A cure for AIDS is no closer today than it was twenty years ago when the virus that causes it was first identified, according to one of the world�s leading HIV experts.

Professor David Baltimore, a Nobel laureate and President of the American Association for the Advancement of Science says the failure of every promising approach to an HIV vaccine had led many scientists to wonder whether a cure would ever be pound.

No research projects currently underway, including his own, have any realistic prospect of producing a vaccine for at least a decade, and success may take even longer, he said.

Baltimore�s is one of the world's leading authorities on the HIV virus who won his Nobel Prize in 1975 for the discovery of reverse transcriptase, a chemical enzyme that was later found to be used by HIV to reproduce in human cells. He has a major grant from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to research a new approach to HIV therapy and treatment, bus says it is a last-ditch effort with only a slim hope of success.

The NZ AIDS Foundation has long stressed that any vaccine or cure for HIV and AIDS is a long way off and may never be found. It promotes commitment to safe sex through the use of condoms as the only way of avoiding HIV infection. Currently one New Zealand man who has sex with men is diagnosed with a locally-contracted HIV infection every five days.

Ref: Times Online

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HIV vaccine or cure may never be found