Ebola Nose Spray Vaccine Protects Monkeys

First time accepted submitter GeekyKhan writes A new needle-free vaccine has proven to be 100% effective at stopping the transmission of Ebola in monkeys, and it could spell a breakthrough in the battle against the disease. The vaccine is administered through a nasal spray using a common cold virus genetically engineered to carry Ebola DNA. From NBC: "The vaccine uses a common cold virus genetically engineered to carry a tiny piece of Ebola DNA. Sprayed up the nose, it saved all nine monkeys tested for infection. But now the research is dead in the water without funding, Maria Croyle of the University of Texas at Austin’s College of Pharmacy said. 'Now we are at the crossroads, trying to figure out where to get the funding and resources to continue,' Croyle told NBC News."

Comments

Of course

[Anonymous Coward]

{insert president} doesn't care about black people.

Re:Of course

[skids]

Those academic scientists at (insert school) and their money grubbing ways, always asking for a handout, feeding off the public trough.

monkeys like us or monkeys like monkeys?

[Anonymous Coward]

n/t

Re:monkeys like us or monkeys like monkeys?

[gstoddart]

No no no ... monkeys like bananas, we like monkeys ... I'm sure some monkeys like us, and I'm pretty sure monkeys also like other monkeys or they'd have died out by now ... but we're talking, like, monkeys.

Monkeys, like, us. Monkeys, like us. Monkeys like us.

Re:monkeys like us or monkeys like monkeys?

[lgw]

monkeys like us or monkeys like monkeys?

We're primates, but not monkeys. The vaccine works nasally for monkeys, so now I just need a monkey nose and I'm safe - hopefully the Aggies will get full monkey nose funding soon.

Re:monkeys like us or monkeys like monkeys?

[Anonymous Coward]

Monkey never crap

Re:monkeys like us or monkeys like monkeys?

[Anonymous Coward]

I do not see you monkeying around.
I do not hear you monkeying around.
I do not speak of you monkeying around.

Shit, now I'm doing it. I must have saw.

Re: monkeys like us or monkeys like monkeys?

[smaddox]

I think you mean longhorns, not Aggies.

Where is

[Bin_jammin]

Jenny McCarthy to protest this? After all, who can really care for all those poor autistic monkeys this will create?

Re:Where is

[NoKaOi]

And the vaccine contains GMOs!

Re:Where is

[aliquis]

And the vaccine contains GMOs!

ALSO IT'S A VACCINE!!

I don't trust science, I trust God! Theref<fell dead on the keyboard>

Re:Where is

[aliquis]

... <resurrected - haha!>

What I really meant was:
* I don't trust science! I trust God and conspiracy theories on the Internet! The bolder and #ff0000 text and the more apocalyptic video the better!

They for sure are more trustworthy than the peer-reviewed content of scientific journals and work of researchers at universities! .. the Bible and the Quran tell us all we need to know!

Re:Where is

[Anonymous Coward]

"peer-reviewed content of scientific journals"
Lets compare to the ZMapp paper written by people who did not blind themselves and then euthanized monkeys according to a secret clinical score.

"D. Clinical Scores. Primates were observed on a daily basis during the challenge period. Clinical scores were recorded for each primate by a blinded technician using a standard, approved scoring methodology."

It is good that the technician was blinded.

"Animals were monitored daily and scored for disease progression using an internal filovirus scoring protocol approved by the CSCHAH Animal Care Committee. The scoring system graded changes from normal in the subject’s posture/activity,attitude, activity level, feces/urine output, food/water intake, weight, temperature, respiration, and ranked disease manifestations such as a visible rash, hemorrhage, cyanosis or flushed skin."

Meh, this kind of tells us what they did. I'm not sure why it is so difficult to describe these methods so that others can do them and understand.

"respiratory administration of our formulated vaccine alone afforded full protection to all animals challenged at a much later time after immunization (Figure 12)."

http://pubs.acs.org/doi/pdf/10.1021/mp500646d
This is their main finding (the one in the news). Unfortunately I could not find figure 12, it seems they forgot to include their main data in the paper.

Re:Where is

[bluegutang]

Actual discussion:
Parent "I want #Ebola vaccine for my child"
Doc "There isn't one, but we have #flushot"
Parent "We don't believe in that"

https://twitter.com/AllergyKid...

Technicalities

[Translation Error]

The vaccine uses a common cold virus genetically engineered to carry a tiny piece of Ebola DNA. Sprayed up the nose, it saved all nine monkeys tested for infection.

Saved? I can believe that none of the vaccinated monkeys caught Ebola, but I'd hardly call that 'saving' them. I'd also think calling a vaccine 100% effective is a bit premature with only nine test subjects.

Re:Technicalities

[gstoddart]

For a sample size of 9, it's 100% effective.

As with all statistics, the devil is in the details. :-P

Re:Technicalities

[cdrudge]

If the infection rate prior to being immunized was 100%, I'd say 9 of 9 not being infected is pretty fricking huge for something that kills 1/2 the people that catch it and no other known immunization technique.

Re:Technicalities

[Anonymous Coward]

If someone shoots you with a gun and you happen to be wearing a bullet proof vest, thus you live, would you say that the vest saved your life, or would you just say that you didn't catch the ?

Also, if the sample size is 9, and all 9 didn't catch it, isn't that 100% effective? If they said 95% effective, wouldn't you be wondering how that one monkey became only 55% effective? If they said 89% effective, wouldn't you incorrectly assume that 1 monkey died? What percentage are they supposed to report other than 100% (assuming that the quantity of subjects involved is mentioned, as it was, so that you can calculate a confidence interval for that figure)?

Re:Technicalities

[mikes.song]

It's 100% effective with a 100% margin of error.

A sample size of nine isn't a study; it's a fraud.

Re:Technicalities

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't be so harsh.
With a sample size of 9, it is a demonstration.

It's hard not to call this an achievement.

Now let's see if politics and media attention will make human trails go a lot faster. Or whatever the approach is going to be. I bet the docs in Africa won't mind trying if it can't hurt them.

Re:Technicalities

[Anonymous Coward]

So for your first primate trial with a new treatment you'd have dosed 100 of them? That'd be stupid and wasteful...

Re:Technicalities

[Kurast]

For a population size of 6 billion, confidence interval of 95%, expected mean distribution of 50% (most conservative) of infection ratio, a sample size of 9 gives us a margin of error of 32% (try yourself: http://www.raosoft.com/samples...)
Given 100% efficacy, it is highly significant, well outside the margin of error.
Is is significant even for 98% confidence.

Re: Technicalities

[Anonymous Coward]

Depends on the number of monkies in the control pool. 9 treated and saved with 9 untreated dead would be good showing. If you only have 9 animals and they all survived maybe you did infect them correctly. Details make a difference.

And no. I did not read the article.

Re:Technicalities

[ShanghaiBill]

As with all statistics, the devil is in the details. :-P

... and one of the most important details was left out: What is the infection rate in the absence of the vaccine? If it was 100%, and the vaccine prevented it, then it is 100% effective with 0% margin of error. If the infection rate would have been 50%, then it is still effective with (1-1/512) = 99.5% certainty. It is not clear if a control group was used in this study. TFA made it sound like there was not. So the positive result could have been because of some experimental error like dead ebola, that was non-infectious anyway.

Does anyone have a link to a better article, or the original announcement?

Re:Technicalities

[Nikademus]

That's true, it's know that you need 12 monkeys when a virus outbreak is there. :)

Re:Technicalities

[Anonymous Coward]

you just conflated infection rate with mortality rate.

Re:Technicalities

[Wycliffe]

For a population size of 6 billion, confidence interval of 95%, expected mean distribution of 50% (most conservative) of infection ratio, a sample size of 9 gives us a margin of error of 32% (try yourself: http://www.raosoft.com/samples...)
Given 100% efficacy, it is highly significant, well outside the margin of error.
Is is significant even for 98% confidence.

It doesn't work that way. The population size was 9. You're only right if those 9 were pulled from random from the current
human population but that's not what happened. They were all exposed. It would take a rediculous amount of trials if all results
had to be divided by 6 billion (or whatever the current population happens to be). That's like saying a bug spray that killed all 10k
mosquitos might not work because there are 10 trillion mosquitos in the world so your sample size is too small. I agree that they
should now test a bigger but it doesn't make sense to divide their results by 6 billion.

Re:Technicalities

[slinches]

Wow, it's up to 200% effective!?!?!?!?!

