Tag: HIV/AIDS

The Only Thing Inaccurate about HIV Animal Studies is Ray Greek

The January 26, 2002 edition of The British Medical Journal features a letter from Ray Greek and Pandora Pound arguing that HIV research using non-human primates is unreliable. Greek writes,

Thomas Insel, former director of the Yerkes Regional Primate Center in Georgia, said: “[An animal model] that takes 12-14 years to develop doesn’t sound to me to be ideal . . . I can’t tell you what it is that those studies [with chimpanzees] have given us that has really made a difference in the way we approach people with this disease. Animal models of HIV have been notoriously inaccurate for two reasons.

Firstly, the immune response is intensely complicated and there are many disparities between the human response and those of other animals. Secondly, viruses are usually species specific.

. . .

The fact that 20 years on there is still no cure or vaccine for HIV is surely partly because too much money, time, and effort have been invested in animal research which has produced little, if nothing, in return. To make any impact on this global pandemic during the next 20 years, funding needs to be concentrated on research methods that have come up with the goods.

This is a typical modus operandi with Greek — lie through omission.

For example, take the problems with chimpanzee research into AIDS especially given the long time it takes chimpanzees to develop AIDS. Greek conveniently forgets to mention that this is the major reason why animal research into AIDS Has large switched from chimpanzees to monkeys. Greek forgot to add that although Insel said there are too many limitations with chimpanzees, he added that, “I wouldn’t say that about the monkey work.” (One of the biggest problems with chimpanzees, by the way, is their sheer cost — the cost of simply caring for a chimpanzee in a long-term AIDS study can exceed $100,000).

As Nancy Haigwood, the director of the viral vaccines program at the Seattle Biomedical Research Institute, notes in her reply, for a number of reasons much AIDS research now focuses on macaques which have served important roles in helping determine optimal treatment regimens for those afflicted with HIV.

At one time, for example, there was a lot of controversy over whether people who tested positive for AIDS should receive short-term treatment with anti-viral drugs immediately, even though they were symptom-free. Many researchers feared that the anti-virals would cause lots of side effects for patients while the long term benefits were considered to be small.

Research in macaques, however, demonstrated that short-term treatment of the animals with anti-virals immediately after they were infected with AIDS could help keep the disease under control. Haigwood writes that, “Subsequently, many of the critical parameters and limitations of interrupting treatment have been discovered using these models.”

In addition, Haigwood notes that testing of cutting edge genetically engineered vaccines in macaques has helped researchers better understand the obstacles they must overcome to create such a vaccine for humans. Haigwood writes,

Live attenuated SIV, genetically engineered to eliminate pathogenicity, protects adult macaques from lethal challenge. While an attenuated HIV vaccine was under consideration for humans, this same highly attenuated SIV vaccine was found to cause AIDS in newborn macaques. Without these studies, the need for additional safeguards might have been missed — with dire consequence.

As Haigwood sums her reply up, the issue is not whether researchers conduct animal studies or clinical studies, but rather that all tools available must be utilized in finding better treatments for AIDS. “Animal models must be used to complement epidemiological and clinical studies in humans,” Haigwood writes. “Answers will come faster and the research will cost less if the clinical work is focused on strategies that have been pretested in models.”

Source:

Animal studies and HIV research. Ray Greek and Pandora Pound, British Medical Journal, 2002;324:236, January 26, 2002.

Animal models for HIV advance and complement clinical studies. Nancy Haigwood, British Medical Journal, 2002;324:236, January 26, 2002.

SIV Discovered in Wild Chimpanzee

Science published a study today confirming what many AIDS researchers had long suspected — chimpanzees in the wild contract Simian immunodeficiency virus, though it is apparently very rare and the disease does not appear to harm the animals it infects. SIV had previously been confirmed only in captive chimpanzees.

Researchers developed a test that could determine if a chimpanzee had the disease by testing urine and feces — a very important development which allowed them to study the endangered wild chimpanzees without disturbing them. Researchers screened 58 chimpanzees in all, and found just one infected with SIV. The strain of SIV the chimp carried was very distant genetically from human HIV.

Beatrice Hahn, who led the research team, hypothesizes that the reason SIV does not kill the chimpanzees is that the disease is far older than HIV and chimpanzees have either adapted to the disease and/or the non-pathogenic version of SIV won out over their more pathogenic competitors.

