7 ms·

Canadians to start HIV vaccine clinical trials

77 points by pg 15y ago

9oliYQjP 15y ago
Nobel peace prizes are not normally awarded to philanthropists. But I'm just going to leave this link here. It's a photo of Bill Gates with Prime Minister Stephen Harper announcing funding for HIV vaccine research in 2007. http://pm.gc.ca/grfx/news/PM-feature-20070220-Gates.jpg http://pm.gc.ca/grfx/news/PM-feature-20070220-Gates.jpg Source: http://pm.gc.ca/eng/media.asp?id=1544 http://pm.gc.ca/eng/media.asp?id=1544
- droz 15y ago
  It is laughable to think that someone who funds research should be given an award. The people doing the actual research deserve an award leaps and bounds above and beyond the one providing funding.
  - asshammer 15y ago
    They are all doing a lot more than I am to fix the problem so either way, hats off to them.
  - tolmasky 15y ago
    I don't think you need to be so antagonistic against the funders. Not to mention that there are different awards for different things. I think it would be perfectly fine (and that all the members involved would agree) if the researchers were given the Nobel prize in Biology and the funders the Peace prize.
    - rdl 15y ago
      That would be a great compromise -- an HIV vaccine would probably do more for world peace than at least half of the winners of that prize to date. Another option would be to name the actual vaccine after the funder.
      - msbarnett 15y ago
        > That would be a great compromise -- an HIV vaccine would probably do more for world peace than at least half of the winners of that prize to date. What makes you say that? Improve the human condition and eliminate much suffering, absolutely, but do much for world peace? Has there ever been a war fought over HIV? > Another option would be to name the actual vaccine after the funder. Or, we could name it after the thing it vaccinates against.
        rdl 15y ago
        HIV contributes to violence, civil wars, unstable governments, etc. in Africa. It's actually gotten a lot better in the past 10 years, but in the 1980s/1990s, there was a time when countries looked like they might collapse in the sub-Sahara due to high numbers of HIV/AIDS victims, orphans, etc. It was disproportionately affecting 15-35yo workers, and the fatalism caused by "will probably die from AIDS anyway" led to a lot more individual and organized violence. Dealing with HIV, a general explosion in commodities prices, end of the Cold War, and hands-off Chinese infrastructure investment (tied to commodities, but without trying to influence the government, and thus acceptable) has gone a long way to help Africa. Urbanization, IT/Communications (and access to regional/global markets), and foreign direct investment helps a lot too.
        msbarnett 15y ago
        Thanks for the response, that was very informative.
        deleted 15y ago
        [deleted]
      - x3c 15y ago
        I would argue that a cheap, environmentally clean and viable energy source would do more for world peace than all the Nobel peace prize winners combined. Dependency on oil must be the single largest threat, except maybe nuclear arms, to international stability. And I make that statement without accepting/rejecting the hypothesis that a lot of wars in the past were motivated by Oil supplies.
  - jpulgarin 15y ago
    Why? Not implying this is the case here, but what if the research is trivial, but requires billions of dollars?
  - keithnoizu 15y ago
    Depends, If you have a group of researchers truly dedicated to this cause that are out there working long hours and struggling to get the resources they need to solve this issue than yes they should be rewarded when their work comes to fruition. On the flip side if you're just some lab rat making a salary and don't really care one way or another what genes you're slicing today as long as you're getting paid then what makes your contribution greater than someone that gave up a significant portion of their personal wealth to make something happen. The real test here should be if someone has made a material contribution here because the thought it was the right thing to do.
- loboman 15y ago
  Does Bill Gates care about this? I wonder how many of the Nobel Prize winners care about it really; they can be very proud about what they did already, who cares if somebody else recognizes them as important?
defen 15y ago
> It will test how effective the vaccine is by comparing a vaccinated and a non-vaccinated group, Kang said in the video. So I was going to ask how clinical trials for vaccines are done, and this part kind of answers it, but now I'm curious - if there's no control group that gets a placebo injection, how do you control for the fact that people may behave differently if they think they've been given an anti-HIV vaccine? Unless I'm misreading this and "non-vaccinated" means placebo.
- redthrowaway 15y ago
  A couple things: 1) We generally know the strength of the placebo effect and the rate of HIV transmission among at-risk groups, so we can control for it, and 2) Not sure the placebo effect is particularly relevant. First, a vaccine that shows little to no benefit over the control (placebo or not) is not an effective vaccine. Second, placebos aren't effective for everything. I highly doubt the effectiveness of a placebo at preventing HIV transmission (although it would be difficult to test ethically).
  - ghshephard 15y ago
    The placebo effect is important because it might _increase_ rate of HIV transmission by resulting in more risky behavior. Or, it might reduce rate of HIV transmission by causing the person to focus on the possibility of infection more.
    - NolF 15y ago
      Both vaccine and non-vaccine groups receive appropriate counselling (this part can be double blind even) regarding HIV, risk behaviors, and as a trial vaccine it might no be 100% effective etc etc... You assess the impact of behavior changes via surveys and interviews to see if there has been a significant increase in risk behavior and the control for it. It would be unethical to give a placebo to someone for this kind of disease.
      - ghshephard 15y ago
ajju 15y ago
Kang has been studying HIV since 1987. This guy has been working on fighting one virus for almost 25 years. I can't quite compare what I aim to do with my startup to preventing HIV, but we certainly hope to have a massive positive impact on the world. So when I feel impatient about changing the world now, this should put things in perspective.
baddox 15y ago
Why does Canada need permission from the FDA?
- rdl 15y ago
  They want to make sure the trials are recognized by the FDA as well, so the resulting drug (if successful) can be sold in the US without repeating early stage trials. Outsourcing clinical trials to other countries (usually India or SE Asia) is one of the biggest advances in drug development in the past 20 years. The vaccine is also being manufactured in the US for these trials (it requires BSL3, and I don't think there's a Canadian production facility which meets that).
  - redthrowaway 15y ago
    >Outsourcing clinical trials to other countries (usually India or SE Asia) is one of the biggest advances in drug development in the past 20 years. Not really what I'd call an advancement. It's being done because it's cheaper, the health and safety regulations are practically non-existent, and if something goes wrong then the subjects have very little recourse.
    - ars 15y ago
      That's the cynical reason. The non cynical reason is that subjects in the US often take or have taken various other drugs. Depending on what they are checking those drugs may affect the results.
      - rdl 15y ago
        Making it cheaper (and thus allowing more drugs to be tested, or to allow inventors to raise less money and thus keep more equity ownership, thus being better able to develop future drugs) isn't really cynical either, IMO. I want pharma companies to make huge profits. I just want them to create vastly more surplus value for society in the process, vs. live via regulatory capture. If I could pay Novartis $10k/yr to be totally healthy and do fat lines of coke/mdma/mushrooms every day with no exercise, and have a 200 IQ as a side effect, I'd be quite happy.

