Canadians to start HIV vaccine clinical trials

http://www.ottawacitizen.com/health/Canadians+start+vaccine+clinical+trials/5890341/story.html

by pg • 15 years ago

77 29 15 years ago

9oliYQjP• 15 years ago

Nobel peace prizes are not normally awarded to philanthropists. But I'm just going to leave this link here. It's a photo of Bill Gates with Prime Minister Stephen Harper announcing funding for HIV vaccine research in 2007.

http://pm.gc.ca/grfx/news/PM-feature-20070220-Gates.jpg

Source: http://pm.gc.ca/eng/media.asp?id=1544

droz• 15 years ago

It is laughable to think that someone who funds research should be given an award. The people doing the actual research deserve an award leaps and bounds above and beyond the one providing funding.

asshammer• 15 years ago

They are all doing a lot more than I am to fix the problem so either way, hats off to them.

tolmasky• 15 years ago

I don't think you need to be so antagonistic against the funders. Not to mention that there are different awards for different things. I think it would be perfectly fine (and that all the members involved would agree) if the researchers were given the Nobel prize in Biology and the funders the Peace prize.

jpulgarin• 15 years ago

Why?

Not implying this is the case here, but what if the research is trivial, but requires billions of dollars?

keithnoizu• 15 years ago

Depends,

If you have a group of researchers truly dedicated to this cause that are out there working long hours and struggling to get the resources they need to solve this issue than yes they should be rewarded when their work comes to fruition.

On the flip side if you're just some lab rat making a salary and don't really care one way or another what genes you're slicing today as long as you're getting paid then what makes your contribution greater than someone that gave up a significant portion of their personal wealth to make something happen.

The real test here should be if someone has made a material contribution here because the thought it was the right thing to do.

loboman• 15 years ago

Does Bill Gates care about this? I wonder how many of the Nobel Prize winners care about it really; they can be very proud about what they did already, who cares if somebody else recognizes them as important?

defen• 15 years ago

> It will test how effective the vaccine is by comparing a vaccinated and a non-vaccinated group, Kang said in the video.

So I was going to ask how clinical trials for vaccines are done, and this part kind of answers it, but now I'm curious - if there's no control group that gets a placebo injection, how do you control for the fact that people may behave differently if they think they've been given an anti-HIV vaccine? Unless I'm misreading this and "non-vaccinated" means placebo.

redthrowaway3• 15 years ago

A couple things:

1) We generally know the strength of the placebo effect and the rate of HIV transmission among at-risk groups, so we can control for it, and

2) Not sure the placebo effect is particularly relevant. First, a vaccine that shows little to no benefit over the control (placebo or not) is not an effective vaccine. Second, placebos aren't effective for everything. I highly doubt the effectiveness of a placebo at preventing HIV transmission (although it would be difficult to test ethically).

ghshephard2• 15 years ago

The placebo effect is important because it might _increase_ rate of HIV transmission by resulting in more risky behavior. Or, it might reduce rate of HIV transmission by causing the person to focus on the possibility of infection more.

schiffern2• 15 years ago

They're placebo controlled. It would be a colossal waste of money to do it any other way. Besides being methodologically unsound, the trials wouldn't be recognized by the FDA or Health Canada.

The University of Rochester has also been working on HIV vaccines for many years. They're always recruiting subjects. The posters are interesting because you can see what stage this particular vaccine is at based on who they're looking for. If they're looking for married, middle-age straight non-injection-drug-users, it's safety trial. If they're looking for young single MSMs or injection drug users, then you know that vaccine has progressed to the efficacy trials.

http://www.rochestervictoryalliance.org/

The 'non-vaccinated' group he speaks of is the placebo group. The reason he mentions it 'head off' anyone assuming they would test it by exposing people to HIV.

NolF2• 15 years ago

There is no placebo group, it would be highly unethical to do so. Half the sample population gets the treatment half of it doesn't with the option to get the treatment once trial finishes. Changes in behavior due to treatment are accounted via survey pre-treatment and at measuring intervals.

ojbyrne• 15 years ago

My impression this is going to be something other than a pure scientific experiment (and I don't mean that in a bad way).

Medicine and social sciences have a large body of research about things like the fact that you can't do a pure experiment with a control group if there's serious risks.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Design_of_quasi-experiments

The seminal work (which I slogged through once upon a time): http://www.amazon.ca/Experimental-Quasi-Experimental-Designs...

ajju• 15 years ago

Kang has been studying HIV since 1987.

This guy has been working on fighting one virus for almost 25 years. I can't quite compare what I aim to do with my startup to preventing HIV, but we certainly hope to have a massive positive impact on the world. So when I feel impatient about changing the world now, this should put things in perspective.

baddox• 15 years ago

Why does Canada need permission from the FDA?

rdl4• 15 years ago

They want to make sure the trials are recognized by the FDA as well, so the resulting drug (if successful) can be sold in the US without repeating early stage trials.

Outsourcing clinical trials to other countries (usually India or SE Asia) is one of the biggest advances in drug development in the past 20 years.

The vaccine is also being manufactured in the US for these trials (it requires BSL3, and I don't think there's a Canadian production facility which meets that).

redthrowaway3• 15 years ago

>Outsourcing clinical trials to other countries (usually India or SE Asia) is one of the biggest advances in drug development in the past 20 years.

Not really what I'd call an advancement. It's being done because it's cheaper, the health and safety regulations are practically non-existent, and if something goes wrong then the subjects have very little recourse.

Canadians to start HIV vaccine clinical trials

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