2015

January April July October
February May August November
March June September December

(TUESDAY) January 13, 2015

Focus: Basic Science
Attendance: 337

Nietzsche, Goldilocks and
the Quest for an AIDS Vaccine:
Lessons Learned from Live Attenuated SIV

Starring

R. Paul Johnson, MD

Director
Yerkes National Primate Research Center

Clubhouse Location:
WHSCAB Plaza & Auditorium
Agenda:
6:00pm — wine, cheese, networking
6:30pm — meeting convenes
7:45pm — casual buffet dinner, more networking


Hope to see you for Dinner at the Club in 2015,
-Kimbi Hagen
Your Friendly Neighborhood Vaccine Dinner Club Goddess

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February 4, 2015

Focus: Communication; Controversies
Attendance: 414

This sure is a rocking good time to be talking about vaccine communication as, thanks to the ongoing measles outbreak that caught fire at Disney World, there seems to be a whole lot of vaccination:
• advocating [6:33] — CNN interview with woman whose daughter died of whooping cough]
• finger pointing — Vox.com article claiming 2014 outbreak caused by Amish missionary]
• analysis — (US news article [quoting Walt Orenstein] assessing multiple factors and failures that have promoted outbreak)
• and push back — (New York Times article giving voice to beleagured vaccine hesitant parents)
going on — but is all that the same thing as vaccine COMMUNICATING? Come to the February meeting of the VDC and let's talk…

If You Can't Communicate, You Won't Vaccinate:
The Power of Individuals, the Government,
and the Media to Increase (or Suppress)
Vaccine Uptake

Starring

David Salisbury, CB FRCP FRCPCH FFPH FAMSci

Director of Immunization, United Kingdom Department of Health
Fellow, Royal College of Physicians
Fellow, Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health
Honorary Chair, Imperial College, London

Clubhouse Location:
WHSCAB Plaza and Auditorium (1440 Clifton Rd)
Agenda:
6:00pm — wine, cheese, networking
6:30pm — meeting convenes
7:45pm — casual buffet dinner, more networking


Dear Vacciners,
Last November pediatrics professor David Stuckus (Nationwide Children's Hospital, Columbus OH) set social media ablaze when he tweeted a hallway comment made by one of his colleagues:

Actual discussion: Parent "I want #Ebola vaccine for my child" Doc "There isn't one, but we have #flushot" Parent "We don't believe in that"

Hmmm… Three months later and I still can't read that tweet without wanting simultaneously to belly laugh, groan, and bang my head against a wall. You?

As reported by Andrew Revkin in the New York Times (Nov 6, 2014), Dr. Stuckus likes Twitter because "the platform helps him 'increase patient engagement with evidence-based medicine' in a world flooded with misinformation."

That sounds like a good thing.

But does it work? Could we really use Communication with a capital C, for example, to get a handle on the current measles brush fires that started breaking out all over after Disney World proved that it is, indeed, a small world after all?

Come to the February meeting of the Vaccine Dinner Club and find out what Dr. Salisbury has to say about the power of individuals, the media, and the government to increase or suppress vaccine uptake. Dr. Salisbury has taken time off from keeping the UK vaccine-covered and is flying all the way from London just to talk to us (seriously, some people will do anything for a VDC speaker mug), so please come help us give him a warm VDC welcome.

Hope to see you for dinner at the Club this February 4th (Wednesday),
-Kimbi

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March 4, 2015

Focus: Basic Science
Attendance: 263
Clubhouse: WHSCAB (1440 Clifton Rd)

'Forget your perfect offering, there is a crack,
a crack in everything, that's how the light
gets in' (Leonard Cohen):
The Crack Gets Wider ...
Neutralizing Antibodies and an HIV Vaccine

Starring

Dennis Burton, PhD

Professor, Department of Immunology and Microbial Science
Scripps Research Institute

Clubhouse Location:
WHSCAB Plaza and Auditorium (1440 Clifton Rd)
Agenda:
6:00pm — wine, cheese, networking
6:30pm — meeting convenes
7:45pm — casual buffet dinner, more networking

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April 1, 2015

Focus: Science History; Hollywood
Attendance: 260

'Dinner & a Movie Night'
Dr. Ehrlich's Magic Bullet
(1940)

Starring

Dr. Paul Ehrlich (Edgar G. Robinson)
Mrs. Hedy Ehrlich (Ruth Gordon)
Dr. Emil von Behring (Otto Kruger)

