Slashdot Mirror
Bird Flu May Be Developing Drug Resistance
Pingular writes "The virus currently causing bird flu in humans may be developing resistance to the only drug that can so far combat the infection. From the article: 'A previous paper in the journal Nature described a single case of drug resistance in a patient being treated for avian flu. However, in this case the patient had been given low doses of Tamiflu before becoming infected, as a family member had been stricken. Lead researcher Dr Jeremy Farrar described the latest findings as "very worrying" - but said they were not surprising.'"
We can also stop AIDS and other communciable diseases in humans by killing them as well.
Can I bum a sig?
1: Tamiflu doesn't cure the disease, it "treats" the flu, meaning it lessens the symptoms of it. One of the reasons people die from the flu is their lymph system becomes so clogged due to immunological response they literrally cease breathing and die, which is why tamiflu helps as it lessens the response and keeps most people from dieing.
4 11.htm
2: How can the bird flu develope a resistance to it, especially since it isn't an epidemic yet? How many people have been infected? How many DECADES did it take for us to get antibiotic-resistant bacteria? The article bases it's premise on 2 people dieing. Is that thorough research?
3: Donald Rumsfield has lots of stock in the company which produces tamiflu, so there is a polticial reason for the BBC to talk about it.
http://www.emediawire.com/releases/2005/11/emw304
4: Allright, now I'v been reading the peanut butter factory material (conspiracy nut --> nuttier than a tin of PB --> Get a bunch of them together...Peanut butter factory) for quite some time, mabye 3 or 4 years. See this finely tuned BS detector, notice the flashing lights and buzzing sounds indicating a positive affirmation?
Notice how they build you upto the conclusion in the first "paragraph" of worldwide pandemic by stating how many people have died? Then they go onto talk about how some guy happened to die from bird flu when being given tamiflu and it not curing him.
But here's the kicker; the last 2 paragraphs call for...guess? More funding for big pharma and reassuring us we're protected by the government.
The BBC has done this stuff before, and they'll do it again. Usually their reporting is pretty good, but sometimes they crank out a cowpatty like this.
5: And for those of you who are afraid of bird flu, it's a hoax. The WHO has been yelling at the top of it's lungs for YEARS about a worldwide pandemic coming out of chinese chicken feedlots and nothing has come yet. Has it happened? Yep, several times infact, and it comes every year right when our bodies shut down vitamin D production due to less light decreasing our immunity to said diseases. It comes from foreign countries who already have regular flu, and it mutates in feedlots and in sweatshops year round and you get it from opening that nice new fresh third-world-smelling toy truck or consumer electronic. Is a massive worldwide plague going to happen? It's on such a low order of probability that it might as well not happen.
I personally am a believer in preperation for any event, but letting the government take care of you is hogwash, which is why they're encouraging people not to worry about it and let them take care of it. Because if canadian geese begin turning up dead all over the place (good riddance; it's overdue) in the USA due to birdflu, then bush will have his martial law because it's a pandemic; the laws are already in place, they were passed SPECIFICLALY DUE TO bird flu if you check around a few months ago. And it'll eventually find it's way over here mind you, they know it and we know it. As birds migrate from China to Europe (and have already) they'll pass it along to birds there which'll pass it along to birds here somehow; chicken feed, imported chicken, ect. They want people so afraid of dieing by going out doors that they'll do anything the government says to survive.