Re:Technicalities

[Chalnoth]

It is generally true that such studies should be considered preliminary. It's possible that this vaccine won't work for humans, or that the ebola virus will evolve around the vaccine so rapidly that it has no impact.

But clearly this sounds like a very promising start, and the researchers absolutely deserve to have more funding to finish their work. This is exactly the kind of thing that the NIH is designed to fund. But, due to Republican fuckery, NIH funding has been cut.

Re:Technicalities

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually the problem with this vaccine is that it only immunized the monkeys' nose. Saved the nose but the monkey died. Technical success as non-nose body parts are out of scope!!

Re:Technicalities

[mikes.song]

Wow, it's up to 200% effective!?!?!?!?!

That's the level of accuracy we are dealing with here folks.

Re:Technicalities

[Anonymous Coward]

In the paper it says 3/3 survived in a subgroup getting some special formulation. That 9/9 number appears made up.
http://pubs.acs.org/doi/pdf/10.1021/mp500646d

Re:Technicalities

[bytesex]

With a 70% death rate?

Re:Technicalities

[RockDoctor]

Since they need to blind, they need to use at least 18 monkeys. (The paper mentions twenty were "secured" - from suppliers? or by wild capture? - and taken to the BSL-4 laboratory in Winnipeg. What happened to the other two?)

So, there are two constraints there, already. Firstly where are you going to get the hundred or two hundred monkeys that would have made for a much better study? It's a stunningly simple question, and that suggests to me that they probably couldn't get more. From anywhere. It's called a limited resource, because the resource is limited.

Now, what's the other constraint? It's space in BSL-4 laboratories. 20 monkeys need a pretty substantial animal house. Between living space (absolute minimum of 1 sq.m per animal, and you'll probably need more; let's guess 5 sq.m because you don't want these animals to die or fall unwell from stressful living conditions. You want them to die (or not) of your disease or the treatment. If you go around killing your test animals by incompetent husbandry, you have wasted your limited resources of both animals and lab space - this will not make you popular - people who waste valuable resources are never popular. So we'll give 5 sq.m per animal for cage space. 100 sq.m for the group. You'll need the same amount of space for corridors between the cages and access (you need to move entire cages in order to clean them properly ; I've worked in animal houses - I was moderately surprised on my first day there to see the amount of "wasted" space, but once you start rolling cages around to take them to the cleaning stations, you realise it's not wasted space.) So, we've got a 200 sq.m house just for the accommodation. You also must have a separate room for treatment - standard husbandry is that you don't do injections or things in front of the other animals because it stresses them. They're then more likely to die, or become unwell, regardless of treatment or non-treatment. Let's say 20 sq.m for the treatment room. How much lab space do you need in addition is hard to say. Lets say 80 sq.m (an 8m by 10m room) for a total space requirement of 300 sq.m.

That's a BSL-4. That is a pretty expensive piece of real estate. And you don't build BSL-4 facilities overnight.

If you go to read the fucking paper. (I know, it's Slashdot, people don't do that. But since you're accusing the researchers of FRAUD, I thought that just maybe you'd have the balls to actually do your fucking homework), you'll see that the study took 150 days, with an additional 30 days at the start for the animals to become acclimatised to their new home in the BSL-4 animal house. So, allowing 10 days to write and review the paper, they cannot have started this work any earlier than May 1st.

Did you know about the Ebola outbreak on May 1st? Did your political representatives? Almost certainly not. I did know about it then, but that's through some uncommon coincidences - I've worked in animal houses before as a student ; I've had repeated exposures through my work to various diseases, and I've had to carry a vaccinations passport along with my national passports for over 10 years now, and on May 1st, I was just returning to the UK from my employment in West Africa following a flight diversion into Cote d'Ivoire.

A sample size of nine isn't a study; it's a fraud.

Do you have any idea of how much of a complete twat (British English : it's rude) you sound? Nah, probably not.
Well, I hope that the authors decide to sue you for libel. As a Brit, I've read this, in Britain, and had my opinion of the researchers materially influenced by your writing, so they've got adequate grounds to sue you for libel in Britain, under British libel laws. I'll give you a hint : don't waste time trying to prove your allegations of fraud - it's not a defence under British libel laws. Which is why I mention it.

Re:Technicalities

[RockDoctor]

Does anyone have a link to a better article, or the original announcement?
http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10...

You'll need a (free) account to get the PDF.

The viral challenge the monkeys were exposed to was sufficient to cause 100% infection. The challenge was DESIGNED to do that.

Re:Technicalities

[ozydingo]

If it was 100%, and the vaccine prevented it, then it is 100% effective with 0% margin of error.

0% margin of error? How do you figure? Maybe I'm just mixing up terms (surely you don't just mean standard deviation in the sample?), but it seems to me that no matter your assumptions a 0% margin of error based on this study would be rather foolish and meaningless.

Re:Technicalities

[mikes.song]

I really hope you are paid to write that dribble.

Between all the name calling, I gather your point as expense of a medial trail being too expensive.

Because, come on... a trial with only nine subjects is not a trial... it's simply a fraud. Even, in the US you need a jury twelve to get a criminal conviction.

Like I care about the chimps... I care about humans. How many of those people get dosed for each monkey in your bogus-trial?

Re:Technicalities

[Firethorn]

The paper mentions twenty were "secured" - from suppliers? or by wild capture? - and taken to the BSL-4 laboratory in Winnipeg. What happened to the other two?

In this context 'secured' means 'made available for their use'. It was probably a mix of buying, leasing, and renting* the monkeys from their owners who were acting as suppliers.

*With a penalty to be paid if the monkeys are killed/harmed.

Re:Technicalities

[RockDoctor]

Yeah, "secured" is a pretty slippery word.

Obviously the monkeys, after exposure in this trial, won;t be usable in either future Ebola work, or in many types of adenovirus work. So that'd be a significant degree of damage to their future income-earning potential for their owners.

If they're coming from multiple sources, then that does suggest that the availability of experimental animals is a real resource constraint, which again strengthens the case for using that resource as carefully as possible. Unlike "mikes.song", I do understand that you are not going to expand the supply of that resource overnight, even if you throw money at the question like it is going out of fashion.

Re:Technicalities

[RockDoctor]

Well, you want to continue courting libel. Your problem.

Between all the name calling, I gather your point as expense of a medial trail being too expensive.

You mean a "medical" trial? ; I've never heard of a "medial" trial, though it is composed of bits of statistical terminology.

The point is not that a trial of thirty, forty, a hundred monkeys is too expensive, what I'm saying is that, literally, the resources to carry out a bigger trial do not exist. Or, to be more precise, the resources do not exist to carry out this trial and the 37 (made up number) other trials which are also evaluating potential Ebola resources at this moment, let alone the 373 (another made up number) other trials for which funding (and resource) grant applications were submitted, but not approved.

The availability of "resources" is often a severe constraint on carrying out research. If you want a 1000 minutes on the Hubble Space telescope to watch your neighbour sunbathing, good luck with that application. If you want a drilling rig that can take core samples from 2km below the seabed, in 5km of water depth, then you're on a 3-4 year waiting list, and have a hundred million dollars, shore base, work permits and regulatory approval ready to go, otherwise you're back to the back of the queue.

If you have a potential treatment for "Song-Mike Cancer" and you have only ten patients with the disease each year, then how are you going to conduct your trial in an ethically responsible way? Do you blind the trial fully, and wait six years before unblinding. That's the statistically clearest way of performing the trial. However, the people in years 2 through 6 of the trial are at increased risk of death if your treatment really is good, so your ethical purity over statistical ignorance puts twenty people needlessly at risk. Enjoy getting that one past your Ethics Oversight Committee, because you'd run a good chance of losing your license for proposing such a design. (Also, if your treatment is worse than the standard treatment, you put all 60 patients at increased risk.) What you do, in fact, is you design your trial with continuous monitoring of outcomes, and continuous re-assessment of the most-likely relative efficacy to give you the observed results. That way, you actually minimise the number of patients (your constrained resource) who you kill in the effort to assess your new treatment (against standard treatment).

After a year of working with me, my statistics lecturers thought I was good enough at statistics to invite me to change majors (along with 4 others out of an advanced class of about 120 ; there were another 300-odd on the regular statistics course), but I declined because I found it was too stressful dealing with the old trials which we studied in near real-time as weekly tutorials (without patient names, but everything else, formatted as "review meetings" for each trial). I declined. I know enough about statistics to know how little I know.

You sound so confident that I am sure that you haven't studied medical statistics.

(Sorry - I've assumed in the SongMike Cancer example above that you get 100% recruitment into the trial. That's a rocking-horse shit occurrence. Many people will opt for the standard treatment. Lengthen your trial appropriately.)