Plus a Cast of Thousands with Diphtheria and Syphilis
(but not necessraily at the same time)

Clubhouse Location:
WHSCAB Plaza and Auditorium (1440 Clifton Rd)
Agenda:
6:00pm — Dinner (Pizza) and Movie Snacks (Popcorn, Milk Duds)
6:30pm — MOVIE NIGHT!
8:15pm — head home, feeling REALLY glad that Dr. Erlich made the world a better place for all of us


Dear Vacciners,
This is a super entertaining and AMAZING movie about a real life hero, Dr. Paul Ehrlich, who (on his way to a Nobel Prize) pioneered the discovery of bacteriological stains for disease diagnosis, developed a treatment for diphtheria, described the toxin/antitoxin relationship, improved the treatment for sleeping sickness, proved the existence of the blood/brain barrier, invented the concepts of "autoimmunity" and "chemotherapy," and — oh yeah — cured syphilis.

But what makes the movie particularly amazing is that it was filmed at a time that the mere mention of "venereal disease" was strictly forbidden under an infamous Production Code that stringently regulated what one could do, say, or show in a movie.

But during the 1930 and '40s the Warner Brothers film studio made free use of a loophole — the science biopic genre allowed them to engage in caustic social criticism under the acceptable cover of 'historical fact.' In this case, about syphilis. But only to a point. As quoted from a review of Dr. Ehrlich's Magic Bullet here:

A close examination of the script of Dr Ehrlich's Magic Bullet makes very clear the result of the negotiation that must have taken place between [the Production Code head honcho and the movie studio] prior to the production of this film: the characters are allowed to talk about syphilis, but only as an abstract concept. That is, they are allowed to say things like, "Syphilis is a disease"; but never at any point does anyone say to a patient, "You have syphilis." Instead, vague references to "this scourge" and "this dread disease" are made, with a strict distance kept at all times between the phenomenon of syphilis and those suffering from it. There is also some dislocation between who might have the disease theoretically, and who actually does. The dialogue makes it clear that no-one is safe from syphilis – towards the end, a physician begging for access to Ehrlich's still-experimental drug makes an impassioned speech about "young lives destroyed, marriages ruined, children infected", and mentions in particular "a young girl" – but throughout the film, the only people visually identified as carrying the disease are all adult males. The other thing that the screenplay does, far more contentiously, is have Ehrlich twice insist that syphilis can be caught "in very innocent ways". Evidently a disease that could only be caught in, well, very guilty ways was not considered acceptable subject matter.

(And of course, as with the later advent of the contraceptive pill, there was a section of society that regarded the finding of a cure for syphilis as an open invitation to public immorality; and that likewise considered Ehrlich's research to be immoral in and of itself.)

But what about the plot?

Here is what the back of the film box says:

Edward G. Robinson gives a powerful and moving performance in this compelling film that documents one doctor's valiant struggle to make medical history.

Medical maverick Dr. Paul Ehrlich (Robinson) risks everything -- including his life -- when, in his quest to discover a simple diagnosis for tuberculosis, he inadvertently develops the deadly disease himself. Traveling to Egypt with his wife (Ruth Gordon) in search of a cure, he stumbles on a theory of poison immunity, with which he hopes to eradicate diphtheria and syphilis -- the major killers of the time. But putting his theories to practice back in Germany is no easy task: the good doctor must brave prejudice, fascism, sickness and even financial ruin in order to actualize his vision and discover the building blocks of modern medicine.

Directed by William Dierterle (The Life of Emile Zola) and written by John Huston (director of The Maltese Falcoln and The Afrcian Queen), Dr. Erlich's Magic Bullet was one of the most daring films of its time, controversial and challenging in its subject and style. Today's audiences are sure to find its suspense and drama both thrilling and captivating.

Grab your family and friends and come on over next Wednesday.

Hope to see you for dinner and a movie at the Club,
-Your friendly neighborhood vaccine dinner club goddess

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May 6, 2015 - Combined meeting of the VDC & Mahy Seminar

Focus: Basic Science
Attendance: 381

6th Annual Meeting of the "Mahy Seminar" The Mahy Seminar is an annual lecture featuring the globe's top virologists. It honors the outstanding career of Dr. Brain Mahy and acknowledges his unparallelled role in expanding the field of virology at the CDC and beyond.

