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Possible Treatment For Ebola
RedEaredSlider writes "Researchers at the US Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases have found a class of drugs that could provide treatment for Ebola and Marburg hemorrhagic fever. The new drugs are called 'antisense' compounds, and they allow the immune system to attack the viruses before they can do enough damage to kill the patient. Travis Warren, research scientist at USAMRIID, said while the work is still preliminary -— the drugs have been tested only on primates — the results are so far promising. In the case of Ebola, five of eight monkeys infected with the virus lived, and with Marburg, all survived. The drugs were developed as part of a program to deal with possible bioterrorist threats, in partnership with AVI Biopharma."
Outbreak rentals just dropped to zero
... but how on earth will the people affected by these diseases get these drugs in time once they are sick? We can't even get decent distribution of (somewhat) affordable malaria drugs to the parts of the world that need it. This will be just one more cure for a disease that is defeated by poverty and corruption in parts of the world that can't afford any more of either.
I guess they just pulled some E-1101 out of the freezer.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
Now what am I supposed to wish upon my enemies?
This, right here, is an example of the correct priorities for anti-terrorism funding.
It's much harder to cure someone who has been blown up by a bomb, I realize that. But, things like this, and harmonizing emergency radio systems, and subsidized first aid, and other sensible measures that should be done anyway but aren't only as a pure factor of economic reality, they are the first things that should be in line for funding that truly saves lives and makes people safer; and they work equally well for terrorism, natural disasters, negligent officials, and plain bad luck (unlike most anti-terrorism programs which look impressive but are essentially military in nature).
Bruce Schneier has said the same thing for about as long. But still you've got sheriffs buying robotic sentry cannons and military research into autonomous robotic assassins. It's only lucky that, like the space program, the benefits do eventually trickle down to private industry and then to the general population. But it could still be better spent in the first place, for more immediate effect.
So, what are the chances of this actually being supplied to "unimportant" people (ie. foreign countries), for fear of bioterrorist chemists engineering resistant strains?
IMO first aid should be a required class beginning in about the 6th grade, right along with household and small business microeconomics.
"said while the work is still preliminary - the drugs have been tested only on primates"
Last time I checked, Humans are primates...
"antisense compounds" tested on primates. Too easy.
Ebola isn't that bad, from a bioweapons POV. Yeah, it's deadly... but it sucks at infections in the early stages (the first week or two?) I guess it works for "bioterrorism" though, given the high scary rate.
There's a lot nastier stuff out there, which spreads faster and easier... while still being pretty high on the mortality rate.
Couldn't agree more. In sixth grade I took a 4-part Red Cross first aid course as an after school program.would have been 1977-1978 or so. Planning to find something similar for my daughter next summer weather it's through school or not.
Researchers at the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases have found a class of drugs that could provide treatment for Ebola and Marburg hemorrhagic fever.
Is this going to be another example of government spending hundreds of Hundreds Millions of Taxpayer Dollars developing a drug only to give it away exclusively to a pharmaceutical business who can then make billions of dollars on the drug if there's an outbreak? That is exactly what the National Cancer Institute or NCI, part of the US federal government's National Institutes of Health did. The NCI spent more than $484 Million [pdf] developing and testing Taxol as a breast cancer drug. The NCI then gave Bristol-Myers Squibb, BMS, exclusive rights to its use. What did BMS pay for those rights? BMS paid $35 Million in royalty payments through 2002. BMS had those exclusive rights for more than 10 years. Guess how much BMS sold Taxol for... In 2000 BMS sold $1.6 Billion, earning between $4 and $5 Million a day.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
For me, the fact that a treatment that gives a 60% survival rate is considered a major breakthrough only underscores the fact that Ebola is terrifyingly dangerous, and it's just a few mutations from being real trouble.
If you enjoy being frightened, give Richard Preston's The Hot Zone a read.
Am I part of the core demographic for Swedish Fish?
...by 5 out of 8 monkeys.
Ebola only occurs in one part of the world unlike malaria
Except that's not true. Here's a table of known cases of ebola outbreaks published by the CDC. In 1976 there was one in England. In the US the first one was in 1989. Other countries with outbreaks not in Africa is Italy and the Philippines.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
Military is where the money is, where the magically-cuts-through-red-tape national-security rationale is most available.
Seems like reasonable means to a good end though, in cases like this.
I listen to both RIAA and non-RIAA stuff if I like the music, tangential business/politics nonwithstanding.
