Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Canada Will Ship 800 Doses of Experimental Ebola Drug to WHO

Posted by timothy on from the good-fight dept.

The WSJ reports that 800 doses of an experimental vaccine for Ebola, developed over a decade at Public Health Agency of Canada’s main laboratory in Winnipeg, will be shipped to the World Health Organization in an effort to help fight the ongoing Ebola crisis in West Africa: The vaccine will be shipped by air from Winnipeg, Manitoba, to the University Hospital of Geneva via specialized courier. The vials will be sent in three separate shipments as a precautionary measure, due to the challenges in moving a vaccine that must kept at a very low temperature at all times. ... The vaccine had shown “very promising results in animal research” and earlier this week, Ottawa announced the start of clinical trials on humans at the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research in the U.S. ... The government has licensed NewLink Genetics Corp. , of the U.S., through its wholly owned subsidiary BioProtection Systems Corp. to further develop the vaccine for use in humans. The government owns the intellectual property rights associated with the vaccine.

102 comments

  1. WHO? by TWX · · Score: 1, Funny

    Canada Will Ship 800 Doses of Experimental Ebola Drug to WHO

    Who?

    --
    Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
    1. Re:WHO? by sjames · · Score: 1

      Skippy, you're doing that owl thing again.

    2. Re:WHO? by canatech · · Score: 1

      No...no...The Guess Who
      You know, that band who were also from Winnipeg.
      Ahhh... the 70's.
      (American Woman etc.)

    3. Re: WHO? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Who? I don't know.
      I don't know's on second
      Who's on third?
      Who's on first.

    4. Re:WHO? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Obviously the Guess Who. The article even said that they are from Winnipeg, though they have been running back to Saskatoon for a long, long time and never made it, it seems.

    5. Re:WHO? by slashmydots · · Score: 1

      It's got to either be We Help Ostriches or Waffle House Observers.

    6. Re:WHO? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Doctor

    7. Re: WHO? by johnsnails · · Score: 1

      Oh, Canada - Five Iron Frenzy: http://youtu.be/3sPZILnTMWs

    8. Re:WHO? by davester666 · · Score: 1

      Yes, all efforts must be made to lengthen their lives, as the copyright on their music must not enter the public domain.

      --
      Sleep your way to a whiter smile...date a dentist!
    9. Re:WHO? by Sri+Ramkrishna · · Score: 1

      That's what I was trying to figure out? Who are they shipping it to? Why isn't this a question?

  2. just call him.... by frovingslosh · · Score: 2, Funny

    Don't call him Who, just call him "the Doctor".

    --
    I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
    1. Re:just call him.... by bluegutang · · Score: 2

      Obligatory bash.org:
      http://www.bash.org/?4780

  3. WHO's on first? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Whoooooooo! Arrrrrrrrrrrrre! Youuuuuuuuuu!

    1. Re:WHO's on first? by ChrisMaple · · Score: 1

      Won't get fooled again.

      --
      Contribute to civilization: ari.aynrand.org/donate
  4. Tax dollars at work. by canatech · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Maybe my tax dollars might save some lives.
    And maybe we'll see the words 'government' and 'intellectual' in the same sentence more often.
    Here's hoping.

    1. Re:Tax dollars at work. by Jane+Q.+Public · · Score: 3, Informative

      Maybe my tax dollars might save some lives. And maybe we'll see the words 'government' and 'intellectual' in the same sentence more often. Here's hoping.

      It's interesting that OP claims the government "owns" the "IP" related to the vaccine.

      In the U.S. there are very few -- almost no -- circumstances in which the government can "own" rights to patents, inventions, copyrights, ect.

      They can be classified, but not "owned" except under very rare circumstances. While the ideal has been distorted, especially since 2000, the Federal government is still an employee of The People in the States, and doesn't really "own" anything.

    2. Re:Tax dollars at work. by canatech · · Score: 1

      IANAL

      Well, I suppose the government paid for the building, the test tubes, and the salary of the researchers so i guess they own the results.....on my behalf.

    3. Re: Tax dollars at work. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I was curious, which government owns the rights? Must be Canada if it was made by one of their companies.

    4. Re: Tax dollars at work. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The Vedran Empress.

      See you on glamorous Seefra.

    5. Re:Tax dollars at work. by Yaztromo · · Score: 2

      They can be classified, but not "owned" except under very rare circumstances. While the ideal has been distorted, especially since 2000, the Federal government is still an employee of The People in the States, and doesn't really "own" anything.

