Back in 1984, federal health officials, flush with excitement over discovery of the virus that causes AIDS, famously predicted that they would have a vaccine ready for market within three years. Now, after almost a quarter-century of toil and struggle, the effort has crashed in failure. No one yet knows whether a vaccine to prevent the disease will ever be possible.

David Baltimore, a Nobel-winning biologist, sounded a note of despair in an address to the American Association for the Advancement of Science in February. He noted that the virus has evolved in a way that makes it virtually impossible to attack by priming the immune system, the usual goal of a vaccine. Repeated efforts have failed, he said, leaving “no hopeful route to success.” The best hope, he said, may lie in the biological equivalent of a “Hail Mary” pass — a wholly new approach that would combine gene therapy, stem cells and immunologic therapy to thwart the disease.
At a conference at the National Institutes of Health last Tuesday, AIDS experts assessed how to proceed after the failure of the most promising vaccine candidate in two large clinical trials last year. Early results showed that those who received the vaccine may actually have been more likely to become infected with the virus than those who did not.
At least one organization that treats AIDS patients has called for giving up on a vaccine and shifting the money to testing, treatment and prevention. That is too defeatist. Federal health officials are rightly determined to increase financing for basic laboratory research, curtail big clinical trials of existing vaccine candidates, and funnel money to researchers with novel ideas. There is little doubt that a vaccine would be the most effective and cheapest way to shrink the AIDS epidemic.

More Young Women Infected With HIV In India

Med Headlines – According to a statement released by the World Health
Organization (WHO), the number of young women infected with HIV in
India is twice as high as the rate of young men affected by the
virus. A WHO official released a statement in Hyderabad, and
expressed concern on growing “feminization” of the disease.

WHO took into account a study by the UNAIDS conducted in 2006.
Manjula Lusti-Narasimhan, who is the technical officer for Sexual and
Reproductive Health and HIV, WHO, revealed that 39% of the people
infected with HIV are young women between the ages of 15-24. The
number is almost double that of affected men in the same age group.

Narasimhan said, “The increasing feminization of HIV in India, among
the younger lot, is not a good sign.”

arly 2.5 million people in India are infected with HIV. Experts feel
that nothing significant has been done to address this issue.

As indicated by Lester Coutinho of the David and Lucile Packard
Foundation, India, “There is far too much of dialogue, too much of
lip service and tokenism. But when it comes to actually tackling the
problem, especially when it concerns the youth, nothing much has been
done.” Coutinho organized an HIV/AIDS awareness program in the tribal
areas of Bihar and Jharkhand for past eight years.

http://www.medheadlines.com/news/11070298.htm

NEW DELHI: Observing that marriage was “anathema” without sex, a local court has held that a person whose spouse is found to be HIV positive is justified in seeking a divorce.

Delivering the judgment, which is bound to kick up a controversy, additional district judge Rajnish Bhatnagar said that a person cannot live “happily” with a spouse who has AIDS or is HIV positive.

The judge thus granted divorce to a man whose wife is HIV positive, saying her ailment had prevented him from leading a “happy married life” as the disease is sexually communicable.

The court added that sex was an integral part of marriage and in this particular case, the husband was deprived of that enjoyment. “The HIV status of the wife no doubt resulted in non-enjoyment of sexual intercourse between the parties and marriage without sex is anathema,” the court said.

The couple from Kerala had married in October 2000 and moved to the capital. Five months after their marriage, the wife was found to be HIV positive in a medical test conducted during her pregnancy. Tests showed the husband hadn’t contracted the dreaded virus.

AIDS activists termed the decision to seek divorce as a matter of personal choice but expressed dismay over the negative impact the judgment would have on society’s perceptions of HIV positive people.

Said Dushyant Meher, AIDS programme coordinator of Salaam Balak Trust, “This is a conflict between the rights of an HIVpositive person and a healthy person. In this case, the court has given precedence to the rights of the healthy person.”