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Ebola Vaccines Successfully Tested on Monkeys
An Anonymous Reader writes "Canadian and American researchers, in a joint venture between Canada's National Microbiology Lab and the U.S. military, have created two vaccines that prevent Monkeys from becoming ill with Ebola and Marburg. While a human vaccine may still be 5 years away, this is very promising news.
Congratulations to all involved! Especially the monkeys!
Did anyone see that Discovery Channel show a few (seven?) years ago about the Ebola virus and how one doctor noticed that one in one hundred or so survive and asked the survivors for blood samples and injected the samples in uninfected villagers and almost all of them survived despite being exposed to the contagion? That was neat.
After all, I am strangely colored.
Are you implying that monkeys are perhaps related to human beings in some way? That sounds like evolution to me!
Don't waste your time with monkeys. The proper way to treat and cure disease is with prayer and the occasional feeding tube.
You know why God sent ebola to the heathens, right? Because they haven't professed their love for Jesus Christ. If you don't want to get the ebola flesh eating disease, get down on your knees now. No silly, we're not going to play "catholic priest and alterboy" again, this time I want you to pray.
This was a front page story in today's Globe and Mail: New vaccines target Ebola, Marburg. Still at least five years away from testing... but if I had Ebola I think I'd be ready to sign up for early clinical trials!
Interesting how the vaccine may end up saving African apes as well...
EricRead about my new AdSense book for non-techies
Well, the good thing is that they have a potential vaccine.
The downside is that, just like with most other vaccines, they will not distribute it to everyone everywhere. It simply isn't affordable. And once youcome in contact with it, the vaccine isn't going to do you a damn bit of good.
I don't see how an ebola vaccine is of any use, other than to vaccinate people just before they go to regions which are currently experiencing an ebola outbreak and the person being vaccinated will be directly in contact with those suffering from the outbreak.
Since Ebola is such a deadly disease, surely many natives would risk the possible side effects of the vaccine to have resistance to ebola, so why not test it, if it works, just implement it and not wait 5 years of more people dying, etc?
This is the same with all drugs, why not?
Those monkeys are always getting the breakthrough drugs before us!
So this vaccine is probably on track to save millions of people, and will probably be used as an agent to eradicate ebola.
So when does ALF firebomb the lab?
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
I can see a new plot leading to the exact same movie as Planet Of The Apes...
"It's too bad that stupidity isn't painful." - Anton LaVey
Well that's two amazing scientific breakthroughs for Canada in the last week. First molecule transistors, and now the Ebola vaccine. Go Canada Go! I can't for the life of me, figure out why this story didn't make the main index of Slashdot... poor taste.
Vaccines rally the immune system to fight the invader. If given after infection but before symptoms show up, it may be able to help your body fight it off. That's exactly what is done with rabies.
You know, a working vaccine could make ebola more dangerous. After all if you could immunise all your agents against it, and then gave them little aerosol sprayer packs full of it, you could get them to walk like the angels of death through a city cutting down people left and right.
Well, you've got the right idea. Undoubtedly, it'll be an expensive vaccine to administer, and you're right, I probably won't do you any good once you've got the disease, especially given how fast it kills you.
But the vaccine will still be very, very useful. For example: right now, when you have an Ebola outbreak, health care workers are usually so scared out of their minds of the disease that they won't take care of the people who might or might not be infected, which ultimately leads to greater spread of the infection. And beyond that, the health care workers themselves are often a major vector for the transmission of the virus to others. Having the doctors and nurses vaccinated ahead of time in higher risk areas could dramatically reduce the spread of the virus in an outbreak situation. And obviously, giving the vaccine to uninfected villagers will help plenty as well.
And obviously, in terms of countering a biowarfare attack, this is a huge development. People have been postulating for years that a modified or especially contagious version of Ebola released into a heavily populated area could wipe out huge numbers of people and possibly be far more destructive than even nuclear weapons. Having a vaccine is, in and of itself a deterrant, making the time and effort required on the part of terrorists to build such a biological weapon more of a waste of time, not to mention how useful it would be in case of an actual attack. The attraction to Ebola as a possible weapon has always been based on a) how sickening the disease is, b) how fast it kills and how contageous it is, and c) that there was no vaccine.
Hey! Hey! We're the Monkey's...
Never leave a dead horse unbeaten!