HIV Vaccine Research Coordination by the World Health Organization Between 1990 and 1995: Negotiating the Access to Research Cohorts of Military Subjects.

Abstract

This article presents how acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS) vaccine research was coordinated internationally between 1990 and 1995 by creating a special unit within the World Health Organization (WHO), the AIDS Vaccine Development (VAD) unit. This WHO's international coordination constituted a paradoxical repoliticisation of international human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) research, as it centralised scattered, privatised and sometimes hidden research within a single international organisation, while also reinscribing research in southern countries into ambivalent, postcolonial power relations by means of humanist arguments and research cohorts of military subjects. This history is important because the WHO coordination appears to have unwillingly elided the sociopolitical conditions of possibility for experimentation that were also, in part, driving the explosion of HIV infection on the continent at that time. Finally, it helps reflect on how the current global health paradigm of accelerated research for innovations and vaccine development can institute uneven research infrastructures.