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Getting to Market: The Scientific and Legal Climate for Developing an AIDS Vaccine

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 April 2021

Wendy K. Mariner  and
Robert C. Gallo
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Extract

Expectations of a vaccine to prevent acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS) are rising. Not only are the prospects for an effective immunogen improving, but immunization appears to hold the greatest promise for halting the spread of infection and disease. Identification of the causal agent—the retrovirus called HTLV-IIII, LAV, or generically, HIV (human immunodeficiency virus)—has provided the direction and limited the options for containing the disease.

Prevention is, of course, critical where the disease must be presumed to be fatal in all cases. Although there is no clear evidence that any single exposure-to HIV will result in infection or disease, prudence dictates that all exposures be considered potentially infectious and, ultimately, disease-producing until more is known. Public education or, more specifically, behavior modification, intended to reduce or eliminate unsafe sexual contact and the sharing of syringes and needles by users of illicit intravenous (IV) drugs, is perhaps the only effective means of prevention that currently exists.

Type
Article
Information
Law, Medicine and Healthcare , Volume 15 , Issue 1-2 , Summer 1987 , pp. 17 - 26
Copyright
Copyright © American Society of Law, Medicine and Ethics 1987

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Footnotes

*

The authors gratefully acknowledge the assistance of Ann H. Sliski, D.Sc., of the Narional Cancer Institute, in the preparation of rhis article.

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