In Flew Enza: Influenza Vaccinations ...
Past, Present, and Future Challenges

Starring

Nancy Cox, PhD

Director (retired)
CDC Influenza Division

Clubhouse Location:
WHSCAB Plaza and Auditorium (1440 Clifton Rd)
Agenda:
6:00pm — wine, cheese, networking
6:30pm — meeting convenes
7:45pm — casual buffet dinner, more networking


FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTION:
"May I bring [non-members] to the meeting with me?"

ANSWER:
YES! Please do!! But each person must be individually registered in advance.


Dear Vacciners,
The May, 1911 edition of the "Journal of the American Institute of Criminal Law and Criminology", (p. 780- 781) included an excerpt from Mr. Joseph Matthew Sullivan's article "Prison Culture" that later appeared in the June, 1911 edition of New England Magazine.

In addition to being possibly one of the earliest examples ever of "[Epub ahead of print],"* Mr. Sullivan's article includes some eye opening information. The first to catch my OWN eye was just how much reading material each of Massachusetts' 22 prison libraries had on offer. According to Mr. Sullivan, "The [Massachusetts State Prison], which is under the care of the chaplain, contains 10,000 circulating volumes and 5,000 textbooks. There have been 37,142 issues of library books during the year ending September 30, 1909." A gracious plenty indeed for a 1909 prisoner census of ~n=839.

Mr. Sullivan's article also reveals that some prisons even created their own literature. The Massachusetts Reformatory in Concord for example (968 prisoners, 3,437 volumes) was one of six prisons in the country in 1909 that published its own periodical. The Massachusetts Reformatory's was called "Our Paper"**

By this point you are probably wondering what on earth I am wittering on about and what all this possibly has to do with the upcoming VDC meeting.

Just this … Volume 10 (1894) of Our Paper included the following poem:

"There was a little girl, and she had a little bird,
And she called it by the pretty name of Enza;
One day it flew away, but it didn't go to stay,
For when she raised the window, in-flu-Enza."

In 1894 this poem would not have struck anyone reading it as being the least bit bizarre. In 1894 influenza was very much on people's minds as the world endured a recurrence of an 1890-91 flu pandemic that killed >1,000,000 people, including one of Queen Victoria's grandchildren (Prince Albert Victor), the first major Russian female mathematician (Sofia Kovalevskaya), the inventor of a wood pulp paper making method that made printing cheap newspapers possible (Charles Fenerty); the poet Samuel Laycock (Warblin's fro' an Owd Songster), and one Mr. John T. Ford, the owner of Ford's Theatre at the time President Lincoln was assassinated.

None of these people had access to influenza vaccine in 1894, although they COULD have bought the "Carbolic Smoke Ball" which was widely advertised as curing influenza (also asthma, 'throat deafness,' snoring, croup, whooping cough, neuralgia, and headache) in anyone who was willing to insert into their nose a tube that was attached to a rubber ball containing carbolic acid. Squeezing the ball shoved carbolic acid fumes up your nose, making it run copiously (you think?), supposedly ejecting any invading influenza virus and other bad bugs in the ensuing effluvium.

Compared to inhaling carbolic acid three times a day for months on end only to get influenza ANYWAY like Mrs. Carlill did, standing in line at Kroger's to get your annual flu shot suddenly starts to seem a lot more do-able, doesn't it?

Unfortunately 'do-able' doesn't always mean 'done.'

A March 30, 2015 article in the journal Vaccine revealed that even though children with neurologic or neurodevelopmental disorders are at increased risk from influenza-related complications, they are not any more likely to receive a flu shot than are other children. Which isn't good news at all since flu shot coverage among children pretty darn low.

What gives? Why are we having so much trouble getting people to get an annual jab that will prevent or lessen the ill effects of a disease that, at the very least, can make you feel seriously miserable for a really long time? And why aren't people who are more likely to get influenza side effects more likely to get an influenza vaccination?

*I* think that part of the problem has to do with Dr. Google. For example, when I googled "influenza side effects" just now not only were only 2 of the 13 links on the ensuing page labeled "influenza side effects" (the rest had to do with influenza vaccine side effects), clicking on the top 'influenza side effects' link (About.com) took me to a page that was nothing but a list of other links that were ONLY about flu vaccine side effects.

So if one were to make health decisions based solely on scanning google search headlines (never a good idea, do not try this at home), one might easily be led to believe that influenza is side effects-free while the vaccine for it is rife with them.

