It's been over twenty years since Robert Gallo's announcement that he'd discovered the probable cause of AIDS. In the U.S., we've spent over 100 billion dollars researching HIV. Worldwide, there are over 100,000 researchers poking and prodding this retrovirus. Margaret Heckler announced in 1984 that a vaccine would be available within two years (1986). So many researchers, so much time, so much money...it's 2005, where's that vaccine?

There are two important points to consider with HIV and vaccines. First, how do vaccines work? To most laypeople, a vaccine must seem like an almost magical fluid that gets injected into a person and voila, they're cured. Vaccines don't cure anybody of anything, not directly anyway. Unlike drugs, which are designed to disrupt, interrupt, alter or terminate certain cellular functions, vaccines essentially help the body help itself. A weakend, or altered form of the virus we're trying to combat is injected into the body. The immune system recognizes this presence as an invader and sets about creating antibodies against it. So far, so good.

The second point to consider is how we go about diagnosing HIV infection. Everybody knows that we use an antibody test to determine HIV positivity. So...we assume somebody's HIV-infected because their blood reacts to an antibody test, which obviously means they're naturally producing antibodies to HIV. Back to the vaccine! So how would a vaccine-induced antibody response differ from one induced by HIV itself? How would a weakened/altered form of HIV entice the immune system into creating better antibodies to HIV than the ones it produces against the real thing? Anybody notice a problem here?

Pretend for a moment that a vaccine against HIV has been made. You get injected with it, and soon your body starts producing antibodies to HIV. Ok, no problem. At some point in the future, you come into contact with HIV. Your immune system notices this invader, and with it's previously-acquired HIV antibodies, sets about to eradicate it from your body. How is this different from people today who are HIV positive (by the finding of HIV antibodies) whose immune systems are doing just what they're supposed to be doing...producing antibodies against HIV? It seems quite paradoxical that an immune system can be vigorously producing antibodies against a pathogen and still be viewed as fatally crippled. Immune systems produce antibodies, that's what they do. If an immune system was overwhelmed or devastated by a pathogen, a good clue would be that it wasn't able to produce antibodies.

So, somebody please tell me how a vaccine against HIV can be created. If our bodies and immune systems are already doing what a vaccine would help do, what's the missing part of the equation?

Like those realists were saying not so many decades ago, we'll never defeat Tuberculosis and Syphillis.

these plagues are not eradicated. AIDS mutates very rapidly. This is still a big problem. I think the solution is in resonate frequency EMP treatment. Look up Royal Raymond Rife.

The original post displays a poor understanding of immunology. When you receive a vaccination, your body does indeed recognize the material in the shot (viral protein antigen, dead or attenuated virus, bacterial antigen, etc.) and raises antibodies to it.

Your body's antibody machines, plasma cells, live for many years (sometimes for life) producing the antibody for the particular antigen they were exposed to from the vaccination (or previous illness). These antibodies circulate in the bloodstream, or are secreted in mucus in your mouth, nose, intestine, and so on. When they encounter the organism for which they are specific, they bind to its antigens and coat it, which then acts as a signal for a different kind of immune cell to gobble up the pathogen and kill it. It is therefore destroyed before it has a chance to establish an infection.

Now, some vaccinations, like the MMR (measles/mumps/rubella) only require a single dose to raise enough antibodies to do the job, while others (hepatitis A and B, for example) require booster shots to get the body to ramp up antibody production sufficiently. And since those plasma cells don't always live forever, we ask you to get boosters of even the MMR, or tetanus shots for example, every ten years or so.

So, to answer the question about why vaccinations protect you against infection, the answer is that it takes your body a few days to weeks to raise antibodies, whether to a shot or to a natural infection. With HIV (or the flu, or the last cold you had, any virus...), the infection becomes established, entrenched in your cells before the immune system has had time to create enough antibodies. And, with HIV, it kills the very cells (GP120 sensitive helper T cells, to get technical) that are responsible for overseeing the destruction of HIV infected cells. So eventually, not only does it infect your CD4 T cells, it also gets into the central nervous system and causes AIDS dementia in the very late stage of the disease.

And that's the rub. HIV is one smart virus -- it kills the very cells that are trying to get rid of it. Other viruses -- polio, herpes viruses, West Nile, you name it -- don't, so as long as you can survive the effects of the infection for a few days to weeks (and the virus doesn't manage to fool your immune system into thinking it isn't foreign, like we think hepatitis C does -- that's a whole other post!) your body will clear the virus and you get well.

For a last comment, the reason I used the title I did is because we know vaccines work. Smallpox doesn't exist anymore because of an aggressive campaign of eradication based on vaccination. Little kids in the US almost never get polio anymore, or measles, or mumps, and so on, as long as they are vaccinated. And, it's not just HIV that mutates too fast or has too many serotypes for us to make a vaccine -- Hep C is similar, as is that familiar old friend, Neisseria gonorrhea (cause of many a poor person's burning urination). I don't know if there will ever be a vaccine for HIV, and maybe there never will be. But don't be mislead into thinking that the vaccines we have don't work.

