Japanese may have found a possible vaccine for AIDS

[NeedBioInfo]

I just read this

In other news, the Japanese may have found a possible vaccine for AIDS. Expect the United States to do everything in its power to prevent this knowledge from spreading.

http://www.asahi.com/english/Herald-asahi/TKY200507070204.html

 

[Moonbear]

Expect the United States to do everything in its power to prevent this knowledge from spreading.

http://www.asahi.com/english/Herald-asahi/TKY200507070204.html

Why would you say that? Especially considering it says that the clinical trials are being done in the U.S.?

From the article:

The researchers conducted clinical tests on 40 AIDS patients in the United States.

Anyway, we already have a thread on this same article:
https://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?t=81611

 

[NeedBioInfo]

Thats what the person who wrote the post (in another place) about it said- I was quoting them...that was why I said "I read this" but I probably should have made it more obvious that I was quoting the person who made a post about that (In another place), sorry

 

[Pengwuino]

Was it on a tv news program per haps? "In other news" sounds like a daily news program.

 

[NeedBioInfo]

I saw the post on a thread in another forum; it's possible that the person I was quoting was in fact quoting a news-person or someone else when they wrote what I quoted. Though they probably just said "in other news" because the thread had gotten somewhat off topic

 

[quetzalcoatl9]

I just read this

In other news, the Japanese may have found a possible vaccine for AIDS. Expect the United States to do everything in its power to prevent this knowledge from spreading.

http://www.asahi.com/english/Herald-asahi/TKY200507070204.html

perhaps you are unaware that over a dozen US-based pharma companies have AIDS vaccines, the furtherest along being the Merck vaccine?

you can take off your conspiracy hat now.

 

[quetzalcoatl9]

I saw the post on a thread in another forum; it's possible that the person I was quoting was in fact quoting a news-person or someone else when they wrote what I quoted. Though they probably just said "in other news" because the thread had gotten somewhat off topic

nice to know that this is from a primary source: "i heard it from my sister's boyfriend, whose mom's hairstylist heard it on a forum while smoking hash." nice.

 

[Moonbear]

I saw the post on a thread in another forum; it's possible that the person I was quoting was in fact quoting a news-person or someone else when they wrote what I quoted. Though they probably just said "in other news" because the thread had gotten somewhat off topic

In the future, ask your own questions, don't copy and paste other people's words (plagiarism) from other forums. If you're not even certain if it was their own words or that they were quoting yet another source's comments, that's even more reason not to quote them here. If they were quoting something they heard in the media, then you need to be citing that source.

If you do quote someone or something, you have to give credit to the original source (with links if possible) and put it in quote tags.

 

[misskitty]

Have any of these vaccines been shown to work? In the clinical trials I mean.

~Kitty

 

[NeedBioInfo]

I did say "I just read this" above what I wrote to indicate that that was what I had, in fact, just read but I guess I should have put quotation marks around what was quoted as well. I guess I should have put a link to where I read that as well sorry or provided some sort of info on the original source/person who said that (Although I didn't know their name or anything) (Is somebody mad or anything that I didn't say the original source/put quotation marks around what they said or something instead of just saying "I just read this?)

Anyways I just started the thread because I was wondering about what they said and the site they linked to

I wasn't aware that over a dozen US-based pharma companies have AIDS vaccines, the furtherest along being the Merck vaccine. It's not like they were telling us all to get vaccinated against aids when I was in high school which I just got out of. And it wasn't my "conspiracy hat" it was someone else's (That I was asking about) but whatever

 

[Pengwuino]

Have any of these vaccines been shown to work? In the clinical trials I mean.

~Kitty

I sure as hell wouldn't want to be a test subject :D

 

[Evo]

I did say "I just read this" above what I wrote to indicate that that was what I had, in fact, just read but I guess I should have put quotation marks around what was quoted as well. I guess I should have put a link to where I read that as well sorry or provided some sort of info on the original source/person who said that (Although I didn't know their name or anything) (Is somebody mad or anything that I didn't say the original source/put quotation marks around what they said or something instead of just saying "I just read this?)

Anyways I just started the thread because I was wondering about what they said and the site they linked to

It's ok, you are new and some people here could be a bit nicer when explaining policy. I apologize for the unnecessary roughness.

Although you were a bit unclear in your first post, I think you understand now, Moonbear's post was good advice.

 

[Moonbear]

Have any of these vaccines been shown to work? In the clinical trials I mean.

~Kitty

I wouldn't expect quick answers on this. These aren't the sort of clinical trials like you can do for some really common ailment and know in a few months if it's working. It's probably going to be a slow process just recruiting enough people to participate in the trial.

 

[Pengwuino]

How in the world would you do the trial if its a vaccine. Wouldn't you need to inject people with the virus? And wouldn't one group be a control group with no medicine?

 

[Moonbear]

You can start from this page http://aidsinfo.nih.gov/vaccines/ to locate information on the different clinical trials (use the menu on the left to get the list of each different type of trial).

It looks like the preventative vaccines are still in Phase I trials, which means they are evaluating their safety, that people don't have some horrid reaction to the vaccine itself, and evaluating if it is inducing immune responses (are people actually generating antibodies in response to the vaccination).

The therapeutic vaccines don't look like they're much further along yet, but those are for use on HIV positive patients.

The hardest part will definitely be determining if the preventative vaccines actually are preventative. This will be very slow, because it's going to have to require identifying high risk groups (maybe people who have a partner who is HIV positive) and then just waiting to see if over a long time, fewer people contract HIV with vaccine treatment than without (or in the general population). What will make it even harder is that medical ethics are going to require any subjects in the study are given counseling about reducing their risks, so only a very small percentage of that group might ever be exposed to HIV at all. It'll take a large number of subjects to know if it's working.

Oh, and in clinical trials, and for FDA approval, you're not testing the new drug/vaccine/therapy against placebo in every case. The final phases will be testing it against currently available therapy, so that drug cocktail HIV patients currently take. You have to balance solid experimental design with ethics, and sometimes that means having to compromise on the optimal design because it's just not an option to not treat people in some way when their life is at risk.