Ebola Vaccine 100% Successful In Guinea Trial

An anonymous reader writes: Doctors and researchers have been testing a vaccine to protect against Ebola in the west African nation of Guinea. Trials involving 4,000 people have now shown a 100% success rate in preventing infection. "When Ebola flared up in a village, researchers vaccinated all the contacts of the sick person who were willing — the family, friends and neighbors — and their immediate contacts. Children, adolescents and pregnant women were excluded because of an absence of safety data for them. In practice about 50% of people in these clusters were vaccinated. To test how well the vaccine protected people, the cluster outbreaks were randomly assigned either to receive the vaccine immediately or three weeks after Ebola was confirmed. Among the 2,014 people vaccinated immediately, there were no cases of Ebola from 10 days after vaccination — allowing time for immunity to develop — according to the results published online in the Lancet medical journal (PDF). In the clusters with delayed vaccination, there were 16 cases out of 2,380."

Comments

The Onion had it right

[mungtor]

Almost a year exactly.

http://www.theonion.com/articl...

Re:The Onion had it right

[Anonymous Coward]

Joking aside, we should be asking ourselves why Africa, the second-largest continent, made up of over 50 countries, with over 1 billion people in total, and a vast amount of natural resources and wealth, couldn't find any sort of a solution to this home-grown problem.

Why did they have to resort on foreigners, literally half a world away, for a solution to this problem?

I'm sure that some people will still blame "colonialism", although that hasn't even been an issue for generations now. Even then, we've seen many other regions, like most of Europe, China, Japan, South Korea and even Vietnam, go from total devastation due to war to modern societies capable of producing such research, over roughly the same period of time. Why isn't Africa progressing when so many other nations, often with much fewer resources and far less support, and coming from a much worse situation, managed to turn things around?

Some others will probably blame it on a lack of research facilities, totally ignoring that Africa does have universities and could very well build their own research facilities if the existing ones weren't sufficient. In fact, that difficult part is already done: they just need to build what have existed for many decades in other areas of the world.

It's not like this is the first major Ebola outbreak, either. It has been around for decades now, with other severe outbreaks in the past. It isn't a new problem.

Corruption may be to blame, but that's more of an excuse than anything else. There are a number of democracies in Africa, that actually do hold quite fair and free elections. If corruption is still an issue in these places, then that's yet another problem that Africa just isn't bothering to actually deal with.

I know it's trendy to blame Westerners for all of the world's problems, but they're the only ones we see taking any sort of positive initiative in this case.

Why don't we see any significant effort from any of Africa's 50+ nations, or it's 1+ billion people, or any of its governments that pull in significant income due to natural resources, to combat this problem that affects them more than anyone else?

Re:The Onion had it right

[Anonymous Coward]

It's really weird that you're treating "Africa" as a monolithic unit. The Ebola outbreak affects the USA and France more than South Africa or Kenya.

Re:The Onion had it right

[SirSlud]

Here's to hoping that one day you pass into adulthood.

Re:The Onion had it right

[Anonymous Coward]

He's much further along than you are and he's right.

Re:The Onion had it right

[WillAffleckUW]

Ebola is highly correlated with Africa as it's mostly a vector disease from bats and is spread by human contact with bats in the search for profitable guano (bat poop) and mining (caves) and resource extraction (caves).

Until white people got it in the US and EU, nobody with money cared.

Does that answer your question?

It's like malaria and other diseases. When they infect US populations and rich EU nations, suddenly they get cured, because we spend money on a cure, instead of on useless weapons systems.

Re:The Onion had it right

[Nethemas the Great]

Until recently no one has bothered to invest in Africa (only now China). Western powers, particularly the US, actually found it to be a good place to dump farm commodity surplus (USAID). Since these are principally agrarian nations that was particularly helpful to the farmers whom have a hard time competing with free. To support their families the farmers turn to growing coffee for export. Not only does this NOT produce food for local consumption, but these farmers tend to get severely screwed by the middlemen (only weakly mitigated by the joke known as "Fair Trade" certification). The investment that did come (principally oil) went directly into the coffers of despotic leaders of whom are far more concerned with keeping their citizens' necks under their boot than with education, health, infrastructure, etc..

