Better than 100%, and it means that there may now be a path to developing a far more effective vaccine.
Exactly. Even if they could reliably prevent 50% of AIDS infections from taking place that would be millions of lives saved and millions of dollars in medication that could be used on a much smaller population of HIV/AIDS positive people. Think of all the unborn babies with mothers than have AIDs who might actually grow up.
After reading about this I did some checking and it seems you are being ,to put it bluntly, lied to.
What is astonishing is how some people actually lap this propaganda up without applying some simple checking.
Here is my simple calculations which show the bare faced lie this research actually is.
This study and its findings form a good example of how misleading such things can be.
While on the surface this reported 31% reduction in infection looks promising, they have skewed the figures in a very un-scientific way by only considering those test subjects who actually became infected.
What they should have done is shown the infection rates as percentages relative to both the trial (innoculated) group and the placebo group. Then we would see if there is a statistically significant result that might be attributable to the vaccine.
You have probably seen how infection rates for "swine flu" and other epidemics/pandemics are quoted both as net figures -- i.e. actual cases logged -- and as infections/100,000 of population.
That is the correct way to do it, because
without including the data of the size of the total subject group, the whole thing becomes misleading at best and meaningless at worst.
According to that article which summarizes the HIV Vaccine Trial, 8,197 people were given the vaccine and 8,198 were given a placebo. After three years, 51 of the vaccinated group had become infected with HIV, compared to 74 of the placebo group. So, let's look at the percentages of those infected in relation to all the people who participated in the study.
Percentages (Numbers rounded to 2 sig figs):
Of the vaccine group of 8,197, 0.62% (51) became infected -- and 99.38% (8146) did not.
Of the placebo group of 8,198, 0.90% (74) became infected -- and 99.10% (8,124) did not.
Of the total group of 16,395, 0.76% (125) became infected -- and 99.24% (16,270) did not.
Statistically, then, for any person in the group chosen at random (with no knowledge of whether they were vaccinated or not), the chances of this individual not being infected worked out at 99.24%, which is only 0.14% worse than if they were one of the vaccinated!
To put it another way, the vaccinated group only improved their odds of not being infected by 0.28%, compared to the placebo group.
This is such a small statistical difference that it falls well inside pure-chance variation.
There has to be an allowance for variation due to chance because we are dealing with humans and a communicable disease that's related to social behaviour, so even slight variations in the way the subjects behaved over that three-year period would yield some differences in their infection risk.
A net infection rate difference of 0.28% between the two groups is negligible.
Think about it.
It certainly wouldn't make me feel confident about using that vaccine as a protection against HIV infection.
This is why I say that their claim of 31% is misleading, because it only considers the participants who got infected, and not the two complete groups who were being monitored for those three years.Their claims seem to be a scam in my opinion.
But don't get me wrong: I applaud the efforts of these researchers in trying to do something to reduce the risk of HIV transmission, and also have nothing but admiration for all the people who volunteered to take part in the study. I just feel that the researchers were clutching at straws when they came up with that "31%" figure, and actually I suspect that the relatively low overall rate of infection in a high-risk region like Thailand was probably due to the counselling that all participants received. If the participants had not received any counselling at all about HIV prevention then the infection rates would likely have been higher -- and we might then have seen if the vaccine's effects were actually of any statistical significance.
According to avert.org, the rate of HIV infection among adults in Thailand is over 1%, so as this studied group is well below that, the counselling was probably a contributing positive factor.
(Ref: HIV and AIDS in Thailand )
I fear these headlines are spawned by various media hacks on the take after being fed by the assorted big business interests.In some cases they just copy/paste what ever bullshit is put in front of them after getting a free beer and a sandwich.
"Journalists" are so dirt cheap and corrupt nowadays.
Phuket HERE I COME.
