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Multidisciplinary evaluation
| Last updated: 19.05.03 |
It may seem obvious, that the ultimate goal of clinical trials of an antiviral drug, a microbicide or a vaccine should be to find out if that product works to prevent HIV or AIDS and save lives. Or, as stated later on in relation to HIV vaccines, to reduce the burden of the disease and of its treatmen'.
However, in the context of adding an antiviral, a microbicide, a vaccine or another option to a range of strategies that people are already using in response to HIV, there are more questions that need to be asked.
How do people understand the role of this new technology? How can they integrate it into their other strategies? Does it open up new strategies to them? Does it change the way they perceive the epidemic, and their own and other people's relationship to it?
To answer such questions requires the active involvement of social researchers in evaluating new biomedical technologies. When it comes to HIV prevention, medicine is far too important to be left only to medical scientists.