Parental consent to children’s participation in vaccine research has resulted in the licensure of essential vaccines. Recruitment to this type of research is typically difficult, however, and many parents decline. In this study, the authors interviewed parents about their decision for or against enrolling their child in a vaccine study. The data analysis suggests that parents’ ability to evaluate a vaccine study depends on how attuned they are with science and medicine, either professionally or as consumers of health services. Familiarity does not predispose parents to enrolling their child in research; rather, it is a predictor of parents’ confidence in their decision making. Many parents were motivated by altruism and trust, which, if uninformed, can leave the parents prone to exploitation. It is vital to ensure that parents are confident in their judgment of a study and its potential benefit to their child and society.

According to the latest statistics from the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, in 2004, more than 1 million Americans currently live with HIV, the virus that causes AIDS. However, the advent of antiretroviral therapy and better understanding of how to prevent transmission from mother to child have dropped the annual number of pediatric cases from nearly 2,000 in the early 1990s to under 200 in recent years, mostly to mothers who did not know they were HIV positive.
Scientists at Makerere University in Kampala, Uganda, along with scientists from Johns Hopkins and other institutions worldwide, have begun the first clinical safety trial in Africa of a vaccine to prevent mother-to-child transmission of HIV through breastfeeding. Breast milk is a leading route of infection in the developing world according to the United Nations World Health Organization, which estimates that each day 1,800 newborns are infected with the AIDS virus, 30 percent to 40 percent by virus carried in their mother's milk. The so-called phase I study is designed to test the safety of injecting newborns with the vaccine, formally known as ALVAC-HIV (vCP1521). If the vaccine is found to be safe in this study, and if it is later shown to be effective in reducing the chance of infants' becoming infected during breastfeeding, researchers estimate that it could potentially stop up to 8,000 of Uganda's 22,000 infections a year in children.