Major grant to EVMS will battle AIDS

HIV is such a danger to women both because men sometimes refuse to wear a condom and because there's little else a sexually active woman can do to prevent transmission of the virus that causes AIDS.

Which means that even as the cause of the disease is known throughout the world, infections continue to mount.

An HIV vaccine could help break that cycle. So would something called a microbicide, an idea so promising that it has prompted a $100 million federal grant to Eastern Virginia Medical School, the largest in the institution's history.

A vaccine works by making a person immune to infection. A microbicide would work differently, by killing the virus directly, or keeping it from entering human cells, or by inhibiting its replication.

Unlike a condom, though, the use of a microbicide can be entirely controlled by a woman. Researchers are hoping to find an effective anti-HIV compound that can be made into an easily applied gel, lotion or suppository.

For years, much of the money for AIDS prevention work has been spent on other things, both because a microbicide would give women greater control over their bodies (which, even now, some men resist) and, as one researcher put it, because microbicides "are perceived as drugs for Africa, and no one makes money from Africa."

In 2006, according to AVERT.org, just $222 million - total - was spent on microbicide research, nearly all of it by the public sector.

Priorities like that have left women to account for half of all the HIV infections on the planet, despite the fact that preventing transmission - even now - is both simple and cheap.

Presumably, a microbicide alos would be simple and cheap, if scientists can find one that works. They are hopeful.

Anything that would give women even greater control over their bodies, and a greater chance of preventing infection, should be pursued with all vigor. It's encouraging to know that EVMS will be leading that pursuit.