I'm pretty sure that the past, present, and future challenges of Influenza Vaccination are more nuanced than that though so come to the May meeting of the Vaccine Dinner Club and check out what Dr. Cox has to say. Proof of having had your flu shot last winter is NOT required for admission to the meeting. :-)

Hope to see you for dinner at the Club,
-Your friendly neighborhood vaccine dinner club goddess

*[Qpub … Quill pub … ahead of print]???

** Just in case you are interested, the others were: Mentor (Massachusetts State Prison), Star of Hope (Sing Sing), Reformatory Record (Huntingdon, PA), Summary (Elmira, NY), and Reflector (Jeffersonville, IN).

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June - August, 2014

Summer Vacation
starring
The VDC Membership

Focus: Rest and Relaxation
Attendance: 2,672
Clubhouse du jour: The World

Wherever there is a vaccine to develop, describe, or disseminate, a vaccine preventable disease outbreak to examine, or fun to be had with friends and family -- VDC members will be there in force!

 

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September 2, 2015

Focus: History; Controversies; Interventions
Attendance: 524

When Mickey met Measles:
Vaccine Hesitancy Issues and Interventions in the post-Disneyland Measles Outbreak Era.


Starring

Saad Omer, MD

Associate Professor
Global Health, Epidemiology, and Pediatrics
Emory University, Schools of Public Health & Medicine
Emory Vaccine Center

Clubhouse Location:
WHSCAB Plaza and Auditorium (1440 Clifton Rd)
Agenda:
6:00pm — wine, cheese, networking
6:30pm — meeting convenes
8:00pm — casual buffet dinner, more networking

Bonjour,
Labor Day is almost here. Quick! ... here is your end-of-summer To Do list. Get cracking on it now:

  1. Register NOW for the 2015-2016 VDC season opener
  2. Forward this message to new colleagues/students who recently moved to our region and might be interested in the VDC
  3. Email me (vdc@emory.edu) your summer memories and pictures
  4. Get all jazzed up about attending the September meeting.

Dear Vacciners,
In 1966 the "Its a Small World" attraction was installed at Disneyland in California after having first spent two years at the New York World's Fair. Now featured as a major attraction in all five Disney operations (Anaheim, Orlando, Paris, Tokyo, and Hong Kong), an official Disney site dedicated to it claims that each separate park plays the attraction's theme song "Its a Small World After All" ~1,200 times during a given 16-hour operating day. Can you even imagine?

Not surprisingly, Disney keeps very, very quiet about the long term mental health impact on park employees who work in the aural vicinity of this song but at your own risk of developing an ear worm, please take a minute and a half of your time to watch this video all the way to the end to get a glimpse of the song's global reach and it's true implications. (Note: you may have to endure a truly noxious advertisement for Herbal Essence shampoo before the video comes on).

OK ... Those of you who watched the video will have discovered that:

This is a good thing for the people in the video because sometime between December 15-20, 2014 Disneyland started helping to teach us that it really IS a small world after all when a park visitor sparked a four-month measles outbreak that eventually spread to include 147 people in the US and, as of the time that the US outbreak was declared officially over on 04/14/15, at least 159 people in Quebec.

Truly depressing news given that measles had been officially declared eliminated in the US in 2000 and in the Americas in 2002.

For those of you lucky enough not to have personal experience with the measles, believe me — this is one BAD BUG.

I mean, what can you possibly say good about a virus that can be transmitted by a person who hasn't yet realized s/he has the disease, can be caught by simply breathing the air in a room that an infectious person left TWO HOURS ago, will infect up to 90% of susceptible people who are in the vicinity of that infectious somebody, requires just about the highest vaccination coverage (92-94%) of all vaccine-preventable diseases to achieve herd immunity (and is still capable of causing illness in communities that has an even higher coverage than that), makes everyone who gets it seriously miserable, killed 2.6 million people annually before the invention of a vaccine for it in the 1980s, and as of 2012 was still killing ~122,000 children around the world each year? I'll tell you what you can say good about measles … NOTHING.

Except maybe this. The Disneyland Outbreak seems to have been a wake up call, vividly reminding parents, politicians, and principals that measles (and, by extension, other vaccine preventable diseases) circulating anywhere in the world are just a plane ride away from a school, play group, or theme park near them and their tykes. Which, since there are ~70,000 airplanes up in the air at any given time (see what this looks like), clearly puts germs in a frequent flyer medallion class of their very own.