IMO first aid should be a required class beginning in about the 6th grade, right along with household and small business microeconomics.
You might be interested in Ariel Community Academy, a school in Chicagoland. In it students, K to 8th grade, are taught to invest. Students "in grades K-8 hone math skills and learn practical, lifelong lessons in finance by managing a $20,000 class stock portfolio."
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
There once was a man from Angola
Who contracted a case of Ebola.
He puked out his guts,
Not excluding his nuts,
Then died as he cried out, "Ricola!"
This was all discovered in the nick of time by a disillusioned older scientist and his female research partner with whom he shares a past with, despite the interference of a gung ho General who was in favour of the scorched earth policy?
Professor: As a man enters his 18th decade, he thinks back on the mistakes he made in life.
Amy: Like the heaps of the dead monkeys?
Professor: Science can not move forward without heaps!
I do believe that Reston was proven to be airborne by USAMRIID.
Somebody's playing with with the wikipedia ebola Reston page. The page now says that the site of the oubreak was demolished, but has since been rebuilt as a Kindercare. I really seriously doubt this is possible. I would really need video leading from the street signs to the building for this one.
It says a lot that this is an upbeat article about Ebola that delivers the wonderful news: of the immunized monkeys, only three of eight died! This is one nastly little bug. The fatality rate of Ebola Zaire in humans is up to 90%, with an average fatality rate in humans of 83% over 27 years of experience. Nine of ten dead little humans, in three weeks from infection on the outside or two days if you're lucky. Generally speaking that surviving tenth human isn't well off either as the course of infection normally involves a great deal of organ damage. In the case of a group of people who are all infected the likelihood that the one human of ten would receive the care necessary to survive the fever is remote.
If just one person with an Ebola that's as fatal as Ebola Zaire and also airborne gets on a commercial jet flight anywhere in the world - ever - it's pretty much game over for civilization in about a month. 200 passengers and 14 crew infected, connecting flights, layovers, every person in every boarding area for each flight, then home to the family and not feeling well. I don't feel well but I've must-do's so off to work the next day on the train (sniff, sneeze) but I'm not feeling well (hack, cough) so early home, stopping at Safeway for some Theraflu, then Wal-Mart because Safeway was out. Oh, my that's a scary summer flu story on the news but I'm too tired to listen (hack, cough blood, seize, hemmorage out of every orifice, die). By the time the alert is raised the bus drivers on some route near one of those places have outplaced the virus so thoroughly that it's too late to do anything about it. Your only hope is that you're in Madagascar and they have Shut Down Everything. The only good news about Ebola Zaire is that it kills so many hosts so quickly that outbreaks tend to be self-limiting. In several cases so many died so quickly that the disease had no time to spread.
The most recent new variant of Ebola virus, Bundibugyo is named after a district in Uganda where it was discovered in 2007. This one is less virulent, only killing 34% of the people infected or probably infected. It scares me more than a little that new variants are being discovered this frequently.
Not that I want anybody to panic or anything...
Help stamp out iliturcy.
Why do you keep fighting Mother Nature, dude?
In Kansas they'd learn faith healing and Von Mises economics :P
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
Antisense? Makes no sense at all...
Fully agreed! First aid and some basic survival skills would do more to alleviate the effects of disasters, both natural and man made, than all of the expensive and dubious measures DHS wants to take.
I don't expect people to know how to perform bypass surgery with a push pin and a bottle of whiskey or be able to skin a bear with their teeth, but knowing how to handle sprains, dislocations, broken bones, burns, lacerations etc including improvised antiseptic measures like honey dressings would go a very long way, especially if you add ways to distill water.
It might also help the healthcare crisis if people learn a few common things that do not warrant a trip to the E.R. Apparently it's not as obvious as I always thought it was.
1946 Isaac Newton Square facility scheduled for demolition
Daycare center at 1946 Isaac Newton Square .
It's an amusing coincidence, nothing more. On the other hand, it could provide fodder for a horror film.
"antisense compounds" tested on primates. Too easy.
These days a medical card and the sniffles land many people in the ER, because nobody with access to public pursestrings seems to understand the benefits of prevention.
but what was the mortality in the control group?
... of the clinical trials.
CUR ALLOC 20195.....5804M
As far as I remember this is how AZT works (well there are two way, but reverse-transcriptase inhibition is similar as spoken here), and Oseltamivir block the enzyme used to go out of the cell for the influenza virus. In effect they both reduce the viral load to give a respite to the immune system (well in the case of HIV to prolongate the time before a full blown AIDS happen). I don#t see it as a NEW category of anti viral, but rather as the expansion of an existing category to new virus.
