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Feds steering funds back to basic AIDS vax research
After trying and failing repeatedly to develop an AIDS vaccine, federal officials say they're going back to the drawing board to come up with some new ideas. Anthony Fauci told a summit meeting that "We need to turn the knob toward [basic scientific] discovery--nobody should be unclear about that," according to the Washington Post. And UC San Francisco's Walter Greene backed him up on that point, saying that it's time to execute a mid-course correction in their strategy.
Officials have been forced to rethink strategies after Merck had to halt studies into an experimental vaccine after concluding that its approach likely increased the risk of contracting the lethal virus. The NIH is spending close to half a billion dollars this year on vaccine research. About 38 percent of that money goes to testing experimental vaccines, but Fauci is calling for an even heavier emphasis on funding essential research.
- read the report from the Washington Post
Related Articles:
Long delay seen for Merck's AIDS vaccine. Report
Merck's HIV vaccine linked to higher infections rate. Report
Merck halts study of "ineffective" HIV vaccine. Report
AIDS scientist backed on new vaccine approach. Report
Comments
By Anonymous | Posted 10:56am | June 19, 2009
Quite agreed with Mr. Fauci. The real, potent, long-sought-after AIDS vaccine may still be residing in the fresh Idea of an unknown research student,somewhere else. I mean in his/her crude, basic idea. I think the mistake the AIDS vaccine industry is making is to wholely dependent on the might of known scientists and research institutions. We need to devise method to scout for this "crude" and basic ideas from these unknown and "rudy" research students anywhere, any race. For instance, will anyone be surprised if this sought-after AIDS vaccine may not need involvement of the viral components at all? or will anyone agree if the vaccine may just be as simple as just turning common plasma to a game player to give us the demise of AIDS/HIV forever! It`s time to go low to basic research rather than dependent on applied ones only. This is just a contribution, a suggestion and an opinion.
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