An Aids vaccine might never be found, claims one of the world's leading experts on the disease. David Baltimore, a Nobel laureate, said the complexity of the disease means scientists are no closer to a vaccine today than when they discovered the link to HIV more than 25 years ago.
Baltimore, a biologist at the California Institute of Technology, was awarded the Nobel prize for medicine in 1975 for discovering an enzyme that was later discovered to be the key reproductive mechanism used by the virus known as HIV.
He led a panel of experts in 1986 which concluded that, given the complexity of the problem, an Aids vaccine was at least 10 years away. "I still think an Aids vaccine is 10 years away," he said.
"HIV has found ways to totally fool the immune system so we've got to do one better than nature because nature just doesn't work in this circumstance." But he cautioned that there was still a lot to do. "I don't want to pretend that we have found the route to a new vaccine."
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