Here's the copy of the letter I received as a study participant announcing the end of the study.

Dear Step study participant,

This letter is to inform you that further vaccinations in the Step study have been stopped.

Like many clinical trials, our study is monitored by a Data & Safety Monitoring Board (DSMB). This board is a committee of clinical trial experts, statisticians and ethicists. Review by the DSMB is a regular part of clinical trial monitoring and its members see data that shows who is receiving study vaccine and who is receiving placebo.

At a planned meeting on 18 September 2007, the DSMB for the Step study reviewed data from the study and concluded that the study would not be able to show efficacy of the vaccine. The DSMB therefore recommended that further vaccinations be stopped in the study, because it would not meet its efficacy endpoints, and the study sponsors and Protocol Team leaders agreed with this recommendation.

The vaccinations are being stopped because the vaccine did not show efficacy. The Step study was designed to look at 2 questions related to efficacy:

1. Does the vaccine prevent HIV infection? and
2. Does the vaccine reduce the amount of virus in people who were vaccinated and then later develop HIV infection?

A planned "interim" analysis of data that answer these questions showed disappointing results. The analysis compared results in people who got the vaccine to results in people who did not get the vaccine. The vaccine did not reduce the incidence of HIV infection and did not reduce the amount of virus in people who became infected with HIV.

We would like you to remain in the study so that we can continue to monitor aspects of your health and your immune response to the study vaccine. You will not receive any more injections. Your study visits will continue with the same procedures that we told you about in the study informed consent form.

Thank you for being part of the Step study.

Sincerely,

Susan Buchbinder, MD Jonathan Fuchs, MD
Principal Investigator Co-Principal Investigator

I participated in this study and they are taking care of me well. I don't want to post the particulars nor do I know if I received the vaccine or the placebo but I did receive two injections out of the three and have been given bimonthly check-ups. It is regrettable that this vaccine did not work and though I am often skeptical of big pharma on this I have no complaints.

though shall not fricken si in the arsenal.

what happens now to the people they gave AIDS to, with their magic hocus bocus vaccine

Prevention is the best cure.

According to the CDC, the overwhelming majority of aids cases still come from male-to-male homosexual sex.

Why is this fact almost never mentioned in articles such as these or Hollywood Aids events or Aids Walks, etc.?

Too much on the personal responsibility side?

If you test positive, they pump you full of chemotherapy, and your immune system fails

They do not pump HIV+ prople with chemotherapy...What most of you folks DON'T know about AIDS would fill the library of Congress.

GET INFORMED
http://www.thebody.com/

http://www.webmd.com/hiv-aids/default.htm?ecd=ppc_google_worldaids_sexualhealth_hiv_search&gclid=ci_jpelo144cfsbugaoddwhz5a

AND STILL... with all the things that can trigger false positives (flu, pregnancies), no one ever stops to wonder if the TEST, itself, is part of the problem.

If you test positive, they pump you full of chemotherapy, and your immune system fails (just like AIDS!).

Interesting coincidence.

I got nothing against big Pharma
I just don't think they should be in charge of regulating themselves or writing the laws that regulate them

I don't know which AP photographer took this picture. But doesn't that perfectly capture how f****d over people of color have been by Bush and the neocons? First, it Reagan and flood South Central L.A. with coke. Now Bush and Huckabee saying forget condoms. What's next?

I've seen at least a dozen HIV/AIDS vaccine attempts fail. Each is disappointing. They aren't developing NEW drugs to treat HIV under Bush it's been PITIFUL, compared to all the advances under Clinton. I'm alive today due to the Drugs developed under Clinton, in 1996 I had 12 t-cells, Normal immune systems have 1200-1500 t-cells. A friend of mine also survived, and he could no longer digest food and was being fed through a hep-port in his chest.

Dang! Volunteer in an AIDS vaccine test! That's got to take some courage!

Health didn't matter to Merck back in 1991 when they were informed they would be overloading infants with mercury:
http://www.nomercury.org/science/documents/LATimes-Merck_Memo_2-8-05.pdf

why should ineffectiveness stop them?

I'm surprised the FDA folks looking for research money or jobs there aren't rubber stamping this and adding it to the mandatory childhood vaccine schedule

After all they approved Dr Offitt's rotavirus vaccine that damaged children in the safety testing and then later after it was released. Oh thats right Dr Offitt was on the approval boards while he held the patent.

Better than letting them die in a genocide perpetrated by the government...
http://www.crookedinc.com

It's a great idea but where in the hell would such a study with human subjects be legal?

Merck probably knew it wouldn't work, but took the money anyway. If you knew our government wouldn't do anything about it, wouldn't you do it,too? I know I would.