Don't over-estimate the "help" the western world provides to Africa. The principal goal of which is to make the west feel good about themselves not to bootstrap their entrance into the first world.

Re:The Onion had it right

[bill_mcgonigle]

Hey, the malaria vaccine that was proven safe and effective in the 90's just finally got out of UK regulatory hell last week. About a million kids a year die from malaria. In the time they were bickering about the typeface on the label about 330,000 kids died from malaria. But we need that kind of officiousness and palaces and such for "civility". Those kids weren't white anyway.

Now it goes WHO regulatory hell, but if we're "lucky" the bureaucrats there will only let a quarter million kids die while they get their paperwork in order.

Oh, but a rival gang leader kill three hundred kids in Africa and Twitter loses its shit.

Re:The Onion had it right

[Anonymous Coward]

Do you have something constructive to say or just dismissive personal attacks? At least GP was contributing to the discussion of the story.

Re:The Onion had it right

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm sure that some people will still blame "colonialism", although that hasn't even been an issue for generations now.

And this is where you are wrong, it's still a problem today, though I'm sure you turn a blind eye to most of it being from corporations, even though some of them, such as in the case of the Chinese, are state-owned.

Oh but wait, we SAY they're independent.

That makes it all right.

Re:The Onion had it right

[quantaman]

I'm sure that some people will still blame "colonialism", although that hasn't even been an issue for generations now.
  Even then, we've seen many other regions, like most of Europe, China, Japan, South Korea and even Vietnam, go from total devastation due to war to modern societies capable of producing such research, over roughly the same period of time. Why isn't Africa progressing when so many other nations, often with much fewer resources and far less support, and coming from a much worse situation, managed to turn things around?

Colonialism is still a huge issue because the colonial borders are still in place, the borders were designed to keep them weak by putting rival tribes in the same country.

In Europe and Asia a government can get reasonable levels of support across most of the country because they figure they're all on the same side, so you get investment in the future and a generally functional society.

But in Africa it's really hard to develop a country when a government can never get real support outside of their ethnic group, everyone ends up playing a zero-sum game and you end up with corruption and violence. All that's going to fix it is a lot of time until African's start thinking of themselves as primarily members of their country and not of a tribe.

Re:The Onion had it right

[rubycodez]

You seem to be ignoring how people in Africa do STUPID things that spread ebola, that a person in a first world country would never do. Eating bats as bush meat, fondling the dead, not respecting quarantine....Africa has huge problems because too many Africans are STUPID

Re:The Onion had it right

[Anonymous Coward]

Let's see, many RC folks worldwide kiss their dead whilst they are in coffins.

Bush meat? Have you ever heard of eating deer, rabbit, moose, etc. that you've hunted?

Respecting quarantine...no we just don'thave sensible health measures in the US. We have sick folks wandering all over infecting others.

Meh.

Re:The Onion had it right

[Penguinisto]

You totally forgot the frustrating bit about actively avoiding medical personnel, because you know, the local village shaman said they were evil.

Some of it is understandable (e.g. bush meat - when you can't buy hamburger at the local grocer, you do what you have to in order to feed your family). Some of it is even semi-understandable with enough ignorance (e.g. fleeing to the US or EU because the infection you just got is a death sentence back home, but you at least have some chance of surviving it in the first world). Much of it however is not.

Re:The Onion had it right

[Penguinisto]

Fair cop, but consider that the same despots you cite are very active in absconding with any kind of aid that even smells like money. Outside of schools and hospitals (provided mostly by church-based charities, Catholic Relief Services chief among them)? You don't find much other types of aid reaching Africa, mostly because that shiz gets swiped by every corrupt pair of hands that can reach a piece of it.

So, unless you recommend that we re-establish colonial rule, or simply sweep through with a vast army to conquer and administer (most of) the continent as a collective UN-run organization, what exactly do you recommend?

Re:The Onion had it right

[cant_get_a_good_nick]

Why isn't Africa progressing when so many other nations, often with much fewer resources and far less support, and coming from a much worse situation, managed to turn things around?

