3 ms·

The first firm to make an HIV vaccine will print money selling to various NGO and world governments so I think there's plenty of incentive to develop one. HIV

The first firm to make an HIV vaccine will print money selling to various NGO and world governments so I think there's plenty of incentive to develop one. HIV is a different animal from most viruses since it targets the immune cells, the very thing that allows vaccines to work, so I imagine its a lot more complicated than other vaccines to develop.

alecst 7y ago
From my college years I remember that vaccination was hard because the outer shell of the virus is capable of mutating so rapidly that it's hard to make antibodies specific to it.
- lebuffon 7y ago
  I am not an expert but I notice that we seem to manage variability with Influenza by creating a new vaccine every year.
  - markus92 7y ago
    There efficacy is debated though. Every other year you hear that the vaccine is not for the right strain of it.
  - InitialLastName 7y ago
    The difference, as I (also not an expert) understand it is that HIV is unique in that it's so variable that the host never develops immunity to the disease. In most viruses, the immune system eventually develops an immunity and eliminates the disease. Influenza is an example of this; your immune system learns to fight off the strain that you get. The new vaccine every year is for the new strains. The HIV vaccine mutates quickly enough that the host never develops immunity themselves, which makes triggering immunity with a vaccine very difficult.
lebuffon 7y ago
In the short term they will make money yes, but someone used to make money selling smallpox vaccine. :-) Having spent some time at a Fortune 500 company I cannot imagine a day where someone voluntarily creates a plan to eliminate billions of dollars of sales in monthly doses of medicine in exchange for a single or double dose per patient product. Corporations just don't think like that. Some might say it's even illegal for them to value the patients over the shareholders under current regulations. I take your point on the complexity of HIV. However there are creative strategies that can be used like targeting surface proteins (?) perhaps. There are a great many intelligent people in the field. I have dim memories of work showing promise in the early years of the disease. It seems to have gone silent after the introduction of the drug cocktail approach. Coincidence? Perhaps...
- faitswulff 7y ago
  > In the short term they will make money This is generally reason enough for companies to do what they will, consequences be damned.
  - dmix 7y ago
    Yes. This is literally the business model of tons of successful billion dollar companies in bio and pharma who continually find new revenue streams by attracting talent and acquiring new “exciting firms”. The OPs conspiracies don’t hold any water to reality. The reason for drug prices are randomly spiking in the US (for a small minority of drugs lucky enough to be in FDA backlogs) is mostly unrelated to the R&D side: https://slatestarcodex.com/2016/08/29/reverse-voxsplaining-drugs-vs-chairs/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2016/08/29/reverse-voxsplaining-d...
- headcanon 7y ago
  Perhaps, but I can certainly imagine a day where someone voluntarily creates a plan to create a new product that is extraordinarily valuable to a lot of deep-pocketed customers, that competitors cannot match for years potentially, and even reduces customers for the current product on the market that their competitors can match (cocktail). Not to mention that 1) new vaccines will need to be created to match virus mutation, and 2) thousands of new customers will enter the market daily by sheer virtue of population expansion, especially in areas hit hard by HIV [1]. I'm sorry but there isn't a global conspiracy to stop development of an HIV vaccine. Much of what big pharma does is incredibly cyncial and deserves scrutiny, but even viewing it within that lens, there is a clear business case here. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Projections_of_population_growth https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Projections_of_population_grow...

alecst 7y ago

From my college years I remember that vaccination was hard because the outer shell of the virus is capable of mutating so rapidly that it's hard to make antibodies specific to it.

lebuffon 7y ago
I am not an expert but I notice that we seem to manage variability with Influenza by creating a new vaccine every year.
- markus92 7y ago
  There efficacy is debated though. Every other year you hear that the vaccine is not for the right strain of it.
- InitialLastName 7y ago
  The difference, as I (also not an expert) understand it is that HIV is unique in that it's so variable that the host never develops immunity to the disease. In most viruses, the immune system eventually develops an immunity and eliminates the disease. Influenza is an example of this; your immune system learns to fight off the strain that you get. The new vaccine every year is for the new strains. The HIV vaccine mutates quickly enough that the host never develops immunity themselves, which makes triggering immunity with a vaccine very difficult.

lebuffon 7y ago

In the short term they will make money yes, but someone used to make money selling smallpox vaccine. :-) Having spent some time at a Fortune 500 company I cannot imagine a day where someone voluntarily creates a plan to eliminate billions of dollars of sales in monthly doses of medicine in exchange for a single or double dose per patient product. Corporations just don't think like that. Some might say it's even illegal for them to value the patients over the shareholders under current regulations. I take your point on the complexity of HIV. However there are creative strategies that can be used like targeting surface proteins (?) perhaps. There are a great many intelligent people in the field. I have dim memories of work showing promise in the early years of the disease. It seems to have gone silent after the introduction of the drug cocktail approach. Coincidence? Perhaps...

faitswulff 7y ago
> In the short term they will make money This is generally reason enough for companies to do what they will, consequences be damned.
- dmix 7y ago
  Yes. This is literally the business model of tons of successful billion dollar companies in bio and pharma who continually find new revenue streams by attracting talent and acquiring new “exciting firms”. The OPs conspiracies don’t hold any water to reality. The reason for drug prices are randomly spiking in the US (for a small minority of drugs lucky enough to be in FDA backlogs) is mostly unrelated to the R&D side: https://slatestarcodex.com/2016/08/29/reverse-voxsplaining-drugs-vs-chairs/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2016/08/29/reverse-voxsplaining-d...
headcanon 7y ago
Perhaps, but I can certainly imagine a day where someone voluntarily creates a plan to create a new product that is extraordinarily valuable to a lot of deep-pocketed customers, that competitors cannot match for years potentially, and even reduces customers for the current product on the market that their competitors can match (cocktail). Not to mention that 1) new vaccines will need to be created to match virus mutation, and 2) thousands of new customers will enter the market daily by sheer virtue of population expansion, especially in areas hit hard by HIV [1]. I'm sorry but there isn't a global conspiracy to stop development of an HIV vaccine. Much of what big pharma does is incredibly cyncial and deserves scrutiny, but even viewing it within that lens, there is a clear business case here. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Projections_of_population_growth https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Projections_of_population_grow...