Slashdot Mirror
Meet the Doctor Trying To Use the Blood of Ebola Survivors To Create a Cure
An anonymous reader points out this article about Dr. James Crowe, who is trying to use the blood of Ebola survivors to develop a cure. "For months, Vanderbilt University researcher Dr. James Crowe has been desperately seeking access to the blood of U.S. Ebola survivors, hoping to extract the proteins that helped them overcome the deadly virus for use in new, potent drugs. His efforts finally paid off in mid-November with a donation from Dr. Rick Sacra, a University of Massachusetts physician who contracted Ebola while working in Liberia. The donation puts Crowe at the forefront of a new model for fighting the virus, now responsible for the worst known outbreak in West Africa that has killed nearly 7,000 people. Crowe is working with privately-held drugmaker Mapp Biopharmaceutical Inc, which he said will manufacture the antibodies for further testing under a National Institutes of Health grant. Mapp is currently testing its own drug ZMapp, a cocktail of three antibodies that has shown promise in treating a handful of Ebola patients."
So if the government's fronting the money and the treatment pans out, it should be publicly-owned.
If Mapp is doing this to make money, let them risk their own capital instead of tax money.
This is awesome. Real medicine. Not treatment, not a profit motive. Just building on what protected one patient with the hope of helping others be rid of the disease. Go Dr Crowe, Go Mapp! We need less focus on monetization and more on misery.
Time for a new Political party in the US (or two!) One is off the rails Other cant pony up a leader.
As soon as I read the overview on the front page my immediate thought was that this thread was going to be filled with racist crap ranging from the outright troll baiting to the inevitable more subtle implicit stuff that will follow. Thank you for not disappointing me. I never thought I would get nostalgic for the good old days when slashdot was only mildly racist and mysogenistic.
I've watched way too many zombie movies to feel comfortable with the drug's name.
As soon as I read the overview on the front page my immediate thought was that this thread was going to be filled with racist crap
Especially given the unfortunate coincidental baggage of this doctor's name. It sounds like Jim Crow, the nickname for the policy of systematic racial segregation in the southern United States during the first half of the twentieth century. (Outside the US, you might know it as "apartheid".) James Crowe was also the name of one of the six Confederate veterans who founded the Ku Klux Klan, the others being Richard Reed, John Lester, Frank McCord, Calvin Jones, and John Kennedy. And Ebola is often thought of as a "black" disease.
Dracula has risen!!! YIPPEEEE!!
Lets meet him when he actually finds a cure. That should be his motivation for media attention, not premature sensationalist profiles.
It's nice to see somebody trying to do something without big pharma trying to rape us for billions in R&D for anything it seems nowadays.
Harrison's Postulate - "For every action there is an equal and opposite criticism"
Um, no thanks.
Look the AC is ridiculous but so is the assertion that a Black man killed an Asian and a Hispanic/Latino because some idiot on the internet used a racial epithet.
Hey, just fly to Africa, get infected with Ebola, fly back to U.S., survive the treatment, then you can sell your blood for millions!
Profit!!
Newton's Third Law : For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.
It is IMO also amazingly accurate outside of its intended scope.
So I write "nigger" and another non-white cop dies? Or do I have to call you a nigger for the effect to happen? That is about the biggest stretch I have ever seen. If I use "whitey" does another non-Black cop shoot a black kid as well?