AIDS Vaccine

“FDA Approves 1st Large Testing of AIDS Vaccine” (June 4) overshadows, in my estimation, the primary elections. Even so, some questions come to mind.

Trying to put myself in a testee’s place, I find myself terrified by the very idea that I might have received a placebo instead of the vaccine. Is there not some scientifically valid methodology whereby all participants receive the vaccine and their AIDS rates are compared with those of nonparticipants drawn from the same general population?

Or, if no such methodology can be devised, would it not be more decent and humane were those receiving the placebo guaranteed access (particularly, in poverty-stricken areas such as Thailand) to those very expensive medications that most of us could not possibly afford?

HORACE GAIMS

Los Angeles