HIV Reports from the newest to the oldest. Information listing post.
Getting information compiled so people can be fully informed. This is to support a drive for an HIV vaccine, better medicines, a cure, and an end to HIV as a problem.
Subscriptions are free.
#HIVVaxNow
Sign and share the petition.
https://www.change.org/HIV_Vax_Now
Why this directory post.
This post is to be a list of the reporting on the development of cures, vaccines, and treaments for HIV.
It is to support putting an end to HIV.
Background information.
HIV Trial Network for HIV Vaccines & HVTN numbers.
Before reading about developments it could be useful to understand HVTN numbers.
They do also support for other HIV related medicine. I discovered them when I was trying to understand what these series of numbers HVNT-XXX, (XXX is what number it might be.) I think that each study or activity is assigned these numbers. I am trying to find a confirm. I want to avoid double reporting on HIV vaccines and HIV Cures.
These numbers are useful so you know whether you are reading about the same or different clinical trial. For example the Moderna vaccine has HVTN 302 assigned to its clinical trials. I saw a press release which wasn’t clear that it was part of the Moderna vaccine effort, but since it mentioned HVTN 302, I realized it wasn’t a new effort.
In this press release Moderna isn’t mentioned at all, but the number HVTN 302 told me that it was the same study. For some reason they aren’t mentioning Moderna.
A different HVTN number doesn’t mean it is entirely unrelated either. It might be part of a series of studies in a progression, or a clinical trial for one thing which supports is preliminary, like safety testing, for a subsequent study.
For example, this has an HVTN 300 number, but is clearly part of the HVTN 302 effort.
https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT04915768
Also, the numbers don’t follow a sequence in time. In the following paper HVTN 305 was done in 2012-2017 and HVTN 306 was done 2013-2020. It is a long history of failures to make an effective or even partially effective vaccine.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7655734/
This page tracks the news on the HIV Vaccine developments, particularly those which involve mRNA.
There is good progress figuring out how HIV persists even when it is undetectable. I think a cure might come after the vaccine, but that is a guess on my part.
The dates are when I reported it. Sometimes is is about articles published earlier than the date.
20250616
Advertisement in Biopharmadealmakers in Nature Magazine about genome-editing technology to cure HIV.
https://www.nature.com/articles/d43747-025-00022-4
This is their webpage.
https://provirex.de/
This is the biotechnology.
https://provirex.de/technology/
It is good to cure people of HIV, but we still need a vaccine to prevent it from happening in the first place.
20250501
Finally, the full story on the skin rash issue.
20250421
20250414
HIV vaccine related topic.
mRNA vaccine fast tracked. What is the current FDA policy on mRNA vaccines?
Arcturus Therapeutics has gotten U.S. FDA Fast Track Designation for a self-amplifying mRNA vaccine candidate ARCT-2304. This has self-amplifying mRNA. This is a newer biomolecular technology than the COVID vaccines. So this indicates that there isn’t a blanket opposition to mRNA vaccines.
Still trying to make sense of what is happening. This is the 3rd fast track I have come across recently for mRNA vaccines. So is the Trump administration slowing down or not mRNA vaccine technology.
20250331
An HIV vaccine doesn’t seem to be part of the social justice agenda.
As of the morning of 3/31/2025, the petition has had 136 views and only 6 signatures besides myself, but that includes social media to which I shared the petition and to the subscribers.
From Change.org itself, out of 116 views, there are 3 signatures as part of a campaign on Change.org.
This newsletter has over 830 subscribers, you would think I could get more signatures. An HIV vaccine is possible, but we are going to have to fight for it.
An HIV vaccine is an urgent Gay need, but it doesn’t seem to be part of the progressive agenda.
https://www.change.org/HIV_Vax_Now «««< Sign the petition!
I am going to be starting efforts to get more signatures, readers of this newsletter could also sign it.
20250324
Change.org and the petition to have Trump pursue an aggressive program for an HIV mRNA vaccine.
One signatures out of 72 views. I think we need to understand what this means. Doesn’t seem like there is much support for this issue with the liberal/left/progressive community.
https://www.change.org/HIV_Vax_Now
20250318
CDC might eliminate the HIV prevention division and so I did an emergenct action to save more than a hundred webspages at the Internet Archive.
20250318
Serious development at NIH regarding mRNA vaccines.
ArsTechnica, March 17, 2025, “Report: mRNA vaccines are in RFK Jr’s crosshairs; funding in question.”
I am concerned and will be watching closely.
Federal support for mRNA vaccine research appears in jeopardy after KFF Health News reported Sunday that officials at the National Institutes of Health have directed scientists to remove all references to the lifesaving technology from their grant applications. All such research is now under direct scrutiny from health secretary and long-time anti-vaccine advocate Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
A senior official at the NIH's National Cancer Institute confirmed to KFF that NIH acting Director Matthew Memoli "sent an email across the NIH instructing that any grants, contracts, or collaborations involving mRNA vaccines be reported up the chain to Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s office and the White House."
This new policy has been confirmed by some researchers who got feedback that they needed to remove mention of mRNA vaccines from their grant applications.
I don’t know how you can get funding for mRNA vaccines without mentioning mRNA vaccines.
20250315
One post and one petition.
The petition is at this link, please sign and share the petition.
https://www.change.org/HIV_Vax_Now
The entire story about the Moderna mRNA HIV program halting.
20250314
I wrote it 3/14/2025 and got it posted just a little after midnight on the 15th.
20250313
This is an information module to be used in a campaign to get an HIV vaccine. I need to give a good thorough overview of mRNA Vaccine technology.
20250303
HIV vaccine still stalled out since February 2024.
The initial results looked extremely good.
Since it got stopped by the Biden administration in Feb. 2024, it doesn’t appear to have moved. I am going to think of some campaign to get this moving again.
https://www.modernatx.com/en-US/research/product-pipeline
I discovered the halt while reading Science magazine. You would think this would be a big item in the LGBTQXYZ+ publications, but it wasn’t.
I reviewed the stupidity of the HIV development being halted in this weekly post.
https://edwardhsebesta.substack.com/p/biden-admin-slack-on-mpox-hiv-vaccine
It was an issue I wrote Trump about. Yes, I know it is a longshot, but I think I need to be doing what I can to get a HIV vaccine a reality.
https://edwardhsebesta.substack.com/p/3-letters-to-pres-trump-get-hiv-vaccine
I am unable to find any update since March. This statement is from March 2, 2024 in response to the Science magazine article pointing out that the skin rashes were minor and not serious.
https://www.iavi.org/features/iavi-statement-on-mrna-hiv-vaccine-candidate-trials/
https://www.streetinsider.com/SEC+Filings/Form+10-K+Moderna%2C+Inc.+For%3A+Dec+31/24382813.html
20250203
My letter to Donald Trump asking that the mRNA Moderna vaccine program not be stalled by the U.S. Goverment which has paused it.
It is a long shot, but I am going to do everything that might help.
Feb. 2, 2025
Edward H. Sebesta
Dallas, Texas 75216
President Donald J. Trump
1600 Pennsylvania Ave. NW
Washington, DC 20500
Dear Hon. Trump:
Early in 2024 very promising research into an HIV vaccine was stupidly stopped by bureaucratic politics. The article reporting on it was in Science, Vol. 383, Issue 6687, March 8, 2024, page 1044. Online and page pdfs enclosed.
Or:
https://www.science.org/doi/epdf/10.1126/science.adp0477
The article points out that:
Most of these skin problems quickly resolved and weren't severe enough to stop any trial,
And:
One of the most promising attempts to reinvigorate the stalled quest for an HIV vaccine has hit a snag that might seem minor but has major consequences: delaying the larger trials needed to show whether the concept works.
This rational for halting the test was infuriating.
Most of these skin problems quickly resolved and weren't severe enough to stop any trial, but researchers do not want to minimize them. “At a time when vaccine hesitancy is high, it is critically important not to dismiss urticaria as an unimportant side effect,” says Kimberly Blumenthal, an allergist at Massachusetts General Hospital. [Boldface added.]
Is this really a reason to halt trials because of another political issue?!
Let me make something really clear, they said that in one trial 11 out of 60 got the rash. Gays would be overjoyed to get the vaccine even if the rash happened 100% of the time, lasted twice as long and we need three shots instead of two.
Also, are their people who don’t want an AIDS vaccine found?
There is a lot of cash flow with AIDS. There are the cost of medicines, treatment, counseling, and safe sex instruction. If a cure for AIDS was found tomorrow, a lot of people would be out of work, lots of cash wouldn’t be flowing to those who get it now.
With a vaccine, there wouldn’t be immediate unemployment, but there would be a steady decline in patients over time.
I am not saying there is any effort currently to block an HIV vaccine, I don’t know, likely this halt is due to sheer bureaucratic politics, but I think we need to be aware that there are financial interests.
I ask that you do the following.
1. Take measures to get the development program of this HIV vaccine moving again and going ahead full speed.
2. Make sure that the federal health departments don’t needlessly halt development of this vaccine.
3. Make sure Moderna doesn’t get blocked or bothered in their efforts to develop an HIV vaccine.
AIDS is the great scourge of the Gay community globally. Other groups are afflicted by it in some places also.
If an HIV vaccine is finally developed, the Gay community would be celebrating for days.
Sincerely Yours,
Edward H. Sebesta
20250120
Science, Jan. 8, 2025, “An engineered immunogen activates diverse HIV broadly neutralizing antibody precursors and promotes acquisition of improbable mutations.”
To stop HIV there needs to be anti-bodies that go after a lot of binding sites that are conserved on the HIV virus. Not ones that can easily change and allow the HIV virus to escape anti-bodies.
The full article requires access but the “Editor’s summary,” and “Abstract” are there and have the summary info we need to know.
Work is still progressing on HIV.
https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/scitranslmed.adr2218
20241117
The following section on RFK Jr. and AIDS is from a part of this report.
HIV medical support
You might not get anti-viral drugs or PREP. Becuase is the federal government decides they aren’t real medicines it is illegal to sell them.
RFK Jr. is involved with denialism. The Hill, Nov. 15, 2024, “5 of RFK Jr.’s most controversial views.”
HIV/AIDS denialism
Kennedy has frequently cast doubt in the past whether HIV causes AIDS and the effectiveness azidothymidine (AZT), the first ever drug approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to treat HIV and AIDS.
The causal relationship between human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) and acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS) has long been established. As both federal health agencies and the World Health Organization have stated, HIV can lead to AIDS when it reaches its most advanced stages and is left untreated.
While Kennedy has at times acknowledged HIV can cause AIDS, he’s also argued the more likely culprit has purposely been obscured by scientists and the pharmaceutical industry in order to profit off AZT.
https://thehill.com/homenews/4993660-robert-f-kennedy-trump-health-human-services/
This is the page for his book, “The Real Anthony Fauci,” published by Skyhorse Publishing. Quoting from it.
The Real Anthony Fauci reveals how “America’s Doctor” launched his career during the early AIDS crisis by partnering with pharmaceutical companies to sabotage safe and effective off-patent therapeutic treatments for AIDS. Fauci orchestrated fraudulent do-nothing studies, and then pressured US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) regulators into approving a deadly chemotherapy treatment he had good reason to know was worthless against AIDS. Fauci did the unthinkable and repeatedly violated federal laws to allow his Pharma partners to use impoverished and dark-skinned children as lab rats in beyond order, deadly experiments with toxic AIDS and cancer chemotherapies. [Boldface added.]
https://www.skyhorsepublishing.com/9781510766808/the-real-anthony-fauci/
The potential HIV vaccine with really good odds of success is an mRNA vaccine.
It is being developed by Moderna.
RFK Jr. was against the mRNA Covid vaccine made by Pfizer and Moderna.
Newsweek, March 1, 2021, “Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on Vaccines, COVID and Dr. Fauci: 'I Read the Science'.”
There is a transcript for this interview.
Kennedy: It's really hard to say. The Moderna vaccine [is] probably the more reactogenic of the two. And I would say that it's at the indicia from the clinical trial, and from what we've seen on the ground, are that it is extremely reactogenic.
Reactogenicity refers to reactions that occur soon after vaccination, representing "a physical manifestation of the inflammatory response to vaccination," according to a September 2019 article in the journal NPJ Vaccines. "A reactogenic vaccine is not the same thing as an unsafe vaccine," Saad Omer, a vaccinologist and the director of the Yale Institute for Global Health, told The Atlantic in a December 2020 article.
