In a recent Baltimore Sun editorial, Dr. Homayoon Khanlou and Michael Weinstein, both of the AIDS Healthcare Foundation, argued that less funding should be dedicated to HIV vaccine research so that more could go to HIV prevention and treatment. In response, the Sun (baltimoresun.com, 4/5) has published letters to the editor supporting vaccine research.
The first, [...]
Defending HIV Vaccine Research
To circumcise or not?
For nearly all of Nada Mouallem’s pregnancy, she and her husband, Tony, had a running argument. She wanted to have their son circumcised. He didn’t. “Many days, I’d go off and research all the pros. He’d go and research all the cons. Then we’d get together at night and fight,” she says.
Arguments about circumcision often [...]
Transplanting Hope: Stem Cell Experiment Raises Eyebrows at CROI
Not every remarkable HIV treatment discovery makes the front page of the morning papers. Take, for example, a single-patient study presented at the 15th annual Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections (CROI) in Boston that went largely unnoticed by news outlets but is now generating excitement among activists and researchers.
The intriguing study involves an HIV-positive [...]
Rethinking Is Urged on a Vaccine for AIDS
Researchers must go back to the drawing board before they can develop an effective vaccine against H.I.V., AIDS experts said at a scientific meeting on Tuesday.
And Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, the top federal official responsible for AIDS research, agreed that more fundamental knowledge is needed about H.I.V. and the way the body and experimental vaccines [...]
Merck AIDS Vaccine Failure May Doom Promising Study
A once-promising study of an AIDS vaccine developed by the U.S. will be scaled back and may be scrubbed after the failure of a related Merck & Co. effort.
The vaccine, created by the U.S. National Institutes of Health’s Vaccine Research Center in Bethesda, Maryland, may be studied in about only 2,000 people in the U.S. [...]
Circumcised men no less likely to get sex diseases
Circumcision does not appear to shield men from the types of sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) common in the developed world, according to new research from New Zealand.
While there is “compelling evidence” that circumcision protects men from contracting HIV through sex with women, it is unclear whether circumcised men are at lower risk of other types [...]
How HIV Turns Food-poisoning Into Lethal Infection
Nearly half of all HIV-positive African adults who become infected with Salmonella die from what otherwise would be a seven-day bout of diarrhea. Now, UC Davis School of Medicine scientists have discovered how salmonella becomes lethal for AIDS patients. Their findings also implicate a mechanism by which HIV evades the powerful drugs used to treat [...]
Some people may transmit weaker AIDS virus-study
People with a genetic variation that slows down HIV may also be causing a mutation to the AIDS virus that makes it less potent if transmitted to others, researchers said on Friday.
The human immunodeficiency virus that causes AIDS attacks immune system cells. Like other viruses, it cannot replicate on its own but must hijack a [...]
Study: HIV Vaccine Volunteers Need More Support From Researchers
When it comes to developing a safe, effective vaccine to stem the global AIDS pandemic, researchers agree there is one component they can’t do without - volunteers willing to become human guinea pigs for testing the experimental serums.
Tens of thousands of participants will be needed for clinical trials of vaccines aimed at preventing HIV infection, [...]
Bottom Line for Project (Red)
A year ago, staff members at the Treatment and Research AIDS Center could barely cope. Patients, unable to find care elsewhere, flowed in from every corner of the country. And if one of them was fortunate enough to find a bed here, she often had to share it.
Today, a dozen patients, mostly women, sit in [...]