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Comment by redthrowaway | Hacker News Reader

Modern antiretrovirals are very effective. Combined with a healthy immune system, it's entirely possible for HIV to be present, but knocked into submission. Both health risks and chances of propagation are significantly reduced. That doesn't, however, mean the virus has been eliminated.

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So the great part of this is that pretty much you can live to a ripe old age. The issue is price. If we can TREAT it for a person's life, thats great. That is no solution for a massive epidemic in Africa though where we'd be lucky to vaccinate everyone if we could, nevermind a long-term treatment.

Africa's always going to be a problem. Assuming this vaccine is effective, we need to take the same approach to HIV that we did to smallpox. That will likely mean substantial Western subsidies for poorer nations, and a concerted boots-on-the-ground effort to administer the vaccine. It will be a long time before HIV is eliminated, and it will come at a substantial cost to taxpayers, but it's well worth it to rid ourselves of this disease.

> That will likely mean substantial Western subsidies for poorer nations, and a concerted boots-on-the-ground effort to administer the vaccine.

It will also mean knocking the people who are convinced the vaccines cause AIDS out of the political world, lest they destroy our ability to do that. This will require action in both the Western world and in Africa, and will make a number of people very unhappy.

I know most people here don't care about those morons. However, any accounting of the cost has to include the political cost.

you may not need as many boots on the ground if you use this topical vaccine approach http://gcc.eyeptv.net/blog/2011/03/08/needle-free-topical-ap...

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