Bill Gates, “I`m Going to Pay to Combat AIDS”

“Never let a single pharmaceutical company have all the responsibility for developing an AIDS vaccine, which costs a huge amount of money.”

Important health organizations and foundations worldwide agreed to join forces in establishing a multi-national company to develop an AIDS vaccine.

The Wall Street Journal reported that a statement calling for the creation of a multi-national company for the AIDS vaccine was issued Friday by the Gates Foundation, owned by Bill and Melinda Gates, WHO, the U.S. CDC (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention), the AIDS committee at the U.N., high ranking officials in the U.S. National Institute of Health and 2 Nobel Prize winners.

In the statement, they said that not a single company has succeeded in developing an AIDS vaccine in the last 20 years even though sophisticated scientific technologies have been used in their efforts. The largest problem here is the high risk of failure which cost pharmaceutical companies hundreds of millions of dollars.

Even if pharmaceutical companies successfully develop a vaccine, they are not likely to recoup their investment due to lack of transparency in developing countries` markets, areas with the largest number of AIDS victims.

Seven types of AIDS vaccines have been developed and were under clinical trial in 2001 and 2002. But only the vaccine developed by Vaxgen underwent third phase trials.

The Wall Street Journal reported the effort to create an AIDS vaccine is taking a turning point as the Gates Foundation is taking a lion`s share of the development cost for the vaccine. The Gates Foundation, the biggest private foundation with $ 24 billion in assets, is planning to have a meeting with those who issued the statement to discuss the budget for the future AIDS vaccine.

“This project will have similar characteristics with the multi-national human genome project. If we can create a perfect AIDS vaccine, this project will develop further than the human genome project,” said Gary Nabel, director of the Vaccine Research Center in the U.S.

According to the WHO, 42 million people are infected with the HIV/AIDS virus worldwide. This figure includes 5 million newly infected people. Experts say that if an AIDS vaccine is not developed, AIDS will claim 70 million lives worldwide by 2020.

Ki-Tae Kwon kkt@donga.com