Effective Vaccine against and Immunotherapy of the HIV: Scientific Report and Ethical Considerations from Cameroon

Abstract

In this paper, the scientific results, of biomedical research on a therapeutic vaccine for HIV carried out by V. Anomah Ngu since the 1990s in Cameroon are presented and some relevant ethical considerations and implications raised. The initial results of the research were first orally presented to the Cameroon Academy of Sciences on 2 December 1999 in a paper titled: ‘Vaccines for the HIV: Past Efforts and Future Prospects’. The problematic that set off the research was the puzzle as to why the natural HIV infection provokes immune responses that fail to kill and eliminate the virus from the body. The intuitive hypothesis of the research was the conviction that the key to an effective vaccine against the infection lay in identifying, understanding and eliminating the reason for this failure. Given the gravity of the HIV/AIDS, especially in sub-Saharan Africa and other poor regions of the world, some of the ethical imperatives motivating the research include finding a simple and effective vaccine that can be cheaply and affordably produced, using traditional rather than high technology methods. A candidate vaccine that fits this description has been discovered through V. Anomah Ngu’s research. The vaccine, tentatively named VANHIVAX, has so far been tested on a very limited scale (on HIV-positive persons) in Cameroon with what we consider very hopeful and promising results.

Keywords: HIV/AIDS, Therapeutic Vaccine, VANHIVAX, Cameroon