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

Is that really enough?

[jasonmanley]

I don't want to sound ungrateful or anything but is $100K really all that much considering how expensive it must be to do this kind of research?

Re:Is that really enough?

[Anonymous Coward]

Bill Gates != Microsoft

Why a 100K would be needed from Bill to fund this?

[IAR80]

"When I give food to the poor, they call me a saint. When I ask why the poor have no food, they call me a Communist." Hélder CÃmara

Re:Will this help?

[MjDelves]

Well actually yes this strategy is very sensible. I think you're not quite understanding the research. The vaccine doesn't stop you being bitten by mosquitoes, but would be designed to stop the virus infecting the mosquitoes. This breaks the cycle of infection and prevents many other people being infected. Yes that's little consolation for you, but in the long run, less people being infected does have a direct benefit for you.

Re:Problem

[Your.Master]

You can eliminate it if you hit the herd immunity threshold: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herd_immunity

That requirement is essentially the same as for regular vaccines.

As for risking mosquitoes evolving to smell the poisonous blood -- isn't that a best-case scenario? Where the immunity to spreading the disease is converted to an immunity to getting the disease because the vectors avoid the innoculated.

The worst-case scenario basically leaves us back at square one with no loss and only a temporary gain.

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.

YIDRC

[maccallr]

From http://www.grandchallenges.org/Explorations/Pages/Introduction.aspx

Initial grants of $100,000 are awarded two times a year. Successful projects have the opportunity to receive a follow-on grant of $1 million or more.

Re:Why a 100K would be needed from Bill to fund th

[DNS-and-BIND]

"I am for doing good to the poor, but I differ in opinion of the means. I think the best way of doing good to the poor, is not making them easy in poverty, but leading or driving them out of it. In my youth I traveled much, and I observed in different countries, that the more public provisions were made for the poor, the less they provided for themselves, and of course became poorer. And, on the contrary, the less was done for them, the more they did for themselves, and became richer."
-- Benjamin Franklin, On the Price of Corn and Management of the Poor, November 1766