Science, Aids Vaccine | featured news

Science now has the tools to slash the spread of HIV even without a vaccine — and the U.S. is donating an extra $150 million to help poor countries put them in place, the Obama administration told the world's largest AIDS conference Monday.

There are no scientific reasons the world can't chart a path, albeit a difficult one, toward the world's first AIDS-free generation, a top federal health official said Sunday. "There is no excuse scientifically to say we cannot do it," said Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, speaking to the media at AIDS 2012, an international AIDS conference, which began here Sunday. "What we need now is the political and organizational will to implement what science has given us."

Nabel said no vaccine being tested today "is likely to hit it out of the park," but many researchers do feel advances in broadly neutralizing antibodies are key to developing a highly successful HIV vaccine. "It's really a new day when we start to think about where we are with AIDS vaccines," Nabel said.

The latest research puts scientists much closer to finding a HIV vaccine.

For the first time, an experimental vaccine has prevented infection with the AIDS virus, a watershed event in the deadly epidemic and a surprising result. Recent failures led many scientists to think such a vaccine might never be possible.

The World Health Organization and the U.N.