      Uh...I'll just leave this here...

      Yaz

    6. Re:Tax dollars at work. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      "In the U.S. there are very few -- almost no -- circumstances in which the government can "own" rights to patents, inventions, copyrights, ect."

      In Canada and most other democracies the gov't is the people, and the people are allowed to own stuff. In the US the government is imposed on a hapless population by lizard beings from planet Big Business, who milk the american people for every ounce of their creativity, via rhetoric and constitutional spells and other sacralized bullshit, in order to benefit Big Business. Duh?

    7. Re:Tax dollars at work. by Jeremy+Erwin · · Score: 1

      The US has a patent on an Ebola virus..
      Human ebola virus species and compositions and methods thereof

      Looks like a Canadian patent, owned by the " The Government Of The United States Of America As Represented By The Sec Retary, Department Of Health & Human Services, Center For Disease Control".

      It's the wrong strain, though. Also I'm not sure why the US government would own a Canadian patent.

    8. Re:Tax dollars at work. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      what I like is the Gov't owns the right.....

      I get out of this that Gov't started epidemic for fear and then comes to the rescue to look good.....
      I smell conspiracy.....

    9. Re:Tax dollars at work. by Yaztromo · · Score: 1

      The US has a patent on an Ebola virus.. Human ebola virus species and compositions and methods thereof

      Looks like a Canadian patent, owned by the " The Government Of The United States Of America As Represented By The Sec Retary, Department Of Health & Human Services, Center For Disease Control".

      It's the wrong strain, though. Also I'm not sure why the US government would own a Canadian patent.

      I noticed that myself. However, as someone who has a few patents to his credit, it's not unusual for companies (and I suppose governments) in North America to file patents in both countries to improve their overall protection. The patent systems in the two countries are subtly different, and patents are still a national jurisdiction (meaning that US patents are unenforceable in Canada, and vice-versa). Things patented in the US but not here in Canada are fair game in Canada, as things currently stand. Canada also doesn't permit quite as wide a range of things that can be patented as the US does, so you can run into a situation where a Canadian company holds a US patent for an invention or process, but which doesn't have an equivalent Canadian patent.

      A patent lawyer can probably provide a lot more detail, but if the US Government wants to assert its right to protect its patents in Canada, it has to file them with CIPO.

      Yaz

    10. Re:Tax dollars at work. by Teun · · Score: 1

      I saw you coming :)

      --
      "The likes of Facebook and WhatsApp are free to those whose privacy is of zero value."
    11. Re:Tax dollars at work. by Yaztromo · · Score: 1

      In Canada and most other democracies the gov't is the people, and the people are allowed to own stuff.

      As a generalization you're correct, however, in the case of patents, they technically aren't held by the Government of Canada, but are instead held by the Queen. This is usually written as "HER MAJESTY THE QUEEN, IN RIGHT OF CANADA AS REPRESENTED BY THE MINISTER OF..." in Canadian patents.

      Of course, in a practical sense, the Queen is going around acting as a patent troll. She may own the patents, but control tends to lie with the minister of the responsible government agency.

      Yaz

    12. Re:Tax dollars at work. by Yaztromo · · Score: 3, Funny

      It's interesting that OP claims the government "owns" the "IP" related to the vaccine.

      Something I left out of my previous post; generally, the Government of Canada doesn't own the patent; instead it's owned by Queen Elizabeth II, in Right of Canada, and represented by the minister of the relevant government agency.

      Here's an example I picked purely because of it's humorous title, particular when you relate it to the Queen as owner: APPARATUS FOR PERFORMING SCROTAL CIRCUMFERENCE MEASUREMENT ON BULLS.

      Yaz

    13. Re:Tax dollars at work. by dk20 · · Score: 1

      I find it interesting how the article talks about how the Canadian government owns the IP yet you discuss the US and its rules.

      This is something you see often on slashdot, not all countries have the same rules as the US does.

    14. Re:Tax dollars at work. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Maybe my tax dollars might save some lives.

      Yeah, like the politicians importing vectors to help it spread. Sucks that there won't be enough vaccine to go around but at least we'll save the lowliest amongst us.

    15. Re:Tax dollars at work. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The US has a patent on an Ebola virus..
      Human ebola virus species and compositions and methods thereof

      Time to sue some Africans for using intellectual property without licensing it first.

