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Malaria Vaccine Nearing Reality
colin_faber writes "Right on the heels of the Bill Gates BusinessWeek article discussing the importance of disease prevention and cure over technological deployment is news from CNN that U.S. researchers may have a viable vaccine for malaria. If true, this could change the lives of up to 3.3 billion people living in malaria danger zones and allow us to do away with this disease, which kills hundreds of thousands of people."
yeah... Until concerned parents boycott the vaccine because they think it causes autism.
Genius pun, or awful spelling?
which is totally what she said
Think of the Plasmodium!
Smivs on the intertubes!
Easy
Affordable by those who need it
I would love to see this vaccine become a reality but I'm not very hopeful that this would have a price tag that many African nations could afford to give out to their populations for free or, if not free, the pennies the average citizen could afford. Mozambique, where I live and work, is VERY hard hit by Malaria but it's rural areas are very poor and the medicine distribution points in the CITIES struggle to keep vaccines refrigerated and properly handled. There is much development to be done in many of the nations who see high death rates from Malaria before we can use phrases like "allow us to do away with this disease". I do hope to see the disease done away with but let's not assume that with the development of the vaccine that that victory is imminent.
Until concerned parents boycott the vaccine because they think it causes autism.
I don't think that is going to be a big problem in Africa.
. . . where people allegedly believe raping virgins is a cure for AIDs...?
Why not? Do you feel that Africans are, on average, more rational than Europeans and Americans?
PlusFive Slashdot reader for Android. Can post comments.
There have been instances of vaccine-related 'controversy' bullshit in Africa(Good work, part of Nigera, it's not like polio is a problem or anything...); but none related to autism, to my knowledge.
In general, though, there's nothing like a population for which some ghastly disease is still a firsthand reality to keep vaccine concerns (even ones founded on actual side effects of the vaccine) at bay. For something with the morbidity and mortality rates of malaria, even a vaccine with atypically nasty risks would probably be damn popular.
The really difficult problem is when dealing with diseases that are almost nonexistent (and thus not scary)
I love the mistake in the article: the organization supposedly named "People Opposed to Women Abused". As in "(People Opposed to Women) Abused"?
Ezekiel 23:20
Because you shoot people in the arm.
But it's not an area that I'll be putting money into.
Those people can also work to prevent that malnourishment just like they do in the developed world. Keep in mind that malaria doesn't just kill people, it also cripples people. If you're suffering from a bout of malaria, you're not helping feed your family.
Having a vaccine that must be injected intravenously (not just intramuscularly), five times, in order to be effective is an interesting scientific advance (as stated in TFA), but isn't what one would call a practical solution to the malaria problem in the underdeveloped world (also as stated in TFA). Also keep in mind that many other proposed vaccines have looked good initially, but failed to pass muster later on, and that this trial was very, very small:
Researchers reported that the six volunteers who received five intravenous doses of the vaccine did not contract malaria when exposed to the microscopic parasite. Of the nine who received four doses, three contracted the disease. Of 12 who received no vaccine, 11 became infected.
It's a big stretch to go from six protected individuals to hundreds of millions, so I suggest that the champagne for the "End of Malaria" party not be put on ice just yet. While it is an interesting result, I think someone describing the status of the malaria vaccine as "nearing reality" isn't a very good judge of distance.
Why not? Do you feel that Africans are, on average, more rational than Europeans and Americans?
More rational? No. More fearful of illness and/or death by malaria? Just a bit...
Medicine-related nonsense tends to flourish in the presence of at least one of two conditions: (1) the risk presented by a given disease is very low (the common cold is annoying but nearly harmless, so Airborne(tm) "Invented by a schoolteacher!" doesn't have to worry about any unpleasant testimonials involving dead customers, as long as it doesn't kill them itself...) (2) Conventional medicine has few answers, or very bad news, for you. (If the doctor says that there isn't much we can do, the odds that you'll go find somebody willing to tell you something more palatable just jumped rather markedly...)
