Brad Fraser

AIDS VACCINE
THE NATIONAL POST
BY BRAD FRASER

This week I became a participant in a study for an AIDS vaccine.

The prerequisites to taking part in this study are simple. You have to be a sexually active, HIV negative gay male between the ages of eighteen and sixty. The study is a randomized, double blind test comparing the reactions to the live vaccine against those of a placebo. I don't know whether I am receiving the actual vaccine or some harmless substitute.

There are nearly one hundred men in the Toronto area and thousands worldwide taking part in this study. In Thailand there are another 2,500 people being studied who are at risk of exposure to HIV, the virus believed to cause AIDS, through injection drug use. Unlike certain other vaccines, the AIDSVAX B/B vaccine, courtesy of the drug company Vaxgen Inc. is not made from live components of the virus it is designed to fight. This vaccine contains man-made proteins that are similar to those on the outer surface of the HIV1 virus. There is no danger of infection but there are also no guarantees it will succeed. Side effects have been minor. Our blood, sexual habits and general health will be monitored throughout the study.

My initial response when I heard of the trial was excitement tinged with fear. Excitement because at last people are talking about a possible vaccine for this dread disease. Fear because the rate of HIV infection among gay men and others have begun to rise since the advent of the powerful protease inhibitor cocktails that have extended so many lives. What kind of damage would the possibility of a vaccine, however faint, wreak among a community that is already suffering from grief, anger, societal disapproval and "Safe Sex Burnout"? Wouldn't the very idea of a possible vaccine raise the incidents of HIV infection even higher?

Dr. Ken Logue, who is the principal investigator of the study in the Toronto area, is well aware of these dangers, as are the people who are putting the larger study together. They are very clear that this vaccination is not an excuse for people to go out and begin indiscriminately exchanging bodily fluids. In fact, there is a consistent 1.5-% seroconversion rate (Converting from HIV negative to HIV positive.) among gay men. This is the margin that the people conducting the study will be watching, as well as the activity of the HIV antibodies that the vaccine will produce in the blood of most participants. Safe sex counseling is a major component of the study. There's no guarantee that certain participants will not have unsafe sex, but there is no guarantee outside of the study that people will not engage in unsafe sex either. AIDS has shaped my life for nearly twenty years now. I lived through the early years of terror; not knowing how or when some innocent act of lust committed a decade early was going to have lethal repercussions. I lived through the sleepless, sweaty nights spent palpating my own glands, searching for symptoms that were horrifyingly common. I watched people decline into sickness, their brains liquefying in their skulls, shit flowing out of their bodies like water, their skin burnt with lesions, their eyes blinded, once beautiful men wasting away to wizened centenarians before expiring in unspeakable pain.

I was there when nurses and doctors refused to treat people with AIDS, when meals were left outside doors, when obviously infected people were spat on in the streets and turned away out of their homes. I saw the best and the brightest snuffed out one after another as the rest of the world turned its back in disgust. I saw the baffled and frightened gay community gradually pull together and rise up. I saw those afflicted with the disease struggle against society's bigotry and their own failing health in order to give the scourge a human face. I watched gay people blow whistles, heckle politicians and fight with every erg of energy they had until they were heard. I saw the best and the worst of everything the world has to offer.

The AIDS crisis, more than any other event in this century, has transformed every aspect of society on planet earth. It has demystified all sexual practices. It has led to amazing breakthroughs in medicine and research. It has transformed our sense of morality and mortality. It has offered us great gifts but it has demanded an unspeakable price.

We've developed a certain complacency about the disease in this part of the world. People are no longer dying in droves in first world countries. But as the media has rather belatedly realized this is not the case in less advantaged parts of the world. AIDS in Africa is a human, and predominantly heterosexual, disaster. This virus is not really spread through sex. I'm living proof that one can enjoy I very satisfying sex life without contracting the virus. AIDS is passed on through ignorance. It's passed on through self-hatred. It's passed on through fear.

Through the medical understanding of the disease and its origins- through intimate physical and emotional contact with people infected with HIV or suffering from AIDS- I have gradually lost much of my fear of HIV. I learned to respect it, I learned to avoid it, and, most importantly, I learned to fight it. AIDS and HIV no longer fill me with terror. I know this disease is now something that can be fought and can eventually be conquered. I want to be a part of that battle until it's won. I owe it to the many people who are dead or suffering from this disease and I owe it to myself because the only true way to avoid despair and not give up hope is to fight. I'm not about to stop now.