Thailand Beats the Odds in Completing Vaccine Test

摘要

Bangkok, thailand―Gulping down a tin cup full of yellow syrup, a 32-year-old man visiting this clinic at Taksin Hospital for his daily dose of methadone explains that after 14 years of injecting heroin, he recently became infected with HIV. "I had a wife, but she left me when I told her about my blood results," says the man, who ekes out an existence as a day laborer and lives with his father. "I knew that HIV was transmitted by sharing needles, but I had a craving." His tragic circumstance is, unfortunately, not unusual: A catastrophic 40% of injecting drug users (IDUs) in Thailand are infected with HIV But his infection is particularly noteworthy because it occurred while he was participating in a landmark AIDS vaccine study, just now coming to a close. In the painful calculus of a placebo-controlled vaccine efficacy trial, some people must become infected for researchers to determine whether a preparation has any worth. (Until the data are unblinded, it will not be known whether he was given a placebo or the vaccine.)