VOA标准英语2011--AIDS Vaccine Conference Ends with Eye to

AIDS Vaccine¹ Conference Ends with Eye to Future

The AIDS Vaccine 2011 conference ended Thursday in Bangkok, Thailand. While a vaccine to help end the pandemic remains² elusive³, scientific advances are being made.
About 850 scientists, researchers and others met for four days to discuss progress on finding a vaccine to prevent HIV infection. It’s the only conference to focus exclusively on that.
Exciting time
Mitchell Warren, head of the AIDS Vaccine Advocacy Coalition⁴, or AVAC, gives the meeting fairly high marks.
“I’d say on a scale from one to ten, we are in a scientific zone in the upper sevens and eights,” he said.
AVAC is a non-profit organization with a stated goal speeding up the “ethical development and delivery of AIDS vaccines⁵” as part of a “comprehensive response to the pandemic.”
“We are in a terrific moment in the field and I must say it is terrifically exciting to be able to do this meeting here in Bangkok. It’s not just good science, but to be in the country where the largest AIDS vaccine trial in the world took place - and the first trial to demonstrate that a vaccine was possible – it’s pretty exciting timing,” he said.
That vaccine candidate is known as RV-144. The results of the trial involving about 16,000 participants were announced in 2009. They showed a protection rate of about 31 percent - not nearly good enough to go to market, but good enough to show it can be done.
Now what?
Warren said, “Over the last two years, an unprecedented⁶ international collaboration⁷ has been underway to try to understand why we got the modest effect in that trial that we did.”
What they found were not definite answers, but rather new signals of what direction to take next.
“It is what we call hypothesis generating and there is going to need to be some additional studies to confirm that. But these are the first signals we’ve ever had,” he said.
A follow-up trial to RV-144 will be held in 2014. It will reflect new the data and direction developed since 2009.
Meanwhile, there is a vaccine trial that’s currently recruiting 2,200 participants in about 20 U.S. cities. It’s sponsored by the HIV Vaccine Trials Network. HVTN 505 is the world’s largest ongoing⁸ HIV vaccine study and uses a combination of two experimental vaccines. It will focus on preventing infection among men who have sex with men and transgender women.
“While this is one of the most exciting times in our field, it is also the most complex time in our field. These are complexities⁹ and challenges that we’ve longed for. I think it’s safe to say that vaccine trials are going to get more complicated, but more interesting in the next couple of years,” said Warren.
Three-part strategy
He added that in these difficult economic times, a comprehensive strategic plan is needed for HIV/AIDS. The near and midterm strategies, he says, should include scaling up treatment and care, condoms, male circumcision, microbicides and the use of antiretroviral drugs as a preventive measure. The long term strategy is an AIDS vaccine.
“The near term and midterm strategies are the ones that are going to help us begin to control the epidemic¹⁰. The long term strategy will get us an end to the epidemic,” he said.
AIDS Vaccine 2012 will be held next September in Boston, Massachusetts.

1 vaccine   

n.牛痘苗，疫苗；adj.牛痘的，疫苗的

参考例句：

• The polio vaccine has saved millions of lives.脊髓灰质炎疫苗挽救了数以百万计的生命。
• She takes a vaccine against influenza every fall.她每年秋季接种流感疫苗。

2 remains   

n.剩余物，残留物；遗体，遗迹

参考例句：

• He ate the remains of food hungrily.他狼吞虎咽地吃剩余的食物。
• The remains of the meal were fed to the dog.残羹剩饭喂狗了。

3 elusive   

adj.难以表达(捉摸)的；令人困惑的；逃避的

参考例句：

• Try to catch the elusive charm of the original in translation.翻译时设法把握住原文中难以捉摸的风韵。
• Interpol have searched all the corners of the earth for the elusive hijackers.国际刑警组织已在世界各地搜查在逃的飞机劫持者。

4 coalition   

n.结合体，同盟，结合，联合

参考例句：

• The several parties formed a coalition.这几个政党组成了政治联盟。
• Coalition forces take great care to avoid civilian casualties.联盟军队竭尽全力避免造成平民伤亡。

5 vaccines   

疫苗，痘苗( vaccine的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• His team are at the forefront of scientific research into vaccines. 他的小组处于疫苗科研的最前沿。
• The vaccines were kept cool in refrigerators. 疫苗放在冰箱中冷藏。

6 unprecedented   

adj.无前例的，新奇的

参考例句：

• The air crash caused an unprecedented number of deaths.这次空难的死亡人数是空前的。
• A flood of this sort is really unprecedented.这样大的洪水真是十年九不遇。

7 collaboration   

n.合作，协作；勾结

参考例句：

• The two companies are working in close collaboration each other.这两家公司密切合作。
• He was shot for collaboration with the enemy.他因通敌而被枪毙了。

8 ongoing   

adj.进行中的，前进的

参考例句：

• The problem is ongoing.这个问题尚未解决。
• The issues raised in the report relate directly to Age Concern's ongoing work in this area.报告中提出的问题与“关心老人”组织在这方面正在做的工作有直接的关系。

9 complexities   

复杂性(complexity的名词复数)； 复杂的事物

参考例句：

• The complexities of life bothered him. 生活的复杂使他困惑。
• The complexities of life bothered me. 生活的杂乱事儿使我心烦。

10 epidemic   

n.流行病；盛行；adj.流行性的，流传极广的

参考例句：

• That kind of epidemic disease has long been stamped out.那种传染病早已绝迹。
• The authorities tried to localise the epidemic.当局试图把流行病限制在局部范围。