So how has that wake up call been going? What have we learned so far from the Disney Outbreak and how have we acted, or not, on that knowledge?

Just say "Count Me In!" to the September meeting of the Vaccine Dinner Club and find out!

Hope to see you for Dinner at the Club,
-Kimbi
aka your friendly neighborhood Vaccine Dinner Club goddess

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October 7, 2015

Focus: Policy
Attendance: 347

Saving Lives, Billions at a Time:
The CDC's Strategic Immunization Plan for Defeating Death and Disability


Starring

Eric Mast, MD

Deputy Director for Science and Program
Global Immunization Division
Center for Global Health
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

Clubhouse Location:
WHSCAB Plaza and Auditorium (1440 Clifton Rd)
Agenda:
6:00pm — wine, cheese, networking
6:30pm — meeting convenes
8:00pm — casual buffet dinner, more networking


Dear Vacciners,
If, like me, you are feeling a bit blue that Sunday night's first-time-in-33-years / last-time-for-18-more-years Super Blood Moon Total Lunar Eclipse [which, if it isn't already the name of an indie rock band, it OUGHT to be] was a complete washout in Atlanta, thanks to an unbroken cloud cover, I have just the fix for you!

Forget what happened on Sunday, the weather forecast for WHSCAB plaza and auditorium on 10/7/15 is clear with a chance of hot food, cool science, and breezy networking. Can we Count You In?

ABOUT THE PROGRAM:
According to the internet — that uber infallible font of scientific knowledge — you and I are currently sharing the planet with 7.3 billion other humans. That's a lot of people. A whole lot. But even so, don't forget that we are still grossly outnumbered by other living things, particularly the ones that are too small to see with the naked eye. In fact, according to an article on ZDNet, "a handful of soil has more microorganisms than there are people on the planet." Just one handful. Think about THAT the next time you wash the dirt off your car.

Not all of those microorganisms are hostile to human life of course but there are enough bad bugs (viruses, bacteria, fungi, prions, etc) out there to rain at least the potential threat of untimely death and disability on all 7.3 billion of us.

Fortunately for us though SOME of these bugs are vaccine preventable. Yay! In fact enough are that, given enough planning, cooperation, expertise, money, staff, time, and luck, we vaccineophiles have the potential to make a measurable difference in the lives of homo sapiens all over the planet.

But holding back death and disability doesn't happen magically. It requires a lot of the aforementioned planning, cooperation, expertise, money, staff, time, and luck.

Want to hear the specifics? Of course you do!

So register now for the October meeting of the Vaccine Dinner Club when VDC Charter Member Dr. Eric Mast gives us a look under the hood at the CDC Global Immunization Division's strategic plan for mitigating global misery through vaccines.

Hope to see you for dinner at the Club on October 7th,
-La VDC Goddess

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November 4, 2015

Focus: Basic and Clinical Science
Attendance: 362

Cherishing and Protecting Our Personal Germs:
Intestinal Bacteria and Resistance to Infection


Starring

Eric G. Pamer, MD

Head, Division of General Medicine
Chief, Infectious Diseases Service
Enid A. Haupt Chair in Clinical Investigation
Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center

Clubhouse Location:
WHSCAB Plaza and Auditorium (1440 Clifton Rd)
Agenda:
6:00pm — wine, cheese, networking
6:30pm — meeting convenes
8:00pm — casual buffet dinner, thoughtful conversations about intestines


Dear Vacciners,
When is the last time you said a hearty thank you to your intestines? Or even just gave them a thought beyond: "Shut Up! I'm in a meeting here — I'll feed you as soon as possible!"

People do think about their intestines of course, but usually not in a good way; particularly if they have been overindulging in Sichuan Hot Pot, Phaal Curry, or Chicken Vindaloo.

That's a shame because Dr. Eric Pamer, our November VDC speaker, is on his way to Atlanta to tell you that you SHOULD be thinking of, and thankful for, your intestines on a daily basis because the longest organ in your body does more than just move food from North to South, it ALSO provides housing to about 20 trillion* itty bitty critters that keep you healthy. Unless you throw too many Big Macs at it.

