License to Be Irresponsible Fails

A test of an experimental AIDS vaccine has failed miserably:

TRENTON, N.J. — In a disappointing setback, a promising experimental AIDS vaccine failed to work in a large international test, leading the developer to halt the study.

Merck & Co. said Friday that it is ending enrollment and vaccination of volunteers in the study, which was partly funded by the National Institutes of Health.

It was a high-profile failure in the daunting quest to develop a vaccine to prevent AIDS. Merck's vaccine was the farthest along, considered the most promising and was closely watched by experts in the field.

Officials at the company, based in Whitehouse Station, N.J., said 24 of 741 volunteers who got the vaccine in one segment of the experiment later became infected with HIV, the virus that causes AIDS. In a comparison group of volunteers who got dummy shots, 21 of 762 participants also became infected. ...

The volunteers in the experiment were all free of HIV at the start. But they were at high risk for getting the virus: Most were homosexual men or female sex workers. They were all repeatedly counseled about how to reduce their risk of HIV infections, including use of condoms, according to Merck.

In a statement, the NIH said a data safety monitoring board, reviewing interim results, found the vaccine did not prevent HIV infection. Nor did it limit severity of the disease "in those who become infected with HIV as a result of their own behaviors that exposed them to the virus" — another goal of the study.

Chances are the high risk people who took the vaccine looked at it as a license to act irresponsibly, and when they did, many of them got caught with their proverbial pants down.

What would be the reaction of most high risk people should a successful vaccine be produced? Chances are you'd see the return of the lifestyles that were present in the homosexual community in the early 80's - the bathhouses and hook-up joints that made the spread of AIDS so easy. It would be foolish to think that an AIDS vaccine would take the risk out of a lifestyle that spends its time cruising for anonymous sex partners.

I wonder sometimes if a successful AIDS vaccine would be a positive or negative development for society as a whole.