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Malaria Vaccine, Via Mosquito
CodeShark writes "The AP is reporting that mosquitoes have been used for the first time to deliver anti-malarial vaccine through their bites. According to this article the results were crystal clear: 100% of the vaccinated group acquired immunity, everyone in the non-vaccinated control group did not. Those in the control group and developed malaria when exposed to the parasites later, the vaccinated group did not. Malaria kills nearly a million people per year, mostly children."
Am I the only person reminded of the debate over whether it was OK to exploit holes in a botnet to disinfect other people's computers without their permission/knowledge?
# cat
Damn, my RAM is full of llamas.
how in holy hell did they get that past the human subjects review board? Athlete's foot and common cold is one thing, intentionally infecting your control group with malaria is something else altogether.
The "vaccine" is the parasite itself... oh just RTFA.
Damn. Informed consent to malaria infection.
It isn't a vaccine. It's just taking drugs that stop you actually developing malaria, then getting bitten. Regular unmodified malaria parasite is the "vaccine".
# cat
Damn, my RAM is full of llamas.
Next up, new AIDS vaccine is delivered by sluts.
The summary text is completely misleading vs. the article text. The mosquitoes don't "deliver" a vaccine. A combination technique is used, involving an existing anti-malarial drug and repeated exposure to the parasites via mosquitoes, to cause natural immunity to develop, essentially controlling a known path to malaria immunity. The article indicates this approach isn't usable on a practical scale, yet is important because:
"This is not a vaccine" as in a commercial product, but a way to show how whole parasites can be used like a vaccine to protect against disease, said one of the Dutch researchers, Dr. Robert Sauerwein.
The article does mentions separate work to commercialize a related approach involving weakened malaria parasites.
I read it, and it is a vaccine.
From Wikipedia, bold by me.
A vaccine is a biological preparation that improves immunity to a particular disease. A vaccine typically contains a small amount of an agent that resembles a microorganism. The agent stimulates the body's immune system to recognize the agent as foreign, destroy it, and "remember" it, so that the immune system can more easily recognize and destroy any of these microorganisms that it later encounters.
from tjer article:
"This is not a vaccine" as in a commercial product"
It is not produced like a vaccines are ready for commercial use. In fact it may never be anything but a 'study aid' to learn more about getting a commercially available product.
"The concept already is in commercial development. A company in Rockville, Md. â" Sanaria Inc. â" is testing a vaccine using whole parasites that have been irradiated to weaken them, hopefully keeping them in an immature stage in the liver to generate immunity but not cause illness."
so, yes this concept is being used as a vaccine, just not for malaria.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
OK, UNDERSTAND the fine article.
The only place where mosquitoes are involved here is that they're exposing the volunteers to mosquitoes to infect them with parasites that are weakened (in their body) through quinine. That part, that is, using mosquitoes to infect the people with parasites, is the part that's not commercially viable... the company in Rockville is using externally weakened parasites... weakened OUTSIDE the body by radiation... no mosquitoes involved.
I grew up in Central African Republic and have had malaria once, and also had dozens of relapses. Malaria stays in your blood and you are at risk for a relapse even after you have recovered with or without medicine. Go server in the US military and contract Malaria while you are overseas on assignment and you will get an extra 600 check each month because it is considered a permanent disability.
You can get a mutation in the gene for CCR5 which codes for a protein on the outside of the immune cells that HIV sticks to so it can enter and replicate and kill them which eventually leads to aids, actually like 10% of people descended from Europeans have this mutation, the further north you go the more common it gets if I remember correctly. It supposedly got passed on by the people who survived the bubonic plague and became more prevalent since people who didnt have that allele died off.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CCR5#CCR5-.CE.9432
Slashdot editors don't like their work, apparently.
These are better articles:
Mosquitoes against malaria?. Quote: 'In what AP describe as a "daring experiment" with "astounding" results, researchers found that ten people subjected to mosquito bites three times over three months whilst taking the drug chloroquine gained apparent immunity against malarial mosquito bites a month later.'
Effective Vaccine For Malaria Possible, Study Shows. Quote: "This unique method of immunization allowed the human immune system to direct its response to eliminating the P. falciparum parasite at the earlier, liver stage of its life cycle. (Chloroquine kills the parasite at the later blood stage.)"
How the hell did that post get to +4? Must be heartless mod night on /.
Did you know that Africa could feed itself, and half the world if they simply stopped fighting. Went to modern farming techniques and stopped fighting? That Zimbabwe was once the breadbasket of Africa and fed nearly the entire sub-content before Mugabe came to power. I for one welcome the eradication of diseases that are terrible and crippling.
Perhaps we should just stop all immunizations world wide, and let people drop dead. Well that's fine with me, I'm vaccinated against everything I can be. But tell that to some 4 year old kid who will never walk and live in an iron lung because mommy and daddy had a conscience attack, and refused to give her a polio vaccination.
Om, nomnomnom...