http://gizmodo.com/5844706/this-90-successful-vaccine-may-be-our-best-chance-to-eradicate-aids
This looks very promising, hopefully it'll sail through trails.
This looks very promising, hopefully it'll sail through trails.
I always wonder why these stories never go MEGA BREAKING NEWS style and only sit on weird websites for a while then disappear.
Subsequently, when do you think these Spanish researchers will go missing?
Lots of money to be made from HIV treatments. I'm skeptical there will ever be a viable vaccine. I always have been.
Subsequently, when do you think these Spanish researchers will go missing?
Lots of money to be made from HIV treatments. I'm skeptical there will ever be a viable vaccine. I always have been.
Lots of money to be made from HIV treatments. I'm skeptical there will ever be a viable vaccine. I always have been.
Just curious but why do you think this?
There's also a ton of money to be made through a vaccine. If the argument that companies wont make vaccines because they make more money from treatment were true then why did we eradicate Smallpox, and create vaccines for a lot of other diseases?
Sorry, but this is bull, Lee. There is many US companies involved in vaccine research. Heck my company develops and markets vaccines against diseases that we make a lot of money of on treatments. Know why? Because there is A a large base of existing patients for which a vaccine won't work and B there is always enough people that will get the disease because for whatever reason they didn't get vaccinated. Double the opportunity to make money. The problem why nothing much happens on the HIV front the following (not exhaustive):
1. There is NOT a lot of money to be made in HIV anymore. Thanks to India in particular ignoring patent laws and the UN, governments and many insurance companies reimbursing for pirated products to save a buck (despite national laws) the value of HIV as a market has decreased dramatically and it becomes very risky to develop drugs at roughly 500 million a pop (minimum investment from Pre-clinical through Phase III at a 1-10% compounded chance of clinical and regulatory success)
2. Lack of obvious targets. Most of the candidates have been exhausted and many of the more complex ideas such as virus excision from DNA often fail in the later stages because the either the delivery mechanism or the drug itself can't reach all the infected cells and at a dose that is not highly toxic.
4. High rate of virus mutation. HIV's genome is very unstable which makes it difficult to identify targets stable enough to allow for an effective treatment that covers a large population. Newer concepts try to circumvent that by targeting host DNA which doesn't mutate rather than the virus itself but many of these concepts haven't made it into later stages of clinical development yet and statistically, a majority of them will not make it to or fail in Phase III.
5. Lack of understanding of the disease. While we know A LOT about HIV, there is still a lot we don't know. For example when I left research 5 years ago, it was still mystery how HIV could kill so many CD4 T-cells when only a small fraction of them was infected at any given time even during acute onset of AIDS. More progress has been made I am sure but considering that time to market for a pharmaceutical product on average is 10-15 years, you're going to have to be patient. It's amazing how much progress has been made so far in fact.
I've been a victim of that kind of medical practice more than once. My most recent was a terrible experience with my dentist of 10 years. I had a tooth with a root canal get an abscess. He told me I had to get the root canal and crown done over again. This made me extremely suspicious, so I got a second opinion. Found out that if I had through with this, I would have been back in the same situation a year later and lost the tooth anyway. In addition, I have always had gum problems. My dentist had told me that I would need to have oral surgery. The dentist I got the second opinion form on the root canal told me that I had plaque up under my gums and that was causing the problem. I did not need oral surgery. I was also told by them that I needed to quit smoking immediately to help fix the problem. I had asked my current dentist about that and he said smoking was fine. Needless to say I ditched my dentist and went with the new one. Quit smoking, got the root canal tooth pulled and now my mouth is in very good shape. You tell me what was going on.
Well I think that the fact that a dentist told you you could do it another way proves there isn't some conspiracy to extract more money from you. No way has a 100% success rate and different doctors will have different opinions about what works best based on their own and their teacher's experience. Very few people go into medicine for the money, it's too much work if you aren't there to help people get better.
I don't think it's s conspiracy at all. I just think it's human nature.