    16. Re:Tax dollars at work. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Thank you for nominating yourself for twit of the week. Please note your nomination is not because you are correct that the Queen owns the patents which are controlled by the minister responsible for the government agency .... no you are nominating yourself for calling the them a patent troll. Most of the IP held by the government of Canada is liscenced to businesses where possible and then some of that earned money is put into new research.

      Patent trolls do nothing ...these organizations do lots and lots of research and testing.

    17. Re:Tax dollars at work. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      In the U.S. there are very few -- almost no -- circumstances in which the government can "own" rights to patents, inventions, copyrights, ect.

      This is only (mostly) true for copyrights. Under 17 U.S.C. 105, works made by the U.S. government are not eligible for U.S. copyright. Note that the U.S. government can own copyrights in foreign countries and can also own copyrights on works created by others, because it has bought them, seized them, been given them, etc.

      As for patents and trademarks, there is no restriction on the U.S. government obtaining them. If you go to http://assignments.uspto.gov and search for "United States of America," you will find that the government owns at least 16767 patents.

    18. Re:Tax dollars at work. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      This is the most ignorant comment, I have ever seen modded up.

      The U.S. government, "owns" and has rights in multiple patents.

      Just pulled this from a random patent.
      "The invention described herein was made in the course of work partially funded by Grant No. xxxxxxxxxxx from the National Institutes of Health, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. The U.S. government may have rights in this invention."

      You will see that the U.S. government can do anything with the research funded by the government. This is true even for some blockbuster drugs. Go look up the patents.

      It's called Bayh-Dole act. A patent without the required disclosure is invalid, if federal funds are involved.

      So, for your ignorant self, the U.S. government owns more patents than most other corporations in the U.S.

    19. Re:Tax dollars at work. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Slashdot modded this post up! Factually, incorrect. US government owns or has rights to more patents than many other corporations in the world. Everything funded by the NIH, any federal agency automatically, grants US government ownership and rights. DARPA funded projects, and so on. Ignorant to the core. It's a different matter that the US government does not use the rights, even if they are in blockbuster drugs. They let the universities license it out to pharmaceutical companies to line the pockets of the universities. Which is why they don't march into those rights, to help the universities. If people don't know about something, they should not be commenting.

      Read up Bayh-Dole act, on how it works, and why US government owns all that intellectual property, including Patents.

      Maybe my tax dollars might save some lives.
      And maybe we'll see the words 'government' and 'intellectual' in the same sentence more often.
      Here's hoping.

      It's interesting that OP claims the government "owns" the "IP" related to the vaccine.

      In the U.S. there are very few -- almost no -- circumstances in which the government can "own" rights to patents, inventions, copyrights, ect.

      They can be classified, but not "owned" except under very rare circumstances. While the ideal has been distorted, especially since 2000, the Federal government is still an employee of The People in the States, and doesn't really "own" anything.

    20. Re:Tax dollars at work. by Jane+Q.+Public · · Score: 1

      It's the wrong strain, though. Also I'm not sure why the US government would own a Canadian patent.

      In reply to this and the other person above:

      That was my whole point. The U.S. government can't hold patents, under most circumstances, by U.S. law. Which is, apparently, very different from Canada.

      But I know of no law that says it can't hold patents in other countries. I am very skeptical of the ethics of it, though.

    21. Re:Tax dollars at work. by Jane+Q.+Public · · Score: 1

      I find it interesting how the article talks about how the Canadian government owns the IP yet you discuss the US and its rules.

      I am tempted to write WHOOSH! here, but I will politely refrain from meaning it seriously. For now.

      I did not make a mistake. I was purposefully bringing attention to that difference between those governments.

    22. Re:Tax dollars at work. by Yaztromo · · Score: 1

      Sigh...that was, naturally, a typo. It was intended to read that the Queen is not a patent troll.

      That said, you can take your nomination and stick it where the sun doesn't shine.

      Yaz

    23. Re:Tax dollars at work. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Jane becasue of certain common responses on Slashdot that your post could be understood in two ways is not solely your fault. Unfortunately you created a misunderstanding because you did not originally identify that your intent was to bring attention to the difference.

    24. Re:Tax dollars at work. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Ummm -- that patent troll was a typo - is not natural - many here identify any non-practicing patent related entity as patent trolls.

      Take your head out of your own arse and realize that your mistake is and was your's not mine. I can admit the twit of the week nomintation is now undeserved because of an honest error, can you admit that you did not correct your mistake until you were called out on it?

