Slashdot Mirror
New Vaccine Halves Malaria Risk
An anonymous reader writes "According to a report in Reuters, scientists are celebrating the end of a clinical trial which found a malaria vaccine reduces infection risk by half in children. From the article: 'While scientists say it is no "silver bullet" and will not end the mosquito-borne infection on its own, it is being hailed as a crucial weapon in the fight against malaria and one that could speed the path to eventual worldwide eradication. Malaria is caused by a parasite carried in the saliva of mosquitoes. It kills more than 780,000 people per year, most of them babies or very young children in Africa. Cohen's vaccine goes to work at the point when the parasite enters the human bloodstream after a mosquito bite. By stimulating an immune response, it can prevent the parasite from maturing and multiplying in the liver. ... Cohen said that if all goes to plan, RTS,S could be licensed and rolled out by 2015.'"
Isn't the world dangerously overpopulated?
Hopefully the reduction in infant mortality will encourage parents to just have a couple kids.
...so will this vaccine and others become useless in a few years, as malaria seems to have become resistant to other treatments over the years?
Donte Alistair Anderson Roberts - hi son!
Karma: Chameleon
If half of the parasite population survives, won't selection quickly favour the resistant part of the population?
Let nature run its course. The turd world is already overpopulated. They can't even feed themselves. Malaria is nature's way of keeping things in check.
Is it just bronze then?
So sad. Malaria is a major killer of ppl. That is a fact. HOWEVER, it occurs where poverty strikes. So, gates, copying Carnigie and Rockfellers to end up with a decent name, is working on this. Basically, he spends money now on curing human SYMPTOMS, while ignoring the main issue that really needs to worked on: poverty. For example, gates, like China, continues to pull money out of the west, and then talks about giving it away without making it productive. Yet, the man has the ability to bring the world out of recession by using that money to fund a large number of innovative start-ups around the world. Note that I said innovative, not necessarily profitable. These start-ups that help create wealth for MANY, that would then invest into their own nations conditions if taught to do so, as part of winning that money. Such a waste of money.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
A vaccine which could save almost a million lives should be donated to humanity.
Is it Sickle Cell?
Africa needs an effective vaccine against babies more than a vaccine against mosquitoes.
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
Malaria is incredibly resistant to both the immune system and treatment. This is an impressive result.
And as for all of the "Won't this lead to overpopulation" comments, I think it will do the opposite. Birth rates in malaria areas are very high in part because of the poverty and lack of education in those areas. Those areas are poor in part because of malaria and its ability to ravage families. There may be an initial population spike from this vaccine, but time and again we have seen that increasing the standard of living lowers the birth rate. The best way to control overpopulation is to reduce poverty and educate people (specifically women). This vaccine goes a long way to doing both.
Great warrior...hrmph! Wars not make one great.
If we vaccinate humans, we can fight a disease with immunity. But we won't vaccinate cattle. Rather than fight the diseases, we gladly slaughter our entire fauna, but won't fight the diseases.
Nae king! Nae laird! Nae yurrupiean pressedent! We willna be fooled again!
I was going to say, aren't Africans immune to malaria? But wiki sayeth: apparently only a third of sub-Saharan Africans are immune to malaria.
I'm not a lawyer, but I play one on the Internet. Blog
Malaria kills about 2414 people per day. But the number one cause of death for women in places like Lagos and Cairo is blood loss during childbirth. The West's invention of a malaria vaccine will be hugely important. But in the meantime, during Cohen's 24 years of working on the vaccines, the west has criminalized the sale of surplus property from USA hospitals to emerging markets. Shredding our own surplus property causes our health care costs to go up, and forces emerging markets to buy brand new equipment they cannot afford, which takes money they need - to buy malaria vaccines. They need computers and need basic things like hospital beds. Here is a link to a story which ran yesterday, that "medical waste" was illegally shipped to Brazil. Had the story translated... it was uniforms and beds. The message is that Western hospitals cannot share surplus property - computers, blood gas analyzers, or beds - with emerging markets. By coincidence, 24 years ago I lived in Africa as a Peace Corps volunteer, and had to dig a grave for a colleagues two year old son. I kept links there and have been trying to help the hospitals during the same 24 years. During the past 24 years, while Cohen perfected his vaccine, donations of surplus property to hospitals in Africa has been criminalized. Sometimes simple things, like donating hospital beds, can save as many people over the period as a new vaccine. The system is sick. http://retroworks.blogspot.com/2011/10/headline-medical-waste-exported-to.html
Gently reply
Unlikely, but, would it be possible to design it in a way that it works in mosquitoes as well? (So, that the mosquito might possibly get the antibodies as well?)
