Slashdot Mirror
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."
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.
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.
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
Ummm ... no, not really, at least not for Israel. I've been in Tel Aviv for two months now, and it's - for lack of a better term - "business as usual".
If it was by what you get on CNN, I'd have expected to crawl under debris by now; In truth, life goes on unaffected in 90% of the country, but that's nothing sensational, so it won't probably appear on the news.
Tie two birds together: although they have four wings, they cannot fly. (The blind man)
It's for humans. The Avian flu is not a serious things for birds. Think of it this way, a cold is shitty, granted, but it won't destroy your life. In very rare cases will a cold last longer than a week and a half, and even rarer for it to have a permanent effect. But if...a dog, somehow someway contracted a common cold, and was completely unprepared to accept the virus and combat it, the dog would die without much of a fight. Monkeys live with AIDS like it's nothing, but it destroys us. The Avian flu is a bird disease, and when cross-genus diseases spread, there's (as far as we know) no way to stop almost certain death. Yay for vaccines!
I Bleed Scarlet
At the risk of igniting a real flame war, life in Beirut is never really business as usual, because the central government there doesn't have real power over their entire country. They've been occupied by the Israelis and the Syrians over the years, and even once the Syrians and Israelis were gone, they couldn't figure out how to get Hezbollah under control. Lebanon is a country I generally sympathize with - they've gotten screwed by a number of parties in the region and outside of it, and once they get their domestic situation under control, they'll probably be a stabilizing influence in the region.
I do agree with your implication towards the poster who somewhat blithely replied that Tel Aviv was doing OK. For one thing, a good bit of northern Israel isn't doing so hot (witness the shelling of Haifa), and it's a bit crass of him to ignore his own countrymen. Second, the folks in Beirut generally don't want this conflict - they were dragged into it by Hezbollah in the south. Maybe once the Israelis decimate Hezbollah, they can take some real control of their country. Well, here's hoping...
Anyways, back on topic: the Middle East does have substantial interests in poultry, since religious Muslims and Jews don't eat pork. This kind of a vaccine is quite helpful in protecting their flocks and themselves - and that's one less thing they all have to worry about in these troubled times.
-Erwos
Plausible conjecture should not be misrepresented as proof positive.
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.
The cover of Sunday's New York Times had a picture of 16 dead Lebanese, which were mostly children. Business as usual?