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention stated on its website that the immediate side effects from the Moderna COVID-19 vaccine "were common but were mostly mild to moderate."
Meaning what?
Meaning that in the clinical trials it was five times as deadly as the Pfizer vaccine. During a phase one trial, you had 100 percent injury rate after the second dose. You had a 6 percent injury in the low-dose group after the first dose, and that is one in every 20 people has a serious injury, meaning medical intervention or hospitalization required. And in the high dose group, it's a 20 percent, 21 percent injury rate, which means one in five people are gravely injured and required medical intervention. That kind of product would never get FDA approval.
No one died as a result of receiving the Moderna or Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine in any stage of clinical trials.
The Phase 1 trial for Moderna's vaccine involved testing different dosages of the vaccine on 45 participants to test the safety of each dose and find out what immune response is produced.
It goes on and on like this where Kennedy makes wild claims which are just pulled out of the air and in defiance of the facts.
https://www.newsweek.com/robert-f-kennedy-jr-vaccines-covid-dr-fauci-i-read-science-1572688
Newsweek, March 1, 2021, “Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Would 'Absolutely Not' Advise His Mom Ethel to Get COVID-19 Vaccine.”
If Kennedy with the support of the Trump administration goes after mRNA vaccines and Moderna, the whole future of mRNA vaccines will slow down if not halted and this will include the mRNA HIV vaccine.
»» You might want to start stockpiling your PREP now.
»» You might want to start stockpiling you AIDS medicines now.
Moderna mRNA vaccines for Herpes, and other diseases won’t get approved.
Moderna had a pipeline and is coming up with a great many vaccines for numerous diseases and therapeutics for cancer. This includes mpox, zika which can be sexually transmitted, as well as VZV (Varicella Zoster Virus, Herpes) and HSV (Herpes Simplex Virus).
https://www.modernatx.com/en-US/research/product-pipeline
The company will be harrassed, the vaccines won’t be approved, and it is questionable whether companies will research possible products that they known won’t be approved.
Even if the product is developed overseas by Pfizer, you will have to go to Canada to get it, and pay for it without insurance.
20240923
Big Breakthrough in HIV prevention.
FOSTER CITY, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)-- Gilead Sciences, Inc. (Nasdaq: GILD) today announced the results of an interim analysis from a second pivotal Phase 3 clinical trial investigating the use of the company’s twice-yearly injectable HIV-1 capsid inhibitor, lenacapavir. Lenacapavir reduced HIV infections by 96% compared to background HIV incidence (bHIV). There were 2 incident cases among 2,180 participants, corresponding to 99.9% of participants not acquiring HIV infection in the lenacapavir group. Twice-yearly lenacapavir also demonstrated superiority to once-daily Truvada ® (emtricitabine 200 mg and tenofovir disoproxil fumarate 300 mg; F/TDF).
NPR article.
https://www.npr.org/sections/goats-and-soda/2024/09/17/g-s1-23248/hiv-drug-aids-epidemic-lenacapavir
If enough people get the treatment there is a sort of herd immunity with HIV transmission stopping because the probability of transmission of one person to another drops below zero.
This doesn’t preclude the need for vaccines.
20240701
First combination mRNA vaccination makes it over the finish line.
Homophobes are the demographic most likely to refuse vaccinations.
So when Gays get vaccinated, it becomes our superpower. This is the first of the combined vaccinations which are possible to do with mRNA technology.
A single vaccine has been shown to protect people from both SARS-CoV-2 and influenza viruses — and with a higher effectiveness than vaccines that target one or the other, the pharmaceutical company Moderna has announced.
The thing is that Moderna has so many potential vaccines for so many diseases, the issue will develop that it gets to be a lot of shots. Last Sept. 2023, I got four shots, Covid booster, RSV shot, Influenza shot, and Pneumonia shot.
Down the road there is likely to be shots for HIV, Herpes, and a lot of other diseases. There is work on vaccinations for cancer. So being able to combine shots is important.
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-024-02121-1
Generally the LGBT is getting vaccinated, and homophobes are a demographic most likely to refuse mRNA vaccines. We live, they die, it is just that simple. So get vaccinated, it is our super power.
20240520
A lot of good news in the progress of achieving an HIV vaccine.
Most of it is fairly technical, but I mention it to show that the use of mRNA technology is leading towards an HIV vaccine.
These are the articles, just to show that there are reports of serious progress.
mRNA makes broadly neutralizing anti-bodies. What this means is that the HIV has all sorts of proteins on its surface which change quickly, so anti-bodies are evaded. However, certain proteins can’t change, since they directly hook into human proteins. What is needed is anti-bodies for these unchanging proteins which would work on all the varieties of HIV. They are called “broadly neutralizing antibodies.”
https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciimmunol.adn0622
I believe this article is about the same thing, but it is very technical. Both papers have some authors in common.
https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/scitranslmed.adn0223
20240428
(At this time I didn’t realize it would remain halted for so long. But this reason to delay for more than a week was stupid.)
HIV mRNA vaccine development stupidly halted by Biden Administration.
The vaccine shows real effectiveness in generating the required anti-bodies, but some of the recipients of the vaccine are getting skin rashes, that aren’t a big deal and clear quickly.
From the article:
Most of these skin problems quickly resolved and weren't severe enough to stop any trial,
However, despite how urgently and desperately the Gay community needs an HIV, the mRNA vaccine program has been halted.
From the article:
One of the most promising attempts to reinvigorate the stalled quest for an HIV vaccine has hit a snag that might seem minor but has major consequences: delaying the larger trials needed to show whether the concept works.
And:
“We are taking this very seriously,” says Carl Dieffenbach, who heads the Division of AIDS at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, which funded a recent phase 1 trial of the vaccine. Researchers want to understand the cause of the skin problems and how to minimize them before expanding tests of the vaccines, which are made by Moderna. “We would be moving more quickly if this finding had not been observed,” says Mark Feinberg, who heads IAVI, a nonprofit that is the vaccine’s major sponsor. [Boldface added.]
Further it is 11 out of 60 that get these rashes. I don’t know, but I think most Gay people would be willing to risk having a week of skin rashes in exchange for HIV immunity. Gays would take the vaccine even if it was the case where 60 out of 60 got skin rashes.
Some of the reasons given aren’t foolish.
Potentially more worrisome, however, would be if the problem is tied to a cumulative effect from multiple mRNA shots or the genetic background of the recipients, or if the HIV sequence itself were responsible for the welts and hives.
I suppose if cumulative shots might mean you can’t get other vaccines that would be an issue, but it isn’t made clear as to what the negative impact of this might be. Perhaps after getting HIV vaccine you might have to wait awhile for your next shot. Given the urgency of this issue, we deserve a better explanation as to why this justifies a delay in getting an HIV vaccine.
The rashes aren’t serious. Gay people generally aren’t anti-vaxxers, and if anti-vaxxers don’t want to get vaccinated, then let them not get vaccinated.
But another reason give is just stupid and infuriating. Making this minor side effect seem important no doubt makes her research and hence herself seem important. Plus it is presenting herself as defender of public health.
However, the reason is just stupid. The health of the Gay community, the development of an urgently, desperately need vaccine is halted so that delulu anti-vaxxers won’t be alarmed.
Most of these skin problems quickly resolved and weren't severe enough to stop any trial, but researchers do not want to minimize them. “At a time when vaccine hesitancy is high, it is critically important not to dismiss urticaria as an unimportant side effect,” says Kimberly Blumenthal, an allergist at Massachusetts General Hospital. [Boldface added.]
So Kimberly Blumenthal wants the vaccine program slowed down so that anti-vaxxer cranks don’t worry. So the people who think vaccines make them magnetic and stick pennies to themselves before legislative committees don’t worry, so people who talk about being vaccinated in Christ won’t worry.
My feeling is that people who refuse to take vaccines can just die.
The Gay community needs this vaccination as soon as possible.
20240325
Over view syphilis vaccine development. It would reduce the spread of HIV.
This is a reputable publisher. It goes over all the issues about developing a syphilis vaccine and the use of RNA and DNA vaccines technology.
One important thing is that syphilis enhances the risk of getting HIV, so a syphilis vaccine would reduce the spread of HIV.
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/21645515.2023.2234790
20240318
Helps avoid fat related problems specific to persons with HIV.
From the article.
Studies presented last week at the Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections in Denver, Colorado, suggest that the anti-obesity drug semaglutide not only helps people with HIV to lose weight but also reduces certain conditions associated with fat accumulation that are especially common in people infected with the virus.
It talks about how specific problems such as fatty liver and adominal fat build up for those who are taking HIV medicines.
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-024-00691-8
20240304
This was an earlier article I found. When I reported this, I didn’t realize that the Phase 1 was already stopped.
Phase 1 for Modern HIV mRNA vaccine has started.
I missed this earlier. However, there will be a Phase 2, and they will likely need a lot more volunteers. Phase 1 with only 40 participants is to make sure the vaccine doesn’t make people sick and find out how much they can give of it. They will be monitoring for anti-body production and other factors that indicate that it is likely to be successful.
Again, Phase 2 will likely need a lot more volunteers and this is your chance to get an HIV vaccine, though no guarantee that it is effective. Though even if it is a failure with only 20 to 30% effective, you would be getting some benefit.
https://trials.modernatx.com/study/?id=mRNA-CRTX-001
20240226
Science magazine article on the difficulty of finding a cure for AIDS.
Fairly long technical article showing the challenges involved. Basically the HIV virus is hiding out by becoming inactive and staying silent while anti-HIV viral drugs are being used. There are challenges to getting this silent hiding virus dealt with. Basically the biomolecular science isn’t there.
https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adk1831
20240122
IAVI: A legitimate source for vaccine information.
I was able to see that Moderna works with this group.
There are bogus websites out there, but I saw at the Moderna website that they work with IAVI. This is good, because I was struggling to find information relevant to Gay health issues and which I could rely on.
One of their areas they focus on is HIV. The others are Tuberculosis, Lassa fever, Marburg virus, Sudan Ebolavirus, and Covid-19. Though HIV is of immediate concern, I suspect that you could get tuberculosis at a crowded place. Also, Marburg and Sudan Ebola could escape to the United States, but I don’t know if it would specifically be most impacting Gays. However, Mpox wasn’t know to be specifically impacting Gays prior to it coming to the Western world.
20240101
This report of improvements for HIV vaccines has weak suggestions. (NOT mRNA vaccines.)
This is about enhancing the technology that has been used for HIV vaccines using the existing pre-mRNA vaccine technologies.
The article is hoping for some incremental improvements to get the vaccine over the finish line. It might work, and there might be an HIV vaccine with some effectiveness, but enhancing a failing method isn’t very promising.
They should try. The mRNA vaccine might not work, or it will need to be done with the other type of non-mRNA vaccines to be effective.
Also, as they have vaccines that fail, they do learn about HiV and the immune system. So I support these efforts, but I am not hopeful
The mRNA HIV vaccine is at Phase 1.
https://www.modernatx.com/en-US/research/product-pipeline
The vaccine was announced a big success. Perhaps they are in the progress of designing the Phase 2 and organizing and planning it. I couldn’t find anything on their website.
Currently this is the only vaccine candidate that seems hopeful.
One of the things is that it seems mRNA vaccines and therapeutics have many, many applications. Even when they get these 40+ projects done, they very easily could do another 40. With circular mRNA technology being developed and self-amplying mRNA technology being developed, there is probably not enough researchers to chanse all the opportunitie.
The good news is that HIV and the herpes viruses are a priority for Moderna as well as Hepititis C, so the medical needs of the Gay community are being met.
N-803 New approach to HIV cure.
Even with the HIV vaccine being released, we will want to have cures. Besides the issue of curing a huge number of Gay people, we can’t expect a vaccine to be 100% effective.
N-803. This is an approach to go after HIV virus hiding out in the lymph nodes and elsewhere.
The title of this first report is:
“Safety and virologic impact of the IL-15 superagonist N-803 in people living with HIV: a phase 1 trial.”
This is the Phase I trial, which is to make sure it doesn’t kill you, injure you or make you really, really sick. It is a typical Phase I trial report. Very technical. You can skip reading it, their conclusion is that the medicine can be taken up to a certain dose leve.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35102335/
A phase 1 needs to be done before they can go to phase 2, which is preliminary testing for effectiveness.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10537516/
This is the abstract for the above article.
