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Universal Flu Vaccine "Blueprint" Discovered
minty3 writes "Scientists say they used the pandemic as a 'natural experiment' to discover how the body's immune system builds resistance to the flu. The research, published in the journal Nature Medicine, showed how certain immune cells helped some avoid the severe illness. 'Our findings suggest that by making the body produce more of this specific type of CD8 T cell, you can protect people against symptomatic illness,' said study leader Professor Ajit Lalvani, from the National Heart and Lung Institute at Imperial College London, in a statement. 'This provides the blueprint for developing a universal flu vaccine.'"
That's good news for people with universal flu.
Right, try to kill a multibillion dollar annual industry and see how quickly this research just vanishes. /cynic
If I was a multibillion dollar industry I'd very much appreciate the fact of having a product that gets sold to every human being on the planet, every year right about the time for holidays, scoring me a big boost in the Q4.
But then again I also believe that based on available evidence it was Lee Harvey Oswald that shot Kennedy.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
Mmmm, mmmm, I love me some of that General's Fried Chicken!
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
Not too expensive so that everyone in the first world can afford it, and bulk-cheap enough that every first world government will help every third world country pay for it for their citizens.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
That's all I need a "universal" flu shot to make me universally sick for 2 months afterwards.
I'll take my chances, 10 years of avoiding the flu shot, 10 years without catching more than a cold.
You can lose something that is loose, so tighten the loose item so you don't lose it.
“The immune system produces these CD8 T cells in response to the usual seasonal flu,” Lalvani said. “Unlike antibodies, they target the core of the virus, which doesn’t change, even in new pandemic strains.”
This simple argument does not entirely convince me that they found a universal vaccine. Proving that it is universal should require extensive experiments on many different strains. Can any experts pitch in why they really did find the key to a universal flu vaccine?
Putting aside that I can't see how they ever came to the conclusion that the universe needed a flu vaccination, what's even harder to figure out is what size of dosage will they need to service something that's (last I heard) approximately 56 billion light years wide, and where the hell are they going to inject the needle?
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Isn't that lead?
The road to tyranny has always been paved with claims of necessity.
In a 100 years some Merkin can add this to the list of things they claim they invented.
Usa!, Usa!, number #1
This is how zombie movies always start. Some new "universal" vaccine that induces growth of one type of cell. No thanks. I like being un-undead.
It's not entirely clear from the abstract, so just for some background (of what I assume is behind the paywall) the main problem with severe flu is cytokine storms. Basically, your immune system can get into a positive feedback loop trying to kill the virus and wind up killing most of the body's cells instead. In the Pandemic Flu of 1918, a great number of the dead were the healthiest ones with great immune systems.
So I'm assuming what's going on here is that they've isolated the parts of the immune system that actually kill the flu, and have a plan to prime them for action. That would be super-awesome. The annual flu deaths, just in the US is in the 3000-49000 per year range. If you have to use government terms, that's at least a 9/11 every year, and if you have to spend a trillion dollars on something, this would be a much better target.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
Nah. All that would do is get you a bunch of equally daft replacements.
...that will eventually produce CD8 T resistant flu.
Double edged sword.
Damn that Darwin!
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I'm still waiting for any American to support their "we only want to own 29839 guns each to defend the constitution, I swear!" claims with actions.
I wouldn't call it universal flu because:
1) One'll have to call the new resistant flu that will appear after the vaccine is widespread something like non-universal flu;
2) Giorgio Tsoukalos and Erich von Däniken descendants in the far future will look at our reports and use them as evidence of alien waged chemical warfare.
Does that mean that people will become immune to universal studios crap? I hope they do a disney flu and warner flu vaccine too!
I believe the US congress has already been proven to be immune to common sense ;)
"Scientists say they used the pandemic"
What pandemic?
Right, try to kill a multibillion dollar annual industry and see how quickly this research just vanishes. /cynic
Did the polio vaccine kill big pharma? The vaccines for measles, shingles, cervical cancer? The answer, of course, is no. Timeline of vaccines
The pharmaceutical industry --- like the life insurance industry ---- benefits from a population that is active, healthy, prosperous, and long-lived
Yes, its a shame we didn't learn our lesson after the huge pandemics of vaccine resistant polio. Clearly we should let people continue to die of the flu to prevent it from possibly evolving into something harmful. Or maybe if we just kill everyone who gets the flu we can breed flu resistant humans and finally eradicate this deadly disease.
