Scientists Say AIDS Vaccine Now Possible
Drugs are now available that can put AIDS patients into remission, and recent advances have made clear that a vaccine to protect against AIDS infection is possible, a panel of AIDS experts said Saturday.
At the same time, however, the AIDS epidemic is being followed by a suddenly resurgent epidemic of tuberculosis, the scientists said.
“We have now made demonstrable first steps in inducing remission,” said William Haseltine of the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston.
“I think there is evidence that a substantial number of people who would have died are now alive,” Haseltine said at the annual meeting of the American Assn. for the Advancement of Science.
He cautioned against a premature conclusion that the AIDS epidemic may be coming to an end. A number of treatments for AIDS and AIDS-related infections are available, he said, but many of them are not available to the poor or to developing countries.
“It looks like most of these will be expensive, hard to deliver and require monitoring,” Haseltine said.
“Unless we develop a vaccine, the future of this epidemic worldwide will be extremely grim,” he said.
A year ago, the prospects for an AIDS vaccine looked doubtful, said James Mullins of Stanford University. But that has changed. “There has been a transition in the effort to find a vaccine,” Mullins said.
Vaccines to protect animals against AIDS-related viruses have shown some success, he said, encouraging researchers to believe that similar vaccines can be found for humans.
“There’s new hope and interest that a vaccine is possible,” said John McGowan of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases in Bethesda, Md.
Sten Vermund, also of the allergy institute, noted that an epidemic of tuberculosis is emerging in AIDS patients in the inner cities.
In New York City, for example, tuberculosis declined between 1960 and 1977 but is now increasing and has reached the 1960 level again.
“We anticipate in our major cities losing two decades of progress in our tuberculosis control efforts,” Vermund said. And unlike the AIDS virus, which cannot be transmitted through casual contact, tuberculosis is easily transmitted through the air.
Many of the cases of tuberculosis are occurring when individuals who were exposed to tuberculosis early in life contract AIDS. They lose the ability to continue suppressing the tuberculosis bacteria, which normally would have remained dormant, and tuberculosis appears.
