Steps Toward a Universal Flu Vaccine

Plasmoid writes "The NYTimes is reporting that scientists have starting developing what could turn out to be a 'universal' flu vaccine. They created antibody proteins that can neutralize different strains of the influenza virus, including the deadly H5N1 bird flu, the virus behind the 1918 epidemic, and common seasonal strains. These new antibodies target part of the virus that is shared between different strains and thus appear to be broadly effective. However, some experts question whether a universal vaccine of this kind is even possible, since the human body has been unable to come up with an antibody solution. An article on nature.com describes the work further."

Comments

Re:Give me a break there, will ya?

[Seth Kriticos]

Your answers and reactions are as expected. Well, just wanted to see if there are some informed people here, but oh well.. letting my original post stay there with no references and answers to your reactions would be quite dumb, so here it goes.

TheGarggh

The reason the 1918 flu had high mortality among young adults is because sometimes when the body is presented with a new and particularly severe infection, there occurs a "cytokine storm", a positive feedback loop of the immune system which can pretty much destroy you. A healthy immune system becomes a liability.

That's speculative. Not even the official medical community states this as fact.

There is an article on this at http://www.whale.to/vaccine/sf1.html with some more detail.

Americano

I'm going to simply respond to your rambling, seemingly paranoid post with a single [Citation Needed].

Paranoid conspiracy theories require some verifiable proof, especially when they directly contradict peer-reviewed and verified science so conspicuously.

I'm on it, as you see.

TroyM

I can't understand why the tin foil hat people think vaccines are a scam to make insane amounts of cash by the pharmaceuticals industry.

Because it is so? Here is an article on the profit motivation part and the documented actions of the pharmacy industry to increase profits (bribes) http://www.naturalnews.com/024114.html Note: this one has a surprisingly mainstream origin.

The reality is the last thing the industry wants is a cure for a disease. What they want is a drug that treats without curing, and has to be taken indefinitely. Something like Prozac, statin drugs, Viagra - that's where the money is.

Thats something I fully agree with.

Microlith

Explain Smallpox, Polio, Hepatitis B, HPV, Chicken Pox, Measles, Mumps, and Rubella. It is not futile. You do it, or you risk dying from easily communicable diseases.

You're an idiot parroting "Vaccines are poison!" crap, who told you this, Jenny McCarthy?

Predjudice? No, that requires knowing nothing about you and making a rash judgment. You've plainly proved you're ignorant and little better than a wishful-thinking conspiracy theorist and deserve every flame fired against your dangerous spreading of mis-information.

Ok, granted, you have no prejudice. You have religion.

TempeTerra

In brief: please provide links for your paranoid delusions, I'd enjoy the read.

The flu variant believed to be responsible for the 1918 pandemic killed by causing a cytokine storm (wiki it yourself) - the host immune system overreacts and kills the host. Of course this is most effective against otherwise healthy people with a strong immune system that can really kick some ass... against their own body.

Thats a long comment of you. I did wiki cytokine storm and even there they write statements with "it is believed". No conclusive evidence. But yea, it's wiki, so lets leave it at that.

You suggest that the pharmaceutical industry has duped the entire medical profession into believing in a disease that doesn't even exist, and will inject the entire population with a potentially lethal disease causing agent, causing massive global economic collapse simply because they can get paid for every unit they produce? No comment.

Probably yes.

kklein ...

Get some manners, dude.

Now to elaborate some of the other points. Interestingly nobody asked what ingredients vaccines have, as I was hinting. There is quite a good description at

Re:innoculation or vaccine?

[Anonymous Coward]

The key word in that wall of text is "chiropractic". Chiropractors are not doctors. By and large they are quacks trying to cure things by supposedly realigning the vertebrae (which they don't in fact). Chiropractors are not required to learn anything remotely close to what even nurses are required to learn about biology and the human body. They are equivalent in many ways to homeopathic practitioners, in that they are deludedly practicing quackery.

In other words, don't trust a chiropractor to say anything reasonable about human health. They can't because they don't understand it any better than a massage therapist.