TR EMERITUS

For the first time, an experimental vaccine has prevented infection with the AIDS virus, a watershed event in the deadly epidemic and a surprising result. Recent failures led many scientists to think such a vaccine might never be possible. The vaccine cut the risk of becoming infected with HIV by more than 31% in the world's largest AIDS vaccine trial of more than 16,000 volunteers in Thailand, researchers announced Thursday in Bangkok. For the first time, an experimental vaccine has prevented infection with the AIDS virus, a watershed event in the deadly epidemic and a surprising result. Recent failures led many scientists to think such a vaccine might never be possible. The vaccine cut the risk of becoming infected with HIV by more than 31% in the world's largest AIDS vaccine trial of more than 16,000 volunteers in Thailand, researchers announced Thursday in Bangkok. Even though the benefit is modest, "it's the first evidence that we could have a safe and effective preventive vaccine," Col. Jerome Kim said in a telephone interview. He helped lead the study for the U.S. Army, which sponsored it with the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. The institute's director, Dr. Anthony Fauci, warned that this is "not the end of the road," but said he was surprised and very pleased by the outcome. "It gives me cautious optimism about the possibility of improving this result" and developing a more effective AIDS vaccine, Dr. Fauci said in a telephone interview. "This is something that we can do." Even a marginally helpful vaccine could have a big impact. Every day, 7,500 people world-wide are newly infected with HIV and two million died of AIDS in 2007, the U.N. agency UNAIDS estimates. "Today marks an historic milestone," said Mitchell Warren, executive director of the AIDS Vaccine Advocacy Coalition, an international group that has worked toward developing a vaccine. "It will take time and resources to fully analyze and understand the data, but there is little doubt that this finding will energize and redirect the AIDS vaccine field," he said in a statement. The Thailand Ministry of Public Health conducted the study, which used strains of HIV common in Thailand. Whether such a vaccine would work against other strains in the U.S., Africa or elsewhere in the world is unknown, scientists stressed. The study actually tested a two-vaccine combo in a "prime-boost" approach, where the first one primes the immune system to attack HIV and the second one strengthens the response. They are ALVAC, from Sanofi Pasteur, the vaccine division of French drug maker Sanofi-Aventis; and AIDSVAX, originally developed by VaxGen Inc. and now held by Global Solutions for Infectious Diseases, a nonprofit founded by some former VaxGen employees. ALVAC uses canarypox, a bird virus altered so it can't cause human disease, to ferry synthetic versions of three HIV genes into the body. AIDSVAX contains a genetically engineered version of a protein on HIV's surface. The vaccines are not made from whole virus -- dead or alive -- and can't cause HIV. Neither vaccine in the study prevented HIV infection when tested individually in earlier trials, and dozens of scientists had called the new one futile when it began in 2003. "I really didn't have high hopes at all that we would see a positive result," Fauci confessed. The results proved the skeptics wrong. "The combination is stronger than each of the individual members," said the Army's Col. Kim. The study tested the combo in HIV-negative Thai men and women ages 18 to 30 at average risk of becoming infected. Half received four "priming" doses of ALVAC and two "boost" doses of AIDSVAX over six months. The others received dummy shots. No one knew who got what until the study ended. All were given condoms, counseling and treatment for any sexually transmitted infections, and were tested every six months for HIV. Any who became infected were given free treatment with antiviral medicines. Participants were followed for three years after vaccination ended. According to the results: New infections occurred in 51 of the 8,197 given vaccine and in 74 of the 8,198 who received dummy shots. That worked out to a 31% lower risk of infection for the vaccine group. The vaccine had no effect on levels of HIV in the blood of those who did become infected. That had been another goal of the study -- seeing whether the vaccine could limit damage to the immune system and help keep infected people from developing full-blown AIDS. That result is "one of the most important and intriguing findings of this trial," Dr. Fauci said. It suggests that the signs scientists have been using to gauge whether a vaccine was actually giving protection may not be valid. "It is conceivable that we haven't even identified yet" what really shows immunity, which is both "important and humbling" after decades of vaccine research, Dr. Fauci added. Details of the $105 million study will be given at a vaccine conference in Paris in October. This is the third big vaccine trial since 1983, when HIV was identified as the cause of AIDS. In 2007, Merck & Co. stopped a study of its experimental vaccine after seeing it did not prevent HIV infection. Later analysis suggested the vaccine might even raise the risk of infection in certain men. The vaccine itself didn't cause infection. In 2003, AIDSVAX flunked two large trials, the first late-stage tests of any AIDS vaccine at the time. It is unclear whether vaccine makers will seek to license the two-vaccine combo in Thailand. Before the trial began, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration said other studies would be needed before the vaccine could be considered for U.S. licensing. Also unclear is whether Thai volunteers who received dummy shots will now be offered the vaccine. Researchers had said they would do so if the vaccine showed clear benefit, defined as reducing the risk of infection by at least 50%. Those issues, plus how to proceed with future studies, will be discussed among the governments, study sponsors and companies involved in the trial, Kim said. Scientists want to know how long will protection last, whether booster shots will be needed, and whether the vaccine helps prevent infection in gay men and injection drug users, since it was tested mostly in heterosexuals in the Thai trial. The study was done in Thailand because U.S. Army scientists did pivotal research in that country when the AIDS epidemic emerged there, isolating virus strains and providing genetic information on them to vaccine makers. The Thai government also strongly supported the idea of doing the study. - AP  Read More →

