My Involvement with an HIV Vaccine Trail
by Robert W. Williams, III
It was 2004, when a few people from the San Francisco Health Department came to the Sexual Minority Alliance of Alameda County (SMAAC) Youth Center where I worked to do a presentation on an HIV vaccine trial they were conducting.
After listening to the presentation I thought to myself, “I am an out and proud black gay man who has had the great fortune not be infected with HIV after living my adult gay life for over 20 years. So why not use my body as a vessel to stop the spread of HIV, by getting involved in this trial?”
The next week, I made an appointment and went to a meeting where they gave me the consent form for the trial, a long, 50-page document. I read it and thought, “Wow, this is a lot.” I took it home and talked to family and friends about getting involved in the study. No one was encouraging me to do it, but I looked at it as an opportunity to give something back. They said things like, “Someone has to get infected in order to test the efficacy of the vaccine.” And to be honest I had not thought about this. But the counselors at the San Francisco Health Department made it clear that they didn’t want any volunteers to become infected and provided me with safe sex counseling as well as condoms.
I still wanted to be involved and did get injections. I thought to myself at the time that I did get vaccine and not a placebo. It just made me feel sluggish for a couple of days. After the study was unblinded a couple of years later, I found out that I had received the vaccine.
I must admit that going into the study; I did not know how it would affect me. But once I got in and started going to my appointments, the trial staff made me feel very good that I had done it. I received safer sex counseling that really made me think about the behavioral risks I had been taking. As a result, I also took a more proactive role in my health. I requested HIV testing every 3 months, even though the protocol only called for testing every 6 months. I also started having them test me for other STDs—not just HIV.
In 2009 the STEP Study came to an abrupt end because early results showed the vaccine tested did not prevent HIV infection. Needless to say, I was sad that the study I had been a part of did not find a vaccine to prevent HIV. But I learned from the trial folks that we had learned a lot from doing this study and that the results would affect the design of future studies. That is some small consolation.
Looking back now, I would do it all over again. It was a chance to somehow change the world, to leave it a little bit better than the way I found it.
Robert W. Williams, III, works at the Center for AIDS Prevention Services at the University of California, San Francisco, where he assists with research on HIV Prevention Interventions that save the lives of young gay men every day.
by Robert W. Williams, III
It was 2004, when a few people from the San Francisco Health Department came to the Sexual Minority Alliance of Alameda County (SMAAC) Youth Center where I worked to do a presentation on an HIV vaccine trial they were conducting.
After listening to the presentation I thought to myself, “I am an out and proud black gay man who has had the great fortune not be infected with HIV after living my adult gay life for over 20 years. So why not use my body as a vessel to stop the spread of HIV, by getting involved in this trial?”
The next week, I made an appointment and went to a meeting where they gave me the consent form for the trial, a long, 50-page document. I read it and thought, “Wow, this is a lot.” I took it home and talked to family and friends about getting involved in the study. No one was encouraging me to do it, but I looked at it as an opportunity to give something back. They said things like, “Someone has to get infected in order to test the efficacy of the vaccine.” And to be honest I had not thought about this. But the counselors at the San Francisco Health Department made it clear that they didn’t want any volunteers to become infected and provided me with safe sex counseling as well as condoms.
I still wanted to be involved and did get injections. I thought to myself at the time that I did get vaccine and not a placebo. It just made me feel sluggish for a couple of days. After the study was unblinded a couple of years later, I found out that I had received the vaccine.
I must admit that going into the study; I did not know how it would affect me. But once I got in and started going to my appointments, the trial staff made me feel very good that I had done it. I received safer sex counseling that really made me think about the behavioral risks I had been taking. As a result, I also took a more proactive role in my health. I requested HIV testing every 3 months, even though the protocol only called for testing every 6 months. I also started having them test me for other STDs—not just HIV.
In 2009 the STEP Study came to an abrupt end because early results showed the vaccine tested did not prevent HIV infection. Needless to say, I was sad that the study I had been a part of did not find a vaccine to prevent HIV. But I learned from the trial folks that we had learned a lot from doing this study and that the results would affect the design of future studies. That is some small consolation.
Looking back now, I would do it all over again. It was a chance to somehow change the world, to leave it a little bit better than the way I found it.
Robert W. Williams, III, works at the Center for AIDS Prevention Services at the University of California, San Francisco, where he assists with research on HIV Prevention Interventions that save the lives of young gay men every day.
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"Fear Eats the Soul"
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