       

    25. Re:Tax dollars at work. by hawkfish · · Score: 1

      Ummm -- that patent troll was a typo - is not natural - many here identify any non-practicing patent related entity as patent trolls.

      Take your head out of your own arse and realize that your mistake is and was your's not mine. I can admit the twit of the week nomintation is now undeserved because of an honest error, can you admit that you did not correct your mistake until you were called out on it?

      Sorry, you get twit of the week for not being able to figure the typo out from the original context...which was pretty bloody obvious.

      --
      You will not drink with us, but you would taste our steel? - Walter Matthau, The Pirates
    26. Re:Tax dollars at work. by Jane+Q.+Public · · Score: 1

      Jane becasue of certain common responses on Slashdot that your post could be understood in two ways is not solely your fault. Unfortunately you created a misunderstanding because you did not originally identify that your intent was to bring attention to the difference.

      Perhaps. Reading my original comment again, I do see how it could be taken two ways. But one of them would be a mistake, and one of them would not.

      When there is ambiguity, should the reader assume the meaning that would be a mistake? Or is it more likely the writer meant it the other way, which is not a mistake?

      Regardless, I shall try to keep this in mind.

  5. Thanks, Eh? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    You Canucks are all right.

    1. Re:Thanks, Eh? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Cynicism is so prevalent in our post-ironic era that sincere gratitude is modded down. What a world.

  6. Annoying grammar guy by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    ...to WHOM

  7. Let's Cut To The Chase by Jane+Q.+Public · · Score: 1

    Third Base

    1. Re:Let's Cut To The Chase by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      No.. First Base!

    2. Re:Let's Cut To The Chase by Jane+Q.+Public · · Score: 1

      No. Who's on first.

      But I don't know, it always seems to come down to third base.

      Then we get to see the homers.

      D'oh!

  8. Who's on First! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    EOM

  9. There is a better drug in my opinion. by backslashdot · · Score: 3, Informative

    It's called favipiravir, and originates in Japan. It was tested on a few Spanish patients and it seems to have worked. The key difference between favipiravir and the ZMapp mAb is that favipiravir is effective even when given in the later stages of infection.

    1. Re:There is a better drug in my opinion. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Any idea how it is manufactured? I found the tobacco leaf manufacture of ZMapp fascinating.

    2. Re:There is a better drug in my opinion. by RDW · · Score: 5, Informative

      There are three very different agents here:

      ZMapp - engineered antibodies to EBOV.

      Favipiravir - small molecule, presumably made by standard organic synthesis techniques, active against the RNA polymerases (key replication enzymes) of quite a broad range of RNA viruses (including influenza virus).

      VSV-EBOV - (what the Canadians are shipping). A vaccine rather than a treatment, made by using molecular cloning to insert specific EBOV proteins into an unrelated, harmless virus. It will be propagated in mammalian cells rather than the tobacco-plant based method used for ZMapp production.

    3. Re:There is a better drug in my opinion. by rmdingler · · Score: 1
      I have a hunch a desperate West African dying in a tent, surrounded by strangers wearing astronaut uniforms, will take either one... first come first served, aay?

      I remember someone here shared the notion that x white people had to get the disease to get a vaccination underway. Maybe the tipping point was actually x hours of news coverage.

      Whatever the motivation, thank you Canadians! This never was a we versus them problem. We are them and they are us, all earthlings.

      --
      Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.

      Ernest Hemingway

    4. Re:There is a better drug in my opinion. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      They still need to be reminded to lay off the backwater bushmeat, rabid bats are not a delicacy!.

    5. Re:There is a better drug in my opinion. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      And where is the evidence any of these are effective? I've only seen a paper on ZMapp. They didn't blind themselves and euthanized the control monkeys according to an unknown method of "clinical scoring". Sounds pretty reliable coming from those who stand to make a bunch of money off the drug... People need to get a lot more credulous when it comes to biomed research.

    6. Re:There is a better drug in my opinion. by sumdumass · · Score: 1

      The problem you are seeing is that these drugs are nowhere near tested as far as any other drug approved for use would be. These are being used as a last ditch efforts to save someone who would already be dead.

      The normal treatment for Ebola is more or less strengthening your body and letting it handle the virus. Blood plasma transfusions from surviving patients seem to help a bit but are sporadic. The ZMapp drug was used- if we are to believe the story- when the patient was within hours of death and no other options existed. Because these are the closest drugs- although completely untested- that seem to help, they are being put to use before any real testing has been done.