Oh, and you're the one who mentioned chimps. So, you still haven't read the paper. I'm not surprised.

Re:Technicalities

[RockDoctor]

Oh, Pyrecantha.

Any particular reason?

Re:Technicalities

[mikes.song]

Excuse the brevity, but if there's not enough resources to do a proper study, then why publish results? The results are bogus because of the sample size. At the end of the day, nine is not a sample; it's still a fraud. Publishing it as if it means anything is even more of a fraud. Coming on here to defend it is just silly.

Re:Technicalities

[Anonymous Coward]

Depends on the method of exposure they used. Usually in monkey vaccine trials, they make sure that they got an infectious dose, so infection rate should have been close to 100%. I haven't looked at the paper, but that's how they normally do it.

Re:Technicalities

[Firethorn]

If they're coming from multiple sources, then that does suggest that the availability of experimental animals is a real resource constraint, which again strengthens the case for using that resource as carefully as possible.

The supplies of experimental use primates is indeed extremely rare. Humans are actually the cheapest primate to use except for ethical limitations. ;)

As a result, I'm not even sure about them using a 'proper' control group. Rereading your initial post I see that you figured that 9 control monkeys, matching the experimental group, was necessary. For a proper experiment that would mean exposing the 9 to ebola - and probably losing all 9. Incredibly expensive. I wouldn't be surprised if they only used 1-2 monkeys for that, just enough to confirm that their ebola source was live and functional. Or even just didn't bother and depend on blood antigen tests to confirm infection and track disease course.

As for the other monkeys - it can get complicated. Primarily you always try to obtain more than you need because odds are something will happen to rule out at least some of them from the experiment. Sickness, injury, etc... Second would be things like companionship, they do better if there's more of them around. Etc...

Re:Technicalities

[RockDoctor]

I would advise you to go back to your course components on non-parametric and Baysean statistics.

Because a study isn't ideal (and I am not saying that small studies like this are ideal) does not mean that they are devoid of useful information. If you don't understand statistics well enough to use that information, then that's fine. But your incomprehension does not give you the right to go around accusing other people of fraud in a public place.

Re:Technicalities

[RockDoctor]

TFP discusses how they actually assessed the lethality of the challenge dose of virus used. I've already forgotten the details - no need to file that in long term memory, that's what papers are for. But definitely they did devote a half-page or so to discussing that.

Otherwise - yes, using experimental animals is complex, and the complexity and difficulty doesn't seem to decrease. And the cost doesn't go down either.

Re:Technicalities

[mikes.song]

I would advise you to go back to your course components on non-parametric and Baysean statistics.

Because a study isn't ideal (and I am not saying that small studies like this are ideal) does not mean that they are devoid of useful information. If you don't understand statistics well enough to use that information, then that's fine. But your incomprehension does not give you the right to go around accusing other people of fraud in a public place.

That sounds like I would say if I was running a fraudulent study.

Re: Technicalities

[RockDoctor]

You really do seem to be courting a libel case. That's fine : your choice, your consequences.

If you really want to continue to expose your not-even-sophomore understanding of statistics in public, that's your choice too.

To answer one of your earlier slights, I do get paid to write things, but not on the Internet. I spent several hours today writing a report on an oil well I drilled, and had to pass through West African airports in the process of the drilling. It is very likely that the current Ebola outbreak is a lot more personal to me than it is to you. That and you insulting attitude to people who are actually trying to do something about the problem is why I weighed-in and I get no reward for this but to enjoy watching you dig your hole deeper.

Sir, you're a prick.

The answer is obvious!

[Anonymous Coward]

I need other people's money funding this! Spare no expense!

There are already ways to deliver vaccine

[Crashmarik]

without a needle

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J...

Seems if needleless vaccination is your goal, this would be the way to go. Speaking as someone who got a flu shot from one of these it's a pretty painless experience.

Re:There are already ways to deliver vaccine

[sexconker]

without a needle

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J...

Seems if needleless vaccination is your goal, this would be the way to go. Speaking as someone who got a flu shot from one of these it's a pretty painless experience.

Uh, those things aren't supposed to be used for vaccines. Read your own link. There's a risk of transmission from patient to patient.

Re:There are already ways to deliver vaccine

[Anonymous Coward]

This type of vaccine is live virus, it uses the cold virus to insert the Ebola DNA which will be expressed by the cells the virus transfected, which is a great way to enrage the entire immune system to make sure the vaccine takes. A hypospray of viral DNA doesn't have the same effect.

Re:There are already ways to deliver vaccine

[cdrudge]

From your link:

Because the jet injector breaks the barrier of the skin, there is a potential that biological material is transferred from one user to the next. Some infectious viruses such as hepatitis B can be transmitted by less than one millionth of a millilitre[6] so makers of injectors need to ensure there is no cross-contamination between applications. The World Health Organization no longer recommends jet injectors for vaccination due to risks of disease transmission.

A breathable mist is even easier to administer and doesn't have the for any special precautions as the skin is never penetrated, eliminating the chance of infection or blood cross contamination.

Re:There are already ways to deliver vaccine

[Andy Dodd]

"Seems if needleless vaccination is your goal, this would be the way to go."

Did you even read the article you linked???

Re:There are already ways to deliver vaccine

[mysidia]

They are for vaccines, but their use in medicine is no longer recommended due to cross-contamination risks.

If they're indeed painless however; the risk might be low enough that it's a worthwhile tradeoff, in case it means more people will opt for the vaccine.

Needles may be safer, but fewer people may get vaccinated due to perceived pain that will be required.

Re:There are already ways to deliver vaccine

[Anonymous Coward]

Those jet injectors are not painless. I was shot with those evil devices many times during boot camp back in the early 70's. They'd line us up and march us between rows of orderlies who would pop us in both arms simultaneously. It sucked, I'll take needles, thank you.

Re:There are already ways to deliver vaccine

[Anonymous Coward]

That child looks terrified! And they call the damn thing a Ped-O-Jet! THINK OF THE CHILDREN.

Re:There are already ways to deliver vaccine

[Anonymous Coward]

'Anonymous Coward' - October 2014:

Triple cases in 3 days. That's 9 cases by October 25. 27 by November 1. Over 2000 by the end of November. 170,000 by the end of the year. 14 million at the end of january and well over half the country by valentine's day.

You'd think someone posting on a site like slashdot would have a clue about exponential growth.

'Anonymous Coward' - October 2014:

Ready to make it three for three in my favor? Remember the first of november, meet you back here and I'll expect and require your apology.

Tell me, sexconker - how many people had been infected with Ebola in the United States by November 1? Do you still think you are 'three for three' and are you expecting and requiring my apology?

Re:There are already ways to deliver vaccine

[rioki]

Except that in this case, if I understand correctly, you get the flue. Granted the flu is better than ebola, but this vaccine is not side effect free. It makes sense to administer it to people heading into the affected regions, but not a general purpose vaccine.

More proof the Republicans are in control

[Anonymous Coward]

No sane person would ever stop funding for something like this. That is proof this is the Republican's fault.

Re:More proof the Republicans are in control

[roc97007]

No sane person would ever stop funding for something like this. That is proof this is the Republican's fault.

On the other hand, wouldn't Republicans fund it and then sell the vaccine at a huge profit? Why would they not do this? (Because they hate... black people?... no wait... um.. I got nuthin.)

Re:More proof the Republicans are in control

[gewalker]

Yeah, it's all Dick Chaney's fault. Oh wait, it says in the article that Dick Cheney was largely responsible for the large funding increase for treatment of Ebola, etc.

Now the Bloomberg article clearly and accurately points out that Cheney did this to combat potential terrorism threats. But hey, no reason not to blame Republicans for being pro-death, anti-vaccine, etc. just because you have no idea about the actual funding details in this case.

Like most people, Dick Cheney has some things to like, some things to dislike. At least Cheney shot an attorney in the face.

Re:More proof the Republicans are in control

[davydagger]

not really, because ebola is mostly in Africa, where no one is going to pay a lot of money for this.

No profit potential, no drugs. That holds true for both parties, but you don't here too much about big pharma, because they donate alot to the dems.

Or it might get funding once Bill Gates or some other wealthy philanthropist decides he is going to pay for it. Or he might not give a shit, and no one develops this vaccine. Isn't philianthropy great. A few rich people make small exceptions to capitalism so they can gobble up social capital, but rarely respond to crises in a regular and predictable fashion that would be required of a truely public service that would replace them.

isn't capitalism great?

