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Meet the man behind a new HIV vaccine that could help end the virus for good.

Dr. Robert Gallo has spent decades aiming to end AIDS.

If there ever were a pioneer in the war on AIDS, Dr. Robert Gallo would certainly fit the bill.


Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images.

He was among the leading researchers who discovered HIV actually causes AIDS back in 1984.

Photo by Jim Watson/AFP/Getty Images.

That may seem like common knowledge today. But back in the 1980s — when the AIDS crisis was ravaging communities across the U.S. and very little was known about the virus — it was nothing short of groundbreaking.

He then spearheaded a blood test that can detect the virus in humans.

Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images.

The blood test has had big ramifications in curbing HIV infections, as health care workers became equipped to rapidly diagnose infected patients.

And on Oct. 8, 2015, Gallo was at it again, announcing yet another big step in the fight against HIV: His potentially game-changing vaccine is going to human trial.

Photo by Jim Watson/AFP/Getty Images.

Sure, there are other HIV-fighting vaccines in human trial (about 30, in fact). But Gallo's vaccine, which has taken his team at the University of Maryland's Institute of Human Virology nearly two decades to produce, stands out ... in a good way.

There are many strains of HIV that can affect the immune system. And that makes creating a universal vaccine that stops all of them a bit tricky. If proven successful, however, Gallo's vaccine would protect patients' immune systems from the variations of the virus classified under "HIV-1," which constitutes the vast majority of infections worldwide.

"Our HIV/AIDS vaccine candidate is designed to bind to the virus at the moment of infection, when many different strains of HIV found around the world can be neutralized. We believe this mechanism is a major prerequisite for an effective HIV preventive vaccine." — Dr. Gallo

Enrollment in the trial opened this month, and the institute is looking for 60 people to participate in its year-long phase 1, according to The Baltimore Sun.

It's a promising step forward in the fight against a virus that's had a massive impact on global health.

There are about 35 million people living with HIV/AIDS around the world, according to the World Health Organization. About 1.5 million people died from the virus in 2013 alone. Sub-Saharan Africa — where nearly 71% of people living with HIV globally reside — has been affected far more than other regions of the world.

An HIV-positive mother holds her baby in Malawi. Photo by Marco Longari/AFP/Getty Images.

Although new medicines have helped HIV patients live longer, healthier lives, there is still no cure for the virus. And even for those fortunate enough to be living in regions with access to such medicines, drugs can be expensive (although that doesn't stop some greedy pharmaceutical company CEOs from inflating prices even further ... yeah, I'm talking about you, Martin Shkreli).

Gallo's vaccine could be huge. But even if it turns out to be, there are plenty of hurdles before patients can benefit.

Gallo's announcement is exciting! But let's not put the cart before the horse. Before the vaccine gets clearance from the FDA and becomes a welcomed reality for patients, it has to successfully pass a range of human trials. And that will take several years to complete.

Photo by Jim Watson/AFP/Getty Images.

But Gallo is confident the long road ahead will bring promising results.

"Can I promise absolute success? No," Gallo said of the vaccine's potential, according to The Baltimore Sun. "Do I hope it leads to a series of advances in the fields? Yes. And I think it will lead to some advances."

Pop Culture

Artist uses AI to create ultra realistic portraits of celebrities who left us too soon

What would certain icons look like if nothing had happened to them?

Bored Panda

Mercury would be 76 today.

Some icons have truly left this world too early. It’s a tragedy when anyone doesn’t make it to see old age, but when it happens to a well-known public figure, it’s like a bit of their art and legacy dies with them. What might Freddie Mercury have created if he were granted the gift of long life? Bruce Lee? Princess Diana?

Their futures might be mere musings of our imagination, but thanks to a lot of creativity (and a little tech) we can now get a glimpse into what these celebrities might have looked like when they were older.

Alper Yesiltas, an Istanbul-based lawyer and photographer, created a photography series titled “As If Nothing Happened,” which features eerily realistic portraits of long gone celebrities in their golden years. To make the images as real looking as possible, Yesiltas incorporated various photo editing programs such as Adobe Lightroom and VSCO, as well as the AI photo-enhancing software Remini.

“The hardest part of the creative process for me is making the image feel ‘real’ to me,” Yesiltas wrote about his passion project. “The moment I like the most is when I think the image in front of me looks as if it was taken by a photographer.”

