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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
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)
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.
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 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)
Oddly, complex things like population control don't work in the simple straightforward way you think.
Educating women is the most effective means of birth control, by far. Making people healthy means they can work more reliably, have more money, afford to go to school, and not miss school because they're sick.
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