SO, now we have a vaccine that seems to protect people against HIV – but don’t pop any champagne corks just yet. The victory was won by the slenderest of numerical margins, and we won’t know whether the vaccine genuinely worked until all the details have been picked over.
The answer is critical to HIV vaccine development, because the favourable result last week was the first vaccine home run against HIV following the failures of earlier candidates in 2003 and 2007. The hordes of researchers who wondered whether a vaccine would ever work now seem to have had their prayers…
