Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Moderna’s HIV vaccine has officially begun human trials

them.us

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

471–480 of 490 posts

Re: Moderna’s HIV vaccine has officially begun human trials

#471

Post by ausudhz »

refurb wrote: post #464
ausudhz wrote: post #459

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes and the known risks are calculated within the trials or after few days of usage. Definitely not 20 years after you've gotten the first pill. Would be pretty hard to correlate it to something that happened 20 years ago.

You completely ignored my example of it taking 4 years to identify the risks associated with Vioxx (which was pulled from the market). I have all three vaccine doses too, I’m not saying don’t take the vaccine, I’m saying Advil has a more robust safety profile.

4 years is not long term, try again.

Other drugs don't have a better safety profile if they were tested for so long. If anything, it proves that is highly toxic for your body (similarly to many chemio treatments)

Re: Moderna’s HIV vaccine has officially begun human trials

#472

Post by ausudhz »

refurb wrote: post #465
ausudhz wrote: post #443

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quoted post unavailable.

How about 15 years in pharmaceutical development? Anyone who says “the vaccines are the safest drugs out there” is just lying or incompetent. The risk of an autoimmune disorder may not show up for years. Our data collection right now is garbage and it’ll take years to sort through.

15 years of pharmaceutical development should've told you that vaccine and drugs are different, but doesn't seems to be the case.

"Autoimmune disorder" probably have a very low correlation and if anything vaccine have saved the life of many, more than any other drug.

Re: Moderna’s HIV vaccine has officially begun human trials

#473

Post by hdjjhhvvhga »

FooBarBizBazz wrote: post #469
hdjjhhvvhga wrote: post #458

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find it hard to believe. Wouldn't it make more sense that the powder was in contact with the external reproductive parts for extended amounts of time (which is its normal usage) and as a result some parts managed to get inside?

I don't think people are intentionally pushing talc through their cervix, if that's what you mean. But, pack your vagina with the stuff every day, and I imagine you can have all kinds of problems. If I were to go any further than that about exactly how it works I'd be speculating.

OK, I see. Because back in the day it was more or less standard to use powder in the groin area and leave it for hours in order to prevent skin irritation in babies, especially in the summer. So since it was standard usage, people should reasonably expect that the powder sold for this purpose was sufficiently examined and fit for the purpose.

When I first heard about asbestos in children talc powder, I simply thought it was just one of these "bad pharma" conspiracy theories (there was another one - about asbestos in sanitary towels). It seemed so far-fetched - who in their right mind wouldn't make sure to thoroughly check a product designed to have long-term contact with babies' skin against well-known carcinogenic substance? Well, it turns out this time it happened not in China but right in the heart of the USA.

Re: Moderna’s HIV vaccine has officially begun human trials

#474

Post by mlyle »

throwaway2037 wrote: post #467
mlyle wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Can’t you grow the peptide of interest and package it in a traditional vaccine? Traditional way to do this is recombinant approaches (mentioned). These are also in progress. mRNA is much quicker to iterate, though. They tried a few candidate sequences in sHIV to guide their human vaccine development. mRNA vaccines are kind of neat in the way that they create a few day long pulse of new virus-like particles showing…

When you wrote >, did you mean >? Ref: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simian_immunodeficiency_virus

No, I meant sHIV or SHIV, which are a family of human-created viruses with SIV structure and HIV sequences within.

https://journals.asm.org/doi/10.1128/JVI.00372-19

Re: Moderna’s HIV vaccine has officially begun human trials

#476

Post by touisteur »

sterlind wrote: post #455
est31 wrote: post #441

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As long as they take their daily ART pills, they are safe from AIDS in specific, which is basically a death sentence. But things are not black and white. Someone who has ever been HIV positive counts as immuno compromised for their entire life. Studies have shown that there is basically no shortening of life expectancy, if you start ART early enough in the process. > if the person with HIV started ART with a CD4 coun…

I've heard HIV patients describe ART as "aging" their organs. obviously preferable to dying horribly from AIDS, but still gnarly to contend with. it's really interesting to me that their health becomes poorer earlier, but that it doesn't affect mortality.