Re:More proof the Republicans are in control

[roc97007]

> not really, because ebola is mostly in Africa

For now.

Re:More proof the Republicans are in control

[Wycliffe]

not really, because ebola is mostly in Africa, where no one is going to pay a lot of money for this.

Just because it is currently only in africa doesn't mean there wouldn't be plenty of
paranoid people in first world countries willing to pay money for a vaccine.

Re:More proof the Republicans are in control

[king neckbeard]

Seems like this is what happened, http://www.smbc-comics.com/ind...

Not to worry!

[Xyrus]

With the republicans in charge, you won't be the only scientific group that doesn't have any funding! You'll have lots of company.

Re:Not to worry!

[Anonymous Coward]

No, no no. Republicans will finally fund studies that prove that pope francis is wrong: earth has been created by god in 7 days and not more.

Re:Not to worry!

[Charliemopps]

With the republicans in charge, you won't be the only scientific group that doesn't have any funding! You'll have lots of company.

Hillarious... but seriously... There is no difference between republicans and democrats:
http://www.scientificamerican....

So stop pretending there is.

Re:Not to worry!

[i kan reed]

You're citing the cuts the republicans forced by threatening legislative innaction that would recrash the economy as evidence that Obama is complicit in anti-science behaviors?

I mean, there's lots Obama has done, hasn't done, but the shit the republicans intentionally caused by threatening criminally irresponsible negligence as a condition of obeying their legislative agenda isn't "his".

Re:Not to worry!

[jeffmflanagan]

It's really dishonest to pretend there's no difference between Democrats and the degenerate remains of the Republican party. Only one party got stuck in the dark ages and bases its policies on superstition.

Re:Not to worry!

[Anonymous Coward]

here is no difference between republicans and democrats

Other than the Republicans being pandering moralists who base policy on religious beliefs instead of scientific fact.

So, people who vote against gay marriage and abortion? Not so much with honest dialog and credible scientific fact.

In other words, morons, idiots, and assholes.

Re:Not to worry!

[cdrudge]

Nitpick, but God created the earth on the first day and then populated it on days 5 and 6. The 7th day was spent resting, drinking beer, and watching football.

Re:Not to worry!

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd like to live in your fantasy world. The big pharma will not be willing to fund something, when there's even better way to make money or the they just won't make enough money from it, so they'll fund something that does.

Re:Not to worry!

[reve_etrange]

There's clearly money to be made on an ebola vaccine.

Not really. Maybe you haven't heard, but ebola is primarily endemic in west Africa.

If this is as promising as they claim, drug companies will be more than willing to fund them in order to make money from the vaccine.

No. Clearly you aren't familiar with the industry, but pharma primarily focuses on using marketing to sell reformulations of existing drugs. If this was about a promising lead on a first-world problem, you might see some industry investment, but the fact is that the industry has turned away from R&D and likes things that way.

Government shouldn't be doing this.

If people like you had your way, there would be no satellites, no internet and no modern medical technology. I have no idea where the bizarre assertion, that if the government doesn't do something, then corporations automatically will, comes from.

In this case, any way you slice it there would have been no progress without government involvement. It originated in government funded research.

Re:Not to worry!

[Anonymous Coward]

on the first day he made light and saw that it was good, but not more.

Re:Not to worry!

[hey!]

I was an MIT student when Reagan was elected. A lot of us had work study jobs in research labs. The change in research wasn't so much a cut in funding a change in focus. "Deaths per dollar" became a familiar metric.

There was a guy who came to work in the same lab as me as an engineer. He'd been the PI of a project that developed an advanced electron microscope that was fifteen years ahead of its time. His project was discontinued because under the Reagan philosophy of science research the government shouldn't do applied research except into weapons -- thus the "deaths per dollar" metric. We used the microscope -- his life's work basically -- as a spare vacuum tank. In the mid 90s under Clinton funding was restored, and electron energy loss spectroscopy made rapid advances again.

Re:Not to worry!

[angel'o'sphere]

Your link has nothing to do with what you claim.
Posted the wrong link?

I down modded you before ad off topic but as I undid it by posting (anonymously even) I thought I answer instead.

Re:Not to worry!

[Anonymous Coward]

Good. Government shouldn't be doing this.

Why the fuck not

Re:Not to worry!

[Anonymous Coward]

Nice right-wing talking point. Divide the left, make them upset, and not care about voting so the Republicans can take over.

Sad, but it worked a little.

There are plenty of differences, and I have more confidence in having a Democrat 'evolve' on the real issues over time in swing states than Republicans.

Re:Not to worry!

[rcamans]

Obama took much of the vaccine development money and redirected it to useless bs years ago. This had nothing to do with the Repubs.

Re:Not to worry!

[Anonymous Coward]

Because the government's sole job is to protect the liberty of its citizens?

You should never be asking yourself "why shouldn't government be doing this," the question must always be "what powers granted by its citizens to the government grant the government the power to do this?"

So go ahead. Point to the part of the Constitution where We the People empowered the United States government to take our money and spend it on medical research.

Re:Not to worry!

[reboot246]

And on the second day the power company sent him a bill.

Re:Not to worry!

[cavreader]

Pharmaceutical companies have no need or right to even $1 of government funding. Engineering vaccines is not fast or cheap. But the pharmaceutical companies do have a lengthy patent exclusivity to ensure they can recoup the R&D expenses and make a handsome profit before generics hit the market. The government has already allowed new Ebola drugs to be used even though the drugs have not finished human trials or completed the extensive process to certify the drugs.

The perceived panic about Ebola is blown out of proportion just like a host of other bullshit you have to wade through on a daily basis in an attempt to get to the truth. Wonder how people today would react to the Polio epidemic that occurred back in the early 1900's? Today's society has devolved into a bunch of entitlement riddled crybabies who know without a doubt everything that is wrong in their life is someone else''s fault. The firms who run the polling services to collect the average citizen opinions produce a combination of unreliable conclusions with a large amount of bullshit. Asking 100 people a question and then extrapolating that minuscule result set to cover 300 million people in the US or the 6 Billion people worldwide is ludicrous. When is the last time anyone challenged a polling firms results? Are any of these firms willing to divulge their statistical methodology in detail to validate their results? Will they detail and publish their base assumptions they use as the corner stone of their data analysis? The entire world has stopped using facts and instead have chosen to use opinion polls and the number of "Likes" a statement may receive in any internet forum. I mean the more people that like something has to mean it's the iron clad truth? If you can't locate a news source that supports your predetermined mindset you need only find another source that does validate your own opinions.

Re:Not to worry!

[argStyopa]

Forgot already that George Bush issued an unheard of $8 billion in AIDS research for Africa, did we?

http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/po...

Re:Not to worry!

[Charliemopps]

So there's a claim that republicans cut spending for science, and I link to the democratic presidents current budget proposal, that keeps funding at that very same rate (a cut if you consider inflation), and you think that's not relevant?

Re:Not to worry!

[Charliemopps]

You're citing the cuts the republicans forced by threatening legislative innaction that would recrash the economy as evidence that Obama is complicit in anti-science behaviors?

I mean, there's lots Obama has done, hasn't done, but the shit the republicans intentionally caused by threatening criminally irresponsible negligence as a condition of obeying their legislative agenda isn't "his".

Seriously? wtf? Do you have any idea how the budget process works? and who the hell is modding you up?
This is the presidential budget proposal.
Read: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2...
The president writes, whatever he wants, and sends it over to congress. He does not need their input or approval. This is the budget he's suggesting congress should consider. Several budgets are sent to congress by several departments of government. None have any legal bearing on what congress will pass. But obviously the presidents suggestions carry a lot of weight. Mainly it's considered the presidents "wish list"

By setting funding as he did in his proposal he's telling congress "I don't expect any more than this" He could have suggested tippling funding in this proposal. He wouldn't have gotten it. But by setting it the way he did you can be sure that science funding wont even be discussed.

Re:Not to worry!

[Anonymous Coward]

He has to give a modicum of a balanced budget. He can't shirk social services or the media will roast him for hating the poor. He can't shrink defense because the Hawks will say he hates the troops. He can't shrink Stimulus and QE because then the Policy wonks will say he hates the economy. That leaves science and R&D holding the bag.

I don't know why anybody would want to be president. everybody blames you and never gives you credit for anything. You work 17 hours a day, the stress level is not worth the compensation, and you have folks want to murder you.

eventually, politics has to end and people have to do their job. The midterm elections are over and people are already campaigning and politicing for 2016. it never ends.

Re:Not to worry!

