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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...?
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
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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
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.
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.
They just had to have that "P.O.W.A" acronym.
Dark Reflection
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.
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'
Comment removed based on user account deletion
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.