech is also suitable for use as a preventive HIV vaccine, however, he says that such a drug is still ten years away.The central idea behind HIV vaccine development is the use of genetic immunization. Genes are introduced into the body in order to generate a controlled immune response against HIV. Gene Transport Unit (or GTU) technology refers to FIT Biotech’s patented method by which genes can be safely introduced into the body."
You aren't too familiar with how vaccines work then. A vaccine is actually providing a way for the immune system to recognize an infectious agent, and deal with it, which can even apply when you have an infection, in some ways it may even be thought of as giving you the infection, but in a way that reduces your chance of more serious consequences.
We already have a difficult time maintaining herd immunity through inoculation because of the autism FUD.
I imagine there will be resistance to an HIV shot in some circles.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
Sorry, you sound like an absolute nut, as does the website you link to. Hell, it even tries to attack some scientists personally through obscure and out-of-context quotes as if that makes you right.
I have no medical knowledge. I don't need any to see what I judge to be a nut. I've seen enough in my own fields to know that people who decide to tell me what's going on in a multi-billion-dollar field full of PhD's as if they know everything that the PhD's don't (without context), tend to be nutters.
I have a girlfriend in genetics. She gets any amount of nutters every day telling her that her field doesn't exist, doesn't do anything useful, is "wrong", is contrary to their religion, etc. that I have to sympathise with her on this one.
Come back when you have ten years of medical school behind you and have proved this all wrong in peer-reviewed journals that we can't adequately debunk. Until then, you're a nut repeating things that other nuts have said to gain attention.
I met a guy on the QE2 once. We were sitting, just socialising as you do on such a beautiful ship, with all kinds of people. We started to play cards. Mid-way through, he tried to tell me that he'd "solved" the three-houses, three-utilities puzzle. (Oh, this was after he told me he invented the card game of Uno). He was utterly serious. He was mortally offended I didn't believe him. He gave me a string of qualifications. Asked him to show me how he did it right there. There was no rush, he had time enough to spout all of this bullshit to me, we were just being friendly. I offered to even publicise it if he could show me his "answer". Strangely, he was unable to produce it, and kept dodging the question. I was genuinely intrigued as to how he'd managed it - I assumed he'd found a hole in the wording of the puzzle used, or some kind of "trick" (e.g. folding the paper, etc.). You know the best kind of thinkers? The guy in the Patch Adams movie, who was a genius, got committed to an institution, and constantly asked how many fingers that they could see when he held three up, and laughing at people who gave the "right" answer... except he was thinking sideways. We have two eyes. That kind of genius is rare, misunderstood, and can create wondrous things. I was genuinely intrigued if this guy was similar.
But no. He hadn't come up with some stroke of genius (real, or interpretative of the data). He just hadn't. He kept on refusing to show anything. Refusing to discuss it. Yet before he'd been so keen to tell me I was wrong. He asked me, quite abruptly, how I knew that he *couldn't* when so obviously he was right and had done it in his head. So I taught him Euler's Formula. He got most offended and never spoke to us again.
The most amazing thing about this vaccine is that it's a tachyon based vaccine.
First the testing is Finnish, and now it begins.
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- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
Always 10 years away?
Yes, when it comes to these high tech innovation announcements like uber-efficient solar cells, flying cars, hydogen fuel cells, hyper storage batteries, optical computers smaller than a warehouse, whatever... its' always the Lewis Carroll quote that is apropos:
"Jam to-morrow, jam yesterday, but never jam today."
The issue here is the distinction between Prophylactic Vaccines and Therapeutic Vaccines .
The OP's confusion is understandable, as the vast majority of vaccines in clinical use are purely Prophylactic in nature, functioning solely as preventatives; these have little or no utility when administered after infection has taken place. Such vaccines are typically heavily dependent on Humoral Immunity, which may take several weeks time to reach maximum effectiveness, and maybe an additional dose or two.
This delay means the vaccine is of little use in acute infectious diseases (which run their course in a relatively short length of time). In chronic diseases, the infectious agent may be around longer, but usually by that time the immune system is already generating an appropriate response to the naturally occurring disease agent -- in other words, the advantage of the vaccine was purely in helping the immune system get there "first-est with the most-est", and you've already lost that advantage in waiting.
The number of Therapeutic Vaccines is relatively small, but a good example of one such entity is the Rabies Vaccine (which is both a Prophylactic and Therapeutic Vaccine) -- which manages to work post-exposure in part due to the time lag before the virus succeeds in penetrating the central nervous system. The case for most HIV therapeutic vaccine candidates I've seen, is in the argument that an HIV infection mis-directs the immune system that can be corrected; most such candidates attempt to enhance the Cell-Mediated Immune response, which appears to be particularly vital to the anti-HIV immune response. However, several such agents have been tried in the past, and all have failed in testing.
Vaccine by definition is something that helps your immune system generate an immune response. Vaccines in general fall into two caterogies.
Prophylactic (this is the category where most vaccines fall into) which is given before the onset of disease to ensure the immune response when it attempts to infect the patient. Example: MMR vaccine.
Second category is therapeutic vaccine, which is given after the onset of disease to generate immune response during the disease. This is rare, as most diseases generate appropriate immune response when they hit, making vaccination's value minimal to harmful. However diseases with delayed infection such as rabies or autoimmune diseases that circumvent immune response such as HIV (may) benefit from therapeutic vaccination after infection.
Only half correct.
What you call "secondary vaccine" is a so called "passive vaccine", passive because the immune system is not required to "do any work". A passive vaccine is nearly in all cases simply a high dose of the appropriated anti body for the particular germ. E.g. against tetanus.
The article here in question is more in the league of a gene therapy.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
It was modded as troll because of the following sentences made at the beginning:
Words mean things. It is unfortunate that you do not understand them. It is true that a vaccine prevents infection. Your post makes me angry with its bullheadedness and ignorance.
That it a completely unnecessary personal attack on someone that dared ask a question on a discussion forum. Had the parent skipped these inflammatory four sentences and started immediately with the body of his otherwise good post, it would of been +5 Insightful instantly.