Fun facts about your own personal germs:

  1. They really ARE your own personal germs. When you were in utero your intestines were a sterile field. Colonizing by itty bitty helpful things first started during the minutes/hours it took you to be born and within 3 days of birth that whole "you are what you eat" cliché had become really, literally true for you (i.e. breastmilk-fed and formula-fed babies have totally different colonies of gut microbes). Then, over the next couple of years your intestines began to develop an independent streak to the point that -- by the age of 3 — only one third of your intestines' itty bitty helpful things were the exact same as everyone else's; the other two-thirds are now as unique to you as your finger prints. READ MORE ABOUT IT
  2. Nope. Not going to divulge. Come to the VDC on November 4th and find out for yourself!

See you on November 4th,
-Kimbi Hagen
aka Your friendly neighborhood Vaccine Dinner Club Director/Goddess

*20 trillion = all of the stars in the entire Milky Way x 200.

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December 2, 2015

Focus: History, Crystal Ball Gazing
Attendance: 310

It Takes a Village:
Progress and Challenges in Vaccine Approaches to HIV Prevention


Starring

Magdalena Sobieszczyk, MD, MPH

Associate Professor (Medicine / Infectious Diseases)
PI, Columbia HVTN and ACTG Clinical Research Site
Columbia University

Clubhouse Location:
WHSCAB Plaza and Auditorium (1440 Clifton Rd)
Agenda:
6:00 — wine, cheese, and networking
6:30 — cow bell rings, members and guests are challenged to progress downstairs
6:45 — fascinating talk begins
7:30 — spirited Q&A begins
7:45 — the VDC village adjourns for dinner and more networking


Dear Vacciners,

On April 23, 1984 Margaret Heckler, Secretary of Health under the Reagan Administration, held a press conference about the burgeoning AIDS epidemic. She has taken some heat ever since then over her (supposed) announcement that we would have a vaccine against AIDS produced within two years.

This misquote has been widely disseminated to the point that it even currently appears on the AIDS.gov website (see entry under 1984). But according to the press conference transcript (as quoted by Jon Cohen in his book Shots in the Dark: The Wayward Search for an AIDS Vaccine) what she ACTUALLY said was: "we hope to have [a] vaccine ready for testing [emphasis mine] in approximately two years." To her credit, Secretary Heckler turned out to be only off by a year — the FDA approved the first vaccine candidate for human tests three years later, in 1987.

According to the transcript, the person who actually put his foot in it that day was Assistant Secretary for Health Edward Brandt Jr. who said, in response to a question from the press corps about how many years it would be before there would be a vaccine for AIDS on the market: "We're estimating a minimum of two years, probably more like three years. In two years, we think it's possible to begin to start human trials. But I think we have a — one of the first steps that has to be accomplished is to mass-produce this virus in sufficient quantity to accomplish that. So I think we're talking about probably three years. We're going to hustle."

Other than providing ammunition to conspiracy theorists who gleefully claimed that Brandt had just openly admitted that the government was hustling to mass produce the AIDS virus in order to intentionally infect people to provide conscripts for human trials of a vaccine [re-read the quote above without the filter of your scientific knowledge about what it takes to build a vaccine…] — other than that, what did Assistant Secretary Brandt accomplish that day?

How about starting the clock on what has to have been the slowest ever three years in human history? His '3 years' has taken 31, so far, and we still don't have a marketable vaccine.

Which is not to say that the scientific world has stood totally still for the last 31 years. Heck no!!

Since 1984 smart people have invented:
• the Thigh Master
• the BeDazzler
• the Hula Chair
• Flowbee (a combo hair cutting tool and vacuum cleaner)
• and the Baby Mop

Also Prozac, DNA finger printing, Facebook, Siri, and the Roller Buggy

But what progress have we made on an AIDS vaccine?

Come to the December 2nd meeting of the VDC and find out for yourself when Dr. Sobieszckyk gives an overview of why the development of an AIDS vaccine has been a 31-years-and-counting tough nut to crack, a brief overview of the 'does-it-actually-work?' (aka 'efficacy') trials that have been completed or are on the horizon, and touches on about what is involved in designing and implementing a vaccine study at a time in which WHO advocates proactively putting everyone at risk for HIV on pre-exposure prophylaxis.

It's going to be a really good talk. As Dr. Sobieszczyk said in an email to me recently: "There is considerable energy in the field given the scientific knowledge derived from [AIDS] research efforts. Testing preventive vaccines is part science, part empiricism, and also of course, some luck — just like with so many things in research."

So … feeling lucky? Register now for the meeting.

Hope to see you for Dinner at the Club on December 2nd,
- your friendly neighborhood VDC director / goddess

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