Slashdot Mirror
Swine Flu Vaccine In Production
ravjen writes with news that "Swiss pharmaceutical company Novartis AG said they have successfully produced a swine flu vaccine weeks ahead of their expectations. The vaccine was made in cells, rather than grown in eggs as is usually the case with vaccines." This announcement came just a day after the World Health Organization declared H1N1's spread to be a pandemic. The vaccine has not been tested in humans yet, so the first batch is set to be used in clinical trials and pre-clinical testing. If all goes well, the new production method would allow Novartis to get the drug to market in large quantities by this fall. Other drug companies, such as Baxter International, have confirmed that they're in "full-scale production" of H1N1 vaccines as well.
It's a new strain of the virus that caused the Spanish flu. H1N1 is known to be highly unstable. It has a tendency to pick up genes from other viruses.
So far, this new strain is milder than a normal yearly influenza virus. But that was also true about the Spanish flu virus, the first two mutations that went around the globe. The third one was highly lethal and, sadly, 100% lethal to pregnant women.
Look at it this way. Three possibilities:
1. We might get a huge deadly pandemic now, which could be as lethal as a world war.
2. Or we may well get a medium deadly pandemic, which also calls for great measures.
3. Or we may get a mild extra flu, on top of the usual annual flu. If we are so lucky this time, it will have been the best possible exercise for our future defences against the next great deadly pandemic. It's only a matter of time before we are faced with a pandemic with the potential of killing off tens of millions of people worldwide.
Fingers crossed and knock on wood, etc, etc...
I refuse to have any shots or other treatments until I am actually "sick". If I am a carrier, sorry dude, you might die but I doubt I will. The reason "pandemics" usually occur is due to OVER-POPULATION. Once people start figuring out that having millions and millions of little petrie-dishes concentrated tightly enough for a virus to play mutation-hop-scotch in, the better off we will be. We are biological organisms, and as such the same rules that apply to other populations of biological organisms apply to us!!!
Besides we could probably use a good culling or two. Between pandemic and war, I will choose pandemic 7 days a week and twice on Sunday. Pandemics are indiscriminate and take down rich, poor, black, brown, yellow, red, white, gay, straight, Jew, Gentile, Atheist, young and old. Wars tend to take out those fighting them and some collateral damage.,,,never those rich or privileged enough to escape them.
-Oz