Let's go for human testing of vaccine,says UNAIDS

This is a report on the first large-scale human testing of an experimental vaccine in the developing world; the trial was authorized by Thailand's Ministry of Health and supported by the UN program on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS). This is a significant step toward the development of a safe and effective vaccine against HIV. However, the vaccine's potential for protecting people against HIV cannot be fully predicted. These multiple trials need to be conducted in developed and developing countries to test the efficacy against different HIV strains in different populations worldwide. The trial in Thailand will test the AIDSVAX vaccine developed by VaxGen, Inc. of California. AIDSVAX is not the first experimental AIDS vaccine to be tested in humans. Several vaccine candidates have been given to people involved in small clinical trials in the US. AIDSVAX has been found to be safe and to stimulate an immune response. Hence, it is the first vaccine test to proceed to large-scale human testing ("Phase III" or efficacy trials). There have been disagreements among researchers on which vaccine to use, but urgent needs must readily be addressed without compromising ethics and science.