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I was thinking the exact same thing. In order to test it, wouldn’t they have had to inject people with the vaccine and then inject them with the AIDS virus to see if the vaccine worked? Who would volunteer for this? So now 11,040 more people have AIDS?

No. Just like you don't tell people to smoke if you want to acess the risk of lung cancer. What you do is you look at the general population and / or groups that are at risk anyway. Just like you expect x% of smokers to get lung cancer, you'd expect y% of Bankok sex workers to get infected with HIV in a certain timeframe (e.g. 12 out of a thousand). Then you see if there's a statistically relevant change with a vaccine (e.g. only 8 instead of 12).

HIV has an infamously high mutation rate which allows it to constantly evade new medications introduced to combat it.

Yes and no. Certain areas of the virus genome have to remain relatively stable, otherwise it would render the virus impotent - i.e. most drug-resistant strains are already weaker than the standard virus. The key is to attack these areas. Also the foremost problem with medication isn't drug resistance, it's getting to the virus once it has integrated into hard-to-reach tissue cells. If it were possible to lure it out of hiding (there are some trials with chemotherapy on top of HIV drugs), curing the vast majority of HIV patients, even eventually erdicating the virus would be a distinct possibility.

I have found the 100% perfect AIDS vaccine! Don't sleep around like a dog!

The problem for most southern black women recently infected with HIV (the fastest growing group among those with HIV in the US) wasn't their own infidelity, it was the fact that their husbands were well,.... sleeping around like dogs.

The problem for most southern black women recently infected with HIV (the fastest growing group among those with HIV in the US) wasn’t their own infidelity, it was the fact that their husbands were well,.... sleeping around like dogs.

However, the medical facts are that the scenario of American men sleeping with infected women, then infecting their wives is essentially medically unheard of. It’s either needle sharing or gay anal sex that infects the man.

Africa is different, because of the prevalence of other STDs.