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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.

13 of 102 comments (clear)

  1. 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

  2. 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 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

    3. 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?

    4. 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

  3. 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 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.

  4. 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.

  5. Re:Canada by Tyr07 · · Score: 2

    That's not what you said last night XD

  6. 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

  7. 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.