<story><title>AIDS vaccine in final testing</title><url>http://www.lanl.gov/news/stories/aids_vaccine_in_final_testing.html</url><text>I hate to quote the Daily Mail, but this is also a good source (perhaps better): http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-1371540/Mosaic-HIV-vaccine-imminent-Scientists-begin-trialling-breakthrough-drug-year.html&lt;p&gt;Couldn&apos;t find better sources yet.</text></story><parent_chain><item><author>electromagnetic</author><text>Super-sucks to be in the placebo group on this one if the vaccine really works.&lt;p&gt;It reminds me of a study done in IIRC South Africa (although it&apos;s been a year or more since I heard of this so it could be anywhere in Africa really) where they circumcised a group of males to see the effect on HIV contraction and it was so great (due to HIV&apos;s severely limited lifetime outside the body compared to over viruses and bacteria&apos;s) that they ended up circumcising the control group.&lt;p&gt;Hopefully if this study goes well then they&apos;ll do the same. I&apos;d sense a massive lawsuit if scientists caught major wind of a guaranteed vaccine and sat on it for the sake of evidence for 5 years and let X-many people get HIV.</text></item><item><author>jessriedel</author><text>As explained elsewhere, you give the vaccine and a placebo to an at-risk.  Than you follow up X years later to check infection rates.  Everything&apos;s double blind, so there&apos;s nothing statistically different about the two populations other than the vaccine vs. placebo.&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2389732&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2389732&lt;/a&gt;</text></item><item><author>patrickaljord</author><text>&amp;#62; Phase 2: Small number of patients with the disease of interest to test drug efficacy.&lt;p&gt;&amp;#62; Phase 3: Large number of patients with the disease of interest to test effects of new treatment in comparison to those of existing treatments.&lt;p&gt;I&apos;m not sure phase 2 and 3 make sense for a vaccine though. Vaccines are only useful for healthy people. I guess the testing is done on healthy animals which are then transmitted the HIV virus, unless some people would accept to go through that kind of testing, not very likely but I&apos;m no specialist so I may be wrong.</text></item><item><author>reason</author><text>Yes, you&apos;re correct.&lt;p&gt;There are 3 major phases in clinically testing a drug&apos;s safety and efficacy before it&apos;s brought to market, and it seems like they&apos;re close to starting the first one.&lt;p&gt;For all those interested in the 3 phases, here they are:&lt;p&gt;Phase 1: Small number of healthy volunteers to assess drug safety, toxicity, and pharmacokinetics.&lt;p&gt;Phase 2: Small number of patients with the disease of interest to test drug efficacy.&lt;p&gt;Phase 3: Large number of patients with the disease of interest to test effects of new treatment in comparison to those of existing treatments. This is where you see double-blind studies, etc.&lt;p&gt;Personally, this isn&apos;t terribly noteworthy. They&apos;ve merely devised a new theory that&apos;s shown to be effective using animal models, and are still quite a ways away from seeing if similar results will occur with human testing. Of course, I do hope they see good results.</text></item><item><author>scott_s</author><text>Title is misleading. To me, the headline &quot;AIDS vaccine in final testing&quot; implies that they are undergoing their final testing to verify that it does indeed prevent people from contracting HIV. That is not what it means. Rather, it means that they are in the final rounds to &lt;i&gt;verify that the vaccine is safe&lt;/i&gt;, before they start human trials.&lt;p&gt;A more accurate title, to my ears, would be &quot;HIV vaccine almost ready for human trials.&quot;</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>Tyrannosaurs</author><text>&amp;#62; I&apos;d sense a massive lawsuit if scientists caught major wind of a guaranteed vaccine and sat on it for the sake of evidence for 5 years and let X-many people get HIV.&lt;p&gt;This is wrong on so many levels.&lt;p&gt;First, until you conduct the trials have the evidence there is no guarantee that (a) the vaccine works and (b) that it isn&apos;t harmful itself. The idea of a guaranteed vaccine that hasn&apos;t been through trials is nonsense as trials are an integral part of such a guarantee.&lt;p&gt;Second, you can&apos;t sue someone for with holding such a drug unless you have some sort of basis in law to have that drug - basically a contract between you and the company. As the drug companies can&apos;t legally sell a drug that hasn&apos;t passed testing no such contracts exist. While I&apos;m sure you&apos;d like to exert some sort of moral right to the drug (and I&apos;d kind of agree with you), a legal right which could form the basis of a law suit simply isn&apos;t there.&lt;p&gt;Third, why would a company sit on a vaccine for AIDS? Yes a majority of those at risk are in the third world and have no money but there is a market of hundreds of millions who could afford and would pay for a vaccine in the wealthy developed world. It simply makes no sense to suggest that they would do anything of the sort.</text></comment>
