A wonderful new vaccine

[Guest guest]

The FDA has , yesterday , approved a vaccine against

papilloma -- warts -- that occur on the neck of the

uterus.

 

It will go on sale in the US on the 8th June , and in

Europe by the end of the year.

 

It is unlikely that this vaccine will be safe. In the

sense that it will produce unwelcome -

BUT MORE IMPORTANTLY : UNACKNOWLEDGED side effects.

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Guest guest]

As they rightly point out there is no recorded cured

AIDS case. Wonder how the Thais regard this and how

much real info they have!

 

AIDS Vaccine Testing Goes Overseas

U.S. Funds $120 Million Trial Despite Misgivings of

Some Researchers

 

Monday, May 22, 2006;

CHONBURI, Thailand -- Inside a ramshackle Buddhist

temple here on the country's southeastern coast,

curious villagers gathered last fall as part of the

United States' biggest gamble yet on stopping the AIDS

pandemic.

 

The informational meeting was almost like a game show

as attractive young hosts revved up the crowd, working

up to the big question, boomed out over loudspeakers:

Would the audience be willing to volunteer to test an

experimental HIV vaccine?

 

 

A nurse prepares a syringe with an experimental AIDS

vaccine at a clinic in Bangkok. The U.S.-funded trial

will involve 16,000 test subjects.

A nurse prepares a syringe with an experimental AIDS

vaccine at a clinic in Bangkok. The U.S.-funded trial

will involve 16,000 test subjects.

 

Cambodian Sex Workers Protest

Yunang Soma joined other Cambodian sex workers in

November 2005 to protest a drug trial for tenofovir, a

possible AIDS vaccine. " If the trial is so good, why

don't they get sex workers from their own country? Why

do they come to a poor country? " asked Soma. The

protest led Cambodia's leaders to cancel the trial and

 

 

The villagers hesitated. No one moved for a full 60

seconds. Then, tentatively, they approached the three

stands set up at the front, marked " Join, " " Not Join "

and " Unsure. "

 

For the past three years, such gatherings have been

held all over Thailand, exhorting young adults to take

part in the largest, most expensive, most

resource-intensive AIDS vaccine trial ever. Funded by

the National Institutes of Health, it ultimately will

involve 16,000 people and last 3 1/2 years.

 

But as the trial moves forward, at a cost of more than

$120 million, some researchers are raising questions

about its validity. They disparage its science,

question its ethics and doubt its efficacy.

 

One of the chief dissenters is Robert C. Gallo, who

helped discover the human immunodeficiency virus. He

scoffs at the notion that the trial will be

successful. " I thought we'd learn more if we had

extract of maple leaf in the vaccine, " he said

derisively.

 

NIH scientists defend the study, arguing that even if

the vaccine doesn't work, the trial may reveal new

things about HIV. " With 5 million new infections each

year, the luxury of time is absent, " four researchers

wrote in the journal Science.

 

Vaccine Is Elusive

 

When scientists identified HIV as the cause of AIDS 21

years ago, they predicted that a vaccine to prevent

the infection would be ready long before a treatment

for the symptoms could be developed. The opposite

turned out to be true. Many people today, especially

in wealthy countries, are keeping the virus in check

with drugs, but a vaccine, desperately needed in poor

countries, has eluded modern medicine.

 

Despite years of effort, investment in the billions of

dollars, and dozens of small tests in people around

the world, there's still no scientific proof that a

vaccine is even possible. HIV is a diabolical virus

that disables the very immune responses a vaccine

needs to trigger in order to work.

 

And yet the need is so urgent that scientists have

gone forward with preliminary human tests of many

vaccines on the basis of data they acknowledge is

weak. The one in Thailand is the largest.

 

The fact that no one has ever been cured of AIDS

increases the urgency of finding a vaccine. " In

contrast to virtually every other microbe we've come

across, there isn't a documented case of anyone who .

.. . ultimately cleared HIV from the body completely.

That's why more and more research is being directed at

trying to stop infection from happening in the first

place, " said Anthony S. Fauci, director of the

National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases,

part of the NIH.

 

The U.S. government last year spent 22 percent of its

$3 billion AIDS research budget on vaccines and other

preventive drugs, compared with less than 8 percent a

decade ago. (Most of the rest is devoted to developing

treatments or a cure for those already infected.)

Meanwhile, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation this

year designated up to $360 million for AIDS vaccine

research, and Congress is encouraging more research

with bills that would provide liability protection and

tax benefits for drug companies.