Having just written two term papers analyzing the social construction of the bird flu, I'm loaded with more H5N1 knowledge than I ever thought possible. Part of the problem is that Tamiflu isn't designed to fight the bird flu, it's not a vaccine, it's an anti-viral (and, up until the end of 2004, it was one of Roche's least successful drugs). It operates by reducing the spread of a virus within the body, alleviating the severity of the effects of normal flu strains in humans by up to 38%, and reducing the time of infection by up to two days. It does NOT cure/prevent bird flu, but it is believed that it might be effective in lesseing the communicability of the disease. There are other anti-virals, such as GlaxoSmithKline's Relenza, that should have roughly equal effectiveness. BUT, guess what? The creator/patent-holder of Tamiflu is Gilead Sciences Inc; a company whose CEO from 1997-2001 was none other than Donald Rumsfeld. The wife of former California Gov. Pete Wilson is on the board, as well as George Schultz (US Sec of State from '82 - '89). These political connections might be a key reason why the Bush Administration hasn't invoked the WHO's TRIPS Agreement, which allows for compulsory licensing (in which, in the face of a potential health crisis, the patent on a drug is broken, allowing other companies to produce the drug, while a modest licensing fee is paid to the patent holder), and would actually allow the US to stockpile enough of the drug to make a serious impact (WHO recommends that a country have enough anti-virals to treat 25% of its population, given the current productive capacities of Roche, the US won't have that amount until around 2011). In light of the recent discovery that the 1918 flu outbreak was, in fact, a strain of the bird flu that had mutated amongst bird populations until developing in a strain that was capable of human-to-human transmission, scientists DO have a genome sequence of one such iteration of the virus, which could be used to develop vaccines (that may or may not work). Most health officials agree, however, that spending money on drug stockpiling is an empty gesture, and that available treatments should be sent instead to the poor East Asian countries where an outbreak is most likely to occur (and who can least afford to pay for the drugs). Even then, the drugs are not recommended as a primary means of prevention, rather, improvement in monitoring/reporting infrastructures, as well as new medical technology, is the suggested course of action. I could go on, but suffice it to say, it's not surprising to hear about Tamiflu's lack of effectiveness, and were it not for the fact that the "BIRD FLU PANDEMICPALOOZA" were just a big political opportunity for the Bush Administration to assert themselves as competent and forward-thinking after the Katrina tragedy and the recent drop in US public support for the Iraqi War, that is, if the Bushies REALLY wanted to fight the flu and not just use it as a means of gaining some good PR while lining the pockets of their friends, then Tamiflu would almost never be mentioned in the press. End Rant.
Whatever happened to "drink lots of fluids and rest up?" I know the Bird flu is nasty, but the human body is actually pretty good at fighting this stuff off. Given half a chance.
"Learning is not compulsory... neither is survival."
--Dr.W.Edwards Deming
Yes, the body does maintain a "library" of antibodies keyed to the proteins on the surface of viruses it has overcome in the past.
The problem is that at one point there may be a "protein envelope" that the immune system cannot match up to, in which case resistance is not just futile - its impossible. Think of a new flu that the body can't manufacture a "key" to fit into the protein coat of the virus - a vaccine won't help.
I don't think Tamiflu was the only drug to be of use, but it is the best one. There was cheaper one but stupid Chinese government recommended using it in birds food and water supply, which is the best recipe for creating immunity.
Just because someone died from bird flu after taking tammiflu doesn't necessarily mean that it's developing a resistance to the drug.
First off, the "bird flu" doesn't transfer from human to human yet. In order for it to "develop a resistance" it's got to be able to go somewhere once this so called resistance has developed. Well, this can't exactly happen since it can't be transferred from human to human yet.
Secondly, the article reports that the people given tammiflu did get better first. This doesn't necessarily mean the virus is has developed a resistance to the drug. There's also the possibility that they weren't given enough tammiflu. Sure it helped for a little bit, but after 3 days it wore off. Maybe this virus is strong enough to require multiple or higher doses of tammiflu than a normal flu virus.
Call me when there's real news to report.
Repeat after me and the history of the human population and their ability to get rid of a virus.
You can't.
How does the TV ad that comes on at dinner time about herpes go? Something like:
Its not about a cure, its about suppression.
The only progress that humans have ever made in viral medicine are vaccines that load up our body with the virus early in life so that our bodies are not as susceptible to it when it comes again. The virus comfortably lives in our bodies for the rest of our lives. Is tamiflu a cure? No.
All it does is treat the symptoms just like AZT, cold medicines, and everything else. AIDS is the best virus because drug companies can push their expensive, quality of life decreasing drugs on people for years until they die.
Here is how much we really care about people's quality of life:
The Supreme Court ruled that federal authorities may arrest and prosecute sick people whose doctors prescribe marijuana to ease pain, concluding that state laws don't protect users from a federal ban on the drug.
That was from an online news source a while back.
This is a drug with no side effects. Has never killed a human. Its fun. It can be naturally grown almost anywhere. Its inexpensive. It helps with depression and anxiety.
Even most all of the "good" prescriptions (recreationally) have so many side effects that people who like to use recreational drugs don't take these or at least not for too long at a time. Tolerance, dependance, stomach problems, severe mental and physical impairment, and a slew of others.
I find it deplorable that Congress is even considering to make it legal for drug companies to put out drugs that are potentially dangerous and deadly without the ability for them to be sued or any negative consequences from being dangerous and deadly to people.
Does any of this make sense or is it OK to people?