You can't spell "oneiromancy" without "roman".
Flu isn't prevalent in Q4 or any specific time of the year at all, especially on a global scale. The reason why people get flu more often in bad weather conditions is because they all crowd inside and the contamination risk is much higher when the people density is up.
Also, it has nothing to do with your "resistance" and vitamin C doesn't help cure the flu. Flu is not a common cold but an entirely different strain of virus. Both are not the least impressed with people eating vitamin C or drinking orange juice. The only thing that vitamin C will help against is a vitamin C deficiency. Whether you will get ill from any of these viruses is mostly determined by how well adapted you already are against that particular virus or something close enough related. You will get infected, you possibly will spread the virus, you just won't get any major symptoms if your body is able to deal with it in an efficient way.
I was promised a flying car. Where is my flying car?
not if we killed all the lobbyists, too, and had the new crop of congresscritters make lobbying illegal the way it is in many other industrialized democracies...
Yes, its a shame we didn't learn our lesson after the huge pandemics of vaccine resistant polio. Clearly we should let people continue to die of the flu to prevent it from possibly evolving into something harmful. Or maybe if we just kill everyone who gets the flu we can breed flu resistant humans and finally eradicate this deadly disease.
You can't really draw a parallel between polio and the flu. The flu has a bunch of non-human hosts that it can jump between. It will happily sit around in the bird/pig/whatever population until it mutates into something that can infect humans again. And birds go everywhere.
AFAIK, polio is for humans (or primates at least) only
For the moment, I'm assuming the article's content has some credibility.
History tells us that building a better mousetrap results in a better mouse. Same can be said for viruses...
You'd probably compare cancer to to the measles in your simplicity...
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You can't really draw a parallel between polio and the flu. The flu has a bunch of non-human hosts that it can jump between. It will happily sit around in the bird/pig/whatever population until it mutates into something that can infect humans again.
It will do that regardless of whether or not humans continue to be a viable host for existing flu viruses.
Fair point about polio.
You can't spell "oneiromancy" without "roman".
... the flu discovers YOU!!!
This sig is not paradoxical or ironic.
I think not.... if the vaccine immunizes against a large number of viruses ---- it will create a competitive gap; in viruses affecting humans, so eventually, a strain of some virus will probably emerge that fits that gap.
I am all for a vaccine that offers some protection/mitigation against all known types of flu. But I think implying that it's a universal cure-all against all future strains of flu, is more hope than reality.
Scientist discovers the explanation for a piece of a phenomenon.
Journalist makes up a news stating it will lead to a cure for cancer/autism/flu/aging/diabetes/whatever
If you read a bunch of scientific news titles, you could wonder why we are not immortals yet. It would be nice if scientific journalists could stop writing their headlines with the idea that readers are stupids
FYI, Nature has been known to publish absolute crap... stuff that should have never gotten past peer review.
I know nothing about this particular topic, but I want to warn anyone who thinks that "published in Nature" means "reliable". Actually, none of the "latest research" should be considered reliable, but I think that Nature is one of the worst high-profile journals.
That even with the current vaccine which clearly does not cure the flu, they are able to maintain a government subsidized monopoly with "almost no spare capacity", even though it is supposedly "not very profitable".
On top of that the new, effective, vaccine which would be protected by patents, would replace the old one (while keeping the government subsidies) AND it should clearly be more expensive to produce - both because there's "almost no spare capacity" AND because it is new technology.
And that's just regarding those measly 300 million or so US Americans.
The market, protected by patents, is THE WORLD.
Seven billion humans and climbing.
Every year. Just in time for the holidays.
Enough to make a CEO of a pharmaceutical company believe in Santa Claus.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
H5N1.....The most miserable but most deadly virus ever....100 million plus dead in 1918, a billion when it learns to pass between humans.....we will drown in our own blood. Hopefully, they can come up with a cure.
Yup