Far less support? Marshall Plan? You need to at least pull Europe from that list.

And we fundamentally broke Africa over generations, hundreds of years. We kind of broke Europe over the course of decades. Europe had decades to recover. Africa, we kind of let free a lot more recently than that.

I hope you're asking earnestly and not looking to point fingers. Real analysis of how things break and stay broken is hard, both to see the connections, and to push through people's initial perceptions. We need more people asking your question and trying to answer it.

Re:The Onion had it right

[Anonymous Coward]

So at the end of the day: if these populations wish to enter the first world, the first step to take is to assert their ownership of the land they occupy on the continent, decide on their own borders, or (like other countries in the first world), abandon tribal identity so they progress on to greater things like indoor plumbing and medical research.

Re:The Onion had it right

[AF_Cheddar_Head]

You seem to be ignoring how people in Africa do STUPID things that spread ebola, that a person in a first world country would never do. Eating bats as bush meat, fondling the dead, not respecting quarantine....Africa has huge problems because too many Africans are STUPID

And people in the first world do stupid things like believing that vaccines cause autism

Re:The Onion had it right

[quantaman]

So at the end of the day: if these populations wish to enter the first world, the first step to take is to assert their ownership of the land they occupy on the continent, decide on their own borders

Bad borders are bad, but trying to redraw borders? That can be much, much worse.

One of the big rules in Africa (and pretty much everywhere) is you don't change national borders because that introduces massive stakes and is a recipe for wars and rebellion since every group decides they want their own country comprising of every bit of land they think their group is entitled to.

or (like other countries in the first world), abandon tribal identity so they progress on to greater things like indoor plumbing and medical research.

That's the solution but I think it's far from simple. Look at the US, there are two parties sharing a white Christian base and the political system has been deadlocked and dysfunctional for half a decade.

What do you think would happen if half the country was Protestant and the other half Muslim, or New Jersey was 50+% Italian descent, Michigan 50+% Nigerian, Texas 50+% Mexican, etc. Getting people to cooperate in a political system is not simple.

Re:The Onion had it right

[roman_mir]

As they say in Russian (a rough translation): saving those, who are drowning is up to those who are drowning. They also say: while you can hope that a god will help you, you should help yourself.

Basically there are enough people on the African continent to make it possible for those very people to figure out how to solve their own problems. I don't see African solutions to problems in Indonesia related to Avian Flu as an example.

Re: The Onion had it right

[Anonymous Coward]

Great, now the CIA is going to have to come up with another way to "solve the Africa problem"

Re:The Onion had it right

[Nethemas the Great]

I'm not sure I have a good answer to that. I was answering the "why" posed above. Ultimately steps need to be taken that work towards the creation of sustainable goods and services industries. Without a healthy functioning economic engine little else matters. Certain of the African nations are more amenable to supporting their citizenry than others. Those would obviously be the best places to start with. In the course of doing so, perhaps the citizens of the other nations will facilitate a change in their environment.

Re:The Onion had it right

[alvinrod]

A lot of Africa is trapped is a cycle of abject poverty that makes it difficult to progress, especially at the lower rungs of society. It's also necessary to consider that a lot of the diseases (Ebola, but HIV especially) that feed into that loop have originated in Africa. The parts of the continent that are doing better tend to be those that don't have massive issues with Malaria, AIDS, etc. Never mind group conflict due to arbitrary borders that have no real basis on history or culture that lead to distrust among the populace along with other mysticism and superstition brought on by a lack of education.

A lot of the other examples you listed also received financial backing to help with growth or recovery. The U.S. and allies brought great destruction upon Germany and Japan, but we also ensured that they could recover and prosper, in large part because of what happened after WWI with Germany.

There are a few African nations that are doing quite well, but Africa is not some monolith and many of the better off countries don't care a gnat's fart more than anyone else about the African countries that are dealing abject poverty, genocide, and epidemics on a continual basis.

