U.S. Army uncovers successful results for AIDS vaccine

[The Straight Story]

U.S. Army uncovers successful results for AIDS vaccine

BAGRAM AIR FIELD, Afghanistan -- The fight against one of the deadliest virus known may have met its match against the United States Army.

The Army in conjunction with the Thai Ministry of Public Health, the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease, the National Institutes of Health, Sanofi Pasteur and Global Solutions for Infectious Diseases have uncovered successful results for an AIDS vaccination.

Lt. Col. Robert Paris, preventive medicine physician for Combined Joint Task Force-82, was the chief of retrovirology at Armed Forces Research Institute of Medical Sciences in Thailand, and had overall responsibility of the Army's HIV vaccine research program. This involved testing candidates in all HIV vaccine phases and was involved in the preparation, design, coordination and analysis of the study.

Paris specifically studied the effects of HIV vaccines on the natural history of HIV infection among people who become HIV-infected after vaccination. He also examined genetic factors associated with immune responses.

The Army and partners, trial tested a combination of ALVAC HIV vaccine, a candidate vaccination for HIV, and AIDSVAX B/E vaccine, another candidate vaccination for HIV, which lowered the rate of HIV infection by 31.2 percent.

http://www.army.mil/-news/2009/10/21/29070-us-army-uncovers-successful-results-for-aids-vaccine/?ref=news-home-title4

[T Wolf]

1. I know the term "uncovered" was in the lead, but my first thought was that the military

had discovered this years ago but only now are allowing that information to surface.

The research did start in 1995, though. So one might wonder about the delay...

[Recursion]

2. It's a virus that can be dormant for a decade or more

The delay is just an unfortunate side-effect of that. In the 80's we may have made a lot of things worse by jumping to conclusions before the data supported them (eg, the toxic levels of AZT they gave out), so this is probably a wiser course.

[Nederland]

3. Why would the US Army research this?

Everybody knows that there are no homosexuals in the Army, just like everybody knows only gay men get AIDS... :eyes:

[GreenPartyVoter]

4. Finally, a reason for me not to resent the huge DOD budget quite as much.