US cancels test of experimental AIDS vaccine

***Manuel*** · #1 (**permalink**) 07-18-2008, 01:59 PM

U.S. cancels test of experimental AIDS vaccine

Quote:

Federal researchers on Thursday dropped plans for a large-scale test of an experimental AIDS vaccine developed by the National Institutes of Health - the latest fallout from the failure last September of a similar candidate from drugmaker Merck & Co. that may have left some volunteers more vulnerable to HIV infection.

Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said the decision to call off the proposed study was his alone, but followed months of meetings to debate the merits of proceeding with the experiment.

manifold · #2 (**permalink**) 07-18-2008, 02:00 PM

I thought that's what bunnies and rats were for anyway.

Wow · #3 (**permalink**) 07-19-2008, 09:51 AM

PETA is deciding who lives and who dies.

editec · #4 (**permalink**) 07-19-2008, 10:22 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by manifold

I thought that's what bunnies and rats were for anyway.

I think they stated they're already past the animal testing stage and have to go to the human testing stage.

PETA has nothing to do with it.

My read of this, is that they think the testing methodology is flawed.

Wow · #5 (**permalink**) 07-19-2008, 10:32 AM

The vaccine itself poses no risk of infecting participants, but there are other moral and social challenges facing trial participants- issues of privacy and confidentiality.

"If you're participating in an HIV vaccine trial, in itself, you've got a privacy problem, people will assume you to be at risk," says Dr. Gostin. "They might think you're a homosexual or a user of drugs."

Another area of concern for participants is discrimination. If the vaccine makes a person test positive for AIDS, even though they don't have the virus, they could face discrimination in areas ranging from jobs to health insurance.

Civil rights Lawyers are getting greedy and want a cut of the profits from a vaccine.