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."

Comments

"allow us to do away with this disease"....

[Anonymous Coward]

yeah... Until concerned parents boycott the vaccine because they think it causes autism.

Do Away With This Disease?

[x_IamSpartacus_x]

It's definitely something to be celebrated that we're nearing the mark of a viable vaccine. Unfortunately, the hardest hit areas by Malaria are not places where vaccine distribution is

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.

Re:Do Away With This Disease?

[Anonymous Coward]

I thought the whole point of Bill Gates' foundation's attempts to find a vaccine for Malaria was to:

1. create a vaccine
2. make lots of it for cheap
3. find ways to distribute it everywhere as cheap as possible
4. help distribute it everywhere

Seems to me that if they keep throwing money at the problems (refrigeration, handling) they will eventually succeed.

Re:Woo

[khallow]

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.

Re:African parent vs autism

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

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.).