In spite of the advances in antiretroviral therapy to treat HIV infection, the presence of a latent reservoir of HIV-infected cells represents the largest barrier towards finding a cure. Among the different strategies being pursued to eliminate or reduce this latent reservoir, the γc-cytokine IL-15 or its superagonist N-803 are currently under clinical investigation, either alone or with other interventions. They have been shown to reactivate latent HIV and enhance immune effector function, both of which are potentially required for effective reduction of latent reservoirs. In here, we present a comprehensive literature review of the different in vitro, ex vivo, and in vivo studies conducted to date that are aimed at targeting HIV reservoirs using IL-15 and N-803.
The article says there are two clinical studies at the recruiting phase to start doing Phase 2 studies to basically see if the therapy works. Phase 3 is when you test a large group of people.
According to this webpage, they are in Phase 3 and the research is being done in Thailand. They expect that the Phase 3 will be completed Nov. 30, 2027. It is going to take a while. Basically you have to give them the medicine and wait some time to get results.
https://www.rihes.cmu.ac.th/news/14321?lang=en
N-803 is being used in a lot of cancer research, so you need to filter to get specific HIV results.
20231225
This might make CAR-T treatments affordable for HIV patients.
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-023-03969-5
The article is entirely about CAR-T using viruses to deliver genetic information to create CAR-T modified T-cells to fight cancer. CAR-T is when you take out T-cells from patients and modify them genetically, and then re-insert them to go after tumors or another target.
Initial research has started in this April 19, 2023 post.
However, as you might imagine, taking T-cells out of a person, modifying them and then growing them and reinjecting them is likely to be very expensive.
A way of modifying them in the human body would tremendously cut costs and make this therapy available to many, many more people.
To reduce HIV in the United States we need to make cures as widely available as possible. Even if we have HIV vaccines, no vaccine will be 100%, and at this point we would be happy if it was 70% effective.
Even if we had insurance so everyone in the Western world could get CAR-T therapy, we would still have HIV in Gay populations around the world where there isn’t the money to pay for these therapies. The cheaper it is, the more people in poorer nations can get treatment and the less HIV infected people there will be reducing the level of HIV. This will reduce the risk of reintroduction to the United States and other nations where it has been eliminated.
Of course, it would be nice if there was a medicine that you could take that would cure HIV and that is ongoing also, but we don’t want to have only one possibility for curing HIV. Besides the fact different possibilities of curing HIV might not work, even with a cure for HIV, we have to likely have more than one cure in case some HIV strain is resistant to one type of cure.
20231218
Failed HIV vaccine not an mRNA vaccine.
The recently announce failure for an potential HIV vaccine was NOT an mRNA vaccine.
Also, it is NOT “the last roll of the dice.” The mRNA HIV vaccines are in Phase 1 at Moderna and at this point are doing well.
I think “last roll of the dice” might be referring to this is the last attempt to see if one of these combination vaccines will work. They aren’t going to try another combination vaccine of this type.
These are DNA and protein vaccination. The combinations are described at this webpage.
It was worth testing them, since HIV is a real ongoing health disaster in Africa, but the reason they are called combinations is that they are trying combinations of possible vaccines hoping that though the individual vaccines don’t’ work, the combination will.
These vaccines are not using any new technology.
“Combination” isn’t a very specific term in reference to vaccines. It can be a combination of technologies, or a vaccine that is effective against more than one disease.
The Moderna mRNA HIV vaccine is still in Phase 1. There initial studies have looked good, but it is just Phase 1.
https://www.modernatx.com/research/product-pipeline
There is progress in HIV vaccine development.
With the recent vaccine trial in Africa with its combination vaccine failing, readers might give up hope, but there is progress towards developing a vaccine.
The medical and biological world technologies and science continues to develop and they have methods to learn things that weren’t possible in the past. There is ongoing research which is improving the understanding of HIV and the immune system which will continue to help make progress in developing an HIV vaccine.
The following article is very technical. They found one reason why current vaccines are failing. It isn’t in itself going to directly lead to a vaccine, but it is building up our knowledge of HIV, the immune system and what is needed to have an effective vaccine.
https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adg0514
20231211
Why so much reporting on vaccines and medicines?
One reason is that I have a scientific education and so I can read the scientific press and understand what might be useful to the Gay community. In particular HIV and other STDs. The elimination of STDs by vaccination would be a huge material benefit for Gays.
Second, Fat Liberation is in denial of the issues of being overweight. When you reach 71, you know a lot of people for whom being overweight has resulted in one medical complication or another. Mostly diabetes. One of the big advantages of the Gay community is that it is more conscious of eating carefully.
Third, it turns out that homophobic Christians are a demographic which has a high percentage of antivaxxers. This has two issues. If Gays get vaccinated, and they don’t, we live and they die or are sick or long term incapacitated. Supporting vaccination for the Gay community increases our advantage over homophobic Christians.
Fourth, the other issue is that the antivaxxers might block the availability of a vaccine. The Evangelicals in Texas blocked requiring HPV vaccines for teenagers. Right now, the Texas Atty. Gen. has sued Pfizer. It could happen that in the state you reside in, you will have to charter buses so Gays can travel to another state to get an HIV vaccine.
Fifth, the legitimate scientific press has been discussing the science of aging and feels confident of being able to do something about it to the point of discussing policy issues, like will insurance cover it. Generally, the Gay community doesn’t want to biologically age.
Our Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton is lambasted by the scientific press.
What happens when homophobic religious lunatics run your state.
This is an article in Ars Technica titled, “Texas sues Pfizer with COVID anti-vax argument that is pure stupid.”
When there is finally an HIV vaccine the place where you live might not get the vaccine right away or not at all. When the production starts, there will be people waiting for the vaccine, and why send it to a state or place where you are going to get harassed by crazed lunatics who happen to control the politics of that state.
New Vaccine technologies are being developed.
The article is titled, “Self-copying RNA vaccine wins first full approval: what’s next.”
This is self-replicating mRNA. A strand of code is attached to the mRNA so it replicates in the body. This means much less is needed to do the vaccination. Given that it is self-amplifying, it could be given in lower doses making them cheaper and lessen the severity of flu-like symptoms.
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-023-03859-w
However, it isn’t just about smaller cheaper doses. From the article.
People often think that the saRNA vaccine platform is simply a variation on conventional mRNA shots, “but in practice it’s really not”, says Anna Blakney, a bioengineer who studies the technology at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada. “saRNA is a totally different beast.”
Because of its virus-like nature, saRNA interacts with the immune system in distinctive ways that could prove beneficial across a range of disease scenarios.
What this means for Gays is that if mRNA technology doesn’t work for an STD, saRNA might be the technology that works.
This also is another differential advantage for Gays over homophobic Christians which are generally opposed to mRNA vaccines. From the article.
More than a dozen saRNA vaccine candidates are currently in clinical trials for a range of applications — from shots for shingles and the flu to therapeutic vaccines for cancer.
It will no longer be that Gays won’t get some viral infection and homophobic antivaxxer Christians will, it will be Gays will be having better survival rates for cancer versus homophobic antivaxxer Christians.
And there is another reason that scientists are happy. Therapeutic proteins which are now made in bioreactors and have to be injected, run risks of immune responses since they are foreign. Made by a person’s own body, that is reduced considerably. From the article.
But researchers are already considering the platform’s broader applications.
For example, the technology might one day be used to produce therapeutic proteins inside the body, says Mark Grinstaff, a biochemist at Boston University in Massachusetts and a co-founder of Keylicon Biosciences in Brookline, Massachusetts.
Manufacturing plants currently use bioreactors to produce such proteins, which are then injected into people who need the treatment. Over the past few months, two independent groups — one involving Smith’s team at VLP Therapeutics2, the other involving Grinstaff and his colleagues at Boston University3 — have posted preprints that describe how altering the chemical backbone of saRNA can diminish the technology’s immune-triggering effects in a positive way. Similar chemical tweaks are commonly used in conventional mRNA vaccines, but not in ARCT-154 or most other saRNA products.
Gays will have another opportunity to have a differential advantage over homophobic antivaxxer Christian.
Of course, there is a risk that you won’t be able to get the advantages of this new vaccine technology because your state has a crazy attorney general elected by religious lunatics and the biotech corporations will decide that initially, the medicine will be released elsewhere.
When there is a new medicine, some people will have to wait until there has been enough medicine manufactured to supply everyone waiting for it. Why bother with a state where you might be targeted by a frivolous lawsuit when you are struggling with ramping up production, dealing with initial distribution and analyzing the data for the larger set of people taking it.
New Crispr technologies
The article is titled, “CRISPR 2.0: a new wave of gene editors heads for clinical trials.”
Though there isn’t a mention of HIV treatments in this specific article, there are scientists testing whether the current CRISPR technology can cut out HIV genetic sequences in humans and get rid of the HIV virus hiding out inhuman cells.
Having more biomolecular technologies means a wider range of possibilities to cure HIV and treat other diseases of interest to Gays.
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-023-03797-7
20231203
A real threat to getting an HIV vaccine in the future. Texas AG sues Pfizer over covid vaccines.
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has sued Pfizer over their covid vaccines.
https://www.reuters.com/legal/pfizer-is-sued-by-texas-over-covid-19-vaccine-claims-2023-11-30/
This is the notice on the webpage of Ken Paxton.
I wrote up a story for it for the local Dallas Gay Liberation newsletter. This could have a devastating impact on medicine in Texas.
20231101
New HIV vaccine trail has been started. Uses CMV virus vector, not mRNA.
We don’t have all the eggs in one basket. And if this vaccine works and the mRNA works, likely getting both vaccines will give an even better immunity.
Another article about it.
https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2810575
20230814
NON-mRNA HIV vaccine phase I success.
They call this a “novel mosaic HIV vaccine.” It is NOT a mRNA vaccine.
The goal of the HIV-CORE 006 is to evaluate the safety, tolerability, and immunogenicity of a novel mosaic HIV vaccine candidate, HIVconsvX, that has been designed to target a broad range of HIV-1 variants, making it potentially applicable for HIV strains in any geographical region.
This is a Phase I trial, and so it is to determine safety and how much you can give a patient. They do look at indicators of whether it seems to be working also. From the article:
'The vaccines used in this trial have demonstrated a favourable safety profile and induction of immune responses in most of the participants.
This is a good thing. We want different technologies to be developed to make sure that at least one of them works. Also, if more than one works, there are choices. If one type of vaccine doesn’t work on a certain type of patient, then the other might.
Remember, vaccine developments go through Phase I, II, and III so this vaccine is just on its first step.
Good resource on HIV vaccine development.
https://www.hvtn.org/
There are a lot of bogus sites on the Internet that look official or credible, but I am not in those technical fields so I don’t know them.
I found this NAID blog with the National Institute of Health which referred to them as being HIH supported.
https://www.niaid.nih.gov/news-events/ias-2023-hiv-vaccines-bnabs-nihs-office-aids-research
There are a lot of developments with “broadly Neutralizing Anti-bodies” (bNAbs) which might be useful for a vaccine and also a cure.
Since homophoboic Christians are the group most likely to be antivaxxer, getting vaccinated is our superpower over them.
An overall view of vaccine development.
The whole field of vaccines is changing so rapidly and there are multiple technologies. This article gives a good review of what is happening.
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41573-023-00119-4
You are probably going to have to use Google to learn some of the terms. I had to.
What you learn is that for different diseases different technologies are being looked at. Malaria vaccines are under development which is important if you are in a part of the world where that is a risk.
Though you hear a lot about mRNA vaccines for HIV, the majority of technologies to make an HIV vaccine are other technologies.
Many vaccine programs are not using either mRNA or nucleic acid (DNA and RNA) vaccines as are using these other technologies. There are 84 total programs to develop an HIV vaccine.
With 84 programs, four major technologies being used, it gives you hope that a vaccine will finally be developed.
20230717
Nature magazine article behind paywall: “Prevention, treatment and cure of HIV infection” It is an overview of the research into HIV.
I am thinking of purchasing it and reporting on it.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41579-023-00914-1
New treatment to keep HIV in check.
You will want to read the “Editor’s Summary.” Basically broadly neutralizing antibodies, (bNAbs), that is antibodies which bind to sites that are on every strain of HIV, can be used to suppress HIV instead of the antiviral drugs we have now.
https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/scitranslmed.adh0004
If for some reason the antiviral drugs don’t work in an individual, or there is some resistance that is developed against antivirals with some HIV strain, this might be an alternative therapy. It is always a good thing to have alternatives.
