Looking forward to a vaccine for HIV

While there isn't yet a vaccine for HIV, Henry Masur, MD, chief of the National Institute of Health's critical care medicine department, is optimistic that a vaccine is on the horizon.

Transcript

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There's a lot of interesting data that is promising on how to make a more effective vaccine. [MUSIC PLAYING]

00:12

We don't have an effective vaccine yet. Once we have a vaccine that we think is effective,

00:18

it will take several years to show that it's effective. But I think the American biomedical complex has

00:25

been so successful at solving problems, I'm at least very optimistic that we're going to have a vaccine. But whether it's going to be in one year, five years, or 10

00:33

years, I'm not certain. But I'm confident we'll be able to understand this problem and create an effective intervention.

00:39

[MUSIC PLAYING] I never say never, and I never say always

00:46

when I'm dealing with these types of things. I think that a cure, in the classic sense,

00:53

is going to be very difficult, perhaps impossible. Does that mean we give up on it? Absolutely not. But I don't think we should expect

01:01

that we are going to cure everybody who has HIV infection. By cure, meaning you take them off their therapy and the virus

01:11

doesn't come back. That's going to be very difficult. And by difficult, I don't mean we're not going to put all of our best thoughts, our minds,

01:20

our creativity, our resources to try and do it. But given the nature of this, it is not going to be easy to do that because

01:28

of the very special characteristics of this virus. [AUDIO LOGO]