If oral vaccination works for polio in humans - would it be possible to design an oral vaccination that might help eradicate the Malaria pathogens in mosquitoes? (i.e. can we 'cure' the mosquitoes before they bite us again?)
Why 2015? What's taking 3 years?
Get over yourself. World population needs some trimming.
Take the safety labels off everything, I say.
I was under the impression that most African countries that have the highest incidences of death by Malaria roughly correlate to the countries that also have death via famine. If that is the case, where's the food coming from for the extra 390,000 people that won't be dying every year? Will they just end up dying of starvation instead?
Some times the pathetic attitude of people here really disappoints me.
Even with his billions he can't lift the world out of recession, he has the same hamstring everyone does, government. How do you propose solving government induced poverty? Spend his billions trying to overthrow petty tyrants? How do you expect him to sort out which start ups have a possibility at success let alone are not scams or will simply succumb to the corrupt governments of the countries they are in?
You seem to ascribe a lot of guilt to one man who actually is trying do good. Did you ever consider that he has evaluated his options and is taking the choice that provides the best bang for the buck?
What are you doing, please don't say that since you don't have X amount of money you cannot help.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
If this really works and is widely deployed then governments need to figure out how to clothe, feed, educate, and find jobs for the the increased population. If not the increase of disadvantaged persons will probably breed civil unrest and war.
Nate
True but vaccines train the body to recognise markers so one presumes that a strain of malaria may arise without the markers that are recognised.
Donte Alistair Anderson Roberts - hi son!
Karma: Chameleon
Pliny knew you could cure malaria by drinking tea made from olive leaf. It is not an accident that 75% of all medications are derived or synthesized from natural sources.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Do some research on how they invest their funds; the corporations where they hold their monies; the entire charity is a tax shelter, a self-serving monument to one man's ego. If this drug were truly revolutionary, it would be released for free and made available to the generic drug makers.
That is sickening. So someone has created and will be "licensing" a vaccine to very poor third world countries for something that can be eradicated with proper nutrition and hygiene. Completely and totally unethical. The stupidity and greed needs to stop. Ranks right up there with Paul Offit's diarrhea vaccine.
The Gates foundation has more funds invested in such corporations as Exxon than they they do in the actual charities they purport to be running. The whole thing is a tax shelter/scam.
A little self-discipline goes a long way.
I was under the impression that most African countries that have the highest incidences of death by Malaria roughly correlate to the countries that also have death via famine. If that is the case, where's the food coming from for the extra 390,000 people that won't be dying every year? Will they just end up dying of starvation instead?
If a woman gives birth to a child that dies, that's a big waste of human energy. Having to give birth just three times (in a lifetime) instead of five (as an example) means more time and energy for work and earning money. Plus think of the grief of the loss of those children, that has a big impact on your life, another waste of energy, even if it's quite common in Africa.
I was under the impression that most African countries that have the highest incidences of death by Malaria roughly correlate to the countries that also have death via famine. If that is the case, where's the food coming from for the extra 390,000 people that won't be dying every year? Will they just end up dying of starvation instead?
If a woman gives birth to a child that dies, that's a big waste of human energy. Having to give birth just three times (in a lifetime) instead of five (as an example) means more time and energy for work and earning money. Plus think of the grief of the loss of those children, that has a big impact on your life, another waste of energy, even if it's quite common in Africa.
Plus, there are not more children born, probably only less children die. There might be a spike in the first few years however.
Vacines give you #$%#$% terrets! Syn#$%$#drom!
dont take them, im not even #$%# playin.
...more cases of autism.
Families maynot have as many kids then. Then they put more resources behind each existing kid who grows up with a better financial outlook. this has happened time and again as developing countries have transitioned into devleoped countries.
Knocking out the weaklings and leaving the all-stars; how is this just not a fast-track to even more resistant malaria strains? This could end up as yet another unintended consequence wreaked on Africa by (this time) well-meaning Westerners.
There are couple of issues with the paper. 1. effect on young patients have not been analyzed. 2. The participants received exceptional medical care and therefore there was no difference between control and experimental group in terms of mortality. 3. Protection is partial unlike other vaccines. 4. It is not clear why did they publish the partial results. The associated editorial in the issue by Nicholas J. White is thought-provoking.
In many cases, they have large families just to be sure that some of them will live long enough to grow up. If you can prevent childhood death, then the need to produce replacement children goes down.