Re:The Onion had it right

[quenda]

And people in the first world do stupid things like believing that vaccines cause autism

Unfortunately, sub-Saharan Africa goes *way* beyond that level. Its hard to explain to someone who has never been to Africa. We've had President Mbeki of South Africa, the most advanced economy in Africa, denying that HIV causes AIDS and treating victims with herbs instead of anti-retrovirals.
President Zuma thinks it is OK to rape an AIDS-infected woman if he showers afterwards. Yes, the US has some dumb people, and past presidents, but they are not really in the same league.

Re:The Onion had it right

[quenda]

Until recently no one has bothered to invest in Africa

What is "recent" ? Western powers were kept out for a long time because of malaria. Once that was controlled, the British invested heavily. But lack of reliable local labour forced then to bring in large numbers of Indian and Chinese, as well as Europeans, to get anything done. You cannot do that now, plus there are massive barriers with the local bureaucracy. Just getting spare parts into the country is extremely slow, even with bribes.

Re:The Onion had it right

[DNS-and-BIND]

What you say is a total lie. Multiculturalism is learning to live with other cultures in peace. It makes the entire nation stronger because of diversity. Diversity is a strength, not a punishment.

Re:The Onion had it right

[johannesg]

Of course, no one in their right mind would even consider the possibility that black people invest in research to stop a disease that is rampant in their own countries... Black people shouldn't have any kind of responsibility for their own lives. They _need_ white people to provide them with food, medicine, etc. And to think otherwise is racist.

While food and medicine is ok, please keep in mind that white people shouldn't attempt to provide free transportation and jobs. That's also racist.

Re:The Onion had it right

[Anonymous Coward]

I sincerely hope you're being sarcastic. I can't even tell these days.

Re:The Onion had it right

[KGIII]

Genuinely curious, do you have a citation where this has been true on a large scale and is actually directly, factually, attributed to multiculturalism?

Re:The Onion had it right

[KGIII]

Things have improved greatly but not enough. The WHO decision to allow DDT use again was probably the most important factor while waiting for the vaccine. (There are some fairly unknown skeletons in the DDT closet, they are probably not what most think.) My most recent trip, Nigeria, was actually a lot tamer than it once was. Things are looking up there and this is a good thing. I am of African decent, partially at least, and I do donate what seems reasonable but a lot of that goes to waste as it ends up being wasted on graft or material goods end up on the black market.

When I had less money, and was a bit more of an idealist, I bought a whole bunch (as in spent nearly a month's salary equivalent) of the OLPC devices for them to donate. I even got a couple during the Give One Get One campaign. It turns out that, really, they have not made much of a difference at all. I understand they are going to be doing a tablet next and I will, again, donate though I will be in a position to donate more. I feel like I am throwing money down a black hole though but I am not one to give up.

An interesting thing that I have noticed... I am not sure how this applies, really. If you notice and draw attention to a problem people seem to automatically believe you have a solution in mind (and are ready to argue it, but that is another point entirely) but I honestly do not have a solution for the mess that is Africa. I certainly have no solutions for sub-Saharan Africa or West Africa. Hell, I do not even have any suggestions for East Africa and those are not exactly great places. Truly, I have no idea how to fix anything there or even if we should keep meddling.

In the spirit of digression, perhaps... Really?

Well, no... I have ideas but, frankly, I do not think they would ever be implemented. The only "solution" that I keep pondering is; How about if we keep our hands out of the entire area and maybe encourage them to not emulate the west but to return to an agrarian society and hunter gatherers? How about they lock down their borders and work on just being Africa - concentrating on their natural beauty, rich history, and a future that does not need to mesh with Western culture or economies? I am not even sure if that could work and I really have been unable to fine-tune the idea so that it could even be possible to consider it in the first place.

So, I see and acknowledge the problems, better than some I think, and I do what seems likely to be beneficial. I understand that the OLPC mission was a bit of a failure, that the devices were stolen and ended up on the black market or in the hands of the more wealthy (comparatively speaking), and that it is not a popular program any more. (I still have one kicking about. I am not sure where it is though and that is unfortunate.) I donate to Heifer International, Red Cross, etc... I go and buy items and spend tourist dollars. But, I am a single person and I am not sure that it would actually, truly, help if everyone did that. We can not force them into a new lifestyle and I am not so certain that we should be trying.

