AIDS vaccine got a cold

Time magazine did a piece on an AIDS vaccine developed by Merck called V520. Their analysis: Merck's drug failed due to a scientific anomoly, the vaccine contained a strain of the common cold, which made people who are "more immune" to the common cold that much more susceptible to contracting AIDS with the vaccine.

My analysis: Anyone who is will ing to put the AIDS virus into their blood stream, dead or alive, is insane. The idea that there can be a vaccine developed against a virus that is constantly adapting is insane as well.

Think of flu vaccines. Every year, people get the flu vaccine, which is essentially an injuection of dead virus cells from the strain of flu that reseachers feel is most likely to spread over the course of the flu season and allowing their bodies to develop an immunity to that strain. And every year, people inevitibly get sick from the flu anyway. Why? Because they catch a different strain of the virus.

The same thing will happen with AIDS.

"There is something magical about the replicating virus, because it has virtually its entire genome," IAVI head Dr. Seth Berkley said in the Time article and that genome adapts, adjusts grows and changes every year and with each new host.

A vaccine is not the answer to AIDS. It's not small pox or even chicken pox which are both stable viruses effecting each host in much the same way. Creative research by Berkeley's group is investigating ways to stimulate so-called neutralizing antibodies, a special class of antibodies that appear to be able to defuse HIV. This is the kind of research that needs to be funded with $25 million grants from the Gates Foundation, not vaccines.