Officials: AIDS Research Needs Overhaul

(CBS/ AP)  Scientists will have to take "enormous intellectual leaps" to develop an AIDS vaccine in the coming years, say researchers clearly frustrated by the failure of a once-promising shot.

The researchers, including a top National Institutes of Health official, want new people with new ideas to step up and join the search. They say the focus of their research should be on discovering a vaccine rather than on clinical trials for evaluating medicines that may or may not work.

"Design of a vaccine that blocks HIV infection will require enormous intellectual leaps beyond present day knowledge," concluded a broad team of researchers writing in Friday's edition of the journal Science.

More than 6,500 new HIV infections occur daily worldwide. A recent high-profile trial of a potential vaccine not only failed to prevent infection, but those who got the inoculation appeared at increased risk of infection compared with those who were given a placebo.

After the disappointing results, the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases held a summit in March on how to reinvigorate vaccine research.

The institute will still support studies in people - but it is raising the bar that candidate vaccines need to pass to get federal support. NIH is looking for fresh ideas on how to approach HIV vaccine discovery, and emphasizing basic laboratory research to fill in key gaps in knowledge. Among the priorities will be increased research in chimpanzees, the Science article says.

The recent failed vaccine study showed "we were maybe on the wrong track a bit," Dr. Anthony Fauci, the institute's director, told a Science podcast. "We will be turning the knob, as I like to say, more preferentially toward answering some of the fundamental questions that have gone unanswered," he said.

When contractors don't meet milestones, or when initiatives don't attract the highest quality of applications, money will be redirected to more promising research activities, Fauci's team wrote. Unfortunately, the need for more resources aimed at discovering a vaccine comes at a time when the National Institutes of Health's budget remains flat, the officials said.

"Should growth in the NIH budget be reinstated in future years, one of the highest priorities will be to target those additional resources to HIV vaccine programs, particularly vaccine discovery research," the health officials wrote.

The struggles to develop a vaccine come at a time when a greater percentage of HIV/AIDS patients are African-American.

Although just 13 percent of the population, the Center for Disease Control says that African Americans accounted for 49 percent of new HIV cases in 2006, the most recent year for which they have statistics, reports CBS News correspondent Randall Pinkston.

The epidemic is also exploding among teenagers and young adults. Of new HIV cases between ages 13 and 19, 69 percent are black. Between the ages of 20 and 24, 56 percent are black.

"No matter how you look at it, through the lens of gender, sexual orientation or class, or level of education or the region of the country where you live, black folks bear the brunt of the AIDS epidemic in this country," Phill Wilson, a Los Angeles-based AIDS activist, told CBS News.

Wilson's also a 27-year survivor. He says early activists sent the wrong message to the black community.

"The mischaracterization of the epidemic ... a white gay man's disease made many black folks think they didn't have to pay attention to the disease," Wilson said.

The development of new miracle drugs dramatically increased survival rates. But the drugs are expensive - and many black Americans have neither private insurance nor the funds.

"A lot of people are dying because they're on a waiting list," Byther-Smith said. "And they can't get medicine."

AIDS activists complain they can't get much attention either from the presidential candidates. When senators John McCain and Barack Obama do mention the disease, their concern is often directed toward AIDS in Africa - not AIDS in America.

[cbsvisit]

The scientific community can''t handle an intellectual leap because too many would be exposed for fraud.See my website www.cancerfraudbadbiotech.com and review the new ideas made available to Gates Merck and Pfizer plus others. The concern not to fund was to contiinue to cover up fraud. And if you read the Red Zone you will see if you don''t use new ideas the disease may cross over and be able to tag 70% percent of humanity. A fmr US Surgeon Gen. has regretted my treatment and Noam Chomsky said the theory may be of phenomenal importance. You decide. Thank you E.A.Greenhalgh

[ejcspau]

AIDS started in Africa, so everyone around the world who now has is should be sent to Africa. Let them deal with their epidemic.

[baileyccc]

Now why in this world would medical science walk to find a cure for AIDS. It is a "cash cow" like diabetes and cancer. The profits are in controlling the symptoms. This is standard protocol for medicine in the United States.

[nothappyatall]

WASTE of research dollars which are always in short supply ,this is a 100% preventable disease UNLIKE cancer or heart disease!

SIMPLY do not have s3x with other humans OR if you insist, then wear a dam CONDO.M!!!!!!!