      People need to get a lot more credulous when it comes to biomed research.

      For the reasons stated above, this would be true with these drugs had the situation not been as dire or wide spread. But make no mistake, even the manufacturer claimed the drugs were nowhere near tested for human use or even close to human testing before their first use. It sort of sucks that people are given the choice of death or becoming a guinea pig for a new untested drug, but there simply is nothing else that can offer hope outside of the body's natural defenses which seem to be not doing so well.

    7. Re:There is a better drug in my opinion. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Sorry, first that should obviously read "incredulous". Second, the idea that experimental drugs have a reasonable chance of being useful, thus providing hope, is just wrong. It is very rare for this to be true. It is essentially performing random activities, something at the level of rain dances. We may as well give the patients a cat to purr on their lap, and tell them the frequencies of the purrs may help the healing process. The best we can hope is the side effects are limited and they just waste money. Unfortunately, history (AZT giving people AIDS, Polio vaccine giving people Polio) suggests we should expect much worse when this kind of rushed drug testing occurs.

    8. Re:There is a better drug in my opinion. by sumdumass · · Score: 1

      Sorry, first that should obviously read "incredulous". Second, the idea that experimental drugs have a reasonable chance of being useful, thus providing hope, is just wrong. It is very rare for this to be true. It is essentially performing random activities, something at the level of rain dances. We may as well give the patients a cat to purr on their lap, and tell them the frequencies of the purrs may help the healing process.

      Of course this is only true if the virus was not understood and the drugs were not being developed with eventual intent or treating the virus and similar ones. In this case, they did provide hope.

      The best we can hope is the side effects are limited and they just waste money. Unfortunately, history (AZT giving people AIDS, Polio vaccine giving people Polio) suggests we should expect much worse when this kind of rushed drug testing occurs.

      While I agree with this in principle, the first case of doing this with this disease turned out well so they did it again. Now they are pushing more drugs that have shown promise on paper but not necessarily on patients. We may still see bad side effects with these drugs but the alternative in many cases is death so the level of severity is somewhat subjective.

    9. Re:There is a better drug in my opinion. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Of course this is only true if the virus was not understood and the drugs were not being developed with eventual intent or treating the virus and similar ones. In this case, they did provide hope.

      You have too much confidence in the theories we have regarding biological systems. They are very primitive, unable to make any kind of testable, quantitative predictions. Most findings in biomed cannot even be easily replicated. We don't even understand what is going on well enough to consistently detect treatment effects in vitro, let alone in vivo. It seems likely most data is not even reliable enough to be worth developing quantitative theories to explain:
      http://www.jove.com/blog/2012/05/03/studies-show-only-10-of-published-science-articles-are-reproducible-what-is-happening

      If I am wrong in this case, we could find some kind of predictions they have made and then tested on new data. I highly doubt this exists in the case of ebola. Therefore we have to fall back on trial and error, which is searching around in the dark for a stable treatment effect. As someone familiar with biomed research, I would with 100% confidence choose the supportive care over any "experimental treatment". I would also recommend the same to anyone else.

    10. Re:There is a better drug in my opinion. by RDW · · Score: 1

      Unfortunately, history (AZT giving people AIDS, Polio vaccine giving people Polio) suggests we should expect much worse when this kind of rushed drug testing occurs.

      Those aren't great examples! AZT has never given anyone AIDS (outside the minds of conspiracy theorists) and remains in use as part of standard anti-retrovial combination therapy. Live polio vaccine can (extremely rarely) revert to a harmful form, but this has to be balanced against its enormously beneficial overall impact. I'm sure the researchers would be delighted if any of the anti-EBOV drugs currently being tested were as effective as AZT is against HIV, or if either of the new recombinant ebola vaccines now in trials (GSK also has one) were as protective as oral polio vaccine is against polio.

