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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.'"
About a million people die each year from Malaria. That's a drop in the ocean compared to the net increase in humans. Nothing short of massive cultural shifts in large swathes of the world will halt global population problems.
Vaccines != antibiotics.
A vaccine which could save almost a million lives should be donated to humanity.
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 half of the parasite population survives, won't selection quickly favour the resistant part of the population?
If it were an antibiotic and not a vaccine, you'd be right.
With a vaccine, you're encouraging the child's immune system to combat malaria. If the half that the vaccine doesn't work for die before procreation then overtime the vaccine would become more effective (assuming that why the vaccine works for some and not for others is genetic based).
Is a man who dedicates half his fortune to curing a major cause of death in the third world to establish his good name really any worse than the man who does same for purely altruistic reasons? The money's the same, after all.
It's a damn sight easier to eliminate a disease than to eliminate poverty. If they have more bodies available to work, then the economy will pick up. Baby steps.
Sent from my CR-48
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
The reason they have so many kids is because infant mortality is so high. They have to have six kids just to make sure that one of them survives to adulthood.
We've seen in other countries that as quality of life improves, birth rate drops. This is a solid first step towards improving the quality of life.
Sent from my CR-48
Written by a troll on a computer with a hard drive engineered in Singapore. Fifty years ago, Singapore was a malaria pit. Today it has hospitals which rival anything in the West. And they engineer hard drives used to write crap about people who will be engineers and software designers fifty years from today if we allow free and fair trade to run its course.
Gently reply
If they have more bodies available to work, then the economy will pick up. Baby steps.
Africa already has the highest population growth. A successful economy needs more then that just people.
Exactly there is actually a problem in some "First World Countries" that their population is dropping. Because their lives are not so filled with death, they feel they have the time to wait to have a child when it is the most convent or not at all, and limit their children to 1 or 2.
Of course there is this funny concept that these countries at the same time complain both about their population from birth dropping being a bad thing, and the population influx from immigrants being a bad thing as well.
I guess population growth is only good for these countries if you are white.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
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.
One of the Gates Foundation biggest health initiatives is family planning.
Seriously, they get it. Enough that they are drawing the ire of certain other groups, for what it's worth.
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
Basically, he spends money now on curing human SYMPTOMS, while ignoring the main issue that really needs to worked on: poverty.
You would make a really shitty triage doctor. When a patient is laying on the gurney with a gunshot wound, you don't throw your hands up and say "Well, until I can treat the underlying problem of gang violence that got him here, fuck it." Helping end disease in Africa will mean a major improvement in lives there. Would it be nice to ALSO end poverty? You betcha. But when you have limited resources, you don't START with the hardest and most intractable problems, you start out with the smaller problems that you can actually SOLVE with those limited resources.
Even a Bill Gates, with his vast individual wealth, couldn't even begin to deal with the issue of poverty in Africa. That would take a coalition of dozens (if not hundreds) of governments willing to pool their resources and work together. And even then it would be a HUGE challenge.
What's REALLY sad that people on /. can't look past their mindless hatred of Bill Gates to acknowledge the real good he's doing in Africa. The bizarre thing is that some of these same people are the ones who cried like their daddy had died when Steve Jobs died--a man who lined his own pockets with billions while never doing ANYTHING to help the sick and impoverished. Not one fucking THING have you or your idol done for the poor in Africa, yet all you can do is criticize Bill Gates, one of the few who is actually getting off his ass and doing something to help.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
Very true. It also needs people who can survive until the age when they can begin contributing to society. This vaccine might help with that.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
Africa needs an effective vaccine against babies more than a vaccine against mosquitoes.
The two are related; people have more babies when they are aware that many of their offspring may not survive till adulthood. They will generally have less if the chances that their children will survive are greater.
Donte Alistair Anderson Roberts - hi son!
Karma: Chameleon
When people that insane are against you, there's a good chance you're doing something right.
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Employment rates in Africa are terrible. The problem is not a shortage of workforce.
Actually, it is yourself that would make a shitty triage. You would obviously try to cure a broken leg or a gunshot wound to the arm, while ignoring the fact that the patient is not breathing and has no circulation.
When you solve malaria, you will now cut the death rate. That will put pressure on the local community. LOADS of it. Right now, the reason why Malaria spread so quickly and easily is because mosquitoes carry it from one person to another. They are right next to each other. Once malaria is cured, then another disease will step right up there because more ppl will occupy the same space, but with the same amount of money to solve issues. Actually less overall as well as less per person. Once it is realized by gates that he screwed up, he will not want to solve the next symptom.
The ONLY answer is to solve poverty. You solve poverty by creating new companies, and then have these companies invest into the local area. Those investments clean up the area, while employing ppl. Once you clean up an area, and have enough money to separate ppl, then disease drops.
