AIDS vaccine trials for India: getting the facts right.

In the last several months, there have been discussions in the media, including in this journal (1), about issues related to how AIDS vaccine trials are conducted in India. The International AIDS Vaccine Initiative (IAVI) has partnered with the ministry of health and family welfare in India through the National AIDS Control Organisation (NACO) and the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) since 2002 to implement the AIDS vaccine research and development programme. With our partners, we strongly support transparency and the highest ethical standards in our joint efforts to find and deliver an AIDS vaccine that the world so desperately needs. In fact, IAVI’s intellectual property agreements are also used as a mechanism to avoid any delay in the introduction of vaccines to developing countries (delays of more than 10 years or so in the past) by insisting that any vaccine will be made simultaneously available in developed and developing countries (2).