By Amanda Lian, Social Correspondent We are sure you are all very concerned about the issue of the influx of International Students at our local Universities and whether it has affected the local students adversely. And so, this article is going to look into anecdotal perspectives of whether foreign (International) students are really depriving locals of places in the few Universities in Singapore, and to what extent. With some evidence, though which may not be enough, this is my take on the issue and hopefully, we would be able to gain further knowledge on this widely debated issue. We will look into two main points in the hope of coming to a conclusive answer: 1.Statistics have been available to the Singapore public that there has been an increased intake of foreign students. So has this in relation affected the local students who are eligible and made it harder to get enrolled? 2.Since only 5% of Polytechnic graduates are eligible for University admission, should we as a nation, reconsider that number and ultimately, decide again on the intake of foreign students in the local Universities? Although on this topic and these points will come up in our minds from time to time, we must also clarify that the answers to them are also able to stand on their own. However, although we might say that it is harder for local students to enter Universities but we are also open to other factors that might affect this conclusion. So before we move into the actual main points, we are going to cover some of these factors. Any caveats? A word of warning first though, this is not an official study but a compilation of all the information that we have our hands on. Therefore, our answers are still highly debatable and tentative to most citizens out there. Why are more and more foreigners coming to Singapore to study? Are there some advantages that they see by flying all the way here? To be truthful, yes there are, including achieving citizenship status more efficiently. On the other hand, would the government be viewing this as devaluing the status of our local citizens? There are definitely stereotype values that foreigners from the West are more valuable than our comrades from the East for some reasons. Would this make Singapore a lost haven? One which we had worked so hard to attain – a haven for people of higher intellect? And because of that, maybe we can also consider why all our high flyers or brain children are going overseas for tertiary education instead. As said in the second main point above, only 5 percent of Polytechnic graduates are eligible for admission into Universities and these graduates have to get a minimum grade point average of 3.5. Yet, how many of these eligible graduates actually have priority to fit into that 5 percent and how many of these are foreigners? Out of all the polytechnic students in a certain intake, 10 percent of them are foreigners. Besides that, shouldn’t scholarships be given out to Singaporean students only, just like most of the other countries? Yes, we are definitely in the know about the new University that is coming up and building that is still using the taxpayers’ money right? Although it is targeted at the local polytechnic graduates, it is still new and has to build a name and reputation for itself from scratch! Another factor to note is that admissions to the local Universities are perceptibly different for polytechnic students because they are admitted and enrolled based on paper qualifications or more colloquially, scores rather than skills while they are being trained in that area while in their course. I fully agree that they are generally enrolled into second year University modules because of their advanced standings but how many graduates actually make it through the admission’s interview in the first place? And so, after listing down so many factors, let us go into the main point of whether our local students are being deprived of places in our handful of Universities by foreigners. The answer to it is actually quite easy: “Apparently not”. As said by the former Senior Minister of State (Education) Aline Wong in 2000, “All local students who qualify will have a place in Singapore's educational institutions and Singaporeans get priority in primary and secondary schools and junior colleges”. From what I gather here, foreign students do not interfere with the competitive education environment with us, other than the JC and Polytechnic divide. On the other hand, as far as us, the citizens know, it is the policies that the Education Ministry has set a benchmark on and the University admissions department has to strictly adhere to the intake numbers of local students and foreign students and the both of them are not correlated. As stated by the then Director (Higher Education) with the Ministry of Education, Mr. Lim Chee Hwee in 2005, “An estimate of approximately 21 percent of primary one cohort gets admitted to our local Universities every year. From this pool, about 2 percent comes from the polytechnics while the remaining comes from the Junior Colleges. Looking into the future, in 2010, 25 percent of primary one cohort will gain admission and by then, the polytechnic graduates who will enter the local Universities would be