HIV Vaccine Trial Shows 90% Immune Response 386
fergus07 writes "Researchers at the Spanish Superior Scientific Research Council (CSIC) have successfully completed Phase I human clinical trials of a HIV vaccine in which 90% of volunteers developed an immunological response against the virus. The MVA-B vaccine draws on the natural capabilities of the human immune system and 'has proven to be as powerful as any other vaccine currently being studied, or even more,' says Mariano Esteban, head researcher from CSIC's National Biotech Centre."
Re:10% (Score:5, Interesting)
turns out, they are not looking for you to not/get the disease, they are looking for you to develop successful antibodies. (which they can test by taking a blood sample, and infecting it and watching under a microscope).
Additionally, 90% seems to be the benchmark for a useable vaccine. For example, the final tests for some of the Polio vaccines resulted in 90%ish of the test subjects developing antibodies. After that, its basically a war of attrition on the disease.
If 90% of a population becomes immune, the chances of the disease spreading within it diminishes accordingly. Eventually, all live carriers die of old age or the disease, and no new carriers are produced, thus eliminating the disease from the population. Heck, even a 55 % successful vaccine could do this, it would just take longer.