I read the scientific press and will be passing along what I find.
Bad websites and HIV information
There are a lot of online sites that merely take information and repackage it, and sensationalize it and then post it online.
I found a July 10, 2023 article that was reporting a breakthrough by Merck. The thing is that Merck had published it in Feb. 22, 2023 in Science magazine. There was a tiny link using the doi format at the very end. The research is good and it might result in a therapy in the future. I noticed that the website asked for donations.
You need to know your websites. Most people don’t read the scientific press and they really don’t know how to judge.
So, one thing to look for is the .edu extension. This is the extension for a university. Though I would say that universities tend to be promotional.
Also, see if the article has a link to the source. Even if it has a link, follow the link and see if the link said what the article said.
One of the issues with some science websites is that some of their content is behind paywalls. So, so sometimes you won’t be able to look at the source.
20230626
Did American Gene Technologies find an HIV cure? Frustrating trying to find hard information.
They may be on the path to a cure, the issue is that I am looking for some hard news. I am not finding anything in the scientific press. That doesn’t mean they are not legitimate, it just means I can’t find confirmation.
First, this is NOT CRISPR and is an approach to repair immune response. There is a CRISPR effort out there. I don’t want people to confuse them.
In reading their online reports at their website I am not finding the number of participants in the trials. They do mention it in the American Gene Therapy video. That is a critical issue for Phase I trials. Also, with just a few people, there can’t be a judge of how effective a treatment is. A treatment might only work with 20% of the patients, but for two or three patients, they all might be cured just out of luck.
This video of 13 days ago, (as of 6/25/2023) says seven patients. Also, saying it is a “HIV Cure Announcement” when it is Phase I doesn’t make sense. Phase I is just to make sure that the medicine doesn’t kill you or make you seriously ill or cause health problems. Phase II and III tells you whether it works. You get some preliminary data from Phase 1. And there is only seven patients in his.
So I found the YouTube of the announcement by American Gene Technology and watched it. It says seven trial participants. It is unclear exactly what the efficancy study was except, “the immune response was what we expected.” Six of the seven went off their HIV retroviral and they saw that the immune system appeared to work. No info on how long they were able to suppress HIV infection. The presentation was vague. Perhaps when they come out with a published report we will see something we can get a hold of. Perhaps they are just celebrating their progress and we shouldn’t expect a lot of details.
The American Gene Technology article Nov. 2022, link below, says that eleven people enrolled. So, what happened to six of the participants?
https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fmed.2022.1044713/full
This July 23, 2022 article says that they are withdrawing the patients from the anti-viral medicine to see if they are cured. I don’t see the number of participants.
https://www.americangene.com/news-releases/agt-hiv-trial-enters-phase-withdrawing-antiretrovirals/
This press release says 100% of patients this and 100% of patients that, but how many patients is not named.
This may be an amazing treatment, I just can’t get hard data. I will be looking forward to further results. It does seem to be a big breakthrough.
20230619
Very encouraging results of Phase I mRNA HIV vaccine test
The first phase, Phase 1 testing is to see if the vaccine is safe. Before they go and inject a lot of people with the vaccine, they need to makes sure it is safe.
The other that they look at is whether the vaccine has indications it is doing what it is expected to do. It doesn’t mean it works. If you administered a vaccine and in blood tests you didn’t see it doing what it was supposed to be doing, there would be no point in giving it to hundreds of people.
They have measures of the antibodies a vaccine produces, cellular immune responses, and other things.
The result of the Phase I Moderna mRNA HIV vaccine was that there were no harmful effects. There was good development of cellular immunity and the right types of B-cells and T-cells.
This is just a first step in a series of steps to come up with a vaccine. However, part of this Phase I test, was to generally test out the feasibility of mRNA technology for a vaccine program and it passed with flying colors. It shows that the next steps are very likely to be successful.
This is a good report for the general public.
https://www.poz.com/article/hiv-vaccine-induces-tcell-response-first-human-trial
These are still somewhat readable by the public, perhaps with some knowledge of science.
https://www.hiv.gov/blog/encouraging-first-in-human-results-for-a-promising-hiv-vaccine/
What do we need to do?
1. Be in opposition to anti-mRNA vaccine opposition.
2. Remember anti-vaxxers in the future are likely to be a special risk of HIV.
3. If you are eligible to volunteer to get the vaccine, it would be good if you did. I am not sure if there is a demand for volunteers at this time, but if there is, support the effort.
The homophobic Christians have been using HIV as a club to hit Gays for quite some time. As soon as this HIV vaccine becomes available people need to sign up for it and get it as soon as possible. There shouldn’t be an issue of vaccines waiting for Gays to show up to get it, it should be Gays waiting for more vaccines to be available.
The initial campaign of vaccination should be only held up by the rate of production of the vaccine.
We also need to apply social pressure on those who are lagging in getting the vaccine and anti-vaxxers who refuse an HIV vaccine need to be pariahs.
The Gay community’s strategic position versus homophobic Christians would be greatly improved with the decline of HIV and having an immunized community.
There might be strategies to really drive the decline. Even if vaccinated, it might be good to take Prep, to make sure there is no breakthrough infection until the rate of new HIV cases is driven to a minimum level. I am just speculating here, but we need to be all in to drive HIV down when the vaccine comes out.
20230605
mRNA panel discussion and the importance to Gays.
I think Gays don’t realize that they can have influence in getting vaccines against STDs available so they just wait for the news to announce it. We can have an influence and we can affect results. That is why I am reporting on vaccines for HIV and other STDS. We should be asking those seeking our vote how they support vaccine research. We should be raising the issue when there is no vaccine effort underway.
mRNA vaccine technology has a lot of abilities which make it likely to be able to make the first successful HIV vaccine. mRNA vaccines are being developed for other Sexually Transmitted Diseases (STDs) also. The following article summarizes a panel discussion on the future of mRNA technology and they have the video of the panel discussion. The mRNA discussion starts at 1 hour 55 minutes.
The article talks about vaccines for cancer. Also, therapies for diabetics and automimmune diseases where the mRNA will produce the proteins that the patients now normally have to inject routinely.
My sense from the article is that there are hundreds of possible applications of mRNA technology. Even though Moderna has 40 mRNA trials ongoing, it is going to take a while to exploit the power of mRNA technology fully. Which means it might be a while until mRNA technology is applied to a specific STD.
The priorities seem to be medical problems that are significant and have a high probability of success and that makes good sense. For Moderna that makes business sense. Successful vaccines will result in cash flow and fund further research and provide the motivation for further research.
What is the Gay agenda here?
1. There is a risk that when mRNA vaccines come out for HIV, herpes, and other STDs, we might not be able to get them because of anti-vaxxer anti-mRNA beliefs. There was a proposal to make mRNA vaccines illegal in Montana. We need to be alert and support policies which support mRNA vaccines.
2. When vaccines for HIV, Herpes, and other STDs come out we need to support getting the community vaccinated. We can’t have a reservoir of HIV and other diseases because people can’t afford the vaccine.
3. When vaccines for HIV, Herpes, and other STDs come out we need to point out the risks of anti-vaxxer Gays. When they are ranting about Covid mRNA vaccines, they probably aren’t getting the vaccines that are already available, and won’t be getting the HIV and Herpes mRNA vaccines.
4. We need to support government research into getting vaccines for STDs. I am not seeing much on syphilis. For gonorrhea there is some work, but for some reason that isn’t any mRNA vaccine being discussed. There might be a reason for that, but I can’t find it and the LGBTQXYZ media doesn’t seem to care.
5. Since anti-Gay Christians are the demographic which is most likely to be anti-vaxxer, Gays need to realize that getting vaccinated gives us a strategic advantage over our enemies.
When Gays are in forums, political clubs, action groups etc. they need to raise the issue of vaccines for STDs.
20230529
Dual CRISPR Gene editing eliminates HIV in some mice. CRISPR is a very new technology.
This is the article for the general public.
https://www.poz.com/article/dual-crispr-gene-editing-cure-hiv
This is the more technical article.
https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2217887120
Even with a vaccine, we will need a cure for HIV. This is an important breakthrough.
There are new technologies now. What is also important is to realize that CRISPR was discovered in 2012. At this time there are medical and biomolecular technologies that didn’t exist in the 20th century and the 2000s. Up until recently the only solution to the HIV pandemic was prevention with safe sex and more recently PreP.
A vaccine alone won’t eliminate HIV. Though an HIV vaccine would be a tremendous benefit in fighting HIV, we still need a cure for HIV. Not just for those who are infected, but also as part of preventing new cases. There is always a possibility of a breakthrough infection for a vaccinated individual, since no vaccine is 100% effective.
Further the rate of decline of HIV in the community when a vaccine comes out would be faster if there was a cure. The rate of vaccination might slow down once 80% of the Gay community is vaccinated and what will drive the elimination of HIV will be the curing of the infected.
HIV isn’t hopeless. There are abundant opportunities opening up to fight HIV. We need to be strong supporters of medical research.
This is an explanation what CRISPR gene editing is.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CRISPR_gene_editing
Remember Gay anti-vaxxers are likely not to be getting the mRNA HIV vaccine or any other mRNA vaccine. He may be hot, but you could end up bio-hot with some infection.
20230522
Progress is moving forward on HIV.
The abstract is all that is needed to be read here. They are understanding why some people can on their own control HIV. This isn’t a cure in itself, but it shows that there is significant progress on understanding how HIV works. With the new abilities of medical and biomolecular technology things can be discovered.
https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciimmunol.ade5872
20230508
Serious threat to the availability of an mRNA HIV vaccine and others
Incidentally, I still come across anti-vaxxer Gays. Gays need to consider that anti-vaxxer Gays are more likely to give you Hepatitis A & B since they have refused to get that vaccine. They are more likely to give you other diseases since they aren’t vaccinated.
When an mRNA HIV vaccine and a mRNA Herpes vaccine comes out they will have refused that vaccine also.
There is always the possibility of a breakthrough infection. Vaccines reduce risk, but not entirely. They might be 70%, or 80% or higher percentage effectiveness, but they aren’t 100%. The elimination of diseases has relied on herd immunity. That is enough people have gotten vaccinated that the disease becomes extinct. With the rise of anti-vaxxer nonsense we no longer are getting herd immunity. If we want HIV be extinct in the Gay community we really need to get vaccination rates up as high as possible.
20230501
Moderna report on mRNA vaccines. Progress on HIV vaccine.
This is somewhat technical. So let me explain it in more broadly understandable terms. All three vaccines are going through Phase I, for safety and see how the body’s immune system reacts.
1. Moderna is trying three different HIV mRNA vaccines at the same time to have the best chance for a winner. Also, to learn different things about making an mRNA vaccine from the three different approaches.
Basically they are betting on three horses for one to win, but also they get 3X learning also.
2. They expect it is likely that they will learn from these vaccines, but it is likely that a new mRNA vaccine or vaccines will be designed based on what they learn. They are expecting this to be iterative.
3. They are working on five different latent viruses including herpes simplex virus.
Over all you can see that they are working on a lot of diseases. They just added Lyme disease and norovirus. I think that if there is a disease that you think needs a vaccine, but isn’t mentioned, it is likely because they are working on a great many diseases already.
Our strategic advantage over anti-Gay Christians is that they are unlikely to get vaccinated and LGBT generally have a high rate of getting vaccinated. Also, remember, a Gay anti-vaxxer isn’t going to be getting an HIV vaccine.
Human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), the cause of AIDS, continues to have devastating health effects globally, resulting in approximately 650,000 deathsworldwide annually. Moderna is advancing three Phase I clinical trials of HIV vaccines with partners (mRNA-1644/IAVI G002; mRNA-1644/IAVI G003; mRNA-1574/NIAID) to expand on proof-of-concept data and evaluate the potential of mRNA technology to successfully deliver immunogens. The goal of these trials is to determine whether this approach is safe and immunogenic, meaning that the immunogens elicit the right type of broadly neutralizing HIV-1 antibodies (bnAbs). The trials are the beginning of an iterative research process with the expectation for multiple Phase 1 trials to converge on a potentially protective vaccine that merits advancement to Phase 2. These trials are conducted in parallel to accelerate the advancement of immunogens into vaccine candidates.
About the impact of Judicial interference with mifepristone. It could impact getting an HIV vaccine.
