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

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1 nothing.
2 So the failure to proceed with vaccine field
3 trials, given the history of vaccine development for every
4 other vaccine that's been successful essentially, the
5 failure to proceed in vaccine field trials is patently
6 unethical.
7 Human rights are particularly relevant to this
8 discussion because, as you know, human rights in the first
9 instance involves a relationship between the state and the
10 individual. In this context, the federal government has
11 invested so heavily in its institutions, from NIH to CDC to
12 FDA to the Department of Defense to USAID, they are so
13 involved in AIDS vaccine research and development that in
14 this context the federal government's failure to proceed to
15 AIDS vaccine field trials, while it has contributed
16 institutionally and financially to field trials of other
17 vaccines which met essentially similar vaccine development
18 criteria -- in other words, human safety and immune
19 response -- without prior knowledge of the correlates of
20 immunity, this failure of the government to proceed
21 represents a clear violation of the human rights of
22 American citizens. We don't even have to talk about
23 citizens in other countries. The human rights of Americans
24 are being violated by this failure of the government to
25 act.
26 This is underscored by the fact that the

FREILICHER & ASSOCIATES, COURT REPORTERS
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