Many distrust AIDS vaccine trials

New research suggests that many Americans remain deeply suspicious of research into an AIDS vaccine and wouldn't want anyone they know to take part in a clinical trial.

The findings reflect a general suspicion of the medical establishment, especially among minorities, says Matthew Murguia, a director at the U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases' division of AIDS, and co-author of a study in the Dec. 15 issue of The Journal of Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndromes.

"We have to try to make sure people understand how vaccines work and what the safeguards are," he says.

While vaccines now protect against a variety of illnesses from chicken pox and polio to smallpox, scientists say the AIDS virus has turned out to be a much tougher customer. More than two decades into the AIDS epidemic, no experimental vaccine has worked.

Still, researchers are continuing to develop vaccines, and about 30 clinical trials are now underway in the United States, Murguia says. Most are in the early stages of testing; Thailand is home to a late-stage trial.

In the new study, researchers randomly surveyed 3,509 Americans by phone about the testing of HIV vaccines. The researchers, who worked from 2002 to 2003, specifically tried to find blacks, Latinos, and gay and bisexual men.

Only 35 percent of blacks and 29 percent of the general population said they'd support someone they know volunteering to take part in the testing of an AIDS vaccine.

Also, 47 percent of the blacks surveyed believe that an HIV vaccine already exists and is being kept secret; 27 percent of the Latinos believed that, as did 13 percent of gay and bisexual men.

"It goes back to the mistrust of government," Murguia says.

"A large number of individuals think the government made AIDS, and if the government made AIDS, they'd have to know how to cure AIDS."

An infamously cruel medical experiment also plays a role in influencing public opinion. "People remember Tuskegee, or they think they know what happened in Tuskegee," Murguia says. "They think maybe with HIV, (the government is) trying to infect us and kill us off."

For 40 years, ending in 1972, federal researchers studied the effects of syphilis by denying treatment to infected black men, many of whom sickened and died. The government, through President Clinton, only apologized in 1997 for the Tuskegee study, named after a city in Alabama.

The new study on attitudes toward HIV vaccine trials also found that many people weren't aware that AIDS vaccines do not cause HIV infection. Seventy-eight percent of blacks thought that testing a vaccine could cause infection, 58 percent of Latinos believed so, as did 68 percent of gay and bisexual men.

Vaccines currently being tested don't include HIV, the virus that causes AIDS. Instead, they rely on manmade proteins designed to fool the body into thinking it's infected with HIV, Murguia explains. If a vaccine works properly, the body will be prepared to immediately swing into action when a real HIV infection comes along.

What to do about misinformation? "The way you solve it is by sharing information that's accurate," Murguia says.

But AIDS specialist Thomas Coates fears that "information and public relations are not going to be enough.

"The real issue is that many groups, especially African-Americans and Latinos, really do have inferior health care and are more likely to die from HIV/AIDS than whites," says Coates, director of the Program in Global Health at the University of California at Los Angeles. "Thus, no one should be surprised at the level of distrust of the government. In a very real sense, the government has already violated its compact with the people in providing inferior health care."

(The HealthDay Web site is at http://www.HealthDay.com.)