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Dozens volunteer for live HIV injections
September 22, 1997
Web posted at: 9:24 p.m. EDT (2124 GMT)LOS ANGELES (CNN) -- Dozens of doctors, nurses and health policy activists have volunteered to be injected with a weakened form of the HIV virus, saying they are willing to risk their lives to speed up development of a vaccine that could protect against AIDS.
Ronda Rowland reports
One of the prime movers behind the volunteer drive, Dr. Charles Farthing of the AIDS Healthcare Foundation, said he will present his proposal for the trial by the International Association of Physicians in AIDS Care (IAPAC) to an international conference in November.
The volunteers hope that a live, weakened vaccine containing the HIV virus may be developed and used in the same way vaccinations against the measles, mumps and chicken pox are in use today.
A L S O : AIDS activists willing to risk their lives for chance at cure
They argue that research into creating an HIV vaccine has been too slow, because scientists have incorrectly assumed that no one would risk his or her life to volunteer for a human experiment.
IAPAC announced this weekend that it has 50 volunteers willing to take part in the study, and dozens more calling in to participate.
AIDS vaccine development is a slow process because of the safety measures and rigorous animal testing needed before injecting humans with a trial vaccine.
Research in the past decade has focused on vaccines that do not involve a live strain of the human immunodeficiency virus because of fear that even a weakened strain might cause AIDS or other complications.
The group has said it may try to conduct the tests on its own, without federal approval, by limiting the experiments to a single U.S. state or going overseas.
But several scientists were skeptical that the proposed human experiments could lead to a vaccine.
VXtreme Audio
Listen to a telephone interview with the leader of the study, Charles Farthing, of the AIDS Healthcare Foundation."I admire them," Dr. Mark Grabowsky of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases told the Chicago Tribune. "That kind of activism can't help but be inspiring. But the scientific questions still remain."
The Chicago-based IAPAC would like experiments to begin as early as within the next 12 months, Farthing told CNN.
"We have the vaccine, we have initial safety data, we now have highly active anti-retroviral therapy which can suppress HIV if it misbehaves," said Farthing, who has volunteered for the study. "So to me, the time would seem right."
The group would like to inject volunteers with a vaccine that Dr. Ronald Desrosiers of Harvard Medical School has used with monkeys.
Desrosiers told the Chicago Tribune that it is not possible to create a 100 percent safe vaccine. But his vaccine seems to protect monkeys from the primate-equivalent of HIV.
In one study, four monkeys injected with a version of Desrosiers' vaccine and then exposed to the primate-equivalent of HIV remained healthy, the newspaper reported.
However, other combinations of the vaccine have made test monkeys ill.
Another Harvard researcher, Dr. Ruth Ruprecht, found that 90 percent of a group of monkeys injected with a live anti-AIDS vaccine at birth are showing early stages of the disease, and half have full-blown AIDS, the newspaper said.
But IAPAC volunteers said that while there may be risks, they understood them clearly and believed the risks were worth taking.
"There are millions of lives going by while we sit around debating the research," said Gordon Nary, the group's director and one of the volunteers.
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- Consumer News: Fitness and Health - HIV/AIDS
Related stories:
- Transcripts for September 22, 1997
- New AIDS cases drop for the first time in U.S. - September 18, 1997
- HIV infections surge among U.S. women - September 16, 1997
Related sites:
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- IAPAC Main Page
- National Institutes of Health (NIH)
- National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID)
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