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Indian Scientists Develop Vaccine for Bird Flu
William Robinson writes "Indian Scientists have succeeded in developing a vaccine against the bird flu disease that has affected poultry business in many parts of the world. This was formally announced, and ICAR Director-General Mangala Rai described this as a big step forward in tackling the highly pathogenic avian influenza, commonly called the bird flu. Indonesia, who has recently reported their 42nd victim of bird flu, will now have one less thing to worry about."
No need to worry about bird flu any more, just the incipient WWIII brewing in the Middle East...
... I hope this will give at least some pause to all the tired old jokes about outsourcing. For supposedly open-minded people there're way too many racist jokes around here.
As the comment on the pages says... is this for the birds or humans ?
Cruise TT
Now they just have to worry about patents and the costs of the vaccine and deployment. After all, now that there is a vaccine, any capitalist-minded people would think, "Hey! Let their chickens die out! We'll have a monopoly on chickens!"
Are we to believe that they'll just give it out to the world?
There's already a vaccine for H5N1; all this article is saying is that now an Indian lab has produced one as well, so they don't have to import it.
Great editing, as usual.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
So, the fact India has this does nothing to directly help Indonesia.
It is described as an indigineous replacement for something they can already import. It sounds as if it's just for birds.
And you hardly can inoculate all the poultry in a country. So the significance of this seems pretty limited.
Dang. I had my hopes way up from reading the headline.
To err is human. To forgive is good system design.
... from a quick read of the article whether they developed or copied a vaccine that they were importing. Too many comments re: IP, importing a vaccine, etc. If it's a clone job, we'll have another example of the, uhh, benefit of using others to develop stuff you want to have value.
Let's not jump the gun here. The big threat to humans is a mutated strain of something like H5N1 that does the damage of the original bird flu but spreads through humans as fast as a human flu. Developing a vaccine for this threat requires knowing what the threat is, and as yet, there have been no confirmed cases of human-human transmission.
Even with recent advances, developing and mass-producing vaccines takes several weeks, by which time the vaccine will be irrelevant for many people if the mutated strain starts to spread. This is the nightmare scenario, and is why so much research is currently being done into improving vaccine development, and so much planning focusses on identifying human-human transmission as early as possible.
Of course anything to reduce the spread of the original bird flu also reduces the opportunity for a mutated strain to develop, and is therefore a good thing. But let's not misunderstand what's been achieved here.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
that this vaccine is for birds and not humans. The vaccine will prevent avian to human transmission, but will be useless if H5N1, the avian flu virus mutates into human infective form.
Legally obligatory sig : My opinions are my own... etc etc
without strict enforcement of IP vaccine development is possible...
with strict enforcement of IP vaccine development is not possible...
but then again, this is slashdot and i am preeching to the converted...
thank goodness for the bill and melida gates foundation.
Does it go on forever?
It's most likely going to prove impossible to inocculate the entire wild bird populations in the areas which are affected by Bird Flu. Further more, one of the main problems with flu strain viruses is their speed of mutation: every year the flu vaccine is different as the strains have adapted. It's a good start, but it doesn't guarantee the flu won't just hide in wild bird populations and re-emerge an even more agressive strain...
Well while I am happy to see a Vaccine being announced... However I am hoping that one will be developed for my parrots. I love my birdies, and do not wish for them to get the bird flu.
-- Josh
"Whoopie! Man, that may have been a small one for Neil, but that's a long one for me!" - Pete Conrad
Whatever vaccine they made today is not going to be greatly effective when a bird flu mutates and becomes transmittable from person-to-person.
I suggest you read Slashdot
Was the 42nd victim a troublemaker?
There are several ways to innoculate birds, one of them is by using aerosols inside the chicken containment house. You can do a large number quickly that way. I don't know if this new med can be used that way, but some can.
That should be "one fewer thing to worry about", unless "things" have ceased being discrete overnight.
If the vacceine is effective againstt he current popular strain in avians, and they can make it rapidly (easier to do with chickens since they need smaller doses than humans, they can innoculate all the chickens in the country. Having the virus nealy eliminated in the bird population greatly mitigates the risk of having it mutate into the human strain of the virus.
I just finished my underground shelter yesterday. It had food, cable internet, food, cable and sat TV, food, PS2, food, games, food, a bed, food, etc. I ordered a special computer. What shall I do with all these preps...