“Chimps may have 10,000 years of living with this virus,” Hahn said. “It may have been pathogenic at first, but evolution bred that out. Chimps probably went through something several thousand years ago that we are going through now and they somehow learned how to handle it. They are at a point where we want to be — but we don’t want to wait 10,000 years.”

HIV-like diseases have been found in 26 different non-human primate species, but SIV in chimpanzees is the only one that is close to the human HIV virus.

Source:

Study Suggests AIDS Rare in Wild Chimps. Maggie Fox, Reuters, January 17, 2002.

Animal Activists to Protest the Tony Awards

This Sunday, activists plan on protesting at the Tony Awards, which are scheduled to take place at the Fox Theatre in Atlanta, Georgia. Here’s the odd chain of command that will be bringing the activists to Georgia: Coca Cola is a major sponsor of the television broadcast of the awards. Coca Cola is also a major contributor to endowments at Emory University. Emory University researcher Harriet Robinson recently announced yet another breakthrough in AIDS research. A vaccine she developed helped prevent a simian form of the disease from developing in laboratory animals for 18 months.

Of course it goes without saying that activists consider such medical advances to be intolerable, so they will be out in force to let the world know that Coca Cola supports animal suffering.

The press release announcing the protest can’t even manage to be truthful (surprise, surprise, surprise). The release claims that, “Earlier this year, Emory announced Harriet Robinson, PhD. had once again made progress in an AIDS vaccine. Emory, Yerkes, and Robinson failed to mention the vaccine worked only in monkeys against a laboratory developed disease and that humans are unlikely to ever be exposed to this laboratory disease.”

In fact the releases sent out by Emory clearly noted that the research subjects were monkeys and described in detail the differing survival rates for the primates in the control group versus the primates who were given the disease. Apparently the animal rights activists were the only ones who, typically, were unable to tell the difference between human beings and animals, as numerous news stories about the breakthrough mentioned that the research subjects were non-human primates and included the standard caveat that such results are not directly transferable to human beings.

On the other hand, it is irrelevant that SIV is not quite HIV. The two diseases are extremely similar in the way they attack the immune system and the knowledge that was gained from this breakthrough provides very important information about how to tackle HIV in human beings, regardless of whether or not Robinson’s approach translates directly to human beings (preliminary clinical trials designed to test a human equivalent of the vaccine for safety purposes will probably get underway in late 2001 or early 2002).

Source:

Atlanta animal activists to attend a live broadcast of Broadway’s Tony Awards. Jean Barnes, EmoryLies.Com, Press Release, June 1, 2001.

Vaccine Prevents AIDS-like Disease in Monkeys

Emory University researchers made international headlines after they announced the phenomenal results of a vaccine that stopped AIDS-like infection in monkeys in its track.

Researchers first administered the vaccine to 24 monkeys, who received an initial vaccination as well as a booster shot. Seven months later they infected all 24 monkeys, as well as 4 monkeys in a control group, with a modified HIV/SIV virus.

Within 7 months all of the control monkeys had developed AIDS-like symptoms and had to be euthanized. Of the monkeys who received vaccinations, however, 23 of 24 test subjects had virus levels so low they were undetectable. The other monkey had very low levels of the virus.

The vaccine contains DNA fragments for three proteins similar to those found in the AIDS virus. When the immune system of the monkeys encountered the vaccine, it quickly developed a sophisticated immune response that persisted over time so that when they were finally exposed to the HIV/SIV virus, their immune system kept the virus in check and the monkeys remained healthy.

Peggy Johnson of the U.S. National Institute of Allergy said, “These are among the very best outcomes we have seen in an animal model.” However, she added, nobody knows if this approach will work in human beings.

“It’s encouraging,” Dr. Bernard Moss, Chief of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said, “but we don’t know whether we can translate this information directly from monkey models to protection [in people].”

Resolving that question will take several years of research and many more studies. Still, this is an amazing step forward that could light the path for development of an AIDS vaccine, which would be the most effective way to stop the global HIV epidemic.

Sources:

Monkey study shows promise for AIDS vaccine. Reuters, March 8, 2001.

AIDS vaccine experiments promising. The Associated Press, March 8, 2001.

AIDS vaccine shows promise. The BBC, March 8, 2001.

