[Email to David Baltimore from Bruce Weniger]

Weniger, Bruce
From: Weniger, Bruce [CORP/NIPI/bgw2]
Sent: 30-May-97 12:59
To: Baltimore, David (MIT)
Subject: Reuters report of Baltimore quotations
From: Weniger, Bruce
Date: 30 May, 1997 11:59
To: Baltimore, David (MIT)
Subject: Reuters report of Baltimore quotations
Dear David,
If the below news report accurately quotes you, then
would you consider standing up to defend the scientific
usefulness for the Thai government, in the face of a serious
epidemic, to determine -- in fact, not theory -- whether existing
HIV vaccine candidates that have protected chimpanzees in
animal challenge studies (without understanding how or why),
and have successfully completed phase I and II trials of safety
and immunogenicity in humans, i.e., the monomeric gpl20
vaccines, would afford any degree of protection for their
populaiton from infection, disease, or contagiousness?
You say your committee would support "any vaccine
strategy that seems in the slightest to be potentially
beneficial." Do you have any firm validated data or
known correlates of human protections upon which to
definitively conclude that this vaccine strategy would not have
such slight potential benefit?
If you truly "don't know what will work", are you willing
to admit the possibility, however remote, that the predictions
of Ho/Wolinsky/Moore and others about gpl20 may be
wrong? What does molecular immunology have to lose, but
face?
Regards,
Bruce
Tel: [1] [phone]
Fax: [1] [phone]
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
"Ten Years is Too Short a Time for [an] AIDS Vaccine Expert"
Reuters (05/29/97)
Dr. David Baltimore, the head of the National Institutes of
Health's AIDS Vaccine Research Committee, said Thursday that
President Clinton's call for an AIDS vaccine by the year 2007 is
unrealistic. "If you say what he meant by development of a
vaccine is to have a good vaccine candidate--then I'd say that's
a reasonable timeline." stated Baltimore, who noted that it often
takes years just to field test a working vaccine. Baltimore,
president-elect of the California Institute of Technology, also
said, "In my committee we have taken the approach of supporting
any vaccine strategy that seems in the slightest to be
potentially beneficial... we don't know what will work."

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