I would call this one a Christmas miracle, but since this broke on the 25th day of Kislev, I guess this is actually a Hanukkah miracle.
Anyway, according to the Toronto Star, a vaccine created in Canada that could prevent a person from becoming HIV-positive has received the okay for testing on human patients. So far, the drug has been shown to strengthen the immune system against the virus and doesn’t have any major side effects, so woohoo! Score one for science!
The vaccine, developed by researchers at the University of Western Ontario, has been approved by the US Food and Drug Administration to start being tested in humans in January.
It is the first preventive HIV vaccine approved for clinical trials to use a whole HIV-1 virus, which has been both killed and genetically engineered, to activate immunity. In this way, the new vaccine is much like the killed whole virus vaccines that are successful against polio, rabies and influenza.
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While the vaccine still needs to be tested, if it works, this could mean the beginning of the end for HIV/AIDS. Suck it, AIDS, you ain’t got shit!
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