American and European vaccine 'controversy' flourishes in the presence of both of these elements: the vaccines people worry about are for diseases that relatively few people have even seen/experienced in person (because vaccination mostly eradicated them) and which are seen as very low risk, while the fears and quackery bubble around autism, a condition for which present medical expertise's ability to help is rather severely lacking.
When it comes to diseases that actually scare them, Americans and Europeans have relatively high compliance rates, even with treatments that are well known to be quite unpleasant and dangerous (chemo, major surgery, antiretrovirals, etc, etc.).
It was five years ago I read about this, where they weakened a virus by actually re-coding in with the 'most pessimal' version of its genome. Same proteins, but reproduces three orders of magnitude slower.
And I haven't heard anything since. Does anyone know what's been going on with that? I suppose re-coding a whole single-celled organism might be more difficult/expensive than a virus, but still... the problem with point-mutations weaking a disease is that point-mutations can be reversed. Eventually someone's going to get sick from the vaccine itself. (Still, if the vaccine's effective it's a better bet, but if you can eliminate that chance...)
PHEM - party like it's 1997-2003!
why don't they instead find a way to get rid of the fscking mosquitoes ?
Malaria isn't the only disease spread by them, athough it might be the biggest killer
and they affect many other parts of the world besides Africa.
Now that malaria is on its way out, can Google float its Wi-Fi balloons without taking any more shit from you?
"Not all who wander are lost" -- JRR Tolkien
My attempts at googling the answer to this have not been successful, so I ask here... (crazy, I know).
Anyway, if there was a ~100% effective vaccine taken by almost everyone, would that eradicate malaria itself, or
could the malaria parasite continue to exist?
i.e. are humans a vital part of the life cycle of the malaria-causing parasites?
Thanks!
Why not? Do you feel that Africans are, on average, more rational than Europeans and Americans?
No but your average European or American is generally pretty rational. Furthermore malaria is an obvious enough problem in Africa that the risks of any side effect (real or imagined) will be very minor by comparison if the vaccine actually works. In some places in Africa the CDC reports that malaria accounts for close to half of all hospital admissions. It kills 600,000 people a year and sickens millions more. It's almost impossible to overstate how beneficial a cure for malaria would be to affected populations. I've seen some snarky comments in this thread but Africans mostly understand the problem quite well. Certainly better than most of the people posting here since I doubt more than a handful of slashdotters have actually observed the effects of malaria first hand.
The forests of North America are missing some birds...
Think again.
They feared that it could be used to suppress protest or support unpopular rule.
So you think a good way to control the population is to let a bunch of poor people die from a horrible disease? Including children? For f*** sake, please help the population control and kill yourself.
when there are too many people for the land, suffering will ensue.
Remember kids, if you're not paying for the service, YOU ARE THE PRODUCT THAT IS BEING SOLD.
Spend time in any African country and you realise that the ignorance about medical issues is an inbred thing - I was in South Africa in 2011 and saw lots of billboards all over the country with the Health Ministers image on it and the quote "avoid AIDS, get circumcised". She also held the policy of rejecting antivirals and instead promoted her own diet of garlic and beet root.
I've seen similar issues in Namibia, Uganda, Kenya, Rwanda and others.
If you think Africa is so great, why not emigrate there? I hear they welcome white people with open arms.
South Africa is really a sad case: Unlike a lot of postcolonial states, they got damn lucky with Mandela (elsewhere, the number of people who were good freedom-fighters and really, really, shitty autocrats is just alarming); but the ANC basically hasn't had a good idea since then. Mbeki was a stark-raving AIDs denialist (as was his favorite Health Minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang, and some of his 'outside experts', notably Peter Duesberg and David Rasnick); and, though the overt craziness surrounding AIDs is supposed to be over at present, the quality of governance is still... painfully unimpressive.
