Data Sharing Aids the Fight Against Malaria

ananyo writes "Two years ago, GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) announced that it would release details of about 13,500 molecules that had already been shown to inhibit the malaria-causing Plasmodium falciparum parasite to some degree. The molecular structures were published in May 2010, along with similar data from Novartis, based in Basel, Switzerland, and the St Jude Children's Research Hospital in Memphis, Tennessee. Researchers were encouraged to test the combined library of more than 20,000 compounds to pinpoint potential drugs, and then find out how they work so that the molecules could be tweaked to enhance their activity. Such 'open innovation' efforts have since been launched, including an effort unveiled last month which will see 11 companies sharing their intellectual property. But are such efforts working? The answer, judging by the GSK effort, seems to be a cautious 'yes.'"

Comments

Sharing IP

[goodgod43]

Actually makes the world a better place. Go figure.

Intellectual Property

[Taco Cowboy]

I, as the sole owner of 3 patents, as well as share ownership of several more patents, have no problem with the concept of IP

However, I do have problem with the way IP has been used to hinder the progress of the innovation and the restriction of information flow, which damages the society as a whole

valuable

[deodiaus2]

Well, the reason why companies wish to protect intellectual property is to keep it to themselves. The fact that others were able to use it means that it has a value.
Companies patent and otherwise protect things on which they can profit.
In the BBC version of "A Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy," a bunch of philosopher were given the idea that they should patent ways of thinking and ideas. Many years prior to seeing that segment, I asked "Why can't physisists and mathematicians patent their ideas much like companies patent the business process. My thought were that a society as a whole does not want individuals to attain that sort of monopoly. However, companies want to do that. Consider the drug research field. Scientists working with public grants find promising drugs to cure or relieve a disease. Shouldn't they get more than just naming rights to the drugs? Pharma wants to take over the process and perform clinical testing. At that point, Pharma has a competitive advantage of scale and money required to perform clinical testing. They don't want to be be spending their cash doing stuff that can be diverted to other segments of society!

We know how to eradicate malaria...

[hsthompson69]

...it's called DDT. Contrary to the lies of Rachel Carlson's "Silent Spring", DDT is safe, effective, and non-toxic to humans and animals.

http://www.wnd.com/2005/06/31095/

Re:We know how to eradicate malaria...

[hsthompson69]

And the one excepted and legal use of DDT now is to kill malaria carrying mosquitoes,

I refer you, dear sir, to the wonderful documentary "Not evil, just wrong." - http://www.noteviljustwrong.com/General/malaria-politics-and-ddt.html

"In 2006, after 25 years and 50 million preventable deaths, the World Health Organization reversed course and endorsed widespread use of the insecticide DDT to combat malaria. So much for that. Earlier this month, the U.N. agency quietly reverted to promoting less effective methods for attacking the disease. The result is a victory for politics over public health, and millions of the world's poor will suffer as a result.

The U.N. now plans to advocate for drastic reductions in the use of DDT, which kills or repels the mosquitoes that spread malaria. The aim "is to achieve a 30% cut in the application of DDT worldwide by 2014 and its total phase-out by the early 2020s, if not sooner," said WHO and the U.N. Environment Program in a statement on May 6.
Citing a five-year pilot program that reduced malaria cases in Mexico and South America by distributing antimalaria chloroquine pills to uninfected people, U.N. officials are ready to push for a "zero DDT world." Sounds nice, except for the facts. It's true that chloroquine has proven effective when used therapeutically, as in Brazil. But it's also true that scientists have questioned the safety of the drug as an oral prophylactic because it is toxic and has been shown to cause heart problems.

Most malarial deaths occur in sub-Saharan Africa, where chloroquine once worked but started failing in the 1970s as the parasite developed resistance. Even if the drugs were still effective in Africa, they're expensive and thus impractical for one of the world's poorest regions. That's not an argument against chloroquine, bed nets or other interventions. But it is an argument for continuing to make DDT spraying a key part of any effort to eradicate malaria, which kills about a million people -- mainly children -- every year. Nearly all of this spraying is done indoors, by the way, to block mosquito nesting at night. It is not sprayed willy-nilly in jungle habitat.

