Thirty two volunteers are needed in Jamaica to become guinea – pigs for the new HIV vaccine. This was disclosed by Dr. Peter Figueroa, chief of Epidemiology and HIV/AIDS in the Health Ministry yesterday at the launch of the new vaccine trial. The trial will be conducted worldwide and is scheduled to begin early next year. Already 1500 persons from other countries have registered.
The volunteers must be between the ages of 18 and 60 and must be HIV negative. Some of them will be given three doses of the vaccine Ad 5 HIV-1 gag/pol/nef over a period of six months. Another group of persons will be given similar doses of a substance called a placebo an injection without any active vaccine made of saline solution. The two groups will be monitored and tested for up to four years there after.

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Dr. Figueroa stressed the fact that the vaccines are not made from live HIV, killed HIV, weakened HIV or infected cells. It is made up of a weakened form of the cold virus called adenovirus 5 that has been crippled so that it cannot grow or spread to other people nor can it make them sick.
Personally I don’t follow it. My understanding of how a vaccine works is that you are injected with a small dose of the virus, not enough to get you sick. Your body then naturally builds anti bodies to fight the weakened virus. That way if you are subsequently affected by that same virus you will have your own defense mechanism in place. Now if the vaccine is not a live, dead or weakened HIV virus how will you build immunity to HIV.
Then again I’m only an ignorant person when it comes to medicine so what do I know. I don’t think I’d be so brave though as to test it whether I understood it or not. What the reports did not say is if the volunteers would be paid and if so how much. ‘Not that that would entice me either’.
Approximately 20,000 Jamaicans are infected with HIV/AIDS. Based on the promiscuity of our society, that number will increase rapidly. Something needs to be done to control the spread of the disease. It’s easy to dismiss something if you have never been affected directly of indirectly by it. However I’m sure that for those who have lost a loved one to HIV/AIDS or has someone who is suffering from the disease they might be more inclined to want to help in the fight against it.
Nuff Love