I think that given right wing hysteria over mRNA vaccines; a crazed federal judge might block an mRNA HIV vaccine. Also, there is an mRNA vaccine for Herpes in development.
https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adi2587
20230424
Crank federal judge is a threat to the development of medicine and this could be a danger to HIV vaccines.
https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adi2587
20230417
A threat to the development and release of an HIV vaccine.
It is a threat to the development and release of any vaccine.
A right-wing crank activist federal judge has overruled the FDA approval of a drug on some pretext. The entire pharmaceutical industry is in an uproar since the approval of any drug is in danger if some crank federal judge can decide that he will disapprove some drug the FDA has approved of. Further why do research if you get your drug approved but some crank judge revokes the approval?
Currently mRNA technology is being used to develop vaccines for HIV, HPV, and Herpes and will likely be used for other drugs. Some crank judge might rule against a drug either because it is an mRNA vaccine or an STD vaccine.
The following are links to articles about this. Ars Technica is more for general readers, Nature magazine is more for scientists.
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-023-01044-7
20230403
CRISPR for HIV cure. Update.
Early in 2022 I did some reporting on CRISPR technology being used for a potential HIV cure. CRISPR is a new gene editing technology and the molecular tool would be to recognize and cut up the genetic material of HIV viruses.
Basically they are being super cautious with this research and they have treated one person starting in July 2022 and then after the treatment regime is over they will see if the HIV stays dormant. Sometime in 2023 we will know the results.
The articles don’t explain why only one patient is being test for the new cure. It might be that the treatment is fairly intensive and requires lots of work to do. However, I think a factor is that there has been a lot of concern about CRISPR being safe. Will it cut up genetic material it is not supposed to and could a few of the accidentally cut up cells become cancer cells. This article discussing the many applications of CRISPR to different diseases talks about some people having life improving results, but also mentions some have died. (This is a publication of MIT.)
CRISPR being used for therapy is totally new and so people are being cautious. The news has been the patient has tolerated the therapy well. So, the therapy itself didn’t make him really sick.
One of the issues raised in the article is that CRISPR cures are likely to be extremely expensive. I think though, if and when CRISPR approaches work, then there will start being a steady number of patients being treated, and then work will start of reducing the cost. It is likely to be the famous learning curve of technology.
CRISPR is a new biomolecular technology of the 21st century. I think we are going to find entirely new biomolecular technologies will give us new opportunities to cure diseases.
I think that vaccines will be really important to fight HIV, but we also will have to treat those who have become infected.
These are the two articles:
https://www.poz.com/article/researchers-study-crispr-gene-editing-cure-hiv
Wired is a magazine for a high-tech audience, but it is written for a general audience. Most high-tech persons don’t know that much about biology or molecular biology.
https://www.wired.com/story/a-bold-effort-to-cure-hiv-using-crispr/
Link to HIV & STD vaccine and cure page further in this newsletter.
20230327
This movement gets crazier and crazier. It could get in the way of us getting the HIV mRNA vaccine.
Missouri might ban mRNA vaccines. Currently the HIV vaccine under development and most likely to succeed is an mRNA vaccine.
20230320
Good article on current status of developing mRNA HIV vaccines.
The timeline is that mid-2023 they will have evaluated the Phase I testing information on the body’s immune response and the vaccine’s safety to decided on proceeding to larger trials. That is studies with larger numbers of people.
https://covid19.nih.gov/news-and-stories/mrna-vaccine-technology-promising-idea-fighting-hiv
I have been reporting on HIV mRNA and other HIV vaccine development, but this is a good summary article recently published for the general reader and has some timeline information. I have an HIV vaccine page where I have links to reports and news articles along with some commentary. I have a link to that post at the end of this report.
It should be remembered even if the vaccine developed only has, let’s say, 50% protection, it would still have a great benefit to the Gay community. It should additionally be remembered that this is a new technology, and like other new technologies it will have development and improvements.
Gays generally are very pro-vaccine, but there are those who aren’t. When a HIV vaccine appears that is working, we need to have the highest rate of vaccination with it. I have a link to a post on how we should respond to those Gays who are anti-vaxxers.
This is a link to a page on the Moderna mRNA vaccines. You can see that they are developing many vaccines now.
https://www.modernatx.com/research/product-pipeline
One important thing you can see is that with mRNA vaccine technology you can have one shot work for more than one disease. If you go down the list you will see a combined covid + flu vaccine, flu + RSV vaccine and even a covid + flu + RSV vaccine. I think this is important. As we have more and more vaccines we will need to have shots that are multipurpose.
Further down the list you can see the HIV vaccines being tested at Stage 1. There are anti-cancer vaccines being tested and a vaccine for Zika. There have been studies that Zika might be an STD. The experience with mpox (monkeypox) should tell us that there can be new STDs emerging.
20230313
This is good for people who might want to go read about developments in medicine including HIV.
Some science websites for those who aren’t super technical.
Given that as Gays we exist in a world where the Gay community can be impacted by scientific and technological developments we need to be informed.
The development of vaccine technology for HIV and other STDs is important. Understanding what is going on in the Internet affects things from hookup apps to social media platforms. So here are some websites of various difficulties.
Arstechnica covers both science and technology and explains it to non-specialists in the field.
Nature is a specialist publication, BUT they have news shorts which explain things for the general reader. Even scientists don’t understand what other scientists do in other fields or know the terminology. So there is a need of short articles breaking it down for the general reader.
This website is dedicated to do popular science reporting.
https://www.quantamagazine.org/
Sky & Telescope has been around a long, long time and is a good source for astronomy.
They have some really interesting articles, but you only get so many until they have a paywall for you.
https://www.technologyreview.com/
An article about a major investment into biotechnology for life extension.
Wired is often a cheerleader for the high-tech industry, what I mean is that they do uncritical hyping of the tech industry in my opinion, and I prefer Arstechnica. They also, only allow a few articles a month before they want you to pay.
This is a new publisher of science and technology which I have discovered. It is published by the John S. and James L. Knight foundation and it is part of the journalism program at MIT. I really should be reading it more.
This article discusses the lack of research into syphilis and also mentions that Gay men are at the highest risk.
https://undark.org/2023/02/20/science-falls-behind-as-syphilis-stages-another-comeback/
There are some so-called sites to avoid. I am not going to mention them, because I don’t want to publicize them.
20230306
(About TB patients not seeking treatment.)
A clear danger to HIV patients. Ideological insanity overrules common sense on a clear public danger.
The title is, “After 17th court hearing, woman with TB ordered to jail for refusing treatment.” She was also refusing any treatment.
The question needs to be asked is why the LGBTQXYZ establishment wasn’t raising the issue. This person besides being a health menace to the public, was certainly a menace to anyone immunocompromised including HIV patients.
What was the risk of it spreading thru Gay community events like mpox?
The LGBTQXYZ establishment is afraid of challenging any craziness because of fear of blowback. Also, they tend to be part of the same local ideological craziness.
20230227
ANTI-mRNA LEGISLATION IN IDAHO.
If the mRNA HIV vaccine works, you might have to drive out of state to get it.
There are mRNA vaccines currently in development for HIV and genital herpes. Likely mRNA vaccines will be the key for other STDs as researchers finish up work with the current vaccines they are working on.
Lunatic Idaho legislators introduce a law to make mRNA vaccines illegal in the state of Idaho.
This growing movement could prevent a vaccine for HIV ever being developed or delay it for years, or make it such that you might have to drive to another state or maybe into Canada or Mexico.
Of course, Gays can get sicknesses from things that aren’t STDs and the generally pro-vaccine view of Gays means they have an advantage over anti-Gay Evangelicals who are most likely to refuse vaccination.
A serious threat to our community.
New HIV vaccine trail has been started. Uses CMV virus vector, not mRNA.
We don’t have all the eggs in one basket. And if this vaccine works and the mRNA works, likely getting both vaccines will give an even better immunity.
Another article about it.
https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2810575
20230202
One of the obstacles we face in getting an HIV vaccine is Gay anti-vaxxers. What we need to point out to people is that a Gay anti-vaxxer is not likely to have gotten the Hepititus vaccine for either A or B, or HPV vaccine, or mpox vaccine or other vaccines and is a disease risk. He may be hot, but you could end up with something also. This is an article I wrote on it. There are Gay anti-vaxxers.
20230123
THIS FAILED HIV VACCINE IS NOT A mRNA Vaccine
20230118
THIS FAILED HIV VACCINE IS NOT A mRNA Vaccine
20230102
CRISPR BEING TRIED FOR ERADICATING HIV FROM THE BODY
I have reported on this before, but this is a good article on CRISPR for the public.
It explains how this therapy is to eradicate HIV from the body and cure a person. Even if we get an HIV vaccine, we still have the issue of the already infected which could potentially cause a breakthrough infection with a person who has received an HiV vaccine.
https://www.poz.com/article/researchers-study-crispr-gene-editing-cure-hiv
This is the universities press release on being the site for the EBT-101 clinical trial.
https://today.rowan.edu/news/2022/12/cmsru-hiv-crisprstudy.html
More news on this. Temple University is a well-known and prestigious university
Of course, this doesn’t mean a cure for HIV is around the corner, there will have to be trials, and it might be it that EBT-101 works to some extent, but needs further development. If it the first version works, it still will need years of testing. Some side-affect might be found, or it only works with a certain class of individuals, or can’t be taken by a class of individuals.
What the importance of this article is to show how the entirely new biotechnologies of the last 10 to 15 years offer new approaches that were impossible before.
As Gay people we might ask are all the possibilities of the new biomolecular scientific developments being looked at for curing HiV and for the possibilities that are identified, is there enough funding?
20221226
VACCINE NEWS FOR HIV – Good news keeps coming in.
This is an article for the more general reader. I had posted the Science magazine article which was very technical in an earlier newsletter. I have updated the HIV Vaccine page with articles that have come out since I published it. I will put a link to it at the end of this post. I realize that I will need to add some dates into the HIV vaccine page entries.
https://gwtoday.gwu.edu/gw-researchers-publish-promising-results-phase-i-hiv-vaccine-trial-humans
This is just a first step and it will take some more years of research, but maybe not super long.
Remember, a Gay anti-vaxxer, is a person who might refuse to get an HIV vaccination and could be the source of a breakthrough infection even if you are vaccinated.
20221205
IMPORTANT HIV VACCINE BREAKTHROUGH
This is an effort by the Scripps Institute working with other institutions, and not Moderna. There is more than one HIV vaccine effort using more than one technology going on.
This is the very technical Science magazine article.
https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.add6502
This is the somewhat less technical AAAS article.
https://www.aaas.org/news/new-hiv-vaccine-induces-rare-antibody-precursors-phase-1-clinical-trial
This is a report for the more general reader.
https://www.cnn.com/2022/12/01/health/hiv-vaccine-phase-1-study
There has been a lot of reporting on HIV vaccines and their promise and then their failures. However, this is very much different and worth reading about.
[1] This vaccine produced what are called broadly neutralizing anti-bodies. That is the induced anti-bodies work on all strains of HIV. The problem with HIV is that the body produces anti-bodies against HIV virus infection, but HIV is a shape-shifting virus so the anti-bodies don’t work on it as it mutates and changes.
There are certain parts of the HIV that can’t change because they are involved in infecting human cells via specific surface targes on human cells that don’t change. However, it has been very difficult to have a vaccine that goes after the unchanging parts of HIV. Scripps appears to have done this.
[2] We don’t have all our eggs in one basket. It is good that there is mRNA vaccine development going on, but by having more than one technology and method being tried we have more than one candidate for an HIV vaccine. Our chances that at least one works is increased.
It has been a long time in waiting, but I think we are reaching the goal of an HIV vaccine. One reason for progress is that biotechnology and biomolecular biology and immunology as sciences and technologies are really advancing very fast. However, there is still Phase II and III to be done for this Scripps vaccine which tests effectiveness in actually preventing infection.
Remember, a Gay antivaxxer is a person who isn’t going to get vaccinated with an HIV vaccine when it becomes available. Though you might be vaccinated, there are occasionally breakthrough infections. If both persons are vaccinated you are fairly safe. If you refuse all unvaccinated, and your partner also refuses all unvaccinated, both of you are really safe.
This applies not only to an HIV vaccine, but mpox vaccine, and any other STD vaccine.