There's a reason why Mandela's health problems have been the object of so much strategic-mourning among ANC figures: basically, their remaining credibility is now bouncing in and out of the hospital on the edge of death...
I was in South Africa in 2011 and saw lots of billboards all over the country with the Health Ministers image on it and the quote "avoid AIDS, get circumcised".
This is good health policy. "There is compelling evidence that male circumcision reduces the risk of heterosexually acquired HIV infection in men by approximately 60%." - WHO (http://www.who.int/hiv/topics/malecircumcision/en/)
She also held the policy of rejecting antivirals and instead promoted her own diet of garlic and beet root.
This is garbage health policy.
Spend time in any African country and you realise that the ignorance about medical issues is an inbred thing - I was in South Africa in 2011 and saw lots of billboards all over the country with the Health Ministers image on it and the quote "avoid AIDS, get circumcised"
Circumcising African men may cut their risk of catching AIDS in half, the National Institutes of Health said today.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/13/health/13cnd-hiv.html?_r=0
So, the NIH are a bunch of ignorant Africans now?
Watch this Heartland Institute video
The latter since malaria does not require humans in particular as part of its life cycle.
If you reply, do so only to what I explicitly wrote. If I didn't write it, don't assume or infer it.
If they're successful at eradicating malaria in the developing world, they're also going to have to do something about birth control since the population will explode due to malaria no longer killing people off. The developing world can't even handle the population it already has in terms of food, potable water, and sanitation.
If you reply, do so only to what I explicitly wrote. If I didn't write it, don't assume or infer it.
Perhaps if more people were to survive to and through productive adulthood instead of dying early to malaria, less effort would need to be spent on rearing children. The savings to a society from less loss of people to diseasemight help toward fighting poverty.
OK then let's step up to the "hard questions" then.
Let's assume that tomorrow we invent a super vaccine that cures the worst diseases in the world; according to WHO, Malaria, Tuberculosis, and HIV/AIDS kills 5.4 million people every year.
Simultaneously, let's assume that we've somehow solved the world's food distribution problems.
What then?
I know it sounds callous to say so, but that's probably why this difficult question never gets seriously addressed: if the bulk of the people dying to disease and starvation didn't, isn't the result just ... MORE starvation, conflict, and misery?
I don't have an answer.
-Styopa
Probably because you killed off your bats and birds. I lived in Mecklenburg and Cabarrus counties in the 70s but I recommend moving out of the Malarial regions of the state. I have personally noted a direct correlation between the de-population of the bat-house on the barn and a HUGE increase in mosquitoes on the farm this year in southern Oregon. We had one Purple Marten sighting and only one Tree Swallow nest (actually, next farm over) this year. Not good.
They feared that it could be used to suppress protest or support unpopular rule.
DDT was unethically fed to prisoners and was found to be non-carcinogenic.
And everything that doesn't cause cancer is good.
Watch this Heartland Institute video
That's Dr. Sheldon Cooper, if you please.
If you find this statement too direct, please feel free to imagine that it was concluded with a winky face or some other unnecessary yet somehow comforting-to-the-unwashed-masses communicative frivolity.
You're welcome.
Bazinga.
This is good health policy. "There is compelling evidence that male circumcision reduces the risk of heterosexually acquired HIV infection in men by approximately 60%." - WHO (http://www.who.int/hiv/topics/malecircumcision/en/)
bull-fucking-shit. The study 'proving' that is widely criticized for being botched, eg people who got circumsized were also taught some sex ed, while uncircumsized guys were left to their devices.
Besides, all the benefits vanish if people fuck twice as much and don't bother with rubber because they think they are safe. Hell, down there they still think rubber is not necessary if you can find a virgin or 2.