BTW, I suspect that even the above will be false. I doubt that gates or others like yourself will look at this rationally and logically. For example, America keeps pouring food and other resources into solving Africa and south America's problems. Yet, new ones pop up. The SMART solution is to work these locals and give them the same capabilities that we have: solve problems LOCALLY. By having enough to deal with it. Brazil is a nation that is building itself up this way. And they ARE addressing issues.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
AFAIK humans are not primary carriers of malaria sporozoites. So elliminating humans from malaria life cycle is not enough to trigger rapid evolution in favor of other malaria strains.
You're an idiot. Which is better? A foundation that invests in things that make money, and can therefore give the profits of those investments to charities for an extended period of time (forever, if the investments are good), or a foundation that gives away all it's worth at once?
It's quite amazing how many leaps of logic you take to assert that fighting a disease is a bad thing.
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.
Quite right. It needs healthy people.
Python coder | PyQt Applications | Writer
Actually, it is yourself that would make a shitty triage. You would obviously try to cure a broken leg or a gunshot wound to the arm, while ignoring the fact that the patient is not breathing and has no circulation.
This is my first and only comment on this whole article, but... your analogy is bullsh*t.
Poverty is a complex, multicausal phenomena, as any sociologist, statistician, or demographer can tell you, and should be analyzed with a systemic perspective. Malaria, as any other health issue, is an indicator of poverty, but also a cause of poverty. That's why we build indicators like "Disability-adjusted life year", "Year-Life Loss", and "Healthy Life Years": they are useful as health indicators and as proxies for economic potential. A purely economic solution for economic problems, which is what you emphasize (massive investment in startups) would have limited impact.
In layman's terms: malaria is expensive, both in social and economic terms. Getting rid of malaria would help a lot in reducing poverty, just by allowing that money to be invested elsewhere.
I rarely respond to comments. Also, don't ask for clarifications: a brain and Google are faster, believe me!
When you solve malaria, you will now cut the death rate. That will put pressure on the local community. LOADS of it. Right now, the reason why Malaria spread so quickly and easily is because mosquitoes carry it from one person to another. They are right next to each other. Once malaria is cured, then another disease will step right up there because more ppl will occupy the same space, but with the same amount of money to solve issues. Actually less overall as well as less per person. Once it is realized by gates that he screwed up, he will not want to solve the next symptom..
I don't think you understand the drain on resources that malaria is. While many do die from malaria, most do not. Most are just chronically sick, and unless you are going to advocate shooting them in the head, these current chronically sick people are a much bigger drain on the entire social structure than the increased costs associated with fewer deaths due to malaria.
Have a read:
http://www.rbm.who.int/cmc_upload/0/000/015/363/RBMInfosheet_10.htm
"Annual economic growth in countries with high malaria transmission has historically been lower than in countries without malaria. Economists believe that malaria is responsible for a ‘growth penalty' of up to 1.3% per year in some African countries. When compounded over the years, this penalty leads to substantial differences in GDP between countries with and without malaria and severely restrains the economic growth of the entire region.
The direct costs of malaria include a combination of personal and public expenditures on both prevention and treatment of the disease. Personal expenditures include individual or family spending on insecticide treated mosquito nets (ITNs), doctors' fees, anti-malarial drugs, transport to health facilities, support for the patient and sometimes an accompanying family member during hospital stays. Public expenditures include spending by government on maintaining health facilities and health care infrastructure, publicly managed vector control, education and research. In some countries with a heavy malaria burden, the disease may account for as much as 40% of public health expenditure, 30-50% of inpatient admissions, and up to 50% of outpatient visits.
The indirect costs of malaria include lost productivity or income associated with illness or death. This might be expressed as the cost of lost workdays or absenteeism from formal employment and the value of unpaid work done in the home by both men and women. In the case of death, the indirect cost includes the discounted future lifetime earnings of those who die.
Malaria has a greater impact on Africa's human resources than simple lost earnings. Although difficult to express in dollar terms, another indirect cost of malaria is the human pain and suffering caused by the disease. Malaria also hampers children's schooling and social development through both absenteeism and permanent neurological and other damage associated with severe episodes of the disease.
The simple presence of malaria in a community or country also hampers individual and national prosperity due to its influence on social and economic decisions. The risk of contracting malaria in endemic areas can deter investment, both internal and external and affect individual and household decision making in many ways that have a negative impact on economic productivity and growth."
Malaria has been effective at developing resistance to treatments over the years and could also be effective at evading the vaccine.
I don't read your sig. Why are you reading mine?
No, malaria is the issue. Most people with malaria do not die and they cause a drain on the resources- both in needing help and in not being able to work to help their families and communities. Once you knock malaria down to something much smaller and more manageable the people and the communities can be in a better position to accept economic help to build their communities up and knock poverty down to something manageable.
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.