On three of us members of the HIV Vaccine Research Unit Community Advisory Board made a video to inform potential new members about what it would mean for them to join our group. The video was to have two purposes – to introduce HIV vaccine research and to introduce the concept of layman meeting in person to discuss the ethics of research which local scientists conduct on human subjects.
The video with the three of us talking is about six minutes long. We decided not to mention Seattle, the specific research network with which we affiliate, or anything about the time. The reason we did this is because we wanted to give other HIV vaccine community advisory boards the option to use this video in their own member recruitment.
There has been some question from the researchers about the content of our video and whether it might impede research. I do not think the issue is that anyone thinks our video is troublesome, but it is a new idea to them that anyone in the public might want to speak freely about their research. I know when researchers talk to journalists they have strict rules and are supposed to refer interviewers to public relations, but since we are not employed and since we mean well I think we should try to support the research. I am not sure of the implications of this, and have not yet met with all the staff I want to meet.
Here is the video. You should right click to save it. It is 60mb and I do not have a video player setup. If you can play WMVs in your browser then you can play this. It is not currently uploaded for streaming on any video site, so you should play it from your computer after you download it.