Dowsett et al. urged caution over using circumcision as a HIV prevention strategy saying that there were still questions that needed to be answered: "We need to investigate the effects of those other social and contextual factors that will be in play in real world settings – because the effectiveness of male circumcision will not be generated by the efficacy of the surgery alone." He contrasts the preventative effect of circumcision taken from the RCT's (55%) with the preventative effect of condoms (80-90%). He criticises the fact that the trials were not double-blinded - the participants knew their circumcision status and so this could have affected how the men responded behaviourally, psychologically and sexually. He criticised the randomisation measures used in the trial: sexual practices (number of partners, condom use) and sexual health measures (presence of STIs), saying that "Effective measures were not used, and differences related to sexual subjectivity, such as sexual network participation, pleasure preferences, body image, sexual history effects (e.g. abuse), partner preferences (younger, older, peers, groups) and so on were never assessed or analysed." He also asks how the extensive counselling and education might have influenced the participants' sexual activity. He adds that "all participants were subject to regular monitoring (e.g. behaviour surveys, clinical check-ups), which clearly might have enhanced compliance with suggested safety regimes and lowered risk-taking during the follow-up period. Such compliance cannot be guaranteed in real world settings." He also said the trials were subject to the Hawthorne effect.[23]
not to mention that if you found by chance that circumcision of females cures cancer and solves the problem of world hunger you'd still get feminists and UN screaming bloody murder and how women have a right to bodily autonomy. Cutting dicks by millions? No problem.
That's only western variety antivax movement though. There are other reasons some people worldwide might be opposed to it. For instance, the good old CIA using it. If people are paranoid about the doctors giving the shot, it's going to have problems. Witness the paranoia about HIV treatments. That IS happening to some degree in Africa.
that the vaccine won't be patented.
why don't they instead find a way to get rid of the fscking mosquitoes ?
You think that idea hasn't occurred to anyone? They haven't done it because it is REALLY hard, and really expensive and given the political instability in parts of Africa as well as the geography not really feasible. We did it in the US in part through the use of DDT which turned out to be a pretty bad idea in the long run.
Not that it's a surprise, the CIA being what it is; but that little trick was crazy unethical on their part. Strictly speaking, though, it didn't seem to have much effect on attitudes about vaccines specifically, just the luckless bastards who have the pleasure of administering them and occasionally getting killed for their trouble.
Yes, because it doesn't stop women becoming infected.
I know that everyone thinks this is a great idea and all, and it's nice to have less suffering in the world, but we are slowly removing more and more of the things that keep the human population in check
You wanna keep the human population in check? Howzabout the USA institute a nickel tax on cheeseburgers and use the money to distribute millions of condoms to Africa. That way no five year old has to suffer and die in fear.
Uninfected men are unable to infect women.
Watch this Heartland Institute video
They just had to have that "P.O.W.A" acronym.
Dark Reflection
"Right on the heals of the Bill Gates BusinessWeek article discussing the importance of disease prevention and cure over technological deployment
I disagree with the premise of the summary.
.
First of all, it was not a Bill Gates BusinessWeek article, it was an interview with Bill Gates in BusinessWeek. Second, Bill Gates takes a swipe at technology deployment being done by a Microsoft competitor, without giving any substantiation of why technology deployment is bad. The BusinessWeek interview of Bill Gates shows just how short-sighted and self-centered his "vision" really is. He is unable to comprehend the benefits of anything besides what he is doing.
A much better idea is to tax children and I mean heavily as in thousands per year.
Got Code?
Hell, go on a chloroquinine regime to protect yourself from malaria and let me know how you appreciate the side affects. Night terrors, demetia, and a whole lot worse are all yours for the experience! But it'll keep you from malaria, which makes it one hell of a better option. Still, it's amazing to me that in the case of malaria, a vaccine that outright killed 1 in a hundred would still be an order of magnitude better than the mortality of the ongoing disease. What a terrible parasite. Scourge of humanity.
Free vaccine with all Windows Surface purchases!
Table-ized A.I.
Wrong, uninfected men can carry the virus for several days, and so promiscuous men can infect women without becoming afflicted themselves.
