Final Phase of Aids Vaccine Trial Extended

The final phase of an Aids vaccine trial in Thailand will be extended for another two years as researchers are not certain if the vaccine is actually effective. Chief researcher Supachai Rerksngarm said his team needed to extend the research until 2009 before concluding whether the vaccine was effective and could be produced on an industrial scale. ''It's still too early to say if the vaccine is effective in terms of preventing people from Aids infection as the results that have emerged so far are not as effective as we expected,'' he said after a trip to the United States where he participated in the interim analysis with a team of vaccine experts last week.