20221202
ENCOURAGING INITIAL RESULTS FOR SCRIPPS INSTITUTE VACCINE - NOT AN mRNA VACCINE.
This is the much more technical article in Science to which they refer.
https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.add6502
20221114
HIV VACCINES AND CURES NEWS UPDATE
I watch out for junk websites. I share stuff from sites that are credible. There are a lot of content farms re-sharing things. The following are from credible websites.
Research Institution Opening up for HIV vaccine research
This grant and the launching of a multi-institute effort reflects the growing optimism about finding both vaccines and cures for HIV.
I follow the articles on molecular biology in the scientific press, but I think the average person isn’t really aware that the biotechnology has really vastly sped up in how fast it advances and how much the understanding and the technology for molecular biology is advancing.
There are new things like mRNA vaccines, but there are other developments in scientific instruments, molecular biology, biotechnology which suddenly make a lot of things possible that weren’t possible before.
For example, it use to take years to figure out the structure of a protein and it involved tedious work of trying to crystalize the protein and then x-ray diffraction and powerful computers to work on the diffraction images to get structures. Some proteins just wouldn’t crystalize. They even crystalized a protein in space to get a structure. Mathematicians, programmers and molecular biologists were working on the problem for decades with little success. They even had a conference about how they were totally failing to figure out what to do.
A lot the development of medicines for diseases and ailments depends on knowing the structure of proteins. Here a piece of software works out the structures of 660 million of them. Suddenly knowing the structure is trivial.
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-03539-1
What is the point of discussing protein folding? To show that molecular biology is moving really fast. The situation where progress was slow and achieved with really determined work is moving to a situation where things are moving much faster and solutions to problems come with lots less work and a lot faster.
This speeding up of progress will not only mean a vaccine for HIV, but it could mean vaccines for other STDs. We need to begin to expect more and demand more in terms of research on vaccines and cures for STDs.
I put a link to a post about Gay Health and the issues with the LGBTQXYZ establishment not meeting Gay health needs because they are embarrassed by it and G is lost in the shuffle of so many letters in the Alphabet Soup of letters.
University of Oxford on a developing HIV therapeutic vaccine.
This is work towards a cure rather than prevention.
If you read it, it is 40% of the patients were able to stay off the HIV medicine for six-months. That is two out of five and may not seem all that great. Science doesn’t work like in the movies where there is a eureka moment and everything is solved.
It is instead, often by steps. There is the testing the first attempt, see if it works at all, then go back and do more work to make it better on the second attempt. Sometimes you have to do it and see if it works at all to see if it is worth working on, and then to find out what the other issues are.
https://www.aelixtherapeutics.com/
The idea that a HIV vaccine could be used to cure HIV is something entirely new.
This article also shows that the possibly ways to go after HIV and prevent it or cure it are increasing.
20221104
HIV Cure News
PROGRESS ON THERAPY FOR THOSE ALREADY INFECTED.
This is work towards a cure rather than prevention.
If you read it, it is 40% were able to stay off the HIV medicine for six-months. That is two out of five and may not seem all that great. Science doesn’t work like in the movies where there is a eureka moment and everything is solved.
It is testing the first attempt, see if it works at all, then go back and do more work to make it better on the second attempt. Sometimes you have to do it and see if it works at all to see if it is worth working on, and then to find out what the other issues are.
https://www.aelixtherapeutics.com/
The idea that a HIV vaccine could be used to cure HIV is something entirely new.
This article also shows that the possibly ways to go after HIV and prevent it or cure it are increasing.
20221010
HIV is cashflow and jobs for a lot of LGBTQXYZ.
A lot of people will lose out when a vaccine becomes available, and undermining our expectations for progress on a vaccine is the first step in delaying a vaccine.
I have done some short items on how there could be opposition to HIV vaccines and cures. Nature magazine actually had an article about how to deal with opposition to an HIV vaccine.
https://www.nature.com/articles/d44151-022-00050-4
Nature is one of the two most authoritative science magazines in the English-speaking world. I will put the links to my two earlier articles about resistance to accepting vaccines and a cure at the end of this post.
The person giving this lecture isn’t having her personal sex life slowed down by HIV. I suppose in some marginal minor way she might claim it does, but she isn’t a Gay man.
Click on the link above, this below, is a screen capture.
Before I start reviewing this article in depth, I want to point out one thing, quoting from the article:
Covid vaccines were produced within less than a year, as unprecedented amounts of money and expertise were dedicated toward their development. [Boldface added.]
Where there is a will there is a way. With Moderna their mRNA vaccine Phase I safety trials have already started.
I would like to point out two things about her lecture.
1. Why isn’t she talking about how the development of the HIV vaccine can be accelerated?
2. Why does this speaker make the assumption that “an unprecedented amounts of money and expertise” wouldn’t be allocated for a HIV vaccine?
What are we, chopped liver? It is this statement that tends to tell you how much priority she expects to be done for an HIV cure and that the lack of an aggressive program to find a vaccine seems reasonable to her.
The fact is that a lot of groups, periodicals, businesses stand to face the loss of major cash flows if an HIV vaccine is available.
Those full-page color ads in your LGBTQXYZ publication, won’t be necessary to sell Prep and HIV medications as the number of people vaccinated go up and HIV case-loads trend down and even more if there is a cure.
All those social welfare groups teaching safe-sex, handing out pamphlets, providing support, doing psychological counseling, and other services won’t be necessary. These are social welfare groups which if they have many Gays involved usually have the type of Gays who are social worker types.
The companies selling Prep and HIV medications will have some market, but greatly reduced markets for these profitable products.
There will be lots and lots of people who have serious huge serious monetary interest in an HIV vaccine being delayed as long as possible and not being that effective.
There will be other types of opposition from certain segments of the Gay community, such as the Respectability Gays who wish Gay life could be toned down and that we all get married, adopt a child, and live behind a white picket fence. The Gays who worry what the straight people think will not be happy is Gay sexual liberation starts being in full swing.
The LGBTQXYZ political establishments will find Gay life embarrassing.
Finally, anti-Gay religious groups will realize that a Gay community not weighed down by the issue of HIV is going to be a Gay community that is much more able to fight back. The anti-Gays won’t be able to use HIV to scare people and to mobilize people against the Gay life.
The various organizations out there aren’t the organizations of Gay men, but instead are “queer” groups, or LGBTQ+ groups or some other type of Alphabet Soup. They have multiple agendas. The interests of the letter “G” tends to be lost in the shuffle.
So, if we do have problems in the expeditious development of an HIV vaccine, we could face opposition from groups with a vested interest in taking time to get a vaccine, but also, the lack of support of the queer/LGBTQXYX groups.
SO HOW MIGHT THEY DELAY IT?
1. One way is indicated by the Bloomberg article above. Underfund and under mobilize the effort to get a vaccine. Don’t take a major effort.
2. Make sure the safety testing is dragged out as long as possible. Now a vaccine can be unsafe, as the Dengue vaccine debacle in the Philippines has shown, however, you can always ask for more testing and fret over any concerning development.
3. Bring up ethical problems when certain studies are done. Maybe the group being vaccinated is a marginal group and you can claim they are being exploited. The group might be male prostitutes working somewhere and would greatly benefit, but you can “raise issues.” The potential for self-righteous nit picking is great.
4. Based on the fear that with an HIV vaccination Gays might engage in sex that puts them at risk for other STDs, require a 11-hour video training and passing a test before getting vaccinated. Have a $50 dollar fee for the training.
5. Make sure it is as expensive as possible.
6. Require a physical beforehand or some type of testing on the basis of avoiding some risk of getting vaccinated no matter how small.
7. Require an HIV test within the last 30 days. Don’t want to give a vaccine if you already have HIV. Was testing done for risk factors in this situation?
8. Preclude some Gays from getting it on the basis of them being in some high-risk group for complications however unlikely.
9. When the vaccine is available don’t have a really aggressive program to get people vaccinated.
10. In the name of protecting the Gay community make sure any rare side effect gets lots of news coverage, maybe have moratorium on vaccinations until there is a full investigation. Make sure every possible, but not verified, reports of side effects get coverage.
11. In the name of inclusion and letting all community voices be heard, provide platforms for anti-vaxxers in LGBTQXYZ media.
Delaying tactics can be more than one of the items in the above list.
I am sure other means might be thought of. It shouldn’t be though that delaying and blocking tactics will be done with those do these tactics conscious of their techniques.
COUNTER MEASURES
1. Volunteer to be a subject for the vaccination research. You will help get the research project to progress. You will be vaccinated in the safety trials or you might be vaccinated or not in the double-blind trials. This however, is not going to be a way of getting the Gay community in general vaccinated, but this is a very limited opportunity. Maybe they are getting all the volunteers they want.
2. If possible, visit another jurisdiction to get a vaccination. Perhaps over a state line or a day trip into Canada or Mexico. This of course will be an option only for a few, but I am going to list all options.
3. Track the progress of vaccine development and roll out and if it is deficient write letters to elected representatives in the federal government. Don’t write to the local LGBTQXYZ groups, you will be wasting your time.
4. Be openly critical of any of your local groups or national LGBTQ+ groups that directly or indirectly be delaying the development or roll out of the vaccine.
5. When the HIV vaccine is available get it right away to set an example for others.
6. Mobilize groups for the cure and for the vaccine just like they do with breast cancer.
SUMMARY
I can say for sure that there will be actions delaying the HIV vaccine, but I think we need to be alert. This article going on at length on how it will take a long, long time I think is lowering expectations and undermining any possible effort to make a push for an HIV vaccine.
There are three major groups which stand to have serious adverse effects from an HIV vaccine.
1. The HIV industry of social services and pharmaceuticals in the lost of jobs and cash flow.
2. The Respectability Gays in seeing the revival of Gay sexual liberation.
3. The Christian right facing a greatly strengthen Gay community and the loss of an anti-Gay scare tool.
Some people may think that this article is imagining problems that won’t exist. Let’s hope so, but this article in Bloomberg displays a concerning attitude towards getting an HIV vaccine quickly.
IMPORTANT NEW APPROACH TO CURING HIV
https://arstechnica.com/science/2022/10/a-bold-effort-to-cure-hiv-using-crispr/
I have reported on this before, and this is an update on the research. This is very early in the medical trials. Even if this effort is only a partial success, the thing about technology is that it goes through iterative development and learns from its failures.
I have been tracking HIV research and I will put a link to the HIV post page at the end of this post.
20220926
COLLABORATIONIST GAY THINKING AND GAY HEALTH
Evidently Gay health itself isn't a sufficient justification and research into our health needs has to be justified by the possible benefits to straight people. The title of this article is, “Gay men are the ‘canary in the coal mine’ of future pandemics…” (Link below)
There is this attitude with many Gays that their needs aren’t sufficiently important by themselves, and need some type of pleading or additional justification.
People wonder why some Gays support transman demands for our bodies. Their support is because they hope for tolerance, feel they must justify themselves, plead for themselves, and have no sense that they, as Gay people, have a worth as a people or any claims as part of humanity.
20220905
THE MURDEROUS INTENT OF THESE CHRISTIANS.
They want to block federal funding for Prep.
A Texas Christian group is suing to eliminate Prep being covered by the Affordable Care Act insurance. This would have murderous impact on Gays since the rate of HIV would likely to go up.
https://fortune.com/2022/07/26/hiv-prevention-drug-prep-texas-lawyer-abortion-ban-aca-lawsuit/
This is another article.
Quoting from the article.
Jonathan Mitchell, the Republican former solicitor general of Texas known for his efforts to restrict abortion access in the state, argues the mandatory PrEP coverage forces Christians to subsidize “homosexual behavior” in violation of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, a statute cited in other health care fights over abortion, contraception and treatments for transgender people.
His clients -- Christian-owned Kelley Orthodontics and Braidwood Management Inc., as well as several individuals who also object on religious grounds -- believe the mandate makes them complicit in “conduct that is contrary to their sincere religious beliefs,” Mitchell said at a hearing Tuesday.
IF HE WINS GAY PEOPLE WILL DIE
20220816 ??? Date correct?
OPTIMISTIC THAT HIV mRNA VACCINE MIGHT BE COMING SOON AND WHY.
It also explains why mRNA vaccines can overcome problems that other vaccines have in protecting people from HIV.
20220810
20220800 (Monthly publication)
mRNA wakes up HIV virus providing possibly an avenue to attack the virus.
They are intended to provide immunity to Covid, but a new thing has been discovered. They wake up HIV virus hiding out in cells.
