"AIDS vaccine"...

I don't think you folks are EVER going to figure it out. Actually, you won't figure it out until, well, everybody else has.

"HIV" is the most researched microbe in history. Biliions and billions of dollars have been thrown at it. "AIDS" is a money pit. Pharmaceutical companies make billions off of "HIV tests" (do a little homework on these, folks, they're a sham) and "AIDS drugs". They're not about to let that gravy train come to a stop with a "vaccine".

For all you "journalists" out there...let's say they actually come out with an "HIV" vaccine. Do a little homework on this. Ask some hard questions. See if this "vaccine" could have actually been developed many years ago. Ask the developers of this supposed vaccine if they could have come up with this vaccine long ago, both conceptually and technologically. See how they answer these questions. If you actually went behind the scenes of "HIV research", and took the haloes off of those who are involved, you might find that the science used to prop up the HIV=AIDS paradigm is shaky at the very least, but fatally-flawed is closer to the truth.

re: Tony Snow...This Admin should be known as the Ostrich Admin. They just stick their heads in the sand and say, "It's not happening. Everything is fine."

Floyd's bounced back in a rather surprising ride today. He's back in third now, only 31 seconds down.

HIV tests cost $40 a pop. What a money maker.

"HIV tests cost $40 a pop. What a money maker."

And the pharmaceutical companies will make dozens of times that amount off of you (if not more) should you come up "positive" on one of their little "tests". Don't forget all those wonderfully expensive pills you'll need to take.

Fun fact, kids: There isn't ONE HIV test approved by the FDA to diagnose HIV infection. Go ahead, look it up. They ALL carry disclaimers stating that they aren't supposed to be utilized to diagnose HIV infection. But, I'm sure all you kids have done your research and already know that. Right?

Thanks for the pro-Israel note, it's a welcome change from conventional Seattle wisdom. It's not even "War". Israel is protecting America from Islamo-Fascists. We can enjoy our lives, vacation, watch silly TV shows safe in the knowledge that Israel and America will react strongly to anyone who tries to challenge our way of life.

Is "snubbed" the right word? You have to admit that the NAACP hasn't presented itself as a welcoming group for him to speak to since his presidency began.

"Question HIV/AIDS": so I should be questioning, what, its "existence"? Yes, millions of people have died of "something" but a "vaccine" for this "disease" is merely a government conspiracy to bilk a "healthy" public out of millions. Multiple available tests? That HAS to be "evidence" of fraud, not a way to test for all known strains and subtypes of this so-called "HIV". I can only hope, dear Question, that should you test "positive" with one of those little "tests", that you'll tell the people who deign to bone you, finger quotes and all.

Heavy Sigh,

if that rant of yours was at all coherent, I might be able to respond to it somehow, other than noting its incoherence.

Um, guys, we have two HIV vaccines in trials at the UW. It's not that hard. But science takes a while to do testing.

Will,
that's super!

Let's say these vaccines are "succesful". My questions still stand. Conceptually and technologically, could these vaccines have been developed years ago?

Might "AIDS" be so profitable that feet are dragging? It doesn't hurt to ask these questions. It's GOOD to ask these questions. Wouldn't you want to know?

Question: We should also question whether or not NASA really landed on the moon. And whether or not Ken Lay is really dead. And so on.

Look, dude, there's a lot of other diseases which kill, maim, injure, or impact a lot more people than HIV/AIDS.

Now, if we were in Africa, I'd agree with you, but here your major cause of death is heart disease. Smoking is a far bigger risk factor than HIV.

Everything is filtered by our own perspective. At some point you'll die. Which thing gets you is not totally within your control.

oh, and I don't think Ken Lay is really dead. closed casket, the guy used to set up fake accounts in the Caribbean, nothing easier than some zombie powder, closed casket, woosh guy's sitting pretty in the Bahamas. Perfect way to escape, just wait seven years and never return to USA. Not that hard.

at the risk of feeding a troll....
Here is a good scientific article reviewing why a vaccine has taken so long:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?db=pubmed&cmd=Retrieve&dopt=AbstractPlus&list_uids=14628286&query_hl=2&itool=pubmed_DocSum

The long time it has taken to develop an HIV vaccine has do with inherent difficulties when dealing with this virus rather than some conspiracy.

HIV never exists as a clonal population. Even in a given patient, there are millions of different subtypes of the same virus. Hep C virus is similar in this regard. In particular, the surface parts of the virus change rapidly.

Unlike vaccines for flu or polio, it's not good enough to simply damage a sample of virus and inject it. The quick approaches failed. Instead, scientists have had to take the virus apart, and find a part of the virus that cannot change if the virus is to remain infectious, is accesible on the surface and preferably will produce an antibody that will work at the mucous barrier.