Yesiltas’ meticulousness paid off, because the results are uncanny.

Along with each photo, Yesiltas writes a bittersweet message “wishing” how things might have gone differently … as if nothing happened.
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American Cancer Society
American Cancer Society
Science

Meet the researcher shining a light on the “white lens” of medical AI in skin cancer prevention

How we can create equity for all communities?

All images provided by Adewole Adamson

It begins with more inclusive conversations at a patient level

True

Adewole Adamson, MD, of the University of Texas, Austin, aims to create more equity in health care by gathering data from more diverse populations by using artificial intelligence (AI), a type of machine learning. Dr. Adamson’s work is funded by the American Cancer Society (ACS), an organization committed to advancing health equity through research priorities, programs and services for groups who have been marginalized.

Melanoma became a particular focus for Dr. Adamson after meeting Avery Smith, who lost his wife—a Black woman—to the deadly disease.

melanoma, melanoma for dark skin Avery Smith (left) and Adamson (sidenote)

This personal encounter, coupled with multiple conversations with Black dermatology patients, drove Dr. Adamson to a concerning discovery: as advanced as AI is at detecting possible skin cancers, it is heavily biased.

To understand this bias, it helps to first know how AI works in the early detection of skin cancer, which Dr. Adamson explains in his paper for the New England Journal of Medicine (paywall). The process uses computers that rely on sets of accumulated data to learn what healthy or unhealthy skin looks like and then create an algorithm to predict diagnoses based on those data sets.

This process, known as supervised learning, could lead to huge benefits in preventive care.

After all, early detection is key to better outcomes. The problem is that the data sets don’t include enough information about darker skin tones. As Adamson put it, “everything is viewed through a ‘white lens.’”

“If you don’t teach the algorithm with a diverse set of images, then that algorithm won’t work out in the public that is diverse,” writes Adamson in a study he co-wrote with Smith (according to a story in The Atlantic). “So there’s risk, then, for people with skin of color to fall through the cracks.”

Tragically, Smith’s wife was diagnosed with melanoma too late and paid the ultimate price for it. And she was not an anomaly—though the disease is more common for White patients, Black cancer patients are far more likely to be diagnosed at later stages, causing a notable disparity in survival rates between non-Hispanics whites (90%) and non-Hispanic blacks (66%).

As a computer scientist, Smith suspected this racial bias and reached out to Adamson, hoping a Black dermatologist would have more diverse data sets. Though Adamson didn’t have what Smith was initially looking for, this realization ignited a personal mission to investigate and reduce disparities.

Now, Adamson uses the knowledge gained through his years of research to help advance the fight for health equity. To him, that means not only gaining a wider array of data sets, but also having more conversations with patients to understand how socioeconomic status impacts the level and efficiency of care.

“At the end of the day, what matters most is how we help patients at the patient level,” Adamson told Upworthy. “And how can you do that without knowing exactly what barriers they face?”

american cancer society, skin cacner treatment"What matters most is how we help patients at the patient level."https://www.kellydavidsonstudio.com/

The American Cancer Society believes everyone deserves a fair and just opportunity to prevent, find, treat, and survive cancer—regardless of how much money they make, the color of their skin, their sexual orientation, gender identity, their disability status, or where they live. Inclusive tools and resources on the Health Equity section of their website can be found here. For more information about skin cancer, visit cancer.org/skincancer.

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It's just a 2-minute video of someone mending a hole in a sweater, but people can't look away

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The mesmerizing lost art of darning knit fabric.

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Nurse turns inappropriate things men say in the delivery room into ‘inspirational’ art

"Can you move to the birthing ball so I can sleep in the bed?"

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Holly the delivery nurse.

After working six years as a labor and delivery nurse Holly, 30, has heard a lot of inappropriate remarks made by men while their partners are in labor. “Sometimes the moms think it’s funny—and if they think it’s funny, then I’ll laugh with them,” Holly told TODAY Parents. “But if they get upset, I’ll try to be the buffer. I’ll change the subject.”

Some of the comments are so wrong that she did something creative with them by turning them into “inspirational” quotes and setting them to “A Thousand Miles” by Vanessa Carlton on TikTok.

“Some partners are hard to live up to!” she jokingly captioned the video.

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