During anti-viral therapy HIV hides out in cells waiting for the therapy to stop. Finding this hidden virus, “waking it up,” so the immune system would go after it, has been a goal of scientists working on HIV.
Turns out that mRNA HIV vaccines wake up the hiding virus so it can be found by the immune system. This is not a cure in itself, but an important and unexpected step in finding a cure. This is an initial result, and of course scientists will build on it.
This is an important article on this at Cornell Univ. (No content-farm sources in my newsletter)
This link following is the really technical article which probably only a scientist in that field would understand. HOWEVER, you can read the abstract (It is fairly challenging also). I also put it here to show that this result is accepted by leading scientific authorities.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-022-32376-z
The important thing is that a new possible avenue to finding a cure for HIV has been found and of course scientists will work on making it better. There will be cycles of development, experimentation, and re-development.
At this point the Gay community is overwhelmingly NOT anti-vaxxer. We need to keep it that way to have a victory over HIV. I provide a meme at the very, very end of the newsletter that you might use against anti-vaxxers. If you see some meme that you think would work to fight anti-vaxxers at my newsletter, feel free to use it.
20220718
HIV VACCINE
There isn’t any real news yet. Vaccine trials take time and it is likely months before we find out how the Moderna trial is going.
There are a lot of questionable website online which are doubtful about HIV vaccine news and some seem to be content farms republishing original news sources.
I am keeping track and will be publishing any real news on HIV vaccines and treatments.
20220716
Opposititon to HIV vaccines.
As companion pieces to this article are “The Safe sex debate after an HIV vaccine and cure,” “HIV Developments and the Alphabet South,” “Vaccination — Our Superpower over Anti-Gay Christians,” and “Trans, Alphabet Democrats and Gay Health.” The links are at the end of this article.
This article appeared in Nature magazine. One of the two major scientific magazines in the English speaking world. The title is, “Preparing society for a HIV vaccine.” This is the link.
https://www.nature.com/articles/d44151-022-00050-4
What it is about is how to prevent or overcome anti-vaxxer sentiment when an HIV vaccine comes out. It is about promoting HIV vaccines in India.
From the above article:
At a 2017 workshop in Chennai to understand people’s hope for a human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) vaccine, a participant said such a vaccine may make society more “morally corrupt”. He believed that a preventive vaccine may encourage more people to engage in unsafe sex with multiple partners. The respondent had HIV and had experienced stigma and discrimination.
This is called survivor’s bias, a common behavioural reaction, but there is a lesson in his response for HIV vaccine developers — the acceptability of an HIV vaccine will not be an easy journey.
The article explains that the issue of how to over come anti-vaxxer sentiment is being written because there is a lot of hope that an HIV vaccine might become a reality with mRNA technology. Also, the article explains that that growing anti-vaxxer sentiment is one of the major health hazards the world faces.
The article then goes on to discuss different strategies to overcome resistance to vaccination.
I reference this article to show that it is possible that HIV vaccines could face opposition and to consider that this opposition might impact the availability of HIV vaccines.
Given how many years the Gay community has waited and hoped for an HIV vaccine that there might be an anti-vaxxer opposition to an HIV vaccine seems outrageous.
However, we need to start thinking now about what we might do and the issues that might come up that block or undermine our ability to get an HIV vaccine.
Right Wing Opposition — Morality
It might be thought that the idea of “moral corruption” wouldn’t enable anti-vaxxers in the United States, but that would be wrong.
When it was originally mandated that school children get an HPV vaccine there developed strong opposition from Christian groups to getting the HPV vaccine since it was thought it would encourage teenage sex.
These anti-Gay Christian groups are very likely to oppose schools mandating HIV vaccines even though teenagers are sexually active.
They might block HIV vaccine availability for people in prisons. For those who might not be concerned about prisoners, it needs to be remembered that HIV will be combated by preventing new cases for the population as a whole. Prisoners who contracted HIV while in prison when released will be in the general population and a potential source of HIV transmission.
It also needs to be understood that an effective HIV vaccination program may not be blocked by one thing, but by many small things undermining it.
Right Wing Anti-vaxxers
There is growing opposition to vaccines. What originally was the delusional beliefs of silly people who believed in alternative medicine and concentrated on the West and East Coasts, has now become a major element of right wing politics. It has gone from just opposition to Covid vaccines to opposition to vaccines in general.
I don’t think they will push for a law that will block getting vaccines outright, they might undermine efforts to get the word out to the public about getting HIV vaccines or efforts to support the distribution of HIV vaccines. It might
They might want to hinder or block U.S. efforts to make HIV vaccines available overseas. Again, this may not seem significant, but the U.S. population travels outside the U.S. and back and the prevalence or lack of HIV elsewhere is going to be an important factor in preventing HIV in the U.S.
The Alphabet Soup LGBTQXYX
Also, the Gay community might find itself somewhat isolated on this issue. In the LGBTQIA+ how many letters are really concerned about HIV and a vaccine.
The asexuals aren’t going to be concerned what ever their leadership might say. I don’t think Lesbians are impacted that much. Trans aren’t likely to be that concerned either, they aren’t particularly sexually active. Other letters are probably not that sexually active.
The various Gays that are complaining about Gays at the Gym, Circuit Parties, Bars, and talking about body positivity are complaining about these Gays since they won’t have sex with them and generally they aren’t getting laid.
Respectability Gays who hoped that Gays would all get married and adopt some children have understood that the end of HIV means the revival of a Gay culture oriented to sexual liberation and non-heterosexual normative Gay lives.
Anti-sex elements in the LGBTQXYZ are not going to be happy with an HIV vaccine, though they might not say it directly. We are likely to hear sanctimonious moralizing statements that will go something like, “Now that we have an HIV vaccine I hope we can choose to do such and such and not do such and such and revert to the bad old days and be positive in our relationships.”
We might find that Alphabet Soup groups and media deprioritize or drop the issue of getting people HIV vaccinated.
All those involved in teaching safe-sex face the end of their employment. If I am vaccinated against HIV will I want to have regular testing for HIV? If I am vaccinated will I still take PREP? There is a whole infrastructure built around treating HIV patients as well. An HIV vaccine would negatively impact the economics of the provision of goods and services.
I don’t think people involved in the anti-HIV efforts to block an HIV vaccine, but they will likely have their special approaches to the availability of HIV vaccines. Hopefully mostly not a problem. They may still urge PREP and testing even when people have been HIV vaccinated which might be a good idea until the incidence of HIV is largely eliminated, but they might also be pushing safe-sex practices and condoms long after they necessary.
This article is at this point is speculative. It seeks to look at the possibilities of opposition to HIV vaccination which when available will be of vital concern to the Gay community.
The important lesson of the Nature magazine article and of this article is to realize that it is possible that their could be an anti-vaxxer opposition to an HIV vaccine which would negative impact the Gay community.
An anti-vaxxer movement negatively impacting the Gay community isn’t impossible.
This article is to prepare us to realize that it is possible and think of what we might do.
One thing that can be done is to oppose anti-vaxxer sentiments in the Gay community. Those who are anti-vaxxer we should point out haven’t taken the HPV vaccine and are disease risks and won’t be taking the HIV vaccines. They can be sexually isolated from the Gay community to some extent and Gay community opinion can be made to be really hostile to anti-vaxxer sentiments.
22020616
OPPOSITION TO HIV VACCINES
This article is about anti-vaxxer resistance to HIV Vaccines.
https://www.nature.com/articles/d44151-022-00050-4
The Gay community needs to take a hard line against anti-vaxxers in the Gay community.
I expect that when vaccines start coming out for Herpes, HIV, and other STDs there will be some in the LGBTQXYZ that won’t be happy about it. Gays will be able to be more sexually active and they would rather Gays get married and adopt children. Assimilationist Gays and Respectability Gays will not be happy.
I suspect they will publish articles about how you still need to practice safe sex and not have multiple partners for some reason. Maybe they will dream up some psychological (imaginary) problem with having a free sex life.
Also, social workers types will have less to do in the Gay community and hence less influence to push their views.
Don’t be surprised that the LGBTQXYZ have some obstructionist role. Perhaps priority on getting vaccinated will involve having to go to a class on responsible sex or something like that. This is just a speculation, but as STDs cease to be an issue and Gays become more sexually active, there are elements in the LGBTQXYZ who will not be happy. Maybe the end result will be just more of these lectures about the supposed toxicity of Gay life.
MORE NEWS ON HIV VACCINES
A good overview of the challenges of developing an HIV vaccine and the use of mRNA vaccine technology.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2022/06/01/hiv-vaccine-covid-vaccine/
20220425
GAY HEALTH – mRNA VACCINES FOR OTHER STDS including HIV.
This is a good overview article written for a general audience regarding mRNA Vaccines and their applicability to many diseases.
https://www.wired.com/story/for-mrna-vaccines-covid-was-just-the-beginning/
Basically, I am thinking that some pharmaceutical company or group of researchers is going to be looking at using a vaccine for any disease which doesn’t have a vaccine now, or a vaccine that works well, and I am guessing, but I think at some point they will expect vaccines of 90% or better as a routine thing. Or maybe even better if mRNA vaccines start to be typically over 95% effective.
No technology is static and there is likely some improvement to come for mRNA vaccines.
The Gay community is a sexually active population and support for research for vaccines and effective treatments should be a significant agenda item for Gays.
20220404
HIV TRIAL NETWORK FOR HIV VACCINES – HVTN NUMBERS
https://www.hvtn.org/
They do also support for other HIV related medicine. I discovered them when I was trying to understand what these series of numbers HVNT-XXX, (XXX is what number it might be.) I think that each study or activity is assigned these numbers. I am trying to find a confirm. I want to avoid double reporting on HIV vaccines and HIV Cures.
These numbers are useful so you know whether you are reading about the same or different clinical trial. For example the Moderna vaccine has HVTN 302 assigned to its clinical trials. I saw a press release which wasn’t clear that it was part of the Moderna vaccine effort, but since it mentioned HVTN 302, I realized it wasn’t a new effort.
In this press release Moderna isn’t mentioned at all, but the number HVTN 302 told me that it was the same study. For some reason they aren’t mentioning Moderna.
A different HVTN number doesn’t mean it is entirely unrelated either. It might be part of a series of studies in a progression, or a clinical trial for one thing which supports is preliminary, like safety testing, for a subsequent study.
For example, this has an HVTN 300 number, but is clearly part of the HVTN 302 effort.
https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT04915768
Also, the numbers don’t follow a sequence in time. In the following paper HVTN 305 was done in 2012-2017 and HVTN 306 was done 2013-2020. It is a long history of failures to make an effective or even partially effective vaccine.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7655734/
This item will be added into the HIV Page, link at the end of the article.
HIV mRNA VACCINE EFFORT ARTICLE – TITLE TOO PESSIMISTIC BUT IT IS INFORMATIVE.
The research does NOT say that it is a long way off. What the researcher said was:
“We don’t really know how far away or how close we are,” Himansu added. “We’re trying to pursue many approaches in parallel, because we don’t know what’s going to work.”
Himansu also said:
In other words, what’s being tested now is not an HIV vaccine itself but the possible eventual components of one. An effective and approved vaccine sequence could still be 10 or 15 years away, Himansu said.
The word is “could.”
Dr. Himansu is correct in what he says. Until it is done you don’t know how long it is going to take, and as with cancer and other potentially fatal diseases is you don’t want to give false hope. With the long history of HIV vaccine failures that used the usual methods of making vaccines that is also the correct response for this reason. Popular reporting on medical research often gives a lot of false hope as if the research might mean a medical breakthrough is imminent. When my mother had breast cancer she would call once a week about some development and I as a subscriber to Science magazine, which also reported on the development, I had the disagreeable task of explaining what the significance of the research was, which wasn’t an imminent, which is what she needed to save her life. Medical researchers are very aware of this type of news reporting.
However, two notable things about mRNA vaccines are how fast they can be developed and with the COVID-19 vaccine, how extremely effective both Moderna and Pfizer are, both in the 90% range. Further mRNA technology can design vaccines to do things that the other vaccine technologies can’t do and very specifically. They call mRNA vaccines the first “digital vaccines.”
Also, as the article does explain though how the HIV mRNA vaccine effort has means of progressing must faster than other vaccine efforts and is correct in this.
