Scientists says 'we won't give up on HIV vaccine'
The scientific community must "beat out nature" if there is hop of finding a vaccine for HIV, a leading expert in the field has said.
Professor David Baltimore, who is president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), has said that, despite the fact that the virus has successfully "fooled" the immune system, researchers cannot give up on finding a vaccine.
He told the BBC: "This is a huge challenge because to control HIV immunologically the scientific community has to beat out nature, do something that nature, with its advantage of four billion years of evolution, has not been able to do.
"I believe that HIV has found ways to totally fool the immune system. So we have to do one better than nature.
"Our lack of success may be understandable but it is not acceptable."
Speaking at the annual meeting of the AAAS in Boston, he added: "In the human you really only have one shot which is to try to change genes in stem cells.
"So we're trying to do that, to design vectors that can carry genes that will be of therapeutic advantage."
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