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Expert says AIDS vaccine more than decade away
Dr. David Baltimore, California Institute of Technology
But group will press on with human experiments
February 1, 1998
Web posted at: 11:33 p.m. EDT (2333 GMT)CHICAGO (CNN) -- The head of the federal government's AIDS vaccine research committee predicted Sunday that a safe vaccine to prevent AIDS could still be more than a decade away from testing, because too much remains unknown about how the body's immune system works.
"There is an increasing belief that we need to understand the structure better," said Dr. David Baltimore of the California Institute of Technology, at the start of the Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections, one of several regular international meetings on HIV and AIDS.
But even as the conference began with Baltimore's cautious prediction, a group that wants to press ahead with vaccine experiments on human volunteers said it plans to begin a trial in just two years.
The International Association of Physicians in AIDS Care (IAPAC) has lined up 200 people -- most of them doctors and other health care workers -- who have volunteered to be guinea pigs for vaccine trials. They would begin in 2000, in hopes of having a safe, effective vaccine by 2007.
Genetically engineered vaccine normally used on canaries The vaccine would be made with a live, but weakened, strain of HIV. Critics say that rather than providing immunity, the experiment could cause the volunteers to become infected with HIV, risking their health and possibly their lives.
Answering that criticism, the group announced that it has lined up three pharmaceutical companies to provide free AIDS-fighting drugs should volunteers contract the disease.
"We don't expect people to progress into AIDS, but we're trying to avoid that 'reckless' label that some people have assigned to us in the world," said Jose Zuniga, a spokesman for the group and one of the volunteers. "We are indeed not reckless. We're trying to be very cautious about the way we move forward with this trial."
But in the face of concerns about safety, some of the latest vaccine research is taking an approach entirely different -- and presumably less risky -- than using a weakened version of the live HIV virus.
Researchers at Johns Hopkins University and other institutions are exploring creation of genetically engineered vaccines. However, researchers say because there is so much they do not know about HIV, it is still hard to tell if such an approach would work.
Another problem is that HIV has proven itself very clever and adaptable to new treatments.
"There is not going to be a magic bullet. I think we're probably going to need several different types of vaccines," said Gordon Nary of IAPAC.
Medical Correspondent Al Hinman and Reuters contributed to this report.
Extended Coverage:
Related stories:
- An overlooked part of AIDS epidemic: Older adults - January 22, 1998
- AIDS patients now accepted for organ transplants - November 11, 1997
Related sites:
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- National Institutes of Health
- Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
- Red Ribbon Net
- AIDS Daily Summary - short summations from the CDC that give news and highlights of news relating to HIV/AIDS and related diseases.
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