77 points by pg 15y ago

Nobel peace prizes are not normally awarded to philanthropists. But I'm just going to leave this link here. It's a photo of Bill Gates with Prime Minister Stephen Harper announcing funding for HIV vaccine research in 2007. http://pm.gc.ca/grfx/news/PM-feature-20070220-Gates.jpg http://pm.gc.ca/grfx/news/PM-feature-20070220-Gates.jpg Source: http://pm.gc.ca/eng/media.asp?id=1544 http://pm.gc.ca/eng/media.asp?id=1544

droz 15y ago
It is laughable to think that someone who funds research should be given an award. The people doing the actual research deserve an award leaps and bounds above and beyond the one providing funding.
- asshammer 15y ago
  They are all doing a lot more than I am to fix the problem so either way, hats off to them.
- tolmasky 15y ago
  I don't think you need to be so antagonistic against the funders. Not to mention that there are different awards for different things. I think it would be perfectly fine (and that all the members involved would agree) if the researchers were given the Nobel prize in Biology and the funders the Peace prize.
  - rdl 15y ago
    That would be a great compromise -- an HIV vaccine would probably do more for world peace than at least half of the winners of that prize to date. Another option would be to name the actual vaccine after the funder.
    - msbarnett 15y ago
      > That would be a great compromise -- an HIV vaccine would probably do more for world peace than at least half of the winners of that prize to date. What makes you say that? Improve the human condition and eliminate much suffering, absolutely, but do much for world peace? Has there ever been a war fought over HIV? > Another option would be to name the actual vaccine after the funder. Or, we could name it after the thing it vaccinates against.
      - rdl 15y ago
        HIV contributes to violence, civil wars, unstable governments, etc. in Africa. It's actually gotten a lot better in the past 10 years, but in the 1980s/1990s, there was a time when countries looked like they might collapse in the sub-Sahara due to high numbers of HIV/AIDS victims, orphans, etc. It was disproportionately affecting 15-35yo workers, and the fatalism caused by "will probably die from AIDS anyway" led to a lot more individual and organized violence. Dealing with HIV, a general explosion in commodities prices, end of the Cold War, and hands-off Chinese infrastructure investment (tied to commodities, but without trying to influence the government, and thus acceptable) has gone a long way to help Africa. Urbanization, IT/Communications (and access to regional/global markets), and foreign direct investment helps a lot too.
        msbarnett 15y ago
        Thanks for the response, that was very informative.
      - deleted 15y ago
        [deleted]
    - x3c 15y ago
      I would argue that a cheap, environmentally clean and viable energy source would do more for world peace than all the Nobel peace prize winners combined. Dependency on oil must be the single largest threat, except maybe nuclear arms, to international stability. And I make that statement without accepting/rejecting the hypothesis that a lot of wars in the past were motivated by Oil supplies.
- jpulgarin 15y ago
  Why? Not implying this is the case here, but what if the research is trivial, but requires billions of dollars?
- keithnoizu 15y ago
  Depends, If you have a group of researchers truly dedicated to this cause that are out there working long hours and struggling to get the resources they need to solve this issue than yes they should be rewarded when their work comes to fruition. On the flip side if you're just some lab rat making a salary and don't really care one way or another what genes you're slicing today as long as you're getting paid then what makes your contribution greater than someone that gave up a significant portion of their personal wealth to make something happen. The real test here should be if someone has made a material contribution here because the thought it was the right thing to do.
loboman 15y ago
Does Bill Gates care about this? I wonder how many of the Nobel Prize winners care about it really; they can be very proud about what they did already, who cares if somebody else recognizes them as important?

