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Comment by m3kw9 | Hacker News Reader

The HIV one is interesting, I wonder what strategy they will use with that?

Some more detail in this article from July, they’re using mRNA to make the body produce virus like particles

https://www.aidsmap.com/news/jul-2020/novel-vaccine-induces-...

Any effective HIV vaccine would presumably cause false-positives to the HIV antibody tests. Recently an Australian COVID-19 vaccine candidate trial was halted due to participants developing antibodies to proteins in the vaccine that were taken from HIV genome, causing false-positive on a HIV test. [1] Such false-positives could easily be co-opted by anti-vaxxers especially in light of the the famous Soviet Union disinformation campaign "Operation INFEKTION" [2] that falsely suggested the HIV/AIDS is a man-made virus created by the United States to cause genocide of Africans. In rural Pakistan, health workers have been killed by villages who see the polio vaccine as a Western conspiracy to sterilize Muslims.

Global mandatory inoculations using a safe and effective HIV vaccine that causes false-positive results on HIV antibody tests would be a field day for anti-vaxxers and conspiracy theorists everywhere.

[1] https://www.livescience.com/australia-covid-19-vaccine-false...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_INFEKTION

Taking into account anything conspiracy nutjobs have to say about this stuff is an exercise in futility. They will not not find another wild excuse to declare conspiracy.

That might be the case, but it was just another way of saying that causing false positives on HIV tests is a huge issue for a vaccine. It should absolutely be prevented if possible, or at the very least adresssed somehow.

If the vaccine proves effective, you could do a test before and then vaccinate on negative knowing you test positive afterwards for a while.

It's very different to a false positive to _another pathogen. That leaves you blind, indeed.

Well new tests have to be developed, that don't trigger when people are vaccinated but non ill.

In Spain we had a snow storm and we have now people calling it an hoax and saying that it was not snow but plastic sent by the government.

What I mean by that anecdote is that conspiracy theorist don't need anything special for creating their theories, they cannot be the ones leading the agenda. Work on explaining why and how these vaccines work / create FPs is the way to go.

> Global mandatory inoculations using a safe and effective HIV vaccine that causes false-positive results on HIV tests would be a field day for anti-vaxxers and conspiracy theorists everywhere.

There's no reason for it to be mandatory. It's not like COVID19 or the flu where it is often transmitted through casual contact. There is simply no reason to delay/halt an HIV vaccine for just causing an false positive on a test. As you said, any effective HIV vaccine will likely have this issue so pushing forward is the only option.

Definitely. I'm sure the then-flawed antibody tests would be retired and replaced with PCR tests.

"PCR" doesn't mean "more precise". It's limited to viral DNA/RNA presented. I don't think there is much HIV circulating, if you're not sero-converting. HIV isn't shedding constantly.

E.g. SARS2 PCR will often fail for blood samples.

I think you’re misunderstanding the problem. We already have vaccines that cause positives on antibody tests. This is quite common. For example, the HepB vaccine causes positives on the HBsAb test, and people who administer the test understand this.

If we had a widely available vaccine and effective vaccine for HIV that affected certain tests, this would easily be justified by the benefit of the vaccine in preventing HIV. And the results of the antibody tests could potentially still be used to assess HIV immunity.

But a COVID vaccine that caused HIV tests to report positive without conferring any immunity would be bad — the test would essentially become useless. Re-engineering the vaccine to avoid this seems like a no-brainer.

I mean, the mRNA vaccine would work by producing specific parts of the virus so as to allow the body to mount an immune response, just like the Covid version does... So yes, you would expect HIV antibodies to be produced.

Personally, I think most people care more about having vaccines for diseases like HIV than worrying about what anti-vaxxers and conspiracy theorists believe.

Wouldnt you want a hiv vaccine to create hiv antibodies? What other mechanism is there for the body to fight off a virus?

I believe the other kind of specific immunity mechanism is referred to as "cellular immunity". But yeah, I had the same thought you had.

It's also very different if you shade the target disease tests, or of an unrelated pathogen. You'd only need to test positive before to rule out infection. It's not like your HIV status is known to anyone else, so it's a matter of information management, not risk inherently.

If we get an HIV vaccine it may also be therapeutic for HIV+ people. So far vaccine development wasn't getting anywhere because we're at loss with the nature of the virus. _If we find a persistent target, HIV may burn out in those infected and vaccinated. Seroconversion may then be something to look forward to.

This shitty mobile client can't do edits... Of course I mean test negative to rule out infection.

And could you blame people for being paranoid when the CIA have used vaccine programs for various purposes in the past.

Though they've apparently now stopped.

I assume you are referring to the time the CIA co-opted an immunisation programme as part of the hunt for Bin Laden.

I don't think anyone has ever seriously suggested that the CIA has tampered with the vaccines. They merely co-opted the inoculation process in order to gain a biological sample.

I'm not suggesting they have, but it will make people in these rural communities rather paranoid or impressionable.

> I don't think anyone has ever seriously suggested that the CIA has tampered with the vaccines. They merely co-opted the inoculation process in order to gain a biological sample.

Its not about CIA tampering with the vaccines. The assumption was that the vaccination programs were politically neutral, a system meant to better humanity regardless of politics or military targets etc etc and in many places, that's what was said to convince people on the ground.

Unfortunately, the use of a doctor to aid in information gathering for the CIA in a vaccination campaign means that that assumption is completely gone.

The context is that the Pakistan and Afghanistan border region is the only place in the world where polio still spreads, while the rest of the world it has been eradicated.

However, there is already suspicion due to lack of education and literacy that the vaccine is some sort of Western plot. So all this did was ensure that there continue to be attacks on polio and other vaccination workers in the area by 1. terrorist groups which was happening anyway, but 2. by uneducated paranoid people who think that the vaccine has been the "plot" of the western governments to do something bad to them.

All in all, the CIAs use of a charity organisation and a vaccination drive as a front for its activities has basically led to hundreds being affected by polio, unable to live their lives in good health or even in death.

It doesn't matter whether they tampered with the vaccine. They destroyed trust in international vaccine Programs and the Health Workers that are administering the vaccines are facing the blowback.

I wasn’t defending them, it was a terrible idea and the cost immeasurably outweighed the benefit of killing an, admittedly, horrific human being.

> Such false-positives could easily be co-opted by anti-vaxxers

I'm less interested in how anti-vaxxers think, than the fact that the HIV test will need to re-target a different protein.

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