Excerpted From AHRP.org by Vera Sharav http://www.ahrp.org and http://ahrp.blogspot.com
FYI “We did a beautiful experiment, but it definitely was a disappointment.” That’s how the lead scientist described Merck’s failed HIV vaccine trial.
Bloomberg News reports (below): “The Merck setback means that 25 years into the AIDS epidemic doctors are still far from having a protective vaccine. An international team of scientists has been recruited to determine precisely what went wrong.”
Meanwhile, leading researchers are re-examining their vaccine strategies, said David Ho, who has studied HIV since the epidemic began. “It’s a giant step backwards,” Ho, scientific director of the Aaron Diamond AIDS Research Center in New York, said in a telephone interview.
“It calls into question all the vaccines using related strategies that have been leading the field.”
TIME Magazine: “I don’t think anyone imagined the results would be so definitively negative so quickly,” says Dr. Gary Nabel, director of the Vaccine Research Center at the National Institutes of Health.
http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1681526,00.html
The New York Times (below), ever more cautious about reporting a major medical research failure, tried to deflect the news: “the researchers said not enough data existed to determine the meaning of the findings about the vaccine, which is made by Merck. The increased risk was principally among a group of people who had pre-existing levels of immunity to a common cold virus known as adenovirus type 5, which was modified to become a critical part of the vaccine. Researchers emphasized that the vaccine itself could not cause AIDS. one theory is that the cold virus may have activated the immune system in some way to make certain recipients more susceptible to becoming H. I. V.-infected when they were exposed to the AIDS virus.”
However, the data is significant 49 in the vaccinated group compared with 33 in the placebo group became infected. Further analysis showed that the imbalance was much more apparent among those who had the highest level of pre-existing immunity to the cold virus used in the vaccine. Among 778 male volunteers who had a high level of pre-existing adenovirus immunity, 21 of those receiving the vaccine developed H. I. V. infections compared with 9 in the placebo group.
The trials were conducted in the United States, Peru, Brazil, Dominican Republic, Haiti, Jamaica, Australia and South Africa.
See also: http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1681526,00.html
TIME Nov. 07, 2007 Assessing a Failed AIDS Vaccine By ALICE PARK
Contact: Vera Hassner Sharav veracare@ahrp.org 212-595-8974http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601109&sid=aQIXYJAthREU&refer=home#
Merck AIDS Failure Hurts Global HIV Vaccine Research (Update1)
By John Lauerman Nov. 15 (Bloomberg) – To contact the reporter on this story: John Lauerman in Boston at jlauerman@bloomberg.net . Last Updated: November 15, 2007 10:12 ESThttp://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/08/health/08hiv.html
THE NEW YORK TIMES November 8, 2007
In Tests, AIDS Vaccine Seemed to Increase Risk By LAWRENCE K. ALTMAN and ANDREW POLLACK
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“Life is the experience of living.” Kathleen Hill
“(Freedom) is the will to be responsible to ourselves.”
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“Freedom is what you do with what’s been done to you.” Jean-Paul Sartre
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A Model Consent Form for Psychiatric Drug Treatment
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How Mercury Causes Brain Neuron Degeneration (5-minute video)
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