increased to 6 percent. From the above, we can see that it will be more competitive for JC graduates to enter Universities and good news for polytechnic graduates while the percentage of foreign students remains the same. Following the above information, let us now look and organize some data on our hands from the Education Statistics Digest Online. Below, we have the total number of graduates entering Universities from previous years in our local context. As said by the former Senior Minister of State (Education) Aline Wong in 2000: “All local students who qualify will have a place in Singapore's educational institutions and Singaporeans get priority in primary and secondary schools and junior colleges”. From what I gather here, foreign students do not interfere with the competitive education environment with us, other than the JC and Polytechnic divide. On the other hand, as far as us, the citizens know, it is the policies that the Education Ministry has set a benchmark on and the university admissions department has to strictly adhere to the intake numbers of local students and foreign students and the both of them are not correlated. As stated by the then Director (Higher Education) with the Ministry of Education, Mr. Lim Chee Hwee in 2005: “An estimate of approximately 21 percent of primary one cohort gets admitted to our local Universities every year. From this pool, about 2 percent comes from the polytechnics while the remaining comes from the Junior Colleges. Looking into the future, in 2010, 25 percent of primary one cohort will gain admission and by then, the polytechnic graduates who will enter the local Universities would be increased to 6 percent." From the above, we can see that it will be more competitive for JC graduates to enter Universities and good news for polytechnic graduates while the percentage of foreign students remains the same. Following the above information, let us now look and organize some data on our hands from the Education Statistics Digest Online. Below, we have the total number of graduates entering Universities from previous years in our local context. Of these numbers, how many of them are from our local Polytechnics and how many are from other countries, or more colloquially, foreigners? From the Junior College list above, you can easily work out how many of the students are eligible to make it into our local Universities. Following which, you should subtract that number from the local university intake and you will get the number of foreign students and those from the Polytechnic pool. From the Polytechnic list, you should work out the 5 percent that is eligible and then you will get the total number of foreign students every year. From here, I must also point out that this number might not be accurate as every year, more and more locals are draining out of the country to pursue their education overseas. Before 1998, Teo Chee Hean stated “the inflow of foreign students stagnated at around 10 percent of the undergraduate intake”. However, in 1998, the influx of international students swarmed to 16.5 percent and by 2000, the capped 20 percent is reached every year. Putting all the information together and analyzing it together with our own beliefs and accounts, we, the locals are not deprived of places in Universities. Rather, it has become more competitive and we have the reassurance that the total influx is capped at 20 percent every year till the next big thing comes about. In fact, to some locals, it might have been made easier to enter the local Universities. However, for a more detailed and conclusive result, further research has to be done and this might not be how it seems to most Singaporeans. About the Author: Amanda Lian graduated with a Bachelor's degree in English Language, Creative writing and Child Psychology from the University of Western Australia. She worked as a staff writer for Hardwarezone and is currently an editorial executive at Cre8 Singapore Pte Ltd.  Read More →

From our Correspondent All estates and town councils in Singapore will be assessed in four areas - cleanliness of estate, estate maintenance, lift performance and service & conservancy charges (S&CC) arrears management, from next month onwards. In addition, there are six indicators ranging from the average number of "Cleanliness Defects" and "Maintenance Defects" per housing block, to the lift breakdown rate and proportion of residents with overdue S&CC payments. The Ministry of National Development introduced the framework for ranking the Town Councils following public furore over the loss of million of dollars of sinking funds from failed structure-linked products last year. The Town Councils involved are PAP-controlled estates while the two opposition constituencies did not invest their sinking funds in such risky investments. During the fiasco, many Singaporeans questioned why S&C charges were raised year after year when the Town Councils had million of dollars in their kitty for investment purposes. Despite the official explanation that the sinking funds are invested in order to generate returns to cover long-term maintenance costs, some residents are still skeptical and unhappy at the non-transparent modus operandi of the Town Councils. More than 85% of Singapore's population lives in public housing built by the government. The general maintenance and upkeep of the estates are under the purview of the Town Councils. With the purse-strings firmly in the hands of the ruling party, the electorate is often threatened to be denied maintenance and upgrading for their estate should they vote for the opposition. The minibond saga is ample proof that Town Councils in opposition constituencies are able to perform their job equally if not better than those belonging to the ruling party. The rankings will be able to provide Singaporeans with a fair and objective assessment of the performance of their Town Councils and respective MPs.  Read More →