HIV Vaccine May Never Come

Caltech's Nobel winning biologist David Baltimore, who won the prize for his 1975 discovery of an enzyme later proven to be part of HIV's reproductive mechanism, said yesterday that science is no closer to creating an effective vaccine for HIV than they were 25 years ago and that a vaccine may never be found.

When HIV was linked to Aids in the early 1980s scientists were convinced a vaccine would be around the corner. Baltimore said: "We've been working on that vaccine since then and we are no closer to a vaccine now than we were then."

He led a panel of experts in 1986 which concluded that, given the complexity of the problem, an Aids vaccine was at least 10 years away. "I still think an Aids vaccine is 10 years away," he said.

He added: "You are quite within bounds to ask, if it's been 10 years away for 20 years, does that mean it's really never going to happen? There are people saying it will never happen."

The latest disappointment came last year, after a trial of a promising vaccine by the pharmaceutical company Merck was halted when some recipients were left more prone to HIV.

A cure will surely arrive before any vaccine does.