SARS Vaccine Developed

sbszine writes "Chinese scientists have successfully produced a SARS vaccine. In a clinical trial beginning in May, 36 volunteers were vaccinated. Most have now developed antibodies, and there have been no side effects reported. Slashdot covered the commencement of the clinical trial in an earlier story."

Comments

Re:"Volunteers"?

[StuckInSyrup]

Nothing melodramatic about that. It's most probably a subunit vaccine (no infectious particles, just selected antigens), so there is no threat of infection from the vaccine. Today, most antiviral vaccines are of this type.

Definitely Jealous

[archnerd]

You don't often see a case in which China is freer than the West, but here it's true. In China, subjects are free to enter into clinical trials, by the mutual consent of the researcher and the subject, with full mutual understanding of the risks involved in doing so. It's a completely voluntary form of association (aside from possible cases where the Chinese government might force people into such tests, but that's not what I'm talking about). In the US we could never do such a thing, because either the FDA would interfere, or the lawyers would sue everybody into bankruptcy as soon as one of the subjects sneezed.

But it only matters if...

[CodeWanker]

SARS doesn't mutate rapidly. That's why we have a different flu vaccine every year. New strains are always evolving. And remember the "crisis" we had this year with the vaccine? It's only a crisis if the World Health Organization guessed the right strain to innoculate against. Sometimes they don't. In which case, no amount of vaccine matters.