Wired 11.01: Testing the First AIDS Vaccine: Sometime in the next several weeks, in an anonymous office building south of San Francisco, medical science will reach a milestone in the long and terrible history of the AIDS epidemic. Researchers at a small biotech firm called VaxGen are testing blood samples from thousands of volunteers inoculated with AIDSVax, the first AIDS vaccine to make it to phase 3 trials. It's the final, full-scale test before FDA approval, and the company is expected to announce preliminary results early in the year. If it works, AIDSVax could mark a turning point in the worst plague in modern history. [...] Even if AIDSVax doesn't work, though, the trial itself amounts to a breakthrough. Before Francis blazed the trail, researchers held little hope that an AIDS vaccine would make it into clinical trials, much less complete phase 3. Now there are several in the FDA pipeline. Though almost comic in its modesty, Francis' achievement is nonetheless substantial: He proved that an AIDS vaccine could clear all the bureaucratic, political, and financial hurdles. Sooner or later, someone will make an effective AIDS vaccine. When that happens, it will be Don Francis' victory as well.

I hope it works. To be honest, I really can't imagine how you'll really determine that, though. As was noted earlier here, the problem with AIDS vaccines is that to determine effectiveness, you need to have clinical field trials. That is, you need to vaccinate a person and then, somehow, you need to say, "Go ye and have unsafe sex!" Needless to say, an ethically dubious position to take, but without someone having unsafe sex with a certain regularity, and being tested regularly, you simply can't know if the vaccine works outside the lab. You also won't know how frequently the vaccine needs to be updated without waiting for it to fail to protect, which is even more ethically dubious than the original test in the first place.

The sort of thing that, although I'm glad we have medical researchers, makes me glad I'm not one of them.