Virus Protection

No, I am not talking about a computer antivirus program. If you were expecting this topic, sorry. I am talking about virus vaccines.

I read a small article where someone actually did a sociology study on the distribution of a theoretical HIV vaccine. It was fascinating to see, mostly because it was an article that was more unique than other articles I have ever seen. Instead of listing results for one country – which has been done – the main researcher collected data from three different countries in the world for this study’s content.

While every study I always have to take with a grain of salt to make sure that I know that it does not represent all people, I can relax a bit on this one. (I still am, by the way; people can influence numbers to say what they want.)

I am just going to go out and say it: HIV scares the crap out of me. It is a deadly virus, in most cases can lead to AIDS, and you can get it from something as simple as having sex with someone (or contaminated blood). There is no known cure, but there are drugs that can help prolong lives and stuff.

In the early 90’s, there was a big awareness campaign about it. You could not see any awards show, for example, without the red ribbon that I show above here on any celebrity throughout the show. It fell out of favor after a couple of years, of course, just like most Hollywood trends.

I wish Hollywood would get tired of this trend, though. Paris, you are ugly, and you are not news. GTFO.

Most people know, however, the threat is still around. AIDS was not exterminated; some say the figures may be as high as 1 in 3 people in Africa are infected with HIV. Tens of thousands of people are infected with the virus in each North American country, if not hundreds of thousands. There is no denying that it is an epidemic, and for a lot of people, it is a death sentence.

I know there is some around that will say the HIV virus is God’s way of smiting the wicked or something like that. I disagree with this statement, since I do not believe a god could be that cruel. What I do believe, though, is that people whom have made the lifestyle choice to put themselves at risk for this virus should not be punished for making that choice, no matter how much I disagree with it personally. Furthermore, for those that do not believe there should be a HIV vaccine because it is “God’s will for the wicked to be cleansed”, do you also believe that a “pure” woman whom was raped should also be subject to God’s judgment in such a manner?

I believe I developed a bit of a tangent from my main point, so allow me to return to it. In the article, I was particularly drawn to this:

We all have our way of thinking and frankly most of us associate vaccines with ‘Okay, now I’m fine.’ The other thing, though, is sometimes we associate vaccines with “Okay, that means that you are going to put a bit of flu inside me.” … Imagine when people think you are going to put a little bit of HIV inside me, [even though] it’s not the case.

This particular part struck me, as I have used the same argument about flu shots. I do not exactly like getting the flu shot, specifically because the vaccine uses a dead version of the virus to allow the body’s immune system learn how to attack the real virus, so then when exposed to the virus the body then can combat it effectively (at least, that is how I understand it). One thing that made more sense about an eventual HIV vaccine: the government would never allow someone to inject another with any form of the HIV virus (at least the Canadian government would not), unless it was proven it works without risk of the person… you know, dying and all that. The version used in testing right now is synthesized to not use the virus, unlike the flu shots.

It leads me to the very obvious question, though, the one I want to base this post on:

If an HIV vaccine was put out tomorrow, would people take it?

It is a legitimate question. I know I definitely would, due to the fact that I would rather be protected against something that could possibly kill me, but would others? Would people in religious communities be shunned for getting a vaccine because of the social stigma surrounding HIV infection? Would the price be too high? Are the side effects bad?

Will taking the vaccine make Vin Diesel ever wear a leather kilt again?

It is a good question. Maybe someone should ask the Pope about it. Yes, I am serious. It would answer a lot of questions right there and then, would it not? It would definitely answer the religion question, and since churches in general tend to dictate behavior in the bedroom and a good majority of the world is religious in some form or another (not to mention that Christian aid organizations are pretty big players in developing countries), it is a valid philosophical question… not the kilt question, but the rest of it.

How will we answer it? I sincerely hope that a lot of the answers come from a personal viewpoint and not a big viewpoint like the Pope or another religious leader, because we need to stamp this out now. HIV has taken too many people away that could not even live up to their own potential as people.

Rest in peace, Freddie. (What? I do not have to put jokes on ALL my picture captions!)

The same can be said for any vaccine. We just hope it does not turn out to be a worldwide placebo, and help the world get over one of the deadliest epidemics to affect the world since the Black Plague (in my opinion only; that may not be a statement of fact).

By the way, I am going to pimp something out here: the World Community Grid. Got a computer that you leave on and are not using all the time? Why not let it crunch a science project for FightAIDS@Home? I challenge you to beat my statistics; I have run over a year of processor time for FightAIDS@Home, and I am proud to donate my spare CPU cycles to a worthy cause such as this.

Now, the vaccine for HIV is many years off – I will be truly surprised if it comes any sooner than five years in the future – but finding out the social impact now of such a breakthrough would be a great thing. I know there are people dying in Africa right now of AIDS – ironically, the one that is rampant through Africa, the place with more HIV infections, is of a different subtype compared to the ones researched in North America, where there is less infected people – and this thing is one of the more adaptive viruses that has ever existed. We should be looking at curtailing this however possible; I would prefer to take all people into the future, if possible.

Let us all hope for a world where we have destroyed this virus, and there is no new outbreaks.