[angel'o'sphere]

It is if at all a single case.
And it shows not cuttings but the current investment of the democrats. For me that are unrelated things.
To debunk your parent you should show SEVERAL periods of democratic presidents and NO CUTTING of republicians afterwards.

Money

[fustakrakich]

God forbid that Wall Street cough up any of that free government money it got over the last 6 years.. No, no, we should never demand that. That would be communism!

Re:Money

[Anonymous Coward]

God forbid any of the African nations affected by this disease cough up any money.

Re:Money

[aardvarkjoe]

God forbid any of the African nations affected by this disease cough up any money.

Considering that the cost to the U.S. of this ebola outbreak is going to be in the billions of dollars, it makes a lot of sense to fund research into vaccines to reduce the cost to us later on, regardless of what other countries are doing.

Re:Money

[fustakrakich]

Nothing left over after that last order for ammo.

The thing is that the Wall Street money is now sitting in a computer directory called "excess reserves", so it can be sprung for this immediately, and any other issue right now, like. for instance, the 'drought' in the central valley, it's 4 fucking trillion dollars being shuttered away for speculation and manipulation of the currency markets.

Re:Money

[cant_get_a_good_nick]

One of the most f**ked countries is Liberia. Founded by the US, the capitol is Monrovia, as in James Monroe, 'Merican President. It's been screwed for a while, partially because of western intervention. They are paying, in money and in lives. They don't have the capital to support a huge antiviral campaign in the scale that is needed in the time scale that is needed.

The US is not the sole reason for Liberia being f**ked. It's not even the main reason. But it is part, and since we do have a partial responsibility, we should have a partial responsibility to help their current crisis. We're not (yet) paying in lives in the scale that Liberia is, but we can pay in capital.

Re:Money

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't worry. I'm sure there are pharma companies with dump trucks fulled of cash on their way to UT - Austin right now.

Re:Money

[mattack2]

Founded by the US

That is misleading, if not false. I infer from that statement that you mean it was founded by the U.S. Government. Wikipedia confirms what I remembered:

Beginning in 1820, the region was colonized by African Americans, most of whom were freed slaves.

It did have help from a private organization, but not the U.S. Government.

OT: hope for slashdot?

[gmhowell]

Eleven comments and nothing by the GNAA? There might be hope for slashdot after all.

Re:OT: hope for slashdot?

[fustakrakich]

Be careful for what you wish for, please. I'm worried those "flags" might be doing something inappropriate.

Re:OT: hope for slashdot?

[gmhowell]

Be careful for what you wish for, please. I'm worried those "flags" might be doing something inappropriate.

But of course they are.

Re:OT: hope for slashdot?

[fustakrakich]

I don't know if it's happening yet, but if posts are being hidden or deleted, that will be most unfortunate. We gotta know about it...

Re:OT: hope for slashdot?

[gmhowell]

Expect any posts that point to disappeared posts to be disappeared as well, with the account modbombed into oblivion and permanent '-2' status.

Re:OT: hope for slashdot?

[fustakrakich]

Save your comments locally and check occasionally, and raise holy hell if it happens...

This is safe?

[blue9steel]

Apparently as a layman I have no understanding of the dangers, or lack thereof, of viral payloads genetically engineered into bacterium as on the face of it that sounds ridiculously dangerous.

Re:This is safe?

[Anonymous Coward]

This is a proven technique. Its harmless.

Re:This is safe?

[Russ1642]

Science doesn't care what sounds scary to you.

Re:This is safe?

[reve_etrange]

I have no understanding of the dangers, or lack thereof, of viral payloads

Indeed. You see, biological information is partitioned into units called "genes," which are responsible for individual functions. A "viral payload" consists of the entire viral genome, usually containing at least several thousand genes. Here, just one (or perhaps a few) viral genes have been selected because they code for proteins which the immune system can use to identify infected cells.

There is no danger in making a weakened cold virus (you simply invented the connection to bacteria) which contains these ebola-infected-cell-identifying genes. None of the genes which make ebola dangerous are present. The modified cold virus trains the immune system to kill cells which look like they have ebola. If ebola itself shows up later on, the vaccinated immune system is already prepared to identify and kill infected cells.

Re:This is safe?

[angel'o'sphere]

There is no viral payload genetically engineered into a bacterium.
Go read a book!

Re:This is safe?

[angel'o'sphere]

Vaccination does not train the immune system to kill infected cells.
It trains it to craft antibodies to attack the virus directly.
The rest of your post however is more or less correct and insightful/informative.

Re:This is safe?

[blue9steel]

Sure, I knew all that. I'm just unaware of how likely things like genetic transcription errors, possible mistakes by the researcher, contamination issues and other process problems could result in things going not as planned. Is this so safe any grad student could do it in their garage or more on the level of this should only be done in a level four biohazard facility in the Arctic?

Re:This is safe?

[blue9steel]

I went back and re-read the summary, and you're right it's engineered into a virus not a bacterium. I'm not sure that really changes my question much but consider me corrected.

Re:This is safe?

[Anonanonaon]

Indeed. You see, biological information is partitioned into units called "genes," which are responsible for individual functions. A "viral payload" consists of the entire viral genome, usually containing at least several thousand genes. Here, just one (or perhaps a few) viral genes have been selected because they code for proteins which the immune system can use to identify infected cells.

There is no danger in making a weakened cold virus (you simply invented the connection to bacteria) which contains these ebola-infected-cell-identifying genes. None of the genes which make ebola dangerous are present. The modified cold virus trains the immune system to kill cells which look like they have ebola. If ebola itself shows up later on, the vaccinated immune system is already prepared to identify and kill infected cells.

The more I learn about virology and immunology, the more I realize that what scientists are doing and what the public thinks they are doing exist in two very different realms.

The science is jargon-laden, complex and rests on certain assumptions which aren't even agreed upon by everybody. But the public, in order to satisfy their need to understand what is going on in this critical world of disease and medicine, build metaphoric stories, reducing the massive complexity and vaguenesses of what is going on at the microscopic level into simple story components.

These stories always sound pat and sensible and the solutions which exist within those story constructs similarly sound pat and sensible, because that's what stories are for. But they are just stories. Sci-fi/Fantasy.

People mistake the stories for reality. For instance:

"Here, just one (or perhaps a few) viral genes have been selected because they code for proteins which the immune system can use to identify infected cells.

There is no danger in making a weakened cold virus (you simply invented the connection to bacteria) which contains these ebola-infected-cell-identifying genes. None of the genes which make ebola dangerous are present."

Viruses are really damned small, and finding the right organism in an infected cell is anything but easy. Cells are full of all kinds of molecule-sized bits and pieces of shit. As of today, it is not even a certainty that the ebola virus has been positively identified, let alone properly categorized; there have been reports of over 250 mutation variants, any of which might be a mutated ebola virus, or maybe just another virus which might just have been present through the isolation process. Maybe just random bits of crap from a previous disease vector or vaccination injection. Nobody really knows for sure. It's pretty murky down there, and determining which organism causes what effects is a sloppy science, and it takes a huge amount of time and energy to even approximate answers.

So, deciding which genes from these samples of uncertain lineage are the ones which cause harm and which are simply present and useful for identification is by no means settled. We have best guesses right now. That's it.

The stories we tell ourselves sound great, and it makes us feel in control, but the reality is that there is still a lot we don't know.

Honestly, this inhaler ebola cure group sound more like they are using public relations tactics to fish for sponsorship. Whether they have a line on a real cure is doubtful.

Re:This is safe?

[rcamans]

We do not know what makes the ebola virus dangerous. Most of the genes in it are completely NOT understood.
Ebola is a very small virus, relatively speaking.
Ebola's methods are not understood.
Fortunately, you do not have to know or understand the virus to make a vaccine.

Re:This is safe?

[RDW]

Viruses are really damned small, and finding the right organism in an infected cell is anything but easy. Cells are full of all kinds of molecule-sized bits and pieces of shit. As of today, it is not even a certainty that the ebola virus has been positively identified, let alone properly categorized; there have been reports of over 250 mutation variants, any of which might be a mutated ebola virus, or maybe just another virus which might just have been present through the isolation process. Maybe just random bits of crap from a previous disease vector or vaccination injection. Nobody really knows for sure. It's pretty murky down there, and determining which organism causes what effects is a sloppy science, and it takes a huge amount of time and energy to even approximate answers.