defen 15y ago

> It will test how effective the vaccine is by comparing a vaccinated and a non-vaccinated group, Kang said in the video. So I was going to ask how clinical trials for vaccines are done, and this part kind of answers it, but now I'm curious - if there's no control group that gets a placebo injection, how do you control for the fact that people may behave differently if they think they've been given an anti-HIV vaccine? Unless I'm misreading this and "non-vaccinated" means placebo.

redthrowaway 15y ago
A couple things: 1) We generally know the strength of the placebo effect and the rate of HIV transmission among at-risk groups, so we can control for it, and 2) Not sure the placebo effect is particularly relevant. First, a vaccine that shows little to no benefit over the control (placebo or not) is not an effective vaccine. Second, placebos aren't effective for everything. I highly doubt the effectiveness of a placebo at preventing HIV transmission (although it would be difficult to test ethically).
- ghshephard 15y ago
  The placebo effect is important because it might _increase_ rate of HIV transmission by resulting in more risky behavior. Or, it might reduce rate of HIV transmission by causing the person to focus on the possibility of infection more.
  - NolF 15y ago
    Both vaccine and non-vaccine groups receive appropriate counselling (this part can be double blind even) regarding HIV, risk behaviors, and as a trial vaccine it might no be 100% effective etc etc... You assess the impact of behavior changes via surveys and interviews to see if there has been a significant increase in risk behavior and the control for it. It would be unethical to give a placebo to someone for this kind of disease.
    - ghshephard 15y ago

ajju 15y ago

Kang has been studying HIV since 1987. This guy has been working on fighting one virus for almost 25 years. I can't quite compare what I aim to do with my startup to preventing HIV, but we certainly hope to have a massive positive impact on the world. So when I feel impatient about changing the world now, this should put things in perspective.

baddox 15y ago

Why does Canada need permission from the FDA?

rdl 15y ago
They want to make sure the trials are recognized by the FDA as well, so the resulting drug (if successful) can be sold in the US without repeating early stage trials. Outsourcing clinical trials to other countries (usually India or SE Asia) is one of the biggest advances in drug development in the past 20 years. The vaccine is also being manufactured in the US for these trials (it requires BSL3, and I don't think there's a Canadian production facility which meets that).
- redthrowaway 15y ago
  >Outsourcing clinical trials to other countries (usually India or SE Asia) is one of the biggest advances in drug development in the past 20 years. Not really what I'd call an advancement. It's being done because it's cheaper, the health and safety regulations are practically non-existent, and if something goes wrong then the subjects have very little recourse.
  - ars 15y ago
    That's the cynical reason. The non cynical reason is that subjects in the US often take or have taken various other drugs. Depending on what they are checking those drugs may affect the results.
    - rdl 15y ago
      Making it cheaper (and thus allowing more drugs to be tested, or to allow inventors to raise less money and thus keep more equity ownership, thus being better able to develop future drugs) isn't really cynical either, IMO. I want pharma companies to make huge profits. I just want them to create vastly more surplus value for society in the process, vs. live via regulatory capture. If I could pay Novartis $10k/yr to be totally healthy and do fat lines of coke/mdma/mushrooms every day with no exercise, and have a 200 IQ as a side effect, I'd be quite happy.