Aids

37 million people in this world are living with AIDS. AIDS has already claimed the lives of 12 million people. As a result, the goal is to create a vaccine that can be used around the world to stop the spread of HIV. Vaccines are usually made of attenuated viruses that are capable of reproducing and invoking an immune response, but they cannot cause the disease.

HIV holds many problems for making the human vaccine. Problems include the virus’ complexity, the risk of making a vaccine from an attenuated virus, the lack of testing a retrovirus vaccine, high mutation rate and various forms of HIV, ineffectiveness of making a vaccine from subunits, and the reluctance of drug companies.

There are a few ethical problems with human testing of HIV vaccines. The designers need to choose an area were safe sex practices are not taught, so that volunteers have a greater chance of getting AIDS. If a volunteer did get AIDS during a trial, he/ she should get all available drug therapies. Because of ethical problems, testing a vaccine would