Canadian HIV vaccine gets green light for human testing

[Mr. X]

The odds are apparently (From what I remember reading) something like 1 in a thousand. Much less then 10% I think.

Still, vaccine = dead HIV virus essentially. Theoretically the immunity would prevent the vaccine from working properly. And thats the problem. The vaccine would do something, it just wouldn't be something that is expected. And in medicine, unexpected results are (usually) bad.

 

[FreakyLocz14]

The odds are apparently (From what I remember reading) something like 1 in a thousand. Much less then 10% I think.

Still, vaccine = dead HIV virus essentially. Theoretically the immunity would prevent the vaccine from working properly. And thats the problem. The vaccine would do something, it just wouldn't be something that is expected. And in medicine, unexpected results are (usually) bad.

Exactly! This is like how when someone without ADHD takes medications for it, it has the opposite effect.

 

[Livewire]

There's more to it than that. You don't get sick from dead viruses. People still get sick after a flue shot because of A, different strain of flu, or B, they mentally convince themselves they're going to get sick. You can't get HIV from this, entirely different type of disease than your average strain of Influenza.

 

[Nihilego]

Still, vaccine = dead HIV virus essentially. Theoretically the immunity would prevent the vaccine from working properly. And thats the problem. The vaccine would do something, it just wouldn't be something that is expected. And in medicine, unexpected results are (usually) bad.

The vaccine and the immunity work completely differently to each other, though. The natural immunity is caused by the lack of a protein required by the HIV pathogen to enter host cells while the vaccine injects non-infectious viral particles which the immune system can ready itself against. They're completely independent of each other.

That doesn't mean to say that any medicine is completely tame and works exactly how we'd like it to, though. Of course it should be tested on a very large sample of people first, but what Live_Wire said is essentially true. Vaccines can't make people ill unless it's a bad vaccine or there is something very, very wrong with the host's immune system. Neither of which arise as a result of natural immunity.

 

[Mr. X]

And thats the thing. All we know is what might happen.

HIV works much differently from your standard virus though. Because of that we can't use the effects of other vaccines as a way to determine what the effects of this vaccine may be.

Even then, the immunity varies. Some people only have a greater resistance to the virus, some people are completely immune, and some people have occasionally lost this immunity for unknown reasons. We don't even know what caused this immunity though. Some people say the mutation originally protected against the plague and HIV immunity was just something else it gave, some say it was a result of smallpox.