I’ve always tried to not get my hopes up in waiting for a vaccine for HIV. Year after year I’ve always read about promising new findings/developments related to some research study that may lead to a successful vaccine. And year after year it’s disappointing to discover these paths may be dead ends. And so while we do need research dollars to lead us further down the path of one day preventing the transmission of AIDS, it’s my opinion that we will save more lives now and in the future if more resources are devoted to contraception/education/treatment programs. It’s not like I’m saying that there’s not a big enough pie for everyone to get a piece, but I am saying that the most attention and funding should be spent on the latter, not the former. The New England Journal of Medicine released a great graphic outlining the number of new infections we’ll have every year for every year we do not have an HIV vaccine:

Vaccines are incredibly complicated, and take years to make. It took half a century to develop the measles vaccine as well as the polio vaccine. So while we wait for the world’s brilliant researchers to reach this step with HIV, let’s keep in mind that there are millions of human beings that will be infected while we wait. And this people deserve the best of care, support, and resources as well.