Gates Foundation Funds "Altruistic Vaccine"

QuantumG writes "The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has awarded a $100,000 grant to the University of Queensland, Australia to develop a vaccine against dengue fever, a disease spread by mosquitoes. Unlike other vaccines, the 'altruistic vaccine' doesn't specifically protect the individual being bitten, but instead protects the community by stopping the transmission of the pathogen from one susceptible individual to another. The hope is to do this by effectively making their blood poisonous to mosquitoes, either killing them or at least preventing them from feeding on other individuals. Professor Paul Young explained how his work fell outside current scientific traditions and might lead to significant advances in global health — he said he could envision the vaccine being used around the world within 10 years, and it would be designed to be cheap and easy to implement."

Comments

Useless

[matria]

This won't do much good unless all warm-blooded suppliers of the mosquitoes are so treated. A handful of humans killing/disabling a few thousand mosquitoes every year won't put a dent in the total population. This kind of thing tends to have unfortunate side effects as well. A similar treatment for dogs and cats to kill fleas has been around for years, and I don't see any reduction in the flea population. I have had a couple of really sick animals as a result of the treatment before I gave it up, though.

Re:Useless

[moj0e]

Actually, mosquito control isn't useless. I grew up in Brazil where there was a dengue outbreak in the 80's. They worked hard at making sure the mosquito didn't have an environment to grow and until this year, I hadn't heard of any dengue outbreaks. My concern with this method is that people who are infected by dengue might be transmitting the disease (through the mosquito) before they even realize that they are sick. If this is the case, the infection cycle wouldn't be completely broken. Unfortunately, this year we did have an outbreak and I got Dengue :/ (very painful). I was actually back in the US before I realized that I had dengue. Anyway, those are my 3 cents (please account for inflation)

The Giving Plague

[Kaseijin]

Is this a vaccine that prevent you from getting infected with that anti-captialist altruistism?

Hey, altruism is serious business.

Re:Is that really enough?

[KibibyteBrain]

The Gates foundation tends to give results-driven grants, so they will probably get more if they come up with something promising.

Re:And 20 years from now...

[Carewolf]

I don't know, mosquitos has many other food sources than humans. Resistance to humans might not be important enough to give potentially immune mosquitos an evolutionary advantage.

I hope it can be mixed in food

[iamacat]

Typically there are many more animal than human hosts, since the former usually do not go to hospitals or use cloth/house/DEET to protect themselves from mosquitos. So your altruism will likely protect a chimp or an antelope rather than another human. But mass vaccination of wildlife through baits dispersed from planes can really make a difference.

Re:And 20 years from now...

[eugene2k]

Problem is, for mosquitos to stop feeding off humans would mean developing some sort of mechanism to differentiate between a human and an animal. So far they don't. So the more probable evolutionary path would be for mosquitos to feed and die until only the ones that survive after feeding off humans are left.

Re:Will this help?

[Ralph Spoilsport]

oh bullshit.

I don't live in the USA, and I don't live in Israel. If they "got ahold" of some nukes, how many does Pakistan have? Last I read, about 60, and they aren't all on missiles, and the military people in PAK have enough sense to no let these lunkheads get access to the codes. So, they would have to use them as something put on a boat and floated into a harbour. Let's pretend that they do get some missiles with nukes, do you think they're going after Western Civ first? No. They'll go after Western Civ's proxy, India (IND). Let's further pretend that they get as many as 20 (roughly 1/3 of the stockpile) in usuable order on missiles, which AFAIK, is extremely unlikely even for PAK today.

So, they use some nukes on IND first. Bombay, New Dehli, a few other big cities disappear. Grossly wounded, there are still hundreds of millions of Angry Indians left, and they collectively march across the border and commence slaughter, with the approval and sanction of the UN. Game over. Did Western Civ end? No.

So, let's say they go for another Western Proxy, Israel. Let's say they dump all 20 on Israel, somehow (even though they don't have a delivery system). What happens? A devastated Israel responds with its own nukes and it has dozens more than PAK and PAK is reduced to a glowing parking lot. Game over. Did Western Civ end? No.

So, let's say they go for the gusto, and somehow get all twenty - fuck it - ALL SIXTY nukes into the USA and set them off. The USA military responds and with one submarine turns PAK into a glowing parking lot. Millions die, in the USA and PAK. But not in Europe or Japan, or Germany or France or Italy or Finland or Russia. Did Western Civ end? No.

So, kindly quit with the fear mongering bullshit.

The apocalypse is NOT a year away. There will be no apocalypse. There is way too much money to be made and too much power to grab for something as self-absorbed and self-indulgent as an apocalypse to occur.

The USA is bankrupt, and will have to retreat from unipolar status fairly soon. When that happens, it will become less of a target.