Viruses are indeed really damned small, but not much else is true in this paragraph, which is mostly FUD. Nobody outside the ranks of medical conspiracy theorists doubts that the Ebola virus has been positively identified. We are about as certain of this are we are about the identity of, say, a tiger or an oak tree. Its genome has been completely sequenced many times. Yes, mutations have been found in viruses from the current epidemic that weren't found in previous outbreaks. There's nothing surprising about this - we see it every time the virus emerges from the animal reservoir and causes a new outbreak. There is no question of this being just some 'random crap' or anything to do with vaccinations. The mutations occur at specific positions within the well-defined sequence of the viral genome, and if you are so inclined you can go along to the UCSC genome website and see exactly where they are: http://genome.ucsc.edu/cgi-bin...

The specific viral genes selected for insertion into the (adenovirus) vaccine vector weren't chosen at random - the Ebola virus has been studied for decades and there is a great deal of data on the functions of the proteins that its genes encode. Of course we can't know for sure if a new type of vaccine is safe and effective until it is actually tested, but this is a long way from just having some sort of vague hunch that it might be OK, as you seem to be suggesting.

Re:This is safe?

[ItsJustAPseudonym]

...trains the immune system to kill cells which look like they have ebola.

So, the solution to Ebola involves profiling? Geez. /s

Re:This is safe?

[reve_etrange]

I believe you need special facilities and approval to work with 'live' ebola, but for something like this I think you can just order the actual sequences you need - which again probably just code for some otherwise harmless cell surface signal - and avoid ever having actual ebola on hand.

Re:This is safe?

[reve_etrange]

For the most part, antibodies bind to pathogens and signal macrophages or the complement system to attack the antibody-tagged pathogens. The closest they come to "directly attacking" anything is to sometimes coat pathogens to such an extent that they can't infect or damage cells. Leaving out the details of how the immune system identifies pathogens (by generating antibodies with specific binding properties) was a (intentional) simplification to be sure, but basically correct nevertheless.

Re:This is safe?

[reve_etrange]

Sorry, of course one needs complete ebola virus as well as secure animal testing facilities in order to conduct the monkey trials component of the vaccine development. A "grad student could do it in their garage" only if they guessed the exact sequences needed on the first try - but then I don't know how they would test it. In general you need Level 4 biocontainment to work with ebola. Turns out the University of Texas has more than one such facility.

Re:This is safe?

[reve_etrange]

I guess it's really cells which feel like they have ebola.

Re:This is safe?

[Anonanonaon]

Viruses are indeed really damned small, but not much else is true in this paragraph, which is mostly FUD. Nobody outside the ranks of medical conspiracy theorists doubts that the Ebola virus has been positively identified. We are about as certain of this are we are about the identity of, say, a tiger or an oak tree. Its genome has been completely sequenced many times. Yes, mutations have been found in viruses from the current epidemic that weren't found in previous outbreaks. There's nothing surprising about this - we see it every time the virus emerges from the animal reservoir and causes a new outbreak. There is no question of this being just some 'random crap' or anything to do with vaccinations. The mutations occur at specific positions within the well-defined sequence of the viral genome, and if you are so inclined you can go along to the UCSC genome website and see exactly where they are: http://genome.ucsc.edu/cgi-bin...

Sadly, this is more story dependency. It happens in the lab as well as out of it.

You can sequence and categorize all you like, and it is true that there are masses of recorded information accumulated in the study of viruses collected from animal and cell cultures. Excellent. But there is a rather large difference between that and knowing whatever it is specifically that is killing people in Africa, if it is just one organism, how the various mutations of it/them work. Pull a sample from a victim, and knowing what you are looking at is anything but a simple matter.

And on that point, has anybody actually isolated and sequenced a confirmed ebola sample from a human subject who died from that specific infection in the affected region?

Not to my knowledge. Maybe there's some breaking news I missed, but so far all I've seen are flaky claims and indeed, FUD.

To the extent which means all these 'confirmed cases' of ebola are pretty strange, as there are no tests that don't suffer from numerous inaccuracies and uncertainties.

That's what I'm talking about here, not the ordered universe inside the lab where the stories about how everything works and is under control line up nicely. -Which is not to say, "Don't study." I am saying that things are nowhere near as clearcut or simple as people would like to think.

I apologize if that sounds like FUD to you. Personally, I'd just call it "UD" because there is plenty of Uncertainty and plenty of Doubt at this stage of the game. The Fear part, however, is entirely optional, and I'd recommend against it, as it tends to lead to condescending little stories about reality; to make ourselves feel better and in control in an analog universe which actively defies digital categorization and control.

Re:This is safe?

[RDW]

And on that point, has anybody actually isolated and sequenced a confirmed ebola sample from a human subject who died from that specific infection in the affected region?

Yes, there are complete genomes from 78 cases (not necessarily fatal, but with confirmed EVD) in this publication alone:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pu...

This genomic sequence cannot be detected in uninfected individuals. It simply isn't there. Run the analysis on a thousand random blood samples from, say, the US or Europe, and you'll never see it. Does that suggest anything to you? (I assume from your language, which is similar to that used by HIV denialists, that it might not!).

Re:This is safe?

[RockDoctor]

The work was done in a BSL-4 lab in Winnipeg.

Putting the BSL-4 lab in the Arctic, Antarctic, or downtown Tokyo wouldn't significantly change the risks. If you've got BSL-4 procedures and equipment in place and working, then there's no problem ; if you've not got the actual procedures and equipment in place, you're fucked.

Re:This is safe?

[angel'o'sphere]

No it was not correct.
As you claimed the macrophages would kill/eat the infected body cells, what they not do.
Macrophages eat the clusters of antibodies and viruses.

Re:This is safe?

[reve_etrange]

You clearly know a little bit about one aspect of immune response and are unwilling to read further or to listen to others. Expect no further reply.

Re:This is safe?

[Anonymous Coward]

That's not entirely true. Usually (we think) antibodies are the important thing to protect us, but generally there is a CD8+ T cell response as well. However, since we aren't really sure if it's important (except for rabies vaccine - it's really important then), it's usually not studied. Antibodies are great at preventing infection and slowing down propagation, but you do need a CD8+ response to clear infection in most cases.

Re:This is safe?

[Anonanonaon]

I bow to your superior knowledge! (Not being sarcastic.)

Thanks for sharing.

If I might bother you with a further question which has been on my mind, as I'm still trying to figure out what my own stance is on all of this. The information is, I am finding, really hard to nail down:

I've been unable to find any information about *how* these viruses are isolated and identified; the process and systems. All anybody ever seems to repeat are these cartoon-level bits of media copy, "Samples must be sent to a lab for verification" -where, apparently through some sort of black-box method, they are "verified". The same sentences are used over and over in every news release, saying essentially nothing. When I try to search-engine my way more deeply into the subject, I find little beyond this avalanche of noise.

The best I could locate was a user's maintenance manual .pdf for some sort of field deployable machine which I think might have been designed to perform a kind of electrical wave form analysis on wet samples, but it was altogether opaque, written for a select customer base who already know what they're doing.

Essentially, I want to know how it works, where it is reliable and where it is not, what gaps in the process exist, or if it is actually working at the Star Trek level. -Those gene charts you linked to; are they what they say they are and how can one know? Is there any spin? Any desire to accommodate funding sources with biases?

There's just too much I don't know about this, and I find I've been made hyper-sensitive due to stories about corruption in the scientific and medical communities and industry. We have little choice but to trust a process which is opaque, and where human nature offers plenty of reason to want to be extremely cautious. "Caveat Emptor", but how can one beware when un-polished knowledge is so hard to come by and so difficult to understand raw?

Knowing how it works would go a long damned way to knowing who to trust and where to look to determine if real problems exist or not.

good. now, about the fruit bats...

[swschrad]

once the vaccine works in fruit bats as well as monkeys, it's time for a general rollout to all wild beasties.

oh, wait, there was some talk of humans at one time, wasn't there?

Well,

[waspleg]

Obama wants 6.2 billion to combat Ebola I doubt he'll get it after last night, but if he does, maybe some of that will go to research?

Re:Well,

[gewalker]

Sure, no that Ebola is in the news everyone wants more Ebola money. Obama was proposed budget cuts in the same budget in prior years too. I'm sure you can find Republicans that did & will do the same thing.

In this case I would half expect that Republicans would increase Ebola funding because it proves bi-partisanship, etc. I can't imagine Obama vetoing this either.

Re:Well,

[Anonymous Coward]

clearly the Republicans will pass a bill Titled "Funding the cure for Ebola" with a rider tacked on to it that kills ObamaCare

Nice snark, but...

