• More Blogs
• Observations »
• Bering in Mind »
• Cross-check »
• Extinction Countdown »
• Solar at Home »
• Expeditions »
• Guest Blog »
• Anecdotes from the Archive »

The U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH) this week canceled plans for a large clinical trial of an experimental vaccine to combat the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV). Anthony S. Fauci, director of the NIH's National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said that   more research was needed on the government-developed vaccine known as PAVE (Partnership for AIDS Vaccine Evaluation) before it could be tested in 8,500 people infected with HIV, the virus that causes full-blown AIDS. The announcement comes 10 months after drug giant Merck & Co. canceled a trial of a similar vaccine after it was found ineffective at reducing the HIV load in volunteers' blood. Fauci said the trial of the newer vaccine was canceled because there was no indication that it would be any more promising than the earlier version; both used a relatively innocuous cold virus to deliver the drug.

6 Comments

1. 1. hotblack 06:32 PM 7/19/08

   So because there's no up-front indication it would work any better than the last attempt, the NIH is denying them the possibility of even trying? Glad we don't take that approach in all experimentation, or we'd all still be living in caves. If it was a 1 in 100 chance that it'd have saved some of these peoples lives before, the NIH just made it a 0 in 100 chance. Nice going, idiots. They're volunteers, dying of HIV. As if it weren't bad enough for these people already, to give them a flicker of hope and then take it away, and say, no, we thought about trying, but, we're just gonna let a whole bunch of you die in the mean time instead anyway. If it were my death warrant Fauci was toying with, I'd see to it he became infected himself. Perhaps that'd properly motivate him.

   Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this

2. 2. BV 01:18 AM 7/20/08

   Its more profitable for drug companies to sell temporary relief for HIV/AIDS patients than it is for them to sell a cure. Not to mention all the government and charity research dollars they get to suck up while HIV is still at large. Don't expect a cure anytime soon, and fully expect the government to play into the drug companies wishes.
   
   

   Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this

3. 3. anyvainlegend in reply to hotblack 01:50 AM 7/20/08

   I laugh at the conspiracy theorists. I can't believe this stuff is still floating around, after all this time - and, on the Scientific American website, no less.
   
   Why waste everyone's time, a whole lot of money, not to mention raising 8,500 people's hopes, on something that all evidence seems to indicate probably will be ineffective? Cancelling a trial because it will be a waste is a good thing. There's no conspiracy. The drug companies do not control science.
   
   Do a Google search for the article "12 Deadly Diseases Cured in the 20th Century" to see how effective so-called 'Big Medicine' is in holding back medical progress.

   Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this

4. 4. Shpongle 10:59 AM 7/20/08

   I have aids

   Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this

5. 5. Eloheim 03:50 AM 7/21/08

   anyvainlegend: I'm no conspiracy theorist either, but I think you're being naïve if you don’t see how profit motives can effect the world of medicine. Just as an example from my personal experience, L&F Labs came out with Celexa to treat depression and anxiety disorders in 1989. A few years from when their patent on the drug was to expire, in 2002, the company came out with Lexapro, which is (just) an enantiomer of their original Celexa. I’m not exactly a chem wiz here, but Celexa contains both the left and right-handed isomers (mirror versions) of the active molecule, whereas Lexapro has only one (left?) of the two. This is very important though because studies have shown that most of the drug’s potency comes from this, single, isomer (and even that the other may hinder its effectiveness and cause greater side effects).
   Now here’s the interesting part. L&F patented Lexapro as a new drug, and therefore generic versions cannot be produced (there was a court case over this). Wiki (forgive me) claims that they began heavily marketing the drug, as opposed to their older Celexa, and by the time their patent on Celexa expired a few years later, they were making up for the lost revenue due to the generic versions (of Celexa) with sales of their newer Lexapro. Wiki’s page on the drug puts the concept in these term: [“Escitalopram can be considered an example of "lifecycle management"- the strategy pharmaceutical companies use in order to extend the lifetime of a drug, in this case of the citalopram franchise.”] The insidious part is the implication that L&F could have known of or suspected the capacity of the Lexapro isomer to outperform the combination, perhaps even before Celexa was released in the first place. And IF they did, or found out earlier than 1997 when they started to develop the newer version, it would certainly have been in their best interest to wait to release it until just before their original patent would expire (just like they did).
   Now if the drug companies were really primarily motivated by helping people and not by making profits, these confict-of-interest-ish issues wouldn’t come up. Of course, one could say, patents are necessary to ‘insure’ scientific investment, or capitalistic medicine development is necessary to give people incentive to create these new drugs in the first place. These are probably valid arguments to an extent, at least, but it still doesn’t strike me as ‘right’ to withhold valuable help for people suffering from conditions like depression and anxiety disorders in order to produce monetary gains.
   

   Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this

6. 6. anyvainlegend 01:52 AM 7/22/08

   The misdeeds and questionable motives on one company do not reflect the scientific research community as a whole.
   
   If an effective vaxine for HIV/AIDS, cancers, Hepatitus, et cetera, were developed, it would mark a huge winfall for pharmaceutical corporations. Right now they only make money from people WITH a particular disease or virus, whereas an innoculation product would make for a major money spinner, becoming a default for healthy people with access to healthcare around the world, like the measles, mumps, rubella, flu and other shots have become.
   
   A better product will almost always win out over a more inferior one. 'Big Pharm' knows there is more money selling drugs to healthy AND unhealthy people, rather than to only the sick. Makes sense, right? Conspiracy theories are paranoid delusions.

   Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this