Perhaps the author of the article wanted to make sure people didn’t think the vaccine was going to be available Fall 2022. Given how fast the Coronavirus vaccine became available, 3 or 4 months, they might.
This item will be added into the HIV Vaccine Page. Link at the end of the newsletter.
20220328
HIV CURE NEWS
CRISPR is a gene editing tool where you can cut at a specific location in DNA, cut out a specific segment, and either just cut out the segment or insert genetic code into the DNA in the same location. CRISPR didn’t exist until recently, like the last five years roughly.
There are a lot of new biological technologies that didn’t even exist before 2010 and there are a lot of new ones since then. Doctors and scientists are looking at their application to HIV.
This study via the links below is about a clinical trial using CRISPR to cut out HIV from infected cells. They are talking about a one-time treatment for HIV. Or it if takes three treatments that would work also.
https://www.phillyvoice.com/hiv-cure-research-temple-clinical-trial-crispr-gene-editing-/
There are multiple new technologies out there and we should expect that new approaches for treating HIV are going to be pursued.
The effort isn’t at just one university either which is good. A potential CRISPR cure isn’t dependent on just one team. Though the different groups in publishing are sharing their results.
This is a paper, highly technical of HIV CRISPR research at the Univ. of Nebraska.
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/ebiom/article/PIIS2352-3964(21)00472-2/fulltext
This is about the company they founded.
https://www.unmc.edu/pharmacology/products-services/NNPP/collaboratories/Exavir_Therapeutics.html
I expect that there might be other efforts outside the United States, and probably new groups looking to start efforts here in the United States. I will be following the progress on CRISPR.
20220323
HIV mRNA VACCINE EFFORT ARTICLE – TITLE TOO PESSIMISTIC BUT IT IS INFORMATIVE.
The research does NOT say that it is a long way off. What the researcher said was:
“We don’t really know how far away or how close we are,” Himansu added. “We’re trying to pursue many approaches in parallel, because we don’t know what’s going to work.”
Himansu also said:
In other words, what’s being tested now is not an HIV vaccine itself but the possible eventual components of one. An effective and approved vaccine sequence could still be 10 or 15 years away, Himansu said.
The word is “could.”
Dr. Himansu is correct in what he says. Until it is done you don’t know how long it is going to take, and as with cancer and other potentially fatal diseases is you don’t want to give false hope. With the long history of HIV vaccine failures that used the usual methods of making vaccines that is also the correct response for this reason. Popular reporting on medical research often gives a lot of false hope as if the research might mean a medical breakthrough is imminent. When my mother had breast cancer she would call once a week about some development and I as a subscriber to Science magazine, which also reported on the development, I had the disagreeable task of explaining what the significance of the research was, which wasn’t an imminent, which is what she needed to save her life. Medical researchers are very aware of this type of news reporting.
However, two notable things about mRNA vaccines are how fast they can be developed and with the COVID-19 vaccine, how extremely effective both Moderna and Pfizer are, both in the 90% range. Further mRNA technology can design vaccines to do things that the other vaccine technologies can’t do and very specifically. They call mRNA vaccines the first “digital vaccines.”
Also, as the article does explain though how the HIV mRNA vaccine effort has means of progressing must faster than other vaccine efforts and is correct in this.
Perhaps the author of the article wanted to make sure people didn’t think the vaccine was going to be available Fall 2022. Given how fast the Coronavirus vaccine became available, 3 or 4 months, they might.
This item will be added into the HIV Vaccine Page. Link at the end of the newsletter.
MORE ARTICLES FOLLOW BELOW.
https://www.poz.com/article/new-study-evaluating-three-mrna-hiv-vaccine-candidates
https://www.nih.gov/news-events/news-releases/nih-launches-clinical-trial-three-mrna-hiv-vaccines
20220321
mRNA HIV VACCINES ARE GETTING STARTED
I am going to be updating the HIV Vaccine news page with these articles. After years of failures, the mRNA technology offers real possibilities of effective vaccines. This I believe will become an issue related to transmen demanding sex from Gay men as I will explain in this essay. The general presence of social workers tends to press social worker attitudes and academic conceptualizations of Gays onto the Gay community will have an impact on how HIV vaccines will have in the discussions of what safe-sex should be or whether there needs to be safe sex practices.
These are the news studies. Mostly just Phase I to test for safety, but there is a possibility of efficacy information being gained.
https://www.poz.com/article/new-study-evaluating-three-mrna-hiv-vaccine-candidates
https://www.nih.gov/news-events/news-releases/nih-launches-clinical-trial-three-mrna-hiv-vaccines
I created a general HIV vaccine info page to be updated as there is progress on a vaccine. Also, a HIV cure page and a HIV writings page with my writings. To find all of these pages, I created a general HIV page. I put the links to the pages at the end of the newsletter.
One thing to consider is that when there is a vaccine and cure for HIV, Gays won’t have to be wearing condoms during sex anymore. Of course, this will need to be done with transmen. Again, pregnancy is going to be an issue clearly separating transmen from Gays and even more so with the advent of HIV vaccines.
20220318
20220318 ???
A vaccine is of course going to be the first line of defense against HIV. However, a cure will still be needed. There will be breakthrough infections that happen. Though in the United States herd immunity might happen, with the proliferation of anti-vaccine lunatics, there will unfortunately be sources of HIV among straight people and stupid Gays who follow anti-vaxxer ideology. Overseas there will be populations that have a low level of vaccinations. The efforts to erradicate polio through the use of vaccines keeps being almost, but just short of success since there will be some war zone where people can’t be vaccinated and polio exists, or some local resistance to vaccination.
So a cure is necessary. Progress is being made on an HIV cure. Biomolecular science and immunology have been advancing immensely in the last few decades. For those who aren’t readers of the scientific press it probably isn’t apparent, but there are things they can do now that were only dreams a decade or two ago.
It needs to be understood that even if one of these technologies by itself doesn’t cure HIV, it might be part of a combination therapy. Or it might be of use in some specialized cases. Even failures will result in some new knowledge about HIV.
HIV empowers the agendas of respectability Gays. It puts a damper on sexual liberation. It also helps create a phalanx of social workers who will tend to push social worker attitudes on the Gay community. A vaccine and cure will disempower them considerably.
This is a companion page to the HIV vacine Page, I will put a link at the bottom of the page. There is a HIV general news page also the link to which is at the bottom of this page.
ARTICLES
For this page I am going to have some links with explanations grouped together. They will be in order of newest to oldest.
CRISPR TECHNOLOGY TO CUT HIV PROVIRUS OUT OF THE CELLS
A provirus is a virus which has been inserted into a cell’s genetic material where it then acts to create more virus particles. HIV hides out in the patients genetic material when it is suppressed with anti-virals. It is also the place where the disease works to create other viral particles to infect other cells. So a technology that could pull out HIV from a cell and render it harmless would be potentially a cure for HIV infection.
These researchers are targeting a cure with one treatment, but my uninformed opinion is that if they can do it with three treatments that is still a great accomplishments. Also, if they can just reduce the hidden virus 90%, it probably has some benefit, though I am not sure what.
CRISPR is a gene editing tool where you can cut at a specific location in DNA, cut out a specific segment, and insert genetic code into the DNA. CRISPR didn’t exist until recently, like the last five years roughly.
There are a lot of new biological technologies that didn’t even exist before 2010 and there are a lot of new ones since then. Doctors and scientists are looking at their application to HIV. There are two companies pursuing the use of this technology at the present. Possibly there are more efforts underway.
The following is in reference to a company called Excision:
These following studies are about a clinical trial using CRISPR to cut out HIV from infected cells. They are talking about a one-time treatment for HIV.
Update (10/6/2022) https://arstechnica.com/science/2022/10/a-bold-effort-to-cure-hiv-using-crispr/
https://www.phillyvoice.com/hiv-cure-research-temple-clinical-trial-crispr-gene-editing-/
There are multiple new technologies out there and we should expect that new approaches for treating HIV are going to be pursued.
The effort isn’t at just one university either which is good. A potential CRISPR cure isn’t dependent on just one team. Though the different groups in publishing are sharing their results.
The following are about the efforts of Exavir:
This is a paper, highly technical of HIV CRISPR research at the Univ. of Nebraska.
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/ebiom/article/PIIS2352-3964(21)00472-2/fulltext
This is about the company they founded.
https://www.unmc.edu/pharmacology/products-services/NNPP/collaboratories/Exavir_Therapeutics.html
GROUP - FLUSHING HIV OUT OF ITS HIDDING PLACE.
The following article is somewhat technical and you only can see the abstract.
https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/scitranslmed.abl3836
This is a popular article.
Basically what happens with AIDS patients getting anti-virals drugs is that the HIV virus hides out in certain cells and says quiet (inactive) so there aren’t foreign proteins for the immune system to find, detect and get rid of the infected cells.
This isn’t a cure in itself, but it is significant progress towards getting a cure.
20220207
HIV RESEARCH
As a member of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) I come across a lot of research articles about HIV. There has been a steady advance in knowledge. Though a lot of the work for the Gay community regarding AIDS prevention and support of HIV Poz people is good, I also feel that it has tended to support anti-sex attitudes. In San Francisco the bath houses were shut down as an anti-HIV measure, when it could have been a great place to do testing and education.
Also, it tends to support a class of social workers who do good work in the Gay community in support of HIV Poz people, but also tend to bring their social worker attitudes into the Gay community.
I don’t want to do HIV reporting, I think that others will do it well, but I thought I would report major milestone events in the progress against AIDS.
I do plan to report on how advances in HIV treatment and prevention have in the Alphabet Soup’s cultural, political and social views of the Gay male community.
20220203
HIV Research developments and the Alphabet Soup
I am a subscriber to Science magazine of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, (AAAS), of which I am a member. I also follow Ars Technica, and see what is at Nature magazine webpage. (Nature is the other world leading science academic publication.)
I will provide some good science sources.
Mostly over the last twenty years, Science articles have been about better understanding how HIV works, better anti-virals, and failing vaccines. However, recent developments give real hope that HIV might come to an end.
In this section I am only going to post major milestone articles, but not all of them.
I believe that HIV tends to drive some anti-sex attitudes, also inhibits sexual activity in the Gay community and builds up a class of social workers with middle class attitudes influencing the Gay community. THESE ARE NOT BAD PEOPLE. I am just discussing tendencies in though. The bathhouses in San Francisco were closed down in the 1980s purportedly as a measure to stop HIV in a city where Respectability Gays (Gay Democrats) ran things. The Bathhouses could have been a great place to provide testing and education and the distribution of condoms but respectability Gays had a panic. Other repressive effects have been more subtle.
I think if there was both a vaccine and cure for HIV there would be more developments of sexual liberation and less anti-Sex attitudes.
VACCINES
The following are articles on mRNA vaccines. These promise effective vaccines against HIV. Basically with mRNA vaccines you can tailor exactly what anti-gens you want produced. They call the mRNA vaccines digital vaccines. If you know the genetic sequence of the vaccine, you can pick precisely which of the virus’ anti-gens to use for a vaccine. The 90+% effectiveness of the Covid vaccines on first try was fairly amazing.
Moderna has just started a clinical trial of a mRNA HIV vaccine as reported on 1/31/2022. No doubt other pharmaceutical companies will come up with other mRNA vaccines. We can also expect some technological cycles with the vaccine. Once the first one is in use, probably a 2nd version will be developed based on what is learned from the first one.
https://www.cnn.com/2022/01/31/health/moderna-mrna-hiv-vaccine/index.html
CURE
The following article is somewhat technical and you only can see the abstract.
https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/scitranslmed.abl3836
This is a popular article.
Basically what happens with AIDS patients getting anti-virals drugs is that the HIV virus hides out in certain cells and says quiet (inactive) so there aren’t foreign proteins for the immune system to find and get ride of the infected cells.
This isn’t a cure in itself, but it is significant progress towards getting a cure.
Though Ed Sebesta was in semiconductor process engineering, he has been following other sciences. The singular thing about science that he has observed is how the tools and methods to discover science themselves have advanced tremendously. The tools in the fields of biology, medicine, molecular biology, etc. would have been unimaginable 40 years ago, yet things continue to advance.
OTHER DEVELOPMENTS
There has been a lot of scientific progress in other areas. Some people are immune to HIV and there is research as to why. How HIV works continues to be investigated. Even failures in new drugs and vaccines offer information about HIV.
#HIVVaxNow
Some articles I wrote are in this page on HIV.
