College Stock: Penny Stock News

Less than 24 hours after The Dean taught the CollegeStock Community about the debate over HIV/AIDS funding and how it will be spent, the Obama Administration has taken into consideration The Washington Post’s suggestions and assigned Dr. Helene Gayle of CARE to oversee where and how the $5 billion for HIV/AIDS research will be spent.

As the AIDS Vaccine Conference is now underway in Paris, skepticism and doubt set the tone for the announcement of more comprehensive results of the Thailand AIDS trials. It’s not The Dean’s place to report his seemingly biased opinion about these AIDS trials but when that opinion is shared by BBC, The Associated Press, Wall Street Journal, Fuller Research and 20 HIV/AIDS researchers who believe this trial has more bark than bite, it’s certainly worth talking about.

From the AIDS Vaccine Conference, BBC reports that the Thailand AIDS trial was initially said to “prevent” and “significantly reduce” HIV infection with 31% effectiveness. Of their interviewed sources, Gus Cairns of British AIDS Charity NAM was recorded saying that these results are “only just statistically significant” and could very well be just “pure chance.” Cairns insistently suggests that “If you look at only the people who strictly adhered to the trial protocol (i.e. took all their vaccine or placebo doses) then it actually becomes not statistically significant.”

BBC also reported that prior to the trial as many as 20 researches protested the trial because the trial vaccines used were both ineffective on their own. Along with the obvious, The Dean thinks this means that the $105 million spent on the trial could’ve been better spent.

Furthermore, the trial, which studied the effectiveness of two vaccines and a placebo on more than 16,000 Thai men and women, focused on a group of at risk population instead of an infected population. During the period of the trial, 125 people in the group became infected—that’s 0.7%. Aside from being questionably or moderately effective, The Dean thinks that the trial outlined the fact that Thailand’s infection rate is a cause for concern. In fact, if that 0.7% observed in the trial population was projected to the 65 million individuals living in Thailand, approximately 4.5 million more people became infected with HIV during this trial period.

The Associated Press has also reported that the “full results” of this trial were “only marginally effective.” The report also suggests that such trial vaccines would work better in the general population.

Less than two weeks ago, The Dean informed the CollegeStock Community that $VRAL Advisory Board member and discoverer of the HIV virus Dr. Luc Montagnier has already suggested doing this in South Africa where the likelihood of infection is at its greatest.

The United States Military Research Program responsible for conducting the trial with National Institutes of Health and the Thai government even refers to the trial’s results as “modestly effective at reducing the rate of infection.” Other sources of doubt include the Wall Street Journal who reports that the trial vaccines effectiveness could just as well be chalked up to chance.

The Dean believes these opinions reinforce the fact that trial vaccines, such as $VRAL‘s VGV-1, should have the opportunity for government funding and the chance to produce results in a similar large-scale trial.

Perhaps the most disturbing part of the Thailand trial debate is that the 31% effectiveness that has been thrown around for a month holds no medical or scientific validity other than the fact that it gives researchers an idea of what not to do with $105 million of funding in the future.