Live vaccine experiment fails

Monkeys given a weakened version of simian immunodeficiency virus (SIV) in hopes of developing a human vaccine model contracted the disease across the board, dashing early hopes that a live virus could thwart the mutation inherent in SIV and HIV on the way to becoming a successful vaccine.

The results are particularly disappointing to vaccine researchers because live vaccine experiments had advanced further than killed virus or genetically engineered vaccine research, and such research was seen as the best and quickest hope for any kind of a vaccine.

But according to results of the experiment by researchers at the Dana Farber Cancer Institute in Boston, both newborn and adult monkeys given the experimental vaccine have either died, became sick with SIV, or developed immune disorders related to simian AIDS. All of the monkeys got sick after just the initial vaccine injection, which didn't even give researchers the chance to test the vaccine against the introduction of the actual virus.n