[Anonymous Coward]

You do realize that Cheney and Bush are the reason for many of the Ebola vaccines/treatments? http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2014/10/24/dick_cheney_drugs_and_bioweapons_ebola_research_funding_unlikely_source.html

good. now, about the fruit bats...

[Aeros]

Well for now it seems as though the monkeys are safe from ebola..provided they get this spray of course. Good for you monkeys!

Re:good. now, about the fruit bats...

[Anonymous Coward]

1. Why on Earth would we want to protect monkeys from Ebola? Let them pay for their own damn health insurance. lazy takers.
2. Pity the poor sod whose job it is to spray vaccine up Ebola-infected monkeys' noses. I suspect the object to such an affront on their dignity, most likely quite emphatically.

What could possibly go wrong?

[thoriumbr]

A very mutable virus paired with a lethal one. Used in a spray. Ok, go ahead.

Re:What could possibly go wrong?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why don't you read the post? Here let me help you "...tiny piece of Ebola DNA."

Re:What could possibly go wrong?

[reve_etrange]

Would it really kill you to at least read up on a subject before engaging in the frivolous fear-mongering? Guess so.

Re:What could possibly go wrong?

[Anonymous Coward]

it is a 'flu' virus combined with
some dna particles ... it is not a combination of two viruses. Also it would help if you would read up why/how flu viruses mutate ...

Re:What could possibly go wrong?

[angel'o'sphere]

There are not two viruses paired.
A weakened virus got a few pieces of DNA from another virus added. Like putting cream on top of a couple of ice boules ...

Isn't this how I Am Legend Started?

[Anonymous Coward]

Just sayin'

It's not obvious?

[waspleg]

Because, there is no market it for it where people can pay exorbitant amounts for it. The dying people are penniless.

Although, maybe that's what the media fear mongering is all about? Maybe they will back it after all once they whip everyone in to a "think of YOUR children dying horribly of Ebola - get vaccinated fast!" buying frenzy?

What do I know, I got modded troll for saying the Apple CEO probably came out for marketing purposes - he released an accessory (iWatch) the next day.

=)

Re:It's not obvious?

[roc97007]

> Because, there is no market it for it where people can pay exorbitant amounts for it. The dying people are penniless.

The way containment appears to be being mishandled, I suspect that isn't going to be true for much longer.

> What do I know, I got modded troll for saying the Apple CEO probably came out for marketing purposes - he released an accessory (iWatch) the next day.

I may burn in hell for this, but that's funny.

Re:It's not obvious?

[Wycliffe]

Because, there is no market it for it where people can pay exorbitant amounts for it. The dying people are penniless.

Sure there is a market. There are plenty of companies that make plenty of money by selling to paranoid people. Look at all the
money made during Y2K. If they were selling an ebola vaccine at walgreens people would be lined up around the block getting it.
I was actually just thinking that this would be a decent way to pay for ebola vaccines. Sell them as a buy 1 give 1. Everytime
some paranoid person buys one at walgreens then they donate one to africa. This has the added benefit as the vaccine to
africa is probably just as effective at keeping the paranoid person healthy than actually being vacinated themself.

Re:It's not obvious?

[rioki]

Because, there is no market it for it where people can pay exorbitant amounts for it. The dying people are penniless.

The people may be, but the countries hosting them are not.Even if they are cash strapped the world bank will love to approve a credit for them, for a small fee, so that they can pay for ebola vaccines. The customers are not the affected individuals, but their country.

I like monkeys

[Mister Liberty]

It's great news.

Re:I like monkeys

[SpankiMonki]

I beg to disagree. Those monkeys have been getting a little too cheeky lately..

Where to begin.

[Anonymous Coward]

If it's so wonderful, then how could the not get funding.... HINT HINT HINT.
It works by modifying the cold... HINT HINT HINT
It can be deployed to everybody no matter if you want it or not. HINT HINT HINT.

WAR will result if they try to force this upon the population.

Privatization

[s1d3track3D]

So, for you proponents of the privatization or everything, what do we do in this (hypothetical) scenario?

Deadly virus starts very slowly over years in third world country where there is no money to be made by creating a vaccine. Years later, virus starts spreading through the entire world at an alarming rate, killing all infected within 5 hours of contracting the disease, which spreads as easy as measles, at which point it's too late to develop a vaccine.

(My point being, a government funded research lab would have potentially stopped this virus in the early stages)

Re:Privatization

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh come on. That's easy. The free market would solve this problem by selling hazmat suits, hermetically-sealed penthouse apartments, and lots and lots of guns and canned goods. Just like any decent zombie movie, the people who can afford this stuff will survive, and the people who can't won't. Problem solved once the latter people die off and stop transmitting the disease. Then the people who can manage things for themselves rather than accepting government vaccine handouts can go back to business as usual, such as investing in the stock market.

I have a suggestion as to where to get funding

[Alaska Jack]

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) just announced that it will be spending $31 million to "enhance diversity in the biomedical research workforce."

$31 million seem like it would buy ... a lot of diversity ... I guess.

Maybe some of the money could be diverted toward actual research like this.

lllll AJ

Snark aside, this is huge.

[jpellino]

Simpler admin, less risk of infection. Wicked fast development.

Re:Snark aside, this is huge.

[Anonymous Coward]

Previous funding of basic research can sometimes pay off.

Re:Snark aside, this is huge.

[RockDoctor]

Wicked fast development.

The work cannot have been started much later than 1st May this year (the figures are in the paper). How much preparation work took place before this, and how much time was taken to write the paper, I don't know.

If they were to re-run the experiment with a different composition of Ebola genes, or a different adenovirus, trying to get better immune response, or fewer side effects, then they'd need until May next year to be publishing the next cycle's results.

In other words, they started doing this research probably months before you heard about the problem. (I'm motivated by both personal work history, and the fact that I work in West Africa; I didn't hear about the outbreak until around March this year, which was about 4.5 months after the outbreak started. I'd guess that this was about when the actual work that is reported here was started.)

9 Monkeys?

[Anonymous Coward]

Whew! I am glad they tested it with 9 monkeys and not the classic 12 or we would all be screwed...

Kickstarter

[Rick Richardson]

https://www.kickstarter.com/

Re:Kickstarter

[Anonymous Coward]

I wish a government organization could accept such funding without anti-corruption laws kicking in, provided that all meeting minutes are public or scrutinized, and that the receiver can't make any legally bounding decisions concerning the donators, or any related entity up to a second decree of separation of spousal or other interest-related relationship.

Re:Kickstarter

[Anonymous Coward]

Drug development is restricted per their rules:
https://www.kickstarter.com/rules/prohibited

ebola doesn't have DNA - it has RNA

[cslewis2007]

Just saying. If the source article gets that fundamental fact wrong, what can we take away from the rest of it. Were they really monkeys?

Re:ebola doesn't have DNA - it has RNA

[Anonymous Coward]

Get away from me with that nose spray, you damn dirty ape!

Re:ebola doesn't have DNA - it has RNA

[RDW]

The vaccine vector is an Adenovirus, a DNA virus. The recombinant Ebola virus gene it carries will be in the form of DNA, designed to encode the same protein as the original RNA gene in the Ebola virus. It's the protein that is important, since this what the immune system will raise its response against.

No Ebola - but they have colds

[NotQuiteReal]

Now you have Ebola resistant monkeys, with Ebola DNA in them swinging around in trees and sneezing on you.

What could possibly go wrong with crossing Ebola with the common cold.

Sure hope the vaccine works, because you are going to NEED it soon.

Re:No Ebola - but they have colds

[angel'o'sphere]

A few pieces of Ebola DNA != Ebola virus.
Don't get why you believe something can go wrong.
Go read a book!

Re: No Ebola - but they have colds

[Anonymous Coward]

Telling someone who exhibits that level of ignorance to go read a book is like telling a rock to go get a college degree.

Re:No Ebola - but they have colds

[Anonymous Coward]

Right and if we give the monkeys Guy Fawkes masks, they might try to blow up King James I. Because making something look a little like something else, clearly makes it the same as something else in your world.

Re:No Ebola - but they have colds

[NotQuiteReal]

LOL.

Called out on my blatant troll, but I still have to say "yes, and"...

Re:No Ebola - but they have colds

[rioki]

Although you are correct, the GP's though came to my mind too. This is the classical into to a apocalypse movie.

Re:No Ebola - but they have colds

[RockDoctor]

You have just described why the surviving animals from the trial will probably be "sacrificed" after the trial is over.

It's possible that they'd be retained for some other experiment, if they're valuable enough a resource. Possible, but not very likely.