    11. Re:There is a better drug in my opinion. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      RDW,

      This discussion does not yet merit the effort of digging up the actual literature for me, but here are a few "general public" sources:
      "In the race to develop a safe and effective polio vaccine, accidents occurred with both types. In 1955, for instance, insufficiently killed virus in the vaccine from Cutter Laboratories in Berkeley, California, infected some 200 children; many were paralyzed and several died."
      http://amhistory.si.edu/polio/virusvaccine/vacraces2.htm

      "The adverse effects of zidovudine are sometimes difficult to distinguish from the symptomatology observed during the clinical course of AIDS, as well as from the possible adverse effects of other drugs used in the treatment of HIV-1 infection."
      http://www.drugs.com/sfx/zidovudine-side-effects.html

      But, rather than I provide you with sources, please cite some to support your claims so we know we are talking about the same thing.
      1) AZT has never given anyone AIDS
      -OK, hard to find a source proving a negative, but provide one discussing the side effects of AZT and also one describing the symptoms of AIDS that you find trustworthy.
      2) Live polio vaccine can (extremely rarely) revert to a harmful form
      - This is not what I am talking about. One of the original batches gave a bunch of people polio. It was a situation just like with Ebola today.
      3) "..but this has to be balanced against its [the various polio vaccines'] enormously beneficial overall impact."
      - How big is this impact, and how was this impact measured, etc?
      4) ..."as effective as AZT is against HIV"
      - How effective is this?
      5)..."as protective as oral polio vaccine is against polio"
      - How protective is this?

      Although I did not mention it in my original post, I am extremely skeptical of the evidence for polio vaccines' effectiveness. All the evidence I have seen for this is epidemiological, and they changed the definition of polio to be more specific over time. Obviously this confounded any relationship between vaccination rates and diagnosis rates. It seems to me we simply have no idea whether any of the polio vaccines are effective.

    12. Re:There is a better drug in my opinion. by sumdumass · · Score: 1

      Lol. They did not just throw darts at a stack of papers and decide to try whatever it landed on. These drugs were already being worked on with knowlege of its Ebola interaction already being worked on.

      I'm not saying we know evrrything but we certainly do have a better understanding of it than the health benefits of cat purrs.

    13. Re:There is a better drug in my opinion. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      This is exactly what I am disagreeing with. Like I said, they have no real theory (or at least I a priori doubt they do and you have not brought it to my attention), i.e. one capable of quantitative prediction. We essentially have no evidence their theories are any better than a nice reasonable narrative. How could we when they cannot make any predictions to test? Just because medicine is hard does not mean we should lower our standards of evidence, we need to be honest with ourselves.

      In my own field of studying SCI-TBI-Stroke nothing has been accomplished for at least 30 years. What happens is this cycle wherein a new faddish theory comes out (neuroprotection, etc), gets supported by tons of "significant" p-values but is never capable of predicting a thing, then it becomes unpopular as people just get fed up or bored with the conflicting evidence. All biomed I have looked into is like this, I would bet that ebola research is as well.

    14. Re:There is a better drug in my opinion. by RDW · · Score: 1

      Although I did not mention it in my original post, I am extremely skeptical of the evidence for polio vaccines' effectiveness.

      Then I'm afraid it's pretty unlikely we can have a useful discussion. There is still no fully effective cure for entrenched belief in anti-vaccine conspiracy theories (or HIV 'scepticism', if you also subscribe to that).

    15. Re:There is a better drug in my opinion. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      RDW,

      I am sure you have never looked at the evidence for yourself. Find one paper where they analyze the effectiveness of a polio vaccine while taking into account the changing definition. I thought it was crazy too until I checked and found a bunch where they ignore it. In retrospect I shouldn't have been surprised, biomed is filled with people who don't like math and are thus incompetent at critical thinking and data analysis.

    16. Re:There is a better drug in my opinion. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It is essentially performing random activities, something at the level of rain dances.

      The majority of scientists aren't as ignorant as you, especially when it comes to thier own fields. Drop the notion that you understanding of pop-sci has any standing outside of convincing yourself you are correct in internet arguments where everyone is as equally unswayed by the arguments of internet denizens who are not them as you yourself are.

    17. Re:There is a better drug in my opinion. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      This is exactly what I am disagreeing with. Like I said, they have no real theory (or at least I a priori doubt they do and you have not brought it to my attention), i.e. one capable of quantitative prediction.

      The mechanisms through which Ebola kills are well known. The fact you're too stupid to use the internet that is literally at your fingertips is a completely separate matter from the scientific community's understanding of Ebola.

    18. Re:There is a better drug in my opinion. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The mechanisms through which Ebola kills are well known. The fact you're too stupid to use the internet that is literally at your fingertips is a completely separate matter from the scientific community's understanding of Ebola.

