Presidential Advisory Council on HIV/AIDS, International Issues Subcommittee [Transcript]

4
1 So what do we have? Well, first of all, we
2 have today several AIDS vaccine candidates that have been
3 shown to be safe in humans. We also have some vaccine
4 candidates which produce a variety of immune responses
5 which include those immune responses possibly associated
6 with protection, and producing this immune response in the
7 majority of recipients.
8 Now normally, traditionally, if this were any
9 other disease, this would lead immediately and inevitably
10 to the initiation of field trials to determine the
11 effectiveness of the vaccine, and yet such trials are not
12 underway today. Why? I can only think of three reasons.
13 One reason people have put forward is an
14 ethical problem. They have said there are ethical problems
15 with the conduct of AIDS vaccine trials. My answer to that
16 is that none of the ethical issues that have been named are
17 insurmountable. Of course there are ethical questions, but
18 all of them can be dealt with effectively.
19 The second reason people sometimes put forward
20 is that some people say they're afraid that there's only
21 one chance we have in history to do an AIDS vaccine trial,
22 and that if it doesn't succeed 100 percent, we'll have lost
23 that historic single opportunity.
24 That is a myth, a pure myth.
25 The third reason why we do not have trials is
26 disagreement in the scientific community about whether

FREILICHER & ASSOCIATES, COURT REPORTERS
[phone]