Almost 40 years after HIV first linked to AIDS, Emory University scientists test a new mRNA vaccine for HIV

What an awesome time to be alive if you just look at the scientific progress and ignore the slow societal collapse.

The progress that's been made on this front has been amazing. It wasn't that long ago that HIV was basically a death sentence, then it became something that could be managed in the long term, and now we've got effective preventive medication.

There have also been three cases of people being cured of HIV infections via stem cell transfer (done to treat cancers, but happened to confer HIV resistance). I hope that progresses toward a more widely available sort of cure in the future!

Maybe the sole silver lining to the Covid pandemic was the rapid acceleration in demonstrating the safety and efficacy of mRNA-based vaccines. This technology has been in development for decades - which is why a Covid vaccine could be formulated so quickly - but the timescale for demonstrating real world success would have been much, much longer without the pressure of a global pandemic.

It’s exciting to see mRNA vaccines being tested to treat or prevent currently incurable diseases like HIV and certain cancers.