"Is an effective HIV vaccine feasible?"This but not: "Is a CANCER vaccine feasible?"
Makes me wonder about the list.
Taking things in purely Darwinian terms, leaving out questions of human suffering and pain, HIV is more relevant. HIV usually strikes people of childbearing age, while cancer usually strikes people who are done having children. HIV is transmissible, and cancer isn't. It is therefore the more urgent issue.
Looking at it coldly -- I haven't lost a loved one to cancer, and don't envy those who have -- the rise in cancer deaths over the last century is a side effect of a victory of medical science. Eveyone who lives long enough to develop cancer is someone who didn't die young of malaria, cholera, yellow fever, pertussis, smallpox, polio, or fatal sepsis from relatively minor injuries.
Penecillin and vaccinations have done more than anything to increase deaths from cancer, heart disease, alzheimer's and other chronic conditions, because they've helped people live long enough to develop them. Sooner or later, everyone dies of something.
Where did you get the absurd notion that cancer mainly strikes people over child-bearing years? What about leukemia?
The point is this: there are manifold types of cancer that can strike anyone at any time. The pain and suffering of HIV is essentially the same as that of dying from cancer: your body exhausts itself trying to fight something it cannot defeat.
The source of HIV is almost purely behavioral, and thus far more preventable and far less in need of a vaccine.
The cause of cancer is still undetermined. Some pathologists and oncologists believe it is rooted in a virus, others in genetic failure, others in environmental toxins.
But this much is known about cancer: that it is an uncontrolled increase in the number of malignant cells attacking the vital cells. Once they find a cure/vaccine for ONE type of cancer, it will set up a rapid domino effect for all other types.
If you've suffered the loss of a loved-one due to HIV, I'm sorry for your suffering. But I don't know how you can honestly claim that finding a vaccine for HIV is more important than finding a vaccine for cancer.