HIV trial’s failure a disheartening defeat
An SA test to probe the effectiveness of an experimental vaccine is halted after a review finds it offers no protection from the illness
To beat HIV the world will need a vaccine, expert after expert said after the announcement that a $104m HIV vaccine trial, the closest the medical fraternity has come to an actual drug, had failed.Scientists this week halted the SA trial that was testing the vaccine after a review found it to be ineffective."I was catatonic," trial head Glenda Gray told a journalist, describing the moment she learnt the trial she had been running in SA had to be stopped.The Boksburg-born doctor, mother and former HIV activist has spent the past few years working late into the nights (because of working hours in a US time zone) with fellow trial head US scientist Larry Corey, while residing in Cape Town, where she is president of the SA Medical Research Council.The vaccine used in the SA trial, named HVTN 702, had reduced infections by a third in what is called the Thai trial, which was run by the US military between 2003 and 2006. Gray tells the FM that in the Thai trial the vaccine activated sp...
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