This might maybe be because a lot of effort is now poured on mid to end of life care, with the improving life expectancy? So the science behind pushing along a decaying body gets better?

Re: Moderna’s HIV vaccine has officially begun human trials

#477

Post by ImaCake »

sterlind wrote: post #456
ImaCake wrote: post #299

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep. In fact mRNA vaccines are almost trivially easy to produce. I know for a fact that many biology labs around the world bought the reagents needed to make homebrew mRNA vaccines in earl 2020. Just in case big pharma screwed up. It would have only been a few days work for them to produce it for themselves and I wouldn’t be surprised if some American and European labs actually did it.

mRNA vaccines don't use regular mRNA though, they use nucleoside analogues to avoid triggering an innate immune response to the mRNA itself. is it really that easy to homebrew that? plus encapsulating it into lipid nanoparticles etc. sounds like it'd be a major project..

The lipid vesicles part is pretty simple I think. You don’t need it to last a long time, just long enough to snort it up your nose.

I am not sure about the XNAs. You might be able to get around it with increasing the dose (trivial if you are producing your own RNA) or it might be possible to use XNAs in a standard synthesis protocol. It would depend on the RNA Pol I think.

Re: Moderna’s HIV vaccine has officially begun human trials

#478

Post by sterlind »

touisteur wrote: post #476
sterlind wrote: post #455

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've heard HIV patients describe ART as "aging" their organs. obviously preferable to dying horribly from AIDS, but still gnarly to contend with. it's really interesting to me that their health becomes poorer earlier, but that it doesn't affect mortality.

This might maybe be because a lot of effort is now poured on mid to end of life care, with the improving life expectancy? So the science behind pushing along a decaying body gets better?

I sure hope so! I don't have HIV but I do have a genetic disorder that's wrecking my body. I'm determined to live as long as possible.

Re: Moderna’s HIV vaccine has officially begun human trials

#479

Post by refurb »

ausudhz wrote: post #472
refurb wrote: post #465

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How about 15 years in pharmaceutical development? Anyone who says “the vaccines are the safest drugs out there” is just lying or incompetent. The risk of an autoimmune disorder may not show up for years. Our data collection right now is garbage and it’ll take years to sort through.

15 years of pharmaceutical development should've told you that vaccine and drugs are different, but doesn't seems to be the case. "Autoimmune disorder" probably have a very low correlation and if anything vaccine have saved the life of many, more than any other drug.

You’re just making things up at this point.

Re: Moderna’s HIV vaccine has officially begun human trials

#480

Post by everforward »

baristavibes wrote: post #213
thebradbain wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m not a doctor, but as a gay man: it’s my understanding HIV doesn’t mutate in the same way a disease like Covid does, at least not in the sense that there’s as many opportunities to spread (i.e. not airborne), so while HIV may actually mutate more in theory, it gets less chances to spread, so less completely-different variants become widespread. Also, as part of “stopping the spread” PrEP has existed for years. It’…

I agree in that no straight people (that i know) consider PrEP, although according to a quick search the HIV prevalence rate is twenty times lower in my country compared to the US. Obviously the human brain statistician goes out the window when comparing a lifelong illness with a few hours of discomfort, but would it be generally safe/worth it to put the entire population on PrEP during sexual activity? I heard that…

It depends on the sexual activities undertaken.

HIV/AIDS is extremely rarely (maybe never) sexually transmitted in female-female intercourse. The CDC notes a "negligible" risk of transmission from sex toys.

HIV/AIDS is contagious through vaginal intercourse. Transmission is fairly low, though certainly not risk free, because most people aren't bursting blood vessels during typical vaginal intercourse. It does happen, though.

HIV/AIDS is most contagious through anal intercourse, and especially for the receptive partner. This is, as far as I know, regardless of the sexual orientation of the participants (presuming there's an actual penis involved and not a toy).

The CDC has data at https://www.cdc.gov/hiv/risk/estimates/riskbehaviors.html

Long story short, it's probably not worth it for most people unless they're engaging in unprotected anal sex with people who have unknown HIV status.

Post reply on HN