Have you ever had someone tell you to wait awhile for something? I have, and unfortunately, being told to wait made me all the more impatient to have what I wanted. The International Association of Physicians in AIDS Care (IAPAC) wants an AIDS vaccine. Last month IAPAC indicated that 50 of its members were willing to be injected with an AIDS vaccine (refer to ABCNEWS story). Unfortunately these volunteers will need to wait awhile.
The SIV virus (simian immunodeficiency virus) and the AIDS virus (Human Immunodeficiency Virus; HIV) are retroviruses. SIV is a virus that causes an AIDS-like infection in monkeys. SIV virus and monkeys are used as a model system to see if a vaccine would work for these retroviruses. If a vaccine for SIV fails then an HIV vaccine is very likely to fail in humans.
An article in the Oct. 3, 1997, issue of Science says that a weakened SIV vaccine can still kill monkeys. Researchers have made mutants of this SIV virus and then infected monkeys in hopes of developing a vaccine that would protect monkeys from SIV infections. Unfortunately, the monkeys that have gotten the mutant SIV virus vaccine are now coming down with AIDS. The vaccine is causing the monkeys to die.
As I said in a previous article, (Noble or Just Irresponsible) people could die if an HIV vaccine is not safe. The SIV vaccine failures are an example of what could happen to humans if we hurry too quickly. Everyone was so sure that the mutants placed in the SIV genome would make the virus less likely to kill monkeys. Unfortunately, they were wrong and it took up to 33 months to find out.
In this case, caution is the better part of valor. Let the research community do the experiments correctly and thoroughly. Haste in this case could mean death not just waste. The IAPAC physicians said they can wait until the year 2000. I believe it may take a while longer to come up with a safe and effective AIDS vaccine.
Would you like some good information on AIDS? Try Immunet, or the University of California, San Francisco's HIV site.
Take Care and Think Microbiologically!
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