The latest efforts to create an AIDS vaccine have failed and the dread HIV continues to spread. From the story:Last fall’s spectacular failure of a three-shot regimen by Merck, which may have left some volunteers more susceptible to HIV infection, is prompting soul-searching at a major AIDS conference here, and calls for a pause in new trials until basic research uncovers new strategies to immunize against the shape-changing virus.
I vividly remember the scene in San Francisco when Secondhand Smokette and I moved here in 1992 at the height of the AIDS devastation. The heartbreak of seeing young men barely able to walk and looking as if they were 100 was almost too much to bear. I did some volunteer work to help AIDS patients and I saw the naked face of the plague up close—and the utter heartbreak it causes.
Further evaluation of the Merck vaccine study results has yet to pinpoint why it didn’t work, but researchers have uncovered a surprising clue as to why volunteers who received the vaccine may have increased their risk of infection: the infection rate was highest among volunteers who were not circumcised. It was a totally unexpected finding that adds to the mystery of why lack of circumcision seems to play such a big role in HIV infection.
In the wake of a trio of AIDS vaccine field trial failures - Merck’s STEP trial was only the most recent - National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases chief Dr. Tony Fauci has agreed to convene a “summit” of top leaders in the vaccine field to rethink strategy and perhaps plot new directions for the flow of federal tax dollars.
Why would anyone risk that? Yet tens of thousands of people are still infected every year in the USA. And what gets me is that almost every new infection is wholly preventable if people simply control their behavior.
This is an aspect of human exceptionalism that needs more emphasis in all our lives. Unlike animals, we can control our urges. We can deny ourselves that which our biological natures desire. As rational and moral beings, we have the capacity to transcend instinct. Vegetarians, for example, forgo natural human food for moral or health reasons. Monastics forgo sexual relations and family for religious or philosophical reasons. Surely, with HIV such a dread disease, people can restrain their risky behaviors—at least until a true vaccine or cure can be found. Indeed, that should be society’s expectation of everyone. After all, lives are literally at stake.
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