      None of these proposed drugs are targeting the "mechanisms through which Ebola kills", they target viral replication which is distal to that. So your aside:
      1) Is not relevant to this discussion.
      2) Must be wrong, otherwise people would be working on ways to simply prevent the death/illness rather than trying approaches like vaccines, anti-virals, and mAbs. The latter are all theoretically crappy because viruses are known mutate often!

      Perhaps the "mechanisms through which Ebola kills" are "well known" in such a vague sense as to be useless to any application. That is what I would expect.

    19. Re:There is a better drug in my opinion. by RockDoctor · · Score: 1

      I remember someone here shared the notion that x white people had to get the disease to get a vaccination underway.

      Leaving aside the "x white body count" shit (remember, most of the work so far has been on the basis of fears of weaponised EBV), you do realise that before you can have a vaccination programme, you firstly need to have a vaccine that works, with a reasonable degree of safety and efficacy (so trials are unavoidable) ; then you need to produce large quantities of the vaccine (GSK estimate that this step is going to take a year ; this is their business, so I accept their estimate of the timing) ; and then you're going to need to ship it and distribute it, which is also going to take weeks to months.

      However many white bodies we are from an effective vaccine, we're also on the order of a year from a vaccine.

      Is there actually a law of nature that requires there to be a vaccine for a particular virus. I don't see that there is, of necessity.

      --
      Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"
    20. Re:There is a better drug in my opinion. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      There are a bunch of problems with what you say. Just because someone doesn't like math doesn't mean they're bad at critical thinking. The data for the polio vaccine are really convincing to me; polio is almost eradicated from the world (IIRC, it's only found in three countries now). The definition of polio virus infection did not change, and that has gone down dramatically. Historically, that shouldn't have happened without some agent that could prevent its transmission. Now, it's not as rigorous as I'd like to base things off of historical controls, but in this case, that's what we have to do - we don't have a second planet where everything was the same up until then, but didn't develop the vaccine. The fact is, vaccine trials are among the best you can do when working with humans.

      Also, the Ebola vaccine here is just one protein from Ebola, stuck onto a virus that we have studied a lot. It cannot give someone Ebola.

  10. WHO owns the property rights? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    "The government owns the intellectual property rights associated with the vaccine."

    This statement scares me.
    Who gives a flying fuck who owns the property rights?
    Just give it to the people WHO need it, end of story.

    Otherwise, are we setting up to make profit off of a zombie hoard?

    1. Re:WHO owns the property rights? by Tyr07 · · Score: 5, Interesting

      You're missing the point of that statement.

      The Government of Canada is giving it to WHO, you should be aware that it wasn't a private organization, but Canada and it's tax payers who are contributing to this. This is a good sign, as it means the citizens of Canada have control over it through their government, which means it won't be used to extort riches. Hence it going to WHO.

    2. Re:WHO owns the property rights? by umghhh · · Score: 1

      In this world somebody will own it. It is better if a good government does (and everybody to use it) than some asshat with a team of scalp hunters dressed as lawyers would. Just shows what big pharma actually does for the money they get. Not much it seems.

    3. Re:WHO owns the property rights? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Nonsense, you can put things into the Public Domain, in case of which nobody owns it.

    4. Re:WHO owns the property rights? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      For now. Surprised the Harper govt hadn't shut down the research lab already.

    5. Re: WHO owns the property rights? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Save your partisan bullshit for the National Post or CBC comment threads.

    6. Re:WHO owns the property rights? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I was thinking the same. Recently there was a biomedical NRC lab shutdown in Winniped by Harper. I didn't know of any other government lab that would have made this if not NRC, but I guess there is one.

    7. Re:WHO owns the property rights? by forrie · · Score: 1

      This makes more sense. I hadn't thought of it that way -- being an American, and used to big pharma's exploits, I keep forgetting (and need to be reminded) that Canada is a bit more progressive with the bigger picture.

      I also can appreciate where an entity, including the Canadian Gov't, would want to recoup reasonable research costs. If all countries thought that way....

    8. Re:WHO owns the property rights? by the+gnat · · Score: 2

      Just shows what big pharma actually does for the money they get. Not much it seems.

      Why would Big Pharma waste time trying to cure Ebola? It's a disease that affects a relatively tiny number of people in (mostly, until the past month) Third World nations. It is only notable due to the terrifyingly (and unusual) high mortality rate, but there is absolutely no financial incentive to go after it right now.

    9. Re:WHO owns the property rights? by Tyr07 · · Score: 1

      It's better this way, meds will be cheaper as the collective tax payer is paying for it, or rather the government has the ability to give the medication to people at a much cheaper cost to the government than if it had to be purchased from a private organization. Intentions can be better.

