[Verified Answer]: While educating an HIV-infected individual…

While educating an HIV-infected individual on the importance of compliance with their highly active anti-retroviral therapy (HAART), the patient asks why a HIV vaccine is not available. The BEST explanation that the nurse can offer is that: Question 10 options: a) Vaccines are more costly than HAART medications and involve the injection of live virus which may cause AIDS b) HIV can circumvent immune surveillance and undergo antigenic shift, reducing the effectiveness of vaccines c) HAART can prolong the life-span of HIV-infected individuals by decades, making it unnecessary to develop vaccines d) HIV specifically infects plasma cells that are responsible for producing anti-HIV antibodies