Developments in Brief : Salk Sees Hope for Finding AIDS Vaccine

A vaccine theoretically could be developed that will not only prevent infection with the AIDS virus but also will slow the spread of the disease in people already infected, said Dr. Jonas Salk, the developer of the polio vaccine.

The search for an AIDS vaccine is geared mostly to finding a way to prevent people from catching the virus. But Salk said that a vaccine for people who already have an AIDS virus infection could reduce the death rate and control the spread of the disease by reducing the amount of virus in patients. “I think it is do-able,” he said.

Salk’s speculation appears in the current issue of the British scientific journal Nature.

The vaccine he envisions would boost immune factors in an AIDS patient to levels that would destroy the AIDS virus when it becomes active and starts to multiply. The immune levels would not, however, be able to wipe out the inactive virus in white blood cells.

Salk based his idea partly on the observation that vaccination after infection can be effective in protecting people from infectious diseases with long incubation periods, such as hepatitis B.