As previously covered here on SciScoop, AIDS vaccine trial data that had gone into evaluation lockup were released today along with preliminary overall results for the test project. Quoted in USA Today in a front page article entitled Vaccine for AIDS Appears To Work: “The results are fascinating and surprising,” says Donald Francis, CEO of VaxGen. “We think they’re scientifically and socially important. It’s at least a beginning”. Yep, that’s what you’d say in a public forum to millions of breathless onlookers as CEO of a company that has spent 10 years and about $200 million to develop the vaccine. USA Today continued the article by quoting Jose Esparza, director of AIDS vaccine research for the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS), who called the finding “probably the most important accomplishment in vaccine research in 15 years.” The closest millions of USA Today readers got to actual scientific results was the sentence: “Although the vaccine failed to provide protection overall, it was 78.3% effective in blacks; they accounted for 349 of those tested.”
Funny, though, that Dr. Francis wasn’t quoted in USA Today as using the F word like business-minded Forbes reported: “Overall what we see is the trial failed,” VaxGen President Dr. Donald Francis, told a conference call. He noted long-awaited results from VaxGen’s trial of AIDSVAX show the vaccine only reduced the rate of HIV infection by 3.8 percent in 5,400 men and women considered at high risk in the United States and Netherlands, well below the lax 30% threshhold the FDA was willing to use as a criteria for success. But he added, “there was a 500 person subset in this that showed clear efficacy. The challenge here is to see if this a statistical fluke.”
CNN noted the media coverage discrepancy on this story by comparing the USA Today headline with one by The New York Times of “Large Trial Fails”. Just goes to show that you should never BLINDLY trust the science news you read anywhere, (ah, I’ll say it) not even here at sciscoop. Meanwhile, the AIDS epidemic rages on – 20 million dead, 40 million infected, and counting…