Obviously, the surviving monkeys will be useless for further experiments on Ebola. Also for common cold research (the vaccine candidate incorporated Ebola DNA into common-cold-related adenoviruses). Maybe they'd be useful for AIDS research. but most likely, it'll be the chop. (Barbiturate overdose, actually ; but you get the idea.)

Why would this get funded

[Anonymous Coward]

No big pharma wants an Ebola vaccine, especially when there is so much money to be made from selling millions of disposable PP garments, face masks and all of the other disposable paraphernalia required to treat a rampant outbreak.

An outbreak like this is far to profitable for a cure to ever be allowed to come out.

Something is wring here ....

[angel'o'sphere]

Aren't it supposed to be twelve monkeys?

Whose Wallet?

[JimSadler]

This world is twisted enough to make me wonder if some corporations have not figured out a way to make money fighting Ebola. I would think that the governments of every nation would jump to get this life saving substance into mass production.

Re:Whose Wallet?

[RockDoctor]

Sigh. didn't you read the reports form GSK last week?

No chance of volume production of any vaccine this side of late 2015. No.chance.what.so.ever. It's bottling plants and production equipment that are the restrictions, besides not knowing which candidates are both safe and effective.

Using constrained production resources to produce a vaccine that is of limited effectiveness is a lethal waste of effort. Using the equipment to produce an unsafe vaccine will be storing up problems for the future - including not being able to persuade people to actually have the vaccine, and therefore allowing the epidemic to continue.

No, there isn't an easy solution. Did anyone ever say that there was going to be an easy solution? If they did, they were either lying or delusional.

No funding no surprise

[Anonymous Coward]

Do I read correctly that they have created a common cold virus, that vaccinates agains ebola? So once I am vaccinated I can vaccinate others by infecting them with my nausea?

Nobody will finance development of a drug that can be reproduced and spread by anyone on earth. Simply there is no way to profit from this.

Vajk

Re:No funding no surprise

[Minwee]

Sure there is. You just sue everybody who "catches" the patented cold virus for stealing it. It works for seeds, why not viruses too?

Good News Everybody!

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh wait, it's not good news at all. Of course.

Democrats until January

[raymorris]

Until January, Democrats have control since they control both the Senate and the presidency. In January we'll have a bipartisan government, with republicans having some control. I'll bet $100 that this gets funded within 30 days of the date the new republicans go to Washington.

Who gives a shit about funding?

[Anonymous Coward]

Step 1: Release modified flu-virus/ebola-vaccine into the public.
Step 2: Flu season.
Step 3: Ebola is cured.
Step 4: No profit, but Ebola is fucking cured.

Monkey ebola is not human ebola

[rcamans]

There are currently five known variants of Ebola. One affects monkeys, the other four affect humans. Humans do not catch the monkey variant (Ebola Reston).
Chimps and Gorillas (Great apes?) do catch Ebola, and get wiped out by it.
So making a vaccine against monkey Ebola may do humans no good at all.
Ebola-Zaire, Ebola-Sudan, Ebola-Côte d'Ivoire, Ebola-Reston, and Ebola-Bundibugyo are the variants currently known.
More bad news, Ebola mutates very quickly. All variants appear to have evolved from an original 70 years ago?
So we could run into the same difficulties we currently have with flu vaccine.

Republicans to the rescue !

[Anonymous Coward]

Now that the Republicans are in charge of the U.S. Senate we'll probably see quick and decisive government action to fund this and other programs beneficial to mankind ...
NOT ! har har har har, imagine that .... har har har

Progress on the GMO front!

[pubwvj]

Scientists have developed vaccine against Ebola that is 100% effective in trials.
They did this by genetically engineering in the genes from the common cold.

The common cold, one of the most infectious and easily spread diseases.

Ebola, one of the most lethal and devestating diseases known to mankind.

What could possibly go wrong?

who pays ?

[Anonymous Coward]

let the countries that suffer the outbreaks pay for developing it

ebola doesn't have DNA - it has RNA

[starman97]

You could always read the original paper
: A Single Dose Respiratory Recombinant Adenovirus-Based Vaccine Provides Long-Term Protection for Non-Human Primates from Lethal Ebola Infection
  http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10...
is a link to the abstract, the full PDF requires a free registration

It's being done in Texas?

[oDDmON oUT]

Well, that funding is doomed.

After all, science flies in the face of the elected party's platform, or at least one plank, albeit a critical one.

Re:It's being done in Texas?

[RockDoctor]

The animal work was done in Winnipeg, which I do not believe is in Texas.
The lab testing was done in California.
Some other work - probably the experimental design and analysis, I haven't RTFA'd in detail, just skimmed the first few paragraphs and discussions - was done in "Gaithersburg, MD" ; OIC, that's where the pre-challenge work on the monkeys was done. They were exposed to the virus after being shipped to the BSL-4 lab in Winnipeg.

In short, a typical cross-borders collaboration.

Kickstarter

[Anonymous Coward]

Forget government grants and funding. Too much paperwork. I'm willing to bet the Kickstarter community will support this.

move to clinical trials?

[Anonymous Coward]

While it would not be the triditional double blind study, I bet the governing bodies in Liberia, Sierra Leone, and other nations hit with Ebola might just seek volunteers to accept the vacceen in their countries. You can track the infection rate through the population of those you either cannot get to, or those that refue to participate. You would know how wlll it is working by years end (if not sooner).

OMG!!! Did they really just do that! are they mad?

[Anonymous Coward]

OMG!!!! Talk about playing god! Just read this link and think about it for a second: http://science.slashdot.org/st... These "mad scientists" are combining the DNA of two viruses, One is the most lethal know to human kind and the other is the most contagious. How could that possibly go wrong!!!!! = Irony for those that miss it... This is just like the beginning scenes of a "B-Grade Horror Movie"!!! How did this ether pass the "ethicasy" test. I could not imagine a less ethical plan even if they chose to test their meddling on new born babies/disabled/old persons... Why stop there, why not throw in some Influenza DNA too (the most mutant know virus) and really create the super weapon properly.... (you know I was reluctant to write that for fear of giving them the idea)... I would be less concerned if they were cloning millions of copies of a mercenary soldier and creating a super sized laser, disguised as a small moon... At least that combination could be survivable for the rest of us..

Yyyyyyup.

[jpellino]

But try explaining that to some people.

It's a conspiracy!

[Tony Isaac]

Obviously, if no one is coming forward with money, it must be a conspiracy.

Re:OMG!!! Did they really just do that! are they m

[PsyMan]

12 monkeys?

How very 'scientific'

[Anonymous Coward]

LOL. Except that monkeys don't get 'Ebola', and 'Ebola' doesn't exist.

https://jonrappoport.wordpress.com/2014/07/31/is-it-ebola-or-is-it-psychological-warfare/

airborne

[JigJag]

funny that, when I think the biggest concern about Ebola was that it would become airborne, turns out we are *making* it so!

Re:airborne

[RockDoctor]

Go back and RTFA.

Re:airborne

[JigJag]

I know this is about the *vaccine*, not the disease itself, but nonetheless, they made airborne the signature of Ebola, which hopefully will stay at that, just a signature and not a payload.

Re:airborne

[Anonymous Coward]

Better not look at that picture that is in all the news stories. It might turn into a payload, too.

Re:airborne

[RockDoctor]

That is why you chose your genes for making the signature carefully. It's why you use surface (glyco-)proteins, the proteins which bind to and interact with the target cells, not the proteins that allow the virus to unload into the target cell, nor the ones that hijack the cell's ribosomal apparatus to create new copies of the virus, nor the ones that manufacture new viral particles. You leave all of those parts of the virus genome thoroughly alone. Which means that for a rational virus design, you need to have a fair idea of how the virus works. (Otherwise, you try various ways of killing or attenuating your virus. Which takes multiple rounds of safety and efficacy testing - say 6-8 months per round, if you're really rushing it.)

You know, I worry about dying every time I fly. But then again, I've had 5 major incidents in my 30 year career, though I've not yet had to swim home, and I have to go through crash training at 2-year intervals. Does that make general flying more dangerous? No.

Dealing with a virus like this is dangerous. Not dealing with a virus like this is dangerous. Not making a decision is dangerous. Enjoy.

Re:good. now, about the fruit bats...

[Lotharus]

You don't give vaccines to people who are already infected. That said, I don't envy the guy spraying vaccine up healthy monkeys' noses, either.

Big bang theory

[Anonymous Coward]

Just saw an episode of big bang theory, where they joked about combining flu and ebola, and that they never released it in the wild.