This is enormously complex, and frankly would be a major accomplishment when it does succeed.

As far HIV not causing AIDS... the evidence for the connection is strong and not contested. What's your proposed source of AIDS? Evidence disproving the HIV-AIDS connection? Evidence for your mechanism?

Heavy Sigh,

I apologize, I found a coherent sentence in your post..."I can only hope, dear Question, that should you test "positive" with one of those little "tests", that you'll tell the people who deign to bone you, finger quotes and all."

There's the rub, "Sigh". NOT ONE HIV test is approved by the FDA to diagnose HIV infection. Kind of a dilemma. Maybe somebody as knowledgeable as Dan Savage can explain how a person can be diagnosed HIV-positive with tests carrying disclaimers stating they're not to be used for that purpose. Hmmm. Bit of a pickle.

For fun, here's a link to a copy of one of those test disclaimers http://groups.msn.com/aidsmythexposed/shoebox.msnw?action=ShowPhoto&PhotoID=40

Instead, scientists have had to take the virus apart, and find a part of the virus that cannot change if the virus is to remain infectious.

That's simple, the knobs cannot change. If the knobs change, then it can't latch on to your tcells and do whatever it is that it's supposed to do to them...the story keeps changing on that point. Does "HIV" directly kill tcells? Does it cause them to commit suicide (apoptosis)? Or does it lay dormant for a while then decide to unleash its fury?

What's your proposed source of AIDS? Evidence disproving the HIV-AIDS connection? Evidence for your mechanism?

Well, if the AIDS definition would just sit still, then maybe we could answer these questions. But we've had four definitions for AIDS in the U.S.(if you include GRID). Problem is, with these varying definitions, we haven't even been talking about the same THING.

So, maybe we need to question how this whole thing is constructed.

The "knobs" eh?

Here is the whole sequence of the HIV genome:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?db=genome&cmd=Retrieve&dopt=Overview&list_uids=12171

Point out the "knobs" to me.

Maybe some of the delay in making a vaccine has do with:
1) getting that sequence
2) Figuring out all the (overlapping) genes in it.
3) Understanding what the genes do
4) Finding the surface genes.
5) Finding the invariable bits (which requires sequencing samples from around the globe and comparing them...). I presume this is what you mean by "knobs."
6) Come up with a way to activate the immune system early and strong enough against these regions before t-cell counts drop.
7) Make sure this vaccine is safe and doesn't cause disease on its own.
8) Find individuals at risk of HIV infection to test the vaccine.

Most of these steps are/were done for the first time in human history with HIV. Some of the techniques developed yielded vaccines against easier viruses, like Hep B.

That sounds like 20 years of effort to me.

As far as how HIV causes damage, the answer to all your questions is "yes".

Yes,it directly kills T-cells. Yes, it causes apoptosis in T-cells and other cells. Yes, as a retrovirus is lies dormant for a while. All of these mechanisms, and more, contribute to the complex syndrome of AIDs.

"Yes,it directly kills T-cells. Yes, it causes apoptosis in T-cells and other cells. Yes, as a retrovirus is lies dormant for a while. All of these mechanisms, and more, contribute to the complex syndrome of AIDs."

Wow. All of the above, huh?

I think you might find plenty of disagreement with scientists researching HIV as to how HIV goes about reducing Tcell counts. Hmmm...yes...very complex...

That "complexity" and all the excuses for not creating a viable vaccine bring up some red flags.

Should a vaccine be proclaimed to "cure AIDS" (however it happens to be defined at that moment), I'll be very curious to see if it is something that could have been developed both conceptually and technologically many years ago. We'll just have to wait for that day.

"Point out the "knobs" to me."

Are you telling me that the infamous gp120 "knobs" or "spikes" that "HIV" uses to latch onto Tcells and do stuff to don't exist?

I've seen researchers go to great lengths with computer-modelling just so we can all view the famed "knobs".

Conceptually and technologically, could these vaccines have been developed years ago? yes. Also, had the concept and technology of air warfare been available, Napoleon would have kicked the shit out of the Russians.

Instead, scientists have had to take the virus apart, and find a part of the virus that cannot change if the virus is to remain infectious, is accesible on the surface and preferably will produce an antibody that will work at the mucous barrier.

Still lookin' like the "knobs", Golob.

Can't have "HIV" latching onto Tcells without it's infamous "knobs". Those must not change if "HIV" is going to lower Tcell counts. So maybe all those folks involved in researching HIV should focus on the knobs.

