'Safe Ebola' Created for Research

Nephrite writes "By removing a gene from the virus Ebola, UW-Madison scientists have managed to stop the deadly pathogen from replicating. This first step may be a start down the path to a vaccine or drug screening. 'The scientists still want the virus to replicate in order to study it, so they developed monkey kidney cells which contained the protein needed. Because the cell was providing the protein, and not the virus itself, it could only replicate within those cells, and even if transferred into a human, would be harmless.'"

Comments

The Sky is falling

[MosesJones]

Why is it on Slashdot that any thing that restricts any sort of digital rights is a massively bad thing and any research that breaks those elements (even if they are used for nefarious purposes) are good, physics and astronomy research is also always "good", meanwhile massive advances in bio-tech are always "think of the children" topics.

Sure Ebola is dangerous, but labs are working around the world with massively dangerous pathogens. Britain's numpties in the bio-farming area managed to release Foot and Mouth into the wild (genius) so of course there is a risk. The question is whether it is safe and what can be achieved by doing this, not simply thinking about the Horror flick that played a ridiculous story line out. Bio-shock story lines are just as realistic as techno-shock ones, i.e. about as realistic as a George Bush explanation on Iraqi WMD.

Bio-science is one of the most real frontiers in science today and its simply stunning what is being done. Sure there need to be controls, but educated people need to stop behaving like Fox News Anchors.

Re:oops

[TheMeuge]

I don't think Ebola has ever had a vital component of the transcription machinery removed before. It's not a very large virus, and I don't think it can find another gene to replace it. Furthermore, I don't think anyone is talking about releasing this virus into the wild, merely making it easier to work with in the lab, as well as safer.

Why wouldn't you support that?

treat the host pool

[ifknot]

As Strat noted in Hmmm..

"Life always finds a way"

Which is why imho vaccine efforts should be directed at the animal host pool in order to eradicate the filovirus, ie make it extinct.

The host is widely considered to be bats http://www.emedicine.com/MED/topic626.htm and if only a tiny portion of the grant money spent on dna twiddling was spent establishing this and looking at either eradicating the bats or vaccinating them then, perhaps, the whole filovirus family could be eradicated.

Before all the bat-lovers start crying foul I would like to point out that it is only ebola's high mortality rate that keeps it contained. If mother nature dose a bit of her own dna twiddling and hits the sweet spot for mortality versus infectivity then haemorrhagic fever will reach Hollywood proportions.

But, call me cynical, this would leave no recurring income for vaccine makers.

Re:Genetics....

[TheMeuge]

I hope that this was a sarcastic post, given the amount of ignorance it contained.

We would like to study ebola, so that we can save your sorry ass if you get it. To do that, we've modified it to weaken it, so we don't kill ourselves studying it. We're not really going to put it in your food and air supply!

As far as why Bush hates funding genetic engineering as a whole you're correct. Your post illustrates PRECISELY why people hate funding it - they are ignorant, scared sheet, and content remaining such.

Re:Nerves of steel

[ajs]

there is no way I'd walk into a room and work for hours with a virus that violently kills almost everyone it infects, should "something go wrong". What do you think happens should "something go wrong" when you're working with a vat of fry grease that can melt off skin at McDonalds? The risk there is much more serious, since training is much less strict and controls are not federally monitored.

What do you think happens should "something go wrong" when you're assembling a skyscraper? Pouring molten steel? Flying a plane? Heck, just driving a car can kill you in the most horrible ways.

If you want safe, you're pretty much hosed.

If you want to balance risk with precaution, work in an industry where the life and death of not just you, but lots of others are on the line. You'll quickly find that the level of precaution taken is burdensome, but quite reassuring.

PS: It doesn't kill everyone. To quote Wikipedia:

Mortality rates are extremely high, with the human case-fatality rate ranging from 50% - 89%, according to viral subtype.[3] The cause of death is usually due to hypovolemic shock or organ failure.

-http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ebola (citation from http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/EID/vol11no02/04-0533.htm)

Re:From TFA

[bcattwoo]

But apparently level 4 is just a large scale level 3. It doesn't put my mind at ease that the filter that keeps the Ebola Virus from escaping the CDC is the same kind that's on my vacuum cleaner. HEPA is a type of filter that removes least 99.97% of airborne particles 0.3 microns in diameter. Particles approximately 0.3 microns are typically the hardest to capture and the efficiency for larger and smaller particles is even greater than 99.97%. While these filters and your vacuum cleaner filter are classed the same way, they are likely world's apart in terms of capacity and durability.

Re:Before you panic

[innerweb]

Just a guess, but for some people, a cure to this miserable disease, and for others, one heck of a biological weapon. It is so limited in transmission that one might feel safe using it in certain situations to cripple an enemy. It is so incredibly debilitating while one has it that it would render combatants or other individuals incapacitated and too weak once they recovered, though they probably would not recover.

Ebola is just another tool in this case.

InnerWeb