    10. Re:WHO owns the property rights? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      So the taxpayer pays for it and then doesn't recoup any costs for it? Sounds sketchy; nothing wrong with a small amount of profit to keep people motivated etc. Nothing moves in this world without money.

  11. Appropiate post on a technology site by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    NOT! Keep your drama bs posts on the CNN/FOX NEWS forums.

    1. Re:Appropiate post on a technology site by CaptainDork · · Score: 1

      Bullshit. This is "stuff that matters."

      --
      It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
  12. This is great news! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    And I hope this vaccine is effective. It is good news that the Canada government retains the IP rights to the vaccine rather on megacorp.

    BUT why the news blackout in the West for JK-05? The Chinese has shipped 10,000 doses to Africa! Not a vaccine but a treatment drug and out of the hands of a for-profit private corporation, like Zmap.

  13. Do I have to be the one to say it? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    *WHOM

  14. Re: Canada by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Troll

  15. Re:Canada by Tyr07 · · Score: 2

    That's not what you said last night XD

  16. Re:no, dammit! by umghhh · · Score: 1

    I thought for a while this was a joke.....

  17. bbbut racism.... by gelfling · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I am keeping my fingers crossed that MSNBC screams that black people are being used as guinea pigs

    1. Re:bbbut racism.... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Ummm "clinical trials on humans at the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research in the U.S." does not make it a "black people are being used as guinea pigs"

  18. drug patents harm the world by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    this is just evil them having to licence a drug that the world needs....

    1. Re:drug patents harm the world by sumdumass · · Score: 1

      I forget which treaty is it, but there are exceptions in which a government can claim a state of emergency and manufacture any drug or violate any patent to address that emergency without violating any international law or foreign law.

      It was all over the news back when the Anthrax scares were happening. Canada cited the provisions when it appeared there would be a shortage of Cipro and decided one of their companies would manufacture it for Canadian stockpiles. I think they later reversed on that when Bayer said they could produce the amounts needed.

      I would be inclined to think this is one of those times. But these drugs are not tested and have little to no working background that could be used to get generics up and running like you could with other drugs.

  19. Re:no, dammit! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    It is, a very lame joke though.

  20. Intellectual rights, in a crisis? by forrie · · Score: 1

    Pardon my ignorance, but where is the greater good served by intellectual rights, in the face of a potentially dangerous epidemic. As an above poster pointed out, not even the US Gov't can own intellectual rights (that I know of anyway). Say this vaccine works, and works really well. Does that now make us all liable to pay the Canadian Gov't for more doses, or to license the formula for manufacture? At what cost. Interesting. I want to learn more facts behind this.

  21. TFT by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Nitpick: The title could mention that the drug is a vaccine, and we wouldn't have to read TFS to find out how many people (that is to say dosage regimens) "800 doses" is good for.

  22. Tax dollars at work. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    The WSJ reports that 800 doses of an experimental vaccine for Ebola, developed over a decade at Public Health Agency of CanadaÃ(TM)s main laboratory in Winnipeg, will be shipped to the World Health Organization in an effort to help fight the ongoing Ebola crisis in West Africa:

    That 10 years is bullshit, maybe ten years for this particular drug, but there's been drugs in development for over 30 years, I'll say that again, 30 years. And only now are they busting ass to use it, let alone produce enough for any type of pandemic like were seeing unfold in Africa as we speak.

    And don't give me that US/Canada regulations BS either on testing the drug on humans, the drug companies or researchers could very easily go to other countries to try it out on humans. Of course the problem might be finding people willing to risk their lives on an unknown drug. But then again people are doing that trying to treat infected people so it shouldn't be to hard.

    The drug gives you a 50/50 chance, which is better then the 70% fatality rate without it.

  23. I know why it does't work by rs79 · · Score: 1

    And when you're sick of people dying. Call me. Remember this.

    --
    Need Mercedes parts ?
    1. Re:I know why it does't work by lissnup · · Score: 1

      I'm already sick of people dying, and I want to know now why this won't work, please

  24. No excuses by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    If they can ship that many, then clearly there are no excuses for not having enough locally for the dozen or so people. After all, the responsibility is to your own citizens first.

  25. Ebola drugs by Ellie+K · · Score: 1

    Current list of Ebola drugs, tacky headline on their stock market status

    --
    tempus fugit