One Step Forward, Two Steps Back — Will There Ever Be an AIDS Vaccine?

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Abstract
In April 1984, when the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) and AIDS were just beginning to be understood, a senior official in the Department of Health and Human Services stated at a press conference that there would be a marketable vaccine within “a minimum of two years, probably more like three years.”1 This prediction has haunted the search for an AIDS vaccine, whose most recent setback was the announcement that a promising vaccine candidate, Merck's V520, was not effective and may actually have increased some subjects' risk of acquiring HIV. Unfortunately, about a quarter-century after the discovery of HIV, there is neither a marketable vaccine nor a credible expectation about when there will be one.