Or maybe they can just keep spending money while others choke down those lovely and expensive "AIDS drugs".

gp120 was among first vaccine targets... and it didn't work. Only a tiny part of the whole gp120 protein stays constant. Point that out that part to me. I showed you the sequence. If this is such an easy thing to do, someone as clever as you should have no problem.

And I'm not understanding your overall arguement. You cast doubt on the HIV-AIDs connection and then complain that an anti-HIV vaccine is too slow in coming. "This food is terrible and there isn't enough of it."

Actually, there is no "whole sequence" - the problem is that HIV/AIDS is evolving at a rapid rate, sometimes faster (like when it infects born-agains, since they don't believe in evolution).

One of the more interesting seminars I attended this spring was by someone who's developing software to predict the evolutionary pathways that HIV/AIDS is taking, so that it can be tricked to deadend or spend time in a less effective pathway.

See, if it was static, and had a long lifespan with low evolutionary mixing/adaptation, it would be pretty easy to deal with. This is precisely why certain diseases like malaria are such a problem, the adaptation rate.

Actually, there is no "whole sequence"

There's some disagreement here. Or maybe Golob will concede that Will is correct?

Will is correct, and I believe is making the same point I was trying to make when I wrote:
"HIV never exists as a clonal population. Even in a given patient, there are millions of different subtypes of the same virus."

Will is just a better writer than I am. ;p

With that point taken, the basic pattern and organization of the HIV genome is relatively constant, but the actual sequence varies significantly, not just in the worldwide population of HIV, but the population of virus in an individual patient. The whole sequence I linked to is a consensus sequence of the most common patterns observed, and a good starting point for research.

Boy, this all sounds complex, huh? Like it might not be so simple of a system to control and manipuate. Might make vaccine development hard, huh?

Perhaps question will be willing to admit that making a vaccine might be more difficult than he seems to believe...

At Question:

So do you think that some mega-corporation is holding the keys to the HIV and/or AIDS problem locked away in a vault so it can make money off the drugs? Then what about a competing company that doesn't sell drugs - wouldn't it want to make money off a vaccine?

Also, do you believe that the common cold, cancer, and every other ailment that afflicts humans has a cure that could've been created many years ago? Or do you just have a big hardon for HIV/AIDS?

Will is correct, and I believe is making the same point I was trying to make when I wrote:
"HIV never exists as a clonal population. Even in a given patient, there are millions of different subtypes of the same virus."

No, you contradict yourself. First you state "here is the whole sequence". So here it is...except that there are millions of subtypes that aren't sequenced. I see cognitive dissonance.

The sequence of it is different from the millions of subtypes. I suppose you will invoke the sequence of it when it suits your purposes and remind us that there are millions of subtypes for the same reason.

There's never been a virus that mutates more rapidly than "HIV". Interesting. "HIV" seems to do whatever the researchers need it to do.

So do you think that some mega-corporation is holding the keys to the HIV and/or AIDS problem locked away in a vault so it can make money off the drugs?

Nope, not at all.

I think we need to go back to the drawing board with this issue. Go back to the basics. Ask some very basic questions about what's going on.

The spiralling "complexity" of this mess should be a red flag to get you to question what's going on.

Reading this thread was extremely painful.
That vaccine against "HIV" will never come, not even in 20 years. They may attempt to fake one, but in the best-case scenario, it won't do anything at all.
After trying to hammer the idea into our heads that HIV is a virus that attacks the cellular immune system itself, they have the nerve to talk about a vaccine (based on that same virus) that's supposed to strengthen the immune system. I never heard a more stupid idea. But then, in "AIDS science", you can expect the weirdest things.

Golob (the worst of the pack) wrote:
"HIV never exists as a clonal population. Even in a given patient, there are millions of different subtypes of the same virus."

This is truly hilarious! You're re-writing virology here. The reason for all these "different subtypes" is that every time they try to get data, they get something else. It's just sloppy science, and all these papers should have been published in the Journal of Irreproducible Results.

I think QUESTION raised some valid points. And when you're trying to answer them, please avoid the ridiculous excuses.
For example: He pointed out that, with all these mutants that are supposed to exist, how come the antigenic part of the protein (the knobs) stays constant? If it doesn't the particle cannot be infectious.

There IS no complete sequence. Sure, they may have some sequences, but of what? Just because we can sequence DNA now, there are molecular geneticists who are sequencing everything they can get their hands on, including whatever the cat dragged in. It's the only thing they know how to do. But who proves that the sequence found has anything to do with "HIV"? Retroviruses contain RNA, so that's an extra reverse transcription step we have to gloss over.
And they've been able to sell this mess to the masses for more than 20 years? Science as I knew it is dead.