AS OF 1999, IT WOULD SEEM THE ROCHE AMIPLICOR HIV-1

MONITOR TEST IS THE MOST POPULAR PCR "VIRAL LOAD" TEST.

"The Roche Amplicor HIV-1 Monitor(TM) test kit, approved by the FDA, was used by more than 70% of the laboratories reporting results."

http://www.phppo.cdc.gov/MPEP/pdf/rna/9902rnaa.pdf

The test kit list: http://www.fda.gov/cber/products/testkits.htm

AMPLICOR HIV-1 MONITOR(TM) TEST

"The AMPLICOR HIV-1 MONITOR Test is not intended to be used as a screening test for HIV or as a diagnostic test to confirm

the presence of HIV infection."

http://www.fda.gov/cber/pma/p9500054.htm

http://www.fda.gov/cber/PMAlabel/P9500054LB.pdf 

NucliSens(R) HIV-1 QT -- HIV QT Nov. 13, 2001

"The NucliSens(R) HIV-1 QT assay is not intended to be used as a screening test for HIV-1 nor is it to be used as a diagnostic test to confirm the presence of HIV-1 infection."

http://www.fda.gov/cber/pma/p0100010.htm

http://www.fda.gov/cber/pmalabel/P0100010LB.pdf 

COBAS AmpliScreen HIV-1 Test, version 1.5

Approval Date: 12/19/2003

"This test is not intended for use as an aid in diagnosis."

http://www.fda.gov/cber/products/hiv1roc121903.htm

http://www.fda.gov/cber/label/hiv1roc121903LB.pdf 



Procleix(R) HIV-1/HCV Assay -- IN0076-01, Rev. A

Approval Date: 6/4/2004

"The Procleix HIV-1 Discriminatory Assay may be used as an aid in the diagnosis of HIV-1 infection." 

http://www.fda.gov/cber/products/hivhcvgen060404.htm

http://www.fda.gov/cber/label/hivhcvgen060404LB.pdf

GENETIC SYSTEMS (TM) rLAV EIA

"The rLAV EIA is intended to be used as a screening test for donated blood or plasma and as an aid in the diagnosis of infection with HIV-1."

http://www.fda.gov/cber/products/hiv1gen062998.htm

http://www.fda.gov/cber/sba/hiv1gen062998S.pdf

VIRONOSTIKAT(R) HIV-1 PLUS O MICROELISA SYSTEM

"System is intended for use as an aid in diagnosis of infection with HIV-1. It is not intended for use in screening blood donors."

http://www.fda.gov/cber/pma/P020066.htm

http://www.fda.gov/cber/pmalabel/P020066LB.pdf

THE CAMBRIDGE BIOTECH HIV-1 WESTERN BLOT KIT

"Accurate diagnosis of HIV-1 infection is important in determining an individual's risk for developing AIDS. Accuracy is complicated by false-positive and false-negative (EIA) results. It would appear that in some limited infections, a compartmentalized response occurs in which expression of HIV-1 or its respective Immune response is limited to a restricted number of organs and tissues.(17)"



"Slight ambiguities exist in the designation of the molecular weights of the HIV-I antigens. The designations listed in Figure 1 have been established by both internal testing with known markers and consensus of published

literature.(5-10)"

"Although a blot POSITIVE for antibodies to HIV-1 indicates infection with the virus..."

"POSITIVE blot results using any specimen type (serum, plasma, or urine) should be followed with additional testing. Such testing may rely on alternative test methods or specimen types. The clinical implications of antibodies to HIV-1 in an asymptomatic person are not known."

"The sensitivity ... using urine was evaluated by comparing the urine results to the results obtained from testing paired serum specimens collected from individuals who were HIV-1 seropositive and from individuals clinically diagnosed as AIDS patients."

http://www.fda.gov/cber/products/hiv1cam052898.htm

http://www.fda.gov/cber/label/hiv1cam052898Lb.pdf 

OraSure(R) HIV-1 Western Blot Kit

"The OraSure HIV-l Western Blot Kit is an in vitro qualitative assay for the detection of antibodies to individual proteins of the Human Immunodeficiency Virus Type 1 (HIV-l) in human oral fluid specimens

obtained with the OraSure HIV-l Oral Specimen Collection Device.

The OraSure HIV-l Western Blot Kit is not intended for use with blood, serum/plasma or urine specimens, or for screening or reinstating potential blood donors."

http://www.fda.gov/cber/pma/P950004.htm

http://www.fda.gov/cber/pmalabel/P950004Lb.pdf 

Reveal(TM) Rapid HIV -1 Antibody Test

"The Reveal" Rapid HIV -1 Antibody Test is intended for use as a point-of-care test to aid in the diagnosis of  infection with HIV -1. This test is suitable for use in multi-test algorithms designed for statistical validation of rapid HIV test results."

http://www.fda.gov/cber/pma/p000023.htm

http://www.fda.gov/cber/pmalabel/P000023LB.pdf