<story><title>AIDS vaccine in final testing</title><url>http://www.lanl.gov/news/stories/aids_vaccine_in_final_testing.html</url><text>I hate to quote the Daily Mail, but this is also a good source (perhaps better): http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-1371540/Mosaic-HIV-vaccine-imminent-Scientists-begin-trialling-breakthrough-drug-year.html&lt;p&gt;Couldn&apos;t find better sources yet.</text></story><parent_chain><item><author>electromagnetic</author><text>Super-sucks to be in the placebo group on this one if the vaccine really works.&lt;p&gt;It reminds me of a study done in IIRC South Africa (although it&apos;s been a year or more since I heard of this so it could be anywhere in Africa really) where they circumcised a group of males to see the effect on HIV contraction and it was so great (due to HIV&apos;s severely limited lifetime outside the body compared to over viruses and bacteria&apos;s) that they ended up circumcising the control group.&lt;p&gt;Hopefully if this study goes well then they&apos;ll do the same. I&apos;d sense a massive lawsuit if scientists caught major wind of a guaranteed vaccine and sat on it for the sake of evidence for 5 years and let X-many people get HIV.</text></item><item><author>jessriedel</author><text>As explained elsewhere, you give the vaccine and a placebo to an at-risk.  Than you follow up X years later to check infection rates.  Everything&apos;s double blind, so there&apos;s nothing statistically different about the two populations other than the vaccine vs. placebo.&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2389732&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2389732&lt;/a&gt;</text></item><item><author>patrickaljord</author><text>&amp;#62; Phase 2: Small number of patients with the disease of interest to test drug efficacy.&lt;p&gt;&amp;#62; Phase 3: Large number of patients with the disease of interest to test effects of new treatment in comparison to those of existing treatments.&lt;p&gt;I&apos;m not sure phase 2 and 3 make sense for a vaccine though. Vaccines are only useful for healthy people. I guess the testing is done on healthy animals which are then transmitted the HIV virus, unless some people would accept to go through that kind of testing, not very likely but I&apos;m no specialist so I may be wrong.</text></item><item><author>reason</author><text>Yes, you&apos;re correct.&lt;p&gt;There are 3 major phases in clinically testing a drug&apos;s safety and efficacy before it&apos;s brought to market, and it seems like they&apos;re close to starting the first one.&lt;p&gt;For all those interested in the 3 phases, here they are:&lt;p&gt;Phase 1: Small number of healthy volunteers to assess drug safety, toxicity, and pharmacokinetics.&lt;p&gt;Phase 2: Small number of patients with the disease of interest to test drug efficacy.&lt;p&gt;Phase 3: Large number of patients with the disease of interest to test effects of new treatment in comparison to those of existing treatments. This is where you see double-blind studies, etc.&lt;p&gt;Personally, this isn&apos;t terribly noteworthy. They&apos;ve merely devised a new theory that&apos;s shown to be effective using animal models, and are still quite a ways away from seeing if similar results will occur with human testing. Of course, I do hope they see good results.</text></item><item><author>scott_s</author><text>Title is misleading. To me, the headline &quot;AIDS vaccine in final testing&quot; implies that they are undergoing their final testing to verify that it does indeed prevent people from contracting HIV. That is not what it means. Rather, it means that they are in the final rounds to &lt;i&gt;verify that the vaccine is safe&lt;/i&gt;, before they start human trials.&lt;p&gt;A more accurate title, to my ears, would be &quot;HIV vaccine almost ready for human trials.&quot;</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>ars</author><text>&amp;#62; I&apos;d sense a massive lawsuit if scientists caught major wind of a guaranteed vaccine and sat on it for the sake of evidence for 5 years and let X-many people get HIV.&lt;p&gt;Considering that all prior HIV vaccine attempts failed completely, sitting on it till they know for sure is exactly what they should do.&lt;p&gt;And, BTW all those vaccines also came with press releases that touted how great it was, and how sure they were that this time they got it.&lt;p&gt;Based on past history I would give this vaccine less then 10% chance of actually working.&lt;p&gt;You seem to be focused on success, but realistically the vast majority of pharmaceutical trials fail.</text></comment>