2 replies to this topic

[Dick]

"The full results from an AIDS vaccine trial in Thailand, released Tuesday, October 20, 2009, showed that the vaccine’s protective effect might be even weaker than researchers first admitted. . .Meanwhile, the continuing debate over whether the vaccine’s slight protective effect found in the study was real or just a fluke got only more complicated.

Last month, researchers from the United States military and the Thai government said their three-year study of about 16,400 Thai men and women suggested that those who received the new vaccine, known as RV144, were 31 percent less likely to become infected. Although no one would consider licensing such a weak vaccine, the announcement made headlines around the world because no other AIDS vaccine trial in 20 years had protected anyone.

But a controversy soon emerged. Of the roughly 8,200 people who got the vaccine, only 51 became infected, while among the roughly 8,200 who received a placebo, 74 became infected. The authors of the study conceded that the difference was just barely statistically significant. Rival researchers with whom they shared the full trial data in private soon began grumbling that it could be analyzed in other ways that made the results meaningless.

...Different statisticians interpreted the results differently. . .But Donald A. Berry, chairman of biostatistics at the M. D. Anderson Cancer Center at the University of Texas... who had no connection to the study or any of its rivals — is that the vaccine does not work. So many trials have been conducted, he said, that even one using injections of water could, just by chance, show a weak effectiveness like this."

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/21/health/r...cine&st=cse

[DOLLY]

I have to admit that I was very skeptical of this trial when I first read that the Thais were conducting it because the Americans put up the money to pay for it. What's been written outside Thailand since the results were fully published suggests that the only people who think the study accomplished anything are the people who are trying to raise more money for further testing.

I hate to say it but my impression is that many drug companies may see more profits in treating AIDS with life-long medicines than preventing it with a single one-time vaccination.

[Hedda]

I hate to say it but my impression is that many drug companies may see more profits in treating AIDS with life-long medicines than preventing it with a single one-time vaccination.

Which is why there likely will never be an AIDS vaccine unless the US government and US taxpayers foot most of the bill for the research.

It's no accident that the funding of this Thai study was done primarily by the US Army and related government agencies. The private drug companies that developed the two unsuccessful vaccines that were combined in the Thai trials both withdrew funding from the project long ago, assuming that failure was far too likely to merit funding.

No drug company that's producing profitable AIDS medicines is going to spend billions of its stockholders' money on developing an AIDS vaccine, when such a vaccine will effectively put a shelf-life on the sale of all those profitable AIDS drugs. To make things worse, if there was a company willing to spend big money on developing a successful, patented AIDS vaccine, it's vaccine would undoubtedly be copied within days of its issue by a variety of third-world countries, including Thailand and India, where pirating drugs by declaring a "national emergency" for their use has become a national passion.