AIDS vaccines stop working after a few months, shocked researchers discover

Saturday, April 03, 2010 by: Ethan A. Huff, staff writer
Tags: AIDS, vaccines, health news

(NaturalNews) An experimental new AIDS vaccine is proving to be effective for only a very short time, according to researchers who have been finding it difficult to explain whether or not the drug is actually useful. Dr. Nelson Michael, a colonel at the Walter Reed Army Research Institute of Research in Maryland, and his team observed only a minor, temporal benefit in patients who took the vaccine, followed by a decline in efficacy.

The experimental vaccine is a combination of Sanofi-Pasteur's ALVAC canarypox/HIV vaccine and VaxGen's AIDSVAX. After AIDSVAX was found to be ineffective in 2003, researchers decided to combine it with ALVAC to see if that combination would work. Early results appeared to show that the vaccine reduced the risk of becoming infected with AIDS by 31 percent. However within a year, the risk level seemed to return back to normal.

At the Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections in San Francisco, the team explained that they may be able to come up with a new trial to verify the legitimacy of the vaccine. Dr. Michael said he plans to work with Dr. Anthony Fauci from the U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases to develop new trials to be conducted in Asia or Africa.

It is important to note that studies conducted on vitamins and nutrients showing positive results are usually accompanied with disclaimers by researchers that further study is needed to verify the results. In this case, researchers have been working overtime to defend the legitimacy of the experimental AIDS vaccine trial, despite the fact that they admit the results are questionable and they cannot determine whether it was actually a success.

The team plans to follow up the study by evaluating blood samples from vaccinated participants to measure their antibody levels. They hope to find evidence that the vaccine is exerting some kind of influence on participants' immune systems.

Previous AIDS vaccines have all proven to be a failure. In 2008, two of the most viable options gathered from a 20-year search not only failed to provide protection from the disease but actually increased one's risk of becoming infected with AIDS.

Since its first discovery in the 1980s, it is estimated that roughly 25 million people have died from AIDS. Various combinations of pharmaceutical drugs are offered to AIDS patients to help control the disease, but according to mainstream experts, there is no cure for it.

Sources for this story include:

http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE61I09L...

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content...