Activists Protest Ohio State University's Planned AIDS Research Project

Animal rights activists recently spray painted graffiti at the home of Ohio State University’s president William Kirwan and OSU’s Bricker Hall. The act of vandalism was apparently in protest of AIDS-related animal experiments slated to begin soon at OSU.

Activists spray painted “Ask Dr. Y Why, Stop the Killing, OSU=Profits Over Pain, Stop Killing Cats and Cat+Meth=Bad Science” on all four sides of Bricker Hall.

The slogans target Dr. William Yonushonis, director of OSU’s laboratory animal resources, who has been outspoken about the importance of animal research. In the wake of the vandalism, Yonushonis reiterated that, “Almost all the major advances in medicine and surgery have been made through animal testing.”

The methaphetamine references refer to research funded by the National Institutes of Health that will be carried out by OSU associate professor of veterinary sciences Michael Podell. The research involves studying the effect that methaphetamines have on the progress of cats injected with FIV (which is similar to human HIV).

Animal activists maintain the research is pointless but as Yonushonis notes, “The research study he [Podell] is doing is worthwhile. HIV replicates at astronomical rates in the brain when used with methaphetamines.” If FIV turns out to replicate in the presence of methaphetamine like HIV does, studying the disease in cats could lead to important information about HIV.

A couple days after the slogans were spray painted, animal rights activists protested outside Bricker Hall against the experiments. The ignorance of the activists was highlighted by protester Nickie Stoan who told the OSU Lantern,

The reason I’m here is that my little brother had a heart transplant, in which they had to experiment on pigs for. He wouldn’t be alive today if they didn’t have that technology. But I think they’re just being curious here, like trying methaphetamines and AIDS. There’s really no connection that it’s going to lead to a cure, and it’s just useless testing, and I think it’s cruel.

It’s amazing just how poor of an understanding many people have of science. Scientists “just being curious” is extremely important to progress in all areas of research; so important in fact that it is given a specific label — basic research. Stoan seems to think that the only animal experiments required for her brother’s heart transplant were some experiments on a few pigs, but in fact hundreds and hundreds of basic research experiments — researchers “just being curious” — provided the insights and understanding necessary so that scientists could ultimately figure out how to transplant organs.

Sources:

Vandals graffiti Ohio State U. president’s house over animal rights issue. Chanda Neely and Monica M. Torline, The Ohio State University Lantern, March 6, 2001.

Protesters call Ohio State U. AIDS research on cats inhumane. John Sobotkowski, The Ohio State Lantern, March 8, 2001.

A Better Tuberculosis Vaccine?

The World Health Organization recently released a report on the daunting numbers of tuberculosis infections. It wasn’t too long ago that scientists thought that tuberculosis was on the verge of being wiped out, but complacence about the disease as well the HIV/AIDS epidemic led to a resurgence of the disease. According to WHO regional director in Southeast Asia, Uton Muchtar Rafei, “an estimated 40 percent of the population is infected with TB in our region and more than 1.5 million people died of TB last year.”

Worldwide, tuberculosis is the second leading cause of death from a single infectious agent.

When TB was last a major epidemic, at the turn of the century, a tuberculosis vaccine was created and refined from 1906-1919. The only problem was that it was only about 50 percent effective. Now researchers at the University of California-Los Angeles believe they may have created a much more effective vaccine.

Dr. Marcus Horwitz at UCLA led a study of the new vaccine that involved taking samples of the old vaccine and genetically modifying it to add a protein that is secreted from the organism that causes tuberculosis. “Most proteins of a bacteria are inside,” Horwitz told Reuters, “but there are some proteins which are actually excreted.”

Researchers then infected guinea pigs with tuberculosis, injecting half of them with the new vaccine and leaving the others unvaccinated as a control group. “The difference between the unvaccinated guinea pigs and those that were vaccinated is just day and night,” Horwitz said. “The unvaccinated animals, their lungs just became completely covered with tubercules and destroyed and the animals with the vaccine have one or two lesions which are contained.”

Testing should begin within a year to see if the vaccine is effective in human beings. If so, Horwitz said it should be able to be produced for just pennies a dose. The only drawback is that the vaccine won’t help people with AIDS since the vaccine could potentially disease itself in people with compromised immune systems.

Sources:

WHO finds TB, malaria return in killer diseases. Reuters, November 27, 2000.

Vaccine may work against tuberculosis. Reuters, November 30, 2000.