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Vaccine for Aids unlikely to be found
A vaccine for human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) and Aids may never be found, a Nobel Prize-winning biologist has said after more than 20 years of research.
- Gulf News Report
- Published: 00:32 February 16, 2008
Dubai: A vaccine for human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) and Aids may never be found, a Nobel Prize-winning biologist has said after more than 20 years of research.
Professor David Baltimore, president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), said though there was little hope among scientists, they were continuing efforts to develop a vaccine.
"Our lack of success may be understandable but it is not acceptable," he was quoted as saying by BBC Online.
While public and private sector researchers and scientists have spared no effort, HIV's ability to evade the body's immune system and evolve has defeated current medical science, Professor Baltimore told the annual meeting of the association in Boston.
No research projects currently underway, including his own, have any realistic prospect of producing a vaccine for at least a decade, and success may take even longer, he said in a bleak assessment of one of the world's fast spreading epidemics. "The community is depressed because we see no hopeful route to success," British media quoted him as saying.
Professor Baltimore, one of the top authorities on the virus and the syndrome, won his Nobel Prize in 1975 for the discovery of reverse transcriptase, an enzyme that was later found to be used by HIV to reproduce in human cells.
The plunge in morale in the scientific community follows the collapse last year of a massive experimental project to develop a simple injection against HIV.
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