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Ebola Vaccine Human Trials Begin
securitas writes "The Washington Post reports on the first human to be injected with '100 trillion strands of synthetic' Ebola DNA. The DNA in the vaccine has been bioengineered by Vical to remove 'the part that triggers illness and the part that might allow the DNA to recombine with the DNA of some other virus.' The New York Times, AP via ABC and BBC all have stories about the new vaccine as the WHO reports 11 dead in a new Ebola outbreak in Congo this week. If you're interested in participating in the Ebola clinical trials, the NIH needs 27 volunteers. The study only has two. Best quote comes from the NIH vaccine center's nursing director: 'People freak out about Ebola.' Slashdot previously discussed an Ebola/HIV gene therapy."
Wouldn't a better idea be to seek volunteers in Congo - in high risk areas? Possibly near the area of the outbreak (/as soon as the next one starts so as to also try and prevent the spread of infection). Otherwise are they planning to infect the volunteers with Ebola... and don't expect anything to go wrong?
On the unethical side - if anything goes wrong it's not like the settlement in Congo will be remotely what it's in the west. People are probably less "freaked out"/don't understand the dangers, so volunteers would be easier to find. -- not that I support these reasons,
7 figures would seem ridiculous unless something went wrong. I believe that putting yourself in harms way for the greater good deserves better compensation. In the end, some company is going to make a profit that well exceeds the total of all compensation given. Why not give the profits to the people that made the drug/vaccine possible?
I do sincerely thank you for putting yourself in harms way.
From a global point of view it does not make sense to invest too much into research on Ebola as it only causes problems for a view people (who are extremly poor creatures that need help of course, don't get me wrong!).
Putting the money into Malaria related projects would benefit more humans, as Malaria is one of the biggest killers in Africa, esp. amoungst children. HIV would be next on this list as whole generations are at risk and actually dying because of HIV.
But surely it is interesting to do research on Ebola and with the mediy hype about it you can even become famous...
My concern would be the testing phase.
"Ok, we gave him the vaccine 2 weeks ago... let's expose him to the virus and see what happens...."
Now, I'd hope that this isn't exactly how it would happen -- at least, not at first (IANA MicroBiologist). First they should pull blood / tissue samples, and expose those to the virus. But still, it has a bit of an omenous [sp?] ring to it, not to mention as fast as some viruses mutate, are you really sure it couldn't cause illness?
It's a good idea, and I look forward to testing it out.... in about 20 years.
I am dyslexia of borg - your ass will be laminated.
besides the horrible horrible pathology of the disease, ebola isn't really a "biblical plague" virus - it tends to self-contain due to the clear symptomatology leading to rapid isolation and the relative difficulty of transmission. Now, if it became airborne and contagious like rhinoviruses, then we have a serious problem; it hasn't, perhaps we'd be better off spending the time and effort to find a vaccine for that most devilish of virii, HIV?
disclaimer: i am not a virologist/geneticist familiar with the details of ebola's function, so i can't say that figuring a vaccine for ebola isn't a conceptual breakthrough that will allow a whole new class of vaccines...but if it isn't, this just seems like mental masturbation, a cure for a nonexistent problem.
Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored. - Aldous Huxley