I guess I could just seclude myself, eat, sit at the computer, play games, watch TV. Actually, nothing has changed.
you vaccinate the non-wild birds (domesticated somehow doesn't fit), because these are the birds that humans are most likely to come in contact with. This reduces the chances of people catching the current virus from infected birds (regular, close contact with an infected bird seems to be a factor in bird/human transmission. In addition, once these birds are vaccinated, you've hopefully created a significant reduction in the bird/human interface where mutation to a more transmissible form is likely to occur.
Interested in a Flash-based MAME front end? Visit mame.danzbb.com
They sure came up with a vaccine of the bird flu fast. I am still waiting for the vaccine for herpes....cause this itching is starting to get annoying. Damn herpes! Its been out longer and still nothing for it. What a buncha cr@p. The drug companies make too much money on suppresive medication, thankfully a country outside of the USA developed a vaccine. In the USA they would find a way for you to buy a pill or few pills at 30 dollars a pop, so they will make a profit.
This is one of the many successes the Indians and Chineese will have showing up the West (US/Europe) in science and technology. I think over the next 10-20 years, it will become more frequent that we see breakthroughs from these areas.
... are they Norwegian Blue?
Until we know how well it works - and I can't find any information linked to today's news - it's too soon to say "one less thing to worry about."
BTW: Didn't Hungarian Scientists do this in 2005? "Hungary's health minister says a bird flu vaccine appears to be effective in early tests. The vaccine works against H5N1 Hungary's health minister says a bird flu vaccine appears to be effective in early tests. The trial jab appears to protect humans and animals against the lethal H5N1 virus, preliminary results show." - BBC 19 October 2005
Reduce, reuse, cycle
US Pharmas have developed a suite of drugs to control the symptoms of the flu. They immediately opened talks with both Congress and the administration to pressure India to prevent deployment of their vaccine. "Implementation of the Indian solution would not be in the best interests of the US or the world," said a Pharma spokesperson.
Is there a +5 Cynical?
Seriously, this tainting of every scientific or technical event with ideological or political claptrap is tiresome.
I would love to see the really important people get this kind of protection first
and along with it why don't we give them the same vaccination regimen that has
worked so well for our troops deployed to the gulf.
There is no way the U.S. health system can handle a pandemic, and distributing vaccine to a large portion of the population is years away. Most hospital emergecy rooms can barely cope with a busy Saturday night.
If you want to track the march of the Avian flu on Google Earth, or just don't want your bird-flu news dumbed down to the level that journalists can understand, Declan Butler, a reporter for Nature magazine, has an excellent blog on the subject.
Amen to that, brother. A year or so ago during the big flu vaccine shortage, it was impossible to get a vaccine anywhere in my area for about a month or so. Even now, flu shots are scarce during flu season.
If history repeats itself, why can't we study the future?
There is no vaccine for H5N1 until now. The post is correct. This is not a generic version of an existing vaccine. BTW, you cannot have a generic released into the market until the patent of the original expires. That takes 20 years. Also there is nothing wrong with someone making generics. Without generics, the poor countries have no way of buying medicines.
Official Press Release at: http://www.icar.org.in/pr/16072006.htm
Never ascribe to malice what can be adequately attributed to ignorance. -Napoleon
The article above is missing the specifics, so try this one:e ctid=4&articleid=7162006205183757162006204743859
http://www.mumbaimirror.com/nmirror/mmpaper.asp?s
"The vaccine will be injected into birds to prevent them from getting infected, he said.
A government statement said it was a homologous vaccine derived from the H5N1 strain."
The point of it is to stop it in birds, so it can't get on to humans I imagine.
If it's for humans, it will be enormously expensive, and none of the people who actually need it will be able to afford it. Meanwhile, the maker of the vaccine will try to get the U.S. government to buy 300 million doses at retail price.
If it's for animals, it'll be cheap enough to lace the entire food chain with it, and we'll only find out it has horrific side effects five years from now. ;-)
Especially so, considering that the largest outbreaks of bird flu have been in countries with the most environmental polution (legacy agent orange contamination in Vietnam + chickens == weakened immune system especially susceptible to influenza).
See Dr. Sherri Tenpenny's FOWL! Bird Flu: It's Not What You Think
or this interview.
Learn the rules so you know how to break them properly.
www.teslabox.com
DANGER!
We could talk pages and pages about pharmaceutical industry, and i think no matter where you are, you need money to continue researching and of course a LITTLE incentive. But i need to mention one particular case. Two years ago, i read an article about the HPV (Human Papiloma Virus) and the vaccine against Cervix Cancer. It said the vaccine was already aproved and tested, but the farmaceutic industry didnt wanted to release ir because the treatment for cervix cancer was way higher than the vaccine. So it wasnt business. TWO YEARS and i dont know how many women dead after, they have just announced that a vaccine has been found. So we can see that farmaceutics dont exist with the motivation of saving people... or at least is not the primary.
