1.   After a decade of research and hundreds of millions of dollars in research, no vaccine has proved effective against the deadly disease.

2.   Against other diseases, vaccines have proven to be an extremely effective weapon.

3.   But, he said, federal officials did not tell the public because they did not know if the vaccine would prove effective after being frozen for four decades.

4.   If the vaccine proved unsafe and he developed HIV, Farthing said he would take the newer combination of drugs that controls HIV in many people.

5.   San Francisco AIDS doctor Conant said the tests will be valuable even if the VaxGen vaccine proves a failure.

6.   So if the vaccine proves somewhat effective, the question will then be how well does it work?

7.   Unlike older vaccines, the new vaccine has already proven effective against pneumonic plague in animal models.

8.   If the two vaccines prove to be safe, they will be combined and the combination vaccine will be tested.

9.   Once the combination vaccine has proven safe, it will be tested to see if it actually wards off AIDS.

10.   Once the combination vaccine has proven safe, it will be tested on many people to see if it actually wards off AIDS.