The Risk of AIDS After Hepatitis Vaccination

To the Editor.— The purification and inactivation process of the Merck, Sharp & Dohme hepatitis B vaccine prepared from plasma is known to inactivate representatives of all known groups of animal viruses. However, fears that an acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS) agent contaminates the vaccine have deterred its use. In a recent issue of JAMA , Sacks et al 1 showed that for persons at increased risk of hepatitis B, reluctance to be vaccinated because of this fear is groundless. Their best estimate of the vaccine-induced AIDS rate was zero, since among 500,000 vaccine recipients no case of AIDS has occurred in individuals who do not have other risk factors, and follow-up studies have shown that the frequency of AIDS in homosexual men who received the vaccine is similar to that in an unvaccinated group of homosexual men. 2 Now that lymphadenopathy virus/ human T-cell leukemia virus-III (LAV/HTLV-III) has been identified as