An experimental AIDS vaccine that appears to be the first to protect people was mired for years in deep controversy and credit for its success must go to Thailand, where the trial was conducted, experts said.
The trial was criticized by 22 prominent US scientists in 2004 because the vaccine was widely expected to have no effect.
The critics, including Robert Gallo of the Institute of Human Virology in Baltimore, who helped discover the AIDS virus, signed a letter accusing the US government of wasting more than US$100 million by funding it.
But Thailand’s health authorities and their US partners at the National Institutes of Health and the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research pressed on with the trial, which involved 16,000 Thai volunteers.
“It was a tough decision. I am glad we made it,” said Anthony Fauci, director of the US National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, who defied the criticism and continued the trial.
The trial vaccine was made using two failed products — Sanofi-Pasteur’s ALVAC canary pox/HIV vaccine and AIDSVAX, made by a San Francisco company and now owned by the non-profit Global Solutions for Infectious Disease.
“This trial was controversial. In 2004, prominent US scientists wrote a letter to Science magazine saying this shouldn’t be done because the vaccines that had previously been tested were found wanting and didn’t stimulate immunity of the right kind,” said Donald Burke, dean of the University of Pittsburgh’s Graduate School of Public Health.
“But given the importance of the AIDS epidemic, the decision was made to go forward regardless of these criticisms. It was a difficult choice, but a courageous choice,” said Burke, who was head of AIDS research at Walter Reed before retiring in 1997.
Burke isolated the AIDS virus taken from a young HIV-infected Thai soldier in 1989, after Thai army doctors discovered an outbreak of HIV among young recruits in Chiang Mai. That virus sample went on to become one of the seed viruses in the experimental vaccine, Burke said.
The US$105 million trial was sponsored and paid for by the US government and results showed it cut the risk of infection by 31.2 percent among 16,402 volunteers over three years.
Eleven people, including a former minister, were arrested in Serbia on Friday over a train station disaster in which 16 people died. The concrete canopy of the newly renovated station in the northern city of Novi Sad collapsed on Nov. 1, 2024 in a disaster widely blamed on corruption and poor oversight. It sparked a wave of student-led protests and led to the resignation of then-Serbian prime minister Milos Vucevic and the fall of his government. The public prosecutor’s office in Novi Sad opened an investigation into the accident and deaths. In February, the public prosecutor’s office for organized crime opened another probe into
RISING RACISM: A Japanese group called on China to assure safety in the country, while the Chinese embassy in Tokyo urged action against a ‘surge in xenophobia’ A Japanese woman living in China was attacked and injured by a man in a subway station in Suzhou, China, Japanese media said, hours after two Chinese men were seriously injured in violence in Tokyo. The attacks on Thursday raised concern about xenophobic sentiment in China and Japan that have been blamed for assaults in both countries. It was the third attack involving Japanese living in China since last year. In the two previous cases in China, Chinese authorities have insisted they were isolated incidents. Japanese broadcaster NHK did not identify the woman injured in Suzhou by name, but, citing the Japanese
YELLOW SHIRTS: Many protesters were associated with pro-royalist groups that had previously supported the ouster of Paetongtarn’s father, Thaksin, in 2006 Protesters rallied on Saturday in the Thai capital to demand the resignation of court-suspended Thai Prime Minister Paetongtarn Shinawatra and in support of the armed forces following a violent border dispute with Cambodia that killed more than three dozen people and displaced more than 260,000. Gathered at Bangkok’s Victory Monument despite soaring temperatures, many sang patriotic songs and listened to speeches denouncing Paetongtarn and her father, former Thai prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra, and voiced their backing of the country’s army, which has always retained substantial power in the Southeast Asian country. Police said there were about 2,000 protesters by mid-afternoon, although
MOGAMI-CLASS FRIGATES: The deal is a ‘big step toward elevating national security cooperation with Australia, which is our special strategic partner,’ a Japanese official said Australia is to upgrade its navy with 11 Mogami-class frigates built by Japan’s Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, Australian Minister for Defence Richard Marles said yesterday. Billed as Japan’s biggest defense export deal since World War II, Australia is to pay US$6 billion over the next 10 years to acquire the fleet of stealth frigates. Australia is in the midst of a major military restructure, bolstering its navy with long-range firepower in an effort to deter China. It is striving to expand its fleet of major warships from 11 to 26 over the next decade. “This is clearly the biggest defense-industry agreement that has ever
RSS