Aids researchers and advocates were devastated in 2007, when a much anticipated vaccine against HIV unexpectedly failed to protect anyone in a clinical trial of 3,000 people. Even worse, the experimental inoculation, developed with money from the Merck pharmaceutical company and the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, actually increased the chances that some people would later acquire HIV. Millions of dollars and more than a decade of research had gone into creating the vaccine. Meanwhile, in that same 10-year period, 18 million people died of AIDS, and millions more were infected.

The Merck vaccine failed in large part because investigators do not yet know how to create the perfect vaccine. Yes, a number of vaccines have been spectacularly successful. Think of polio and smallpox. In truth, though, luck played a big role in those successes. Based on limited knowledge of the immune system and of the biology of a pathogen, investigators made educated guesses at vaccine formulations that might work and then, perhaps after some tinkering, had the good fortune to be proved right when the vaccine protected people. But all too often lack of insight into the needed immune response leads to disappointment, with a vaccine candidate recognized as ineffective only after a large human trial has been performed.

This article was originally published with the title Fast Track to Vaccines.

4 Comments

1. 1. hoamingin 09:25 AM 4/26/11

   At last medical researchers seem to be realising that systems are not made up of discrete components that can be studied independent of the context within which they operate.
   
   Read enough biology reports and you occasionally come across one in which a biologist comments on the incredible complexity of the system being studied. But the subject of the vast majority of biological studies is a tiny fraction of a system, with little perspective on how it fits in that system.
   
   That focused approach and the assumption that interactions are competitive in nature, fail to give biologists an understanding of the system they are studying. An example I often use are the multiple connections between muscles and axons. Much is known about the progressive elimination of connections and strengthening of surviving connections. Biologists call it competition at the neuromuscular junction, but have no explanation of why the mechanism evolved and what it evolved to do. In fact, such questions are prohibited by the rule that there can be no purpose in evolution, so presumably this complex, resource intensive mechanism just happened by blind chance.
   
   Viewed from the perspective of the varying external conditions in which muscle connections are established, this can be seen as a mechanism that evolved to enable each individual's body to co-ordinate muscles that have to work together through the same axon and connect different muscle groups through different axons to avoid excessive demand on an axon at critical times.
   
   The oversupply and progressive elimination of connections can be recognised as an adaptive mechanism that wires up muscle connections to suit the specific lifestyle of that individual by the simple mechanism of using muscles the way the lifestyle demands.
   
   That mechanism must have evolved when individuals whose bodies lacked that mechanism were eliminated when their bodies were unable to adapt by changing behaviours when there was a major change in external conditions.
   
   If that is so obvious, why have biologists who have been studying competition at the neuromuscular junction for decades failed to see it? The reason is that their research approach and assumptions do not allow them to see what is sitting in front of them.

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2. 2. Daniel35 02:04 PM 4/30/11

   The ultimate solution to HIV will be to evolve around it, as we've done several times before for different strains. The coming dark age will speed that considerably, and in return, HIV will help us reduce population to sustainable levels. We've gotta keep thinking of the 'positive' side.

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3. 3. Bruce Voigt 03:42 PM 5/3/11

   My Magic Magee Story
   Mad Scientist meets Radio Talk Show Host
   
   I've had the Magic Magee in my life now for 10 years and I cannot see my life without one now. I sleep with it everynight. I put it behind my lower back while driving. I sit with it while sewing or watching the boob tube.
   I've given so many of them to friends and new people I meet that I have lost track of how many.
   I must preface this commentary with one critical fact. That this healing field cannot be replicated with any other number of magnets under the sun with the magic number being 8. If anyone understands the implication of numbers as do our Asian worlds then you will take to heart what you about to read. I truly believe that this tool belongs in every house and has a real application for every breathing body.
   
   This is how this clever device came into my life. The inventor of this technology had been on my case and pursuing me with his literature for at least a year before I finally agreed to come meet with him and let him show me the power of this tool. At the time I was producing my own radio show and was being approached by every Tom, *** and Harry to promote their products on the air. So I was very skeptical. Then an event in my life forced me to slow down big time! I had a freak fall and shattered my left leg. All excuses for being too busy faded in an instant and so when I was well enough I let a friend take me to meet Bruce.
   
   What happened then was such a shocker that if I could have hightailed it out of there on my crutches I would have, No sooner had we said hello Bruce struck up a match and held it to the outside of my right forfinger giving me a third degree burn in an instant. My flesh was on the match and I was so stunned I almost cried. It really hurt! Bruce then apologized profusely and said to me, "the only way I can truly show you the power of this device is to give you a burn and cure and so I sat with my throbbing hand laying on one of these disks while Bruce covered the hand with a towel and proceeded to show me his experiments with------------ google--the magic magee healing device

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4. 4. wywong 09:20 PM 5/9/11

   This approach may fast track vaccines that use similar mechanisms as proven ones, but is no use for testing vaccines using different mechanisms. It may reject a good vaccine simply because it produces a different signature. Besides, immune response in a test tube is often very different from that in the human body, and therefore it is risky to throw away 'inferior' candidates based on simple signature comparison.

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