Ebola Zaire is way too agressive for a total wipeout. Within 1 week of first infection everything would be shut down and within 2-3 weeks more it would have killed off itself (a long with millions of people).
The perfect killer is something like the spanish flu, high incubation time, looks like normal flu (as you suggested, people go to work/supermarket) and then drop dead.
Yes, that and history and logic.
But who is interested in teaching those subjects to the plebes who are only useful as cannon fodder and as part of a crowd gathering to get some talking head talking points around without giving the content too much thought?
You can't handle the truth.
I did something similar 20 years ago. Thank the FSM that I've never needed to use my first aid skills.
I enquired recently to local childrens first aid club via their online contact form on behalf of my daughter. She loves playing with bandages (see internet photos of me wrapped up like a mummy). The reply I received was:
WHO'S ASKING? WHY DO YOU WANT TO KNOW WHERE AND WHEN THE CLUB IS HELD? ARE YOU SOME SORT OF FUCKING PEADO SCUMBAG?
OK, I made the last sentence up but it was the tone of the reply. What has the world become?
This post contains benzene, nitrosamines, formaldehyde and hydrogen cyanide.
Force Protection. This is meant to keep the troopers in foreign lands healthy. Civilians need not bother to apply.
Frame it as a defense issue.
Having a cure means we can use it as a weapon against others who do not have a cure.
It's only bioterrorism if the bad guys do it otherwise it is biowarfare, isn't it?
US.
Those taxes do not cover the NCI's expenses. So in effect the US government gave BMS a subsidy.
It could be sold at $35 million as a down payment, with the agency expecting to recoup the investment only if the drug turns out to be viable to bring to market.
As I already stated, and you replied to that post, the $35 Million was the royalty payment, stretching over years and years. If it had only been the royalties for the year 2000, BMS would have paid less than 3.5% in royalties. 35 divided by more than 1000. But it's not just 1 year. And that would have been just profits not the revenue on the drug. BMS had the rights to Taxol for more than 10 years.
Figure out what they paid in taxes due to sales of that drug, then your argument is more convincing. They could have easily paid $400 million (or more) in taxes,
It is impossible to calculate the taxes BMS paid on Taxol. Income taxes are not done that way, they are done by subtracting all expenses from all revenue. That includes marketing and research and development on all other drugs. And guess what?... Drug companies spend more on marketing than on R&D. And not all drug research leads to anything that can be sold. So $100 million spent on research for a dud drug is tax deductible.
The rest of your post, not much though, is just as much rubbish and is addressed above.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
Sure it is, it's corporate socialism, commonly called corporate welfare but also called fascism. El Duce, Benito Amilcare Andrea Mussolini, said "Fascism should more properly be called corporatism, since it is the merger of state and corporate power".
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
At what point was the drug bought,
!988-89 after all the testing needed was done.
how much did BMS pay for other compounds that didn't work out?
That does not matter. It was BMS's choice to pay for those, and in return BMS wrote off those costs. They were tax deductible.
These kinds of royalty payments aren't unusual if a compound is bought before it has gone through any kinds of trials.
The NCI did all the research, paying with taxpayer dollars, to get FDA approval as a drug. That is after all those trials was done, with taxpayer money.
The reason that compounds are cheap before trials is that most of them turn out not to work. Google for headlines about pharmaceutical companies buying the rights to drugs from small companies. Note how much is being paid for them. Note how many of them there are. Now, Google for drug approvals and see how many of those compounds that were licensed 8 years ago are on the market.
And again all those costs are income tax deductible. Besides drug companies spend more on marketing than on R&D. Those expenses are tax deductible too.
You repeat about companies buying pre-trial candidates however all trials for Taxol were already done by the NCI.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
I agree with most of what you say, but I take issue with the above. The NIH is not all bad. Because of the NIH we have good drugs like Taxol. I've written about this before, saying stuff like all the data should have been open sourced, so any company could manufacture Taxol. Or license Taxol to all companies who wanted to make and sell it. With a 5% royalty on it and sells of a billion dollars a year for 4 year would have generated $200 Million. In 10 $500 Million, enough to pay for the research.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
No, You missed my point. That I do not want this Ebola treatment, to like Taxol, to become more corporate welfare, a hand out of taxpayer money.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?