WHO is not saying that DDT shouldn't be used. But by revoking its stamp of approval, it sends a clear message to donors and afflicted countries that it prefers more politically correct interventions, even if they don't work as well. In recent years, countries like Uganda, Tanzania and Zambia have started or expanded DDT spraying, often with the help of outside aid groups. But these governments are also eager to remain in the U.N.'s good graces, and donors typically are less interested in funding interventions that WHO discourages. "

Sadly, WHO's about-face has nothing to do with science or health and everything to do with bending to the will of well-placed environmentalists," says Roger Bate of Africa Fighting Malaria. "Bed net manufacturers and sellers of less-effective insecticides also don't benefit when DDT is employed and therefore oppose it, often behind the scenes."

It's no coincidence that WHO officials were joined by the head of the U.N. Environment Program to announce the new policy. There's no evidence that spraying DDT in the amounts necessary to kill dangerous mosquitoes imperils crops, animals or human health. But that didn't stop green groups like the Pesticide Action Network from urging the public to celebrate World Malaria Day last month by telling "the U.S. to protect children and families from malaria without spraying pesticides like DDT inside people's homes."

"We must take a position based on the science and the data," said WHO's malaria chief, Arata Kochi, in 2006. "One of the best tools we have against malaria is indoor residual spraying. Of the dozen or so insecticides WHO has approved as safe for house spraying, the most effective is DDT." Mr. Kochi was right then, even if other WHO officials are now bowing to pressure to pretend otherwise."

Re:MOD PARENT UP

[hsthompson69]

Your wikipedia cite notes that DDT was an effective deterrent to even resistant mosquitos:

"DDT can still be effective against resistant mosquitoes, and the avoidance of DDT-sprayed walls by mosquitoes is an additional benefit of the chemical. For example, a 2007 study reported that resistant mosquitoes avoided treated huts"

Rachel Carson's lies about DDT in "Silent Spring" were enough to scare the world away from a safe, effective chemical, regardless of any specific policy recommendations she did or didn't make.

Re:MOD PARENT UP

[hsthompson69]

Second, if by "humans and animals" you actually mean "mammals and birds,"

Yes, I do.

go back and read the Wikipedia page

Which I did.

If that doesn't convince you, fine, follow the references.

Which I did.

DDT cannot by any stretch of the imagination be called non-toxic.

It absolutely can. The purported effects on mammals and birds espoused by Rachel Carson in "Silent Spring" were lies. DDT is safe for mammals, including humans, and safe for birds.

http://junkscience.com/1999/07/26/100-things-you-should-know-about-ddt/

"10.Rachel Carson sounded the initial alarm against DDT, but represented the science of DDT erroneously in her 1962 book Silent Spring. Carson wrote “Dr. DeWitt’s now classic experiments [on quail and pheasants] have now established the fact that exposure to DDT, even when doing no observable harm to the birds, may seriously affect reproduction. Quail into whose diet DDT was introduced throughout the breeding season survived and even produced normal numbers of fertile eggs. But few of the eggs hatched.” DeWitt’s 1956 article (in Journal of Agriculture and Food Chemistry) actually yielded a very different conclusion. Quail were fed 200 parts per million of DDT in all of their food throughout the breeding season. DeWitt reports that 80% of their eggs hatched, compared with the “control”" birds which hatched 83.9% of their eggs. Carson also omitted mention of DeWitt’s report that “control” pheasants hatched only 57 percent of their eggs, while those that were fed high levels of DDT in all of their food for an entire year hatched more than 80% of their eggs."

Re:MOD PARENT UP

[Daniel Dvorkin]

So it hasn't occurred to you that maybe our understanding of the biology of DDT might have advanced just a little in the last fifty-plus years? You seem to have this weird obsession with a book published in 1962, and the only credible source you've cited so far is six years older than that! How about you read some more recent sources, and if you have arguments with their observations or analysis, let us know. And by "sources," I mean scientific publications, not echo-chamber blogs. Here's a place to start.

GlaxoSmithKline - Tropical Infectious Diseases

[Guppy]

I used to work for GlaxoSmithKline.

While Slashdot likes to rag on Big Pharma, GSK really doesn't get enough credit for it's charitable work, like their Lymphatic filariasis eradication campaign. They are the last of the major pharma companies that still has a tropical infectious disease division; it doesn't make any money, yet they've continued to operate it all these years, since the days of the British colonial period.