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emcon5 emcon5 is offline
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I hope it works, but I have a dumb question. How do they test the effectiveness? Do they expose the recipients to the infection to see if it "catches"?

Quote:
South Africa was the site of the biggest setback to AIDS vaccine research, when the most promising vaccine ever, produced by Merck & Co., was tested here in 2007. Researchers found that people who got the vaccine were more likely to contract HIV than those who did not.
This begs some questions: Did the recipients intentionally engage in risky behavior thinking they were not vulnerable?
Was it some sort of twisted Josef Mengele double-blind test where they gave the vaccine to half the group, gave a placebo to the rest, then exposed them all to see how many got infected?

I mean the disease is as close to 100% avoidable as you can get, simply by changing behavior. There is always a chance of something happening beyond your control, but generally speaking, if you don't share needles and keep a hat on your jimmy, you are not going to get HIV. If someone is aware of the disease enough to volunteer to test a vaccine, wouldn't they be educated enough to know how to NOT get it?

I am not trying to be a callous a-hole, honestly, how do they do a trial on this?

Tom
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