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The truth is that without healthy, HIV-negative individuals who are willing to volunteer for clinical trials, the development of an AIDS vaccine would be impossible. That is because the only way researchers can determine if an AIDS vaccine works is to test it in people. Of course, having researchers test an experimental vaccine for AIDS can raise serious questions about safety - especially with examples of biomedical research misconduct from the not-so-distant past. Thus AIDS vaccine research is a bit of a balancing act between the risks and potential benefits of participating in research.
First of all, participating in an AIDS vaccine clinical trial is a very personal decision. There are many factors to take into consideration before a person decides to volunteer for a clinical trial. For example, before anyone is enrolled into a clinical trial, they must be tested for HIV because only uninfected individuals can participate in preventive AIDS vaccines clinical trials. Getting tested for HIV can have some serious implications for an individual - especially if the test comes back positive. In some cases, association with an AIDS vaccine clinical trial can cause an individual to experience the stigma and social discrimination associated with HIV and AIDS in general.
There are still many more questions to consider before joining a trial - is it safe, what is involved, what happens if I get hurt, what happens if the vaccine works? You should know up front that there are several mechanisms that have been developed over the years to protect the rights and safety of clinical trial volunteers (see the Clearinghouse section on Ethics and Human Rights).
Anyone who is considering joining an AIDS vaccine clinical trial will be taken through a process called Informed Consent. This is when potential trial volunteers are provided any and all information about what volunteering means, including the purpose of the research, all procedures involved, any risks and/or benefits (if any) from participating in the trial, and the duration of the research (to list a few examples).
To date, most people who have volunteered for AIDS vaccine clinical trials have done so out of a sense of altruism - or a desire to do something to help end the AIDS pandemic. These folks are the unsung heroes of AIDS vaccine research - the people who give of their own bodies with the hope that their participation will help speed the development of a safe and effective vaccine for HIV/AIDS.
To view a list of clincial trial sites around the world, click here.
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