Important note: Information in this article was accurate in 1988. The state of the art may have changed since the publication date.
Newsday - September 15, 1988
By Laurie Garrett - Staff Correspondent
Robert Gallo of the U.S. National Cancer Institute mentioned his interest in testing vaccine on human beings in Tanzania. One of Gallo's closest collaborators, Dr. Daniel Zagury, has done human vaccine tests in Zaire. In a press conference later in the day, Dr. Fred Solomon Mhalu, who heads up AIDS efforts in Tanzania on behalf of the World Health Organization, said no vaccine trials would be permitted in this country unless the candidate's vaccine had been previously tested for safety and efficacy on humans in the country of its invention.
"We have been approached by several countries and individuals to see if we would like to try an experimental vaccine," Mhalu said, "but we will not permit such a thing unless the product has been tested in the United States, or Sweden, or wherever it was invented."
Mhalu then turned to Gallo and said, "Bob and I have equal rights, the same human rights, and I don't think he would do anything to me I wouldn't do to him."
Gallo shrugged and said, "How could any decent human being disagree with what you are saying?" But he added there were tremendous difficulties involved in testing AIDS vaccines, because there is no animal that gets acquired immune deficiency syndrome and can be used experimentally.
Phase I vaccine trials, aimed at testing the safety of some products, are now under way in Sweden, the United States and Zaire. In all cases there have been difficulties in obtaining volunteers and those problems will increase as the trials move into Phase II: exposing people to the virus after they have been vaccinated to see if the vaccine works. "I wonder," Gallo asked, "if we had an exciting vaccine next year what would happen? Would anybody in the world allow us to test it?"
The conference also heard word yesterday that a human AIDS virus may infect wild African chimpanzees, which may provide a clue to the origin of the disease.
Dr. Martin Peeters, a French scientist working at the Project SIDA Research Station in Gabon, announced discovery of two Gabonese chimpanzees that appear to carry the HIV-1 type human AIDS virus. The virus found in the chimps is still being analyzed, but initial tests show it looks and behaves exactly like the human AIDS virus.
"I certainly believe they have a virus there, but it's too early to speculate on whether it is the human AIDS virus," Gallo said. "We should wait and see what the molecular biology shows." Luc Montagnier, senior AIDS researcher for the Pasteur Institute, agreed, but called the finding "extremely interesting." He said it may lend further credence to the widely held belief that AIDS began as a monkey virus and spread to humans more than a century ago.
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