The failure of Merck’s V520 HIV vaccine highlights a serious problem in HIV/AIDS scientists’ heavy reliance on animal testing. According to the National Institutes of Health, all of the more than 80 vaccines for HIV/AIDS developed using animals and brought to human trials have failed. V520 is only the most recent in this string of failures. It showed promise in preclinical trials on mice, rabbits and monkeys, but in clinical trials, it actually increased human susceptibility to HIV.
A 2005 article by an animal experimenter at the Washington National Primate Research Center provides insight as to why these vaccines continue to fall short. It stated that “SIV [the form of the virus that affects nonhuman primates] models do not allow direct testing of HIV vaccines†and that “because of the complexity and limitations of the nonhuman primate models, it remains difficult to extrapolate data from these models to inform the development of HIV vaccines.â€
By Justin Goodman, for South Florida Sun Sentinel
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