WASHINGTON — AIDS vaccine researchers are worried about the future of their field after learning an experimental HIV vaccine not only does not work, but just might make recipients more susceptible to infection with the AIDS virus. They are worried about their volunteers and the future of AIDS vaccines in general. And they are worried because they cannot understand how a vaccine would make a person more vulnerable. Researchers from Merck & Co, which makes the vaccine, and the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, which is helping develop it, said on Wednesday they believe a type of common cold virus used as the basis of the vaccine may somehow have made their volunteers more susceptible to HIV. They are meeting this week in Seattle to hash through the data and figure out what happened. This is what they know: Out of 1,500 people vaccinated, 82 became infected with the AIDS virus. Of these, 49 got the vaccine and 33 got a placebo shot. While they are counseling volunteers that they may have raised their own risk of becoming infected, they are also trying to figure out what happened. ‘The data are disappointing […]