Scientist: HIV Vaccine at Square One

Nobel Prize-winning biologist David Baltimore has told his peers that researchers are no closer to discovering an HIV vaccine after decades of study. He called for new approaches and said the challenge was difficult because “to control HIV immunologically the scientific community has to beat out nature, do something that nature, with its advantage of four billion years of evolution, has not been able to do.”

BBC:

HIV had evolved a way to protect itself from the human immune system, he said.

“This is a huge challenge because to control HIV immunologically the scientific community has to beat out nature, do something that nature, with its advantage of four billion years of evolution, has not been able to do,” Prof Baltimore said.

“I believe that HIV has found ways to totally fool the immune system.

“So we have to do one better than nature.”

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The human immunodeficiency virus is the virus that leads to AIDS.