"Indian Scientists have succeeded in developing a vaccine against the bird flu disease..."
But how good is the documentation on how to apply it? ~CYD
//Nothing to see here, please move along.
You guys are too late! It's no longer being publicized therefore it's no longer a threat.
Hmm.. I'm thinking this research was probably outsourced to India..
But what ever are Fox, CNN, and the Bush administration going to use to distract us now? It's been such an integral part of their claim that the sky is falling and that we should therefore hand over all our freedoms. Does this mean double helpings of immigrant phobia? Would have to be, since if they whip up North Korea or Iran, they'd actually have to do something about it.
Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.
Developing a vaccine for this threat requires knowing what the threat is, and as yet, there have been no confirmed cases of human-human transmission.
WHO has in fact acknowledged H2H2H transmission. Details here.
Your comment reminds me of the large US hi-tech companies accusing the Chinese of "stealing their IP"
Funnily enough, the FBI seem to think so too... From the fine article:
The FBI agent in charge, Don Przybyla has no doubt where the principal threat comes from. He says "the majority are coming from China. They are using a shot-gun approach, flooding the Silicon Valley with engineers and scientists.
"The Chinese have found success in obtaining the technology through stealing, essentially. Once successful they'll send more people over to do the same thing."
One software company that found itself targeted is 3DGeo. It deals with remote sensing equipment - searching for oil and gas from space. They had a contract with the Chinese national petrol company which included training opportunities in the US for six staff. The last two sent to California decided to help themselves to the company's secrets.
Whats even funnier is that even when they steal the technology, they find themselves incapable of reverse engineering it. India and China have got a long, long way to go before they can begin to match western technology.
What he can't kill, he has sex on. Trent.
theres a vaccine being trialled in australia. i know, im a volunteer guinea pig. or should that be guinea fowl?
Nothing - well thats something.
We could talk pages and pages about pharmaceutical industry, and i think no matter where you are, you need money to continue researching and of course a LITTLE incentive. But i need to mention one particular case. Two years ago, i read an article about the HPV (Human Papiloma Virus) and the vaccine against Cervix Cancer. It said the vaccine was already aproved and tested, but the farmaceutic industry didnt wanted to release ir because the treatment for cervix cancer was way higher than the vaccine. So it wasnt business. TWO YEARS and i dont know how many women dead after, they have just announced that a vaccine has been found. So we can see that farmaceutics dont exist with the motivation of saving people... or at least is not the primary.
and start trying to instill fear in us with something new
Whatever happened to SARS? You know, that 'deadly' disease that only killed about one ten thousandth of the number of people who died in the same period from normal pneumonia and influenza? SARS WAS normal pneumonia and influenza, that's what happened to it. Some dipstick designed a building with the drains going down the INSIDE of the kitchens - what a lovely thought. So the human excrement passed through the pipe, and several parts of the pipe weren't sealed properly. So a large number of people in that building caught pneumonia from somebody above them, and the geniuses that you call scientists made up a new name for an old disease, the idiots in the media hyped it up and tried to scare us all with it, and the scum in power managed to successfully close down half of Canada, and enable new powers so they could 'quarantine' anybody or any area they bloody well wanted to. And of course, if you happened to be on their 'hit list', they could both 'quarantine' you and then kill you, and say you died of 'SARS'.
The same is exactly true of 'bird flu'. It's a crock of shit. There is no evidence whatsoever that anybody, anywhere, is dying from a 'new' virus, caught from birds. In the places where people have allegedly died from 'bird flu', hundreds of thousands of people DAILY handle birds and slaughter them. A tiny number just happen to get the 'flu and die from it, which has been happening since time immemorial. And then the 'scientists' (i.e. big pharma) re-label it 'bird flu' and try to threaten the entire world with this bullshit, helped, of course, by Donald Rumsfeld, who made a few million with his useless drug 'Tamiflu'.
Why didn't somebody just tell everybody to stop eating birds? Is that too easy?
I'm surprised that nobody here is actually questioning this bullshit.
Do you know how the so-called 'vaccines' are made? Are they making them in fertilised EGGS, in this case, as usual? How ironic? (And pure evil). Did you ever think through what happens to the unborn chicks who are infected with the flu virus, and then minced up alive so they can inject this shit into you?
Try reading Dr Hadwen's talks about what a fraud Jenner was. Vaccination is a fraud, on a grand scale, like most modern medicine.
Wake up Slashdotters.