Which is why "get circumcised" is pathetic advice as a means to avoid HIV, it doesn't even begin to solve the issue.
So complain about the NIH, not the stupid Africans.
Watch this Heartland Institute video
Apparently bullets to the head are also non-carcinogenic.
Because that doesn't work.
The only effective way we've found to decrease population growth is to educate people, especially women. Not sex ed, regular education. A big problem with education in malarial areas is that people miss a lot of school because they're sick, and many children you've spent time teaching die before growing up and having an effect on society.
So institute a nickel tax, but use it to make and distribute vaccines, and build schools.
So now Africa will have 600,000 more people a year to feed, house, and clothe, and they can't even do that now.
Your argument is badly flawed.
That's 600,000 more people that can work and contribute to society. Millions more who don't have to languish in hospitals instead of working or studying because they are sick. Countries that eliminate malaria have been shown to have a 5X increase in GDP per capita. Malaria is estimated to cost Africa $12 billion per year due to lost productivity, lost education, health care costs, reduced tourism, and reduced investment. Think that $12 billion per year might feed and clothe a few people? (That's $20,000 per person per year in a region where the average GDP per capita is presently around $1,900)
The entire results of that study can be explained by the fact that recently circumcised men are not going to be fucking at all until they heal.
They stopped the study when they saw the cut group catching up after healing. Yeah science, no agenda there.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
n/t
"The hallmark of humanity is the ability to move beyond sensory inputs" - Mary Helen Immordino-Yang
Yellow fever and Malaria. Far more then several hundred. Disease stopped the frogs outright.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Almost nobody lives there
Many agree with me.
I believe folks should leave the tundra and such for the birds and their cohort. If you choose to defy nature and live there that's your mistake to make, but don't destroy my planet with your drainage and poisonings.
Probably bringing back the bird population of 200 years ago would not reduce the insect population in Northern Ontario by a noticeable amount (thats why the birds bother to visit in the first place), but I think in places that are actually suitable for humans you can observe the patterns. I believe that I have observed an apparent correlation of the cycles in my location, I could be mistaken. We happen to own a pretty uninhabitable bit of forest in British Columbia, but over the ridge and a half kilometer away it is an entirely different story, airflow matters. I will not be doing anything to upset my local Salamanders or Salmon, It's their home. If we harvest a stem or two of the Thuja plicata straight up by helicopter, I believe we can pay our taxes without killing a significant number of the locals.
Ambitions contained to avoid evil.
They feared that it could be used to suppress protest or support unpopular rule.
Malaria kills less than 1 million people a year. The annual population growth of just sub-Saharan Africa is over 20 million. Malaria is a drop in the bucket of population growth. Not only is it inhumanly cruel to even suggest it as a form of population control, it is also really stupid because it is common knowledge that fertility rates are inversely related to child mortality, and that population growth is inversely related to QoL (dying children tend to get in the way of education, economic growth, etc). Every time any article related to saving lives in poor regions comes up, someone always repeats this stupid and racist sorry excuse for logic. If you want a circlejerk about how much better life would be if we just killed all those smelly brown people that utilize a TINY fraction of the resources your "developed" ass does, you might have more fun over at 4chan.
weinersmith
I'm wondering whether this comment is meant to be a racist slur. Namely that Africans don't have as much to fear from autism.
Specific influential Africans are more rational than specific influential Europeans and Americans.
Who has killed more children: Robert Mugabe or Jenny McCarthy?
you either overstate the risks or overstate the population...
The answer is yes. Malaria only lives in mosquitoes and humans. It has no 'sylvan focus', i.e. it doesn't live in any wild animals. If we could isolate all the people with malaria, and stop anyone being bitten by mossies for 2 weeks, the disease would be eradicated. This would be long enough to interrupt the parasites lifecycle. Another interesting thing about malaria is that it was endemic in Europe up to the first world war. It was eradicated there by spraying and management of sitting water.