Re:The Onion had it right

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm sure that some people will still blame "colonialism", although that hasn't even been an issue for generations now.

  Even then, we've seen many other regions, like most of Europe, China, Japan, South Korea and even Vietnam, go from total devastation due to war to modern societies capable of producing such research, over roughly the same period of time. Why isn't Africa progressing when so many other nations, often with much fewer resources and far less support, and coming from a much worse situation, managed to turn things around?

Colonialism is still a huge issue because the colonial borders are still in place, the borders were designed to keep them weak by putting rival tribes in the same country.

In Europe and Asia a government can get reasonable levels of support across most of the country because they figure they're all on the same side, so you get investment in the future and a generally functional society.

But in Africa it's really hard to develop a country when a government can never get real support outside of their ethnic group, everyone ends up playing a zero-sum game and you end up with corruption and violence. All that's going to fix it is a lot of time until African's start thinking of themselves as primarily members of their country and not of a tribe.

Plain crap. You know not what you are talking about. I've spent years there working as an aid worker and you assessment of the situation on the ground is laughable in its naivete. The reason it is hard to develop a country is because the governments are kleptocracies in almost every case. You analysis is typical lefty conspiracy thinking.

There are countries in Africa where all the citizens belong to the same tribe. And still there are problems.

I mean come on where do you get your information? The Onion?

Re:The Onion had it right

[quantaman]

Plain crap. You know not what you are talking about. I've spent years there working as an aid worker and you assessment of the situation on the ground is laughable in its naivete. The reason it is hard to develop a country is because the governments are kleptocracies in almost every case. You analysis is typical lefty conspiracy thinking.

There are countries in Africa where all the citizens belong to the same tribe. And still there are problems.

I mean come on where do you get your information? The Onion?

In your experience why are the government kleptocracies? (not a rhetorical/combatitive question, I'm genuinely curious about your perspective)

Re:The Onion had it right

[Nethemas the Great]

My apologies, I did mention the oil money going to the local despots but you're right I forgot to include their other investments in Africa.

Re:The Onion had it right

[t_ban]

Yes, the US has some dumb people, and past presidents, but they are not really in the same league.

Aren't you forgetting GW Bush?

Re:The Onion had it right

[rubycodez]

You fail at being a shill for the stupid.

We have bats here too; we don't eat them. We know better, they are disease ridden.

Embalming kills pathogens, your observation about certain weird RC people is not relevant to stupid people's treatment of a diseased pathogen carrying corpse.

The USA places those with ebola into a very strict quarantine

Re:The Onion had it right

[rubycodez]

Most don't, you are not describing the majority

Re:The Onion had it right

[rubycodez]

GW Bush had to addle his brain with cocaine and years of alcohol abuse to get one third the amount of stupid as those Africans who believe raping a virgin cures AIDS

Guinea?

[meta-monkey]

So, you're saying they were guinea pigs?

Re:Guinea?

[Anonymous Coward]

Guinea Humans

Re:Guinea?

[Flavianoep]

Guineans.

Re:Guinea?

[ArcadeMan]

I haven't received mod points in months now, so virtual +1 Funny to you, sir.

Re:Guinea?

[Coren22]

I have to say, looking at this chart made me chuckle:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

They moved from almost 4 people to almost 12 people! Perhaps they need some kind of label on the vertical axis.

How long and how varied

[gurps_npc]

Having a 100% proof vaccine for Ebola is nice, as long as it works for the majority of strains and also lasts for life. Not so good if it lasts for 1 year and you need another, and only for one specific variety of Ebola, not all.

Re:How long and how varied

[MightyMartian]

I'm really concerned that it might give children autism! I mean, imagine surviving an almost guaranteed fatal case of hemorrhagic fever, and the becoming autistic?

I think we have to ask ourselves "Would Jenny McCarthy give her ebola-stricken child this vaccine?"

Re:How long and how varied

[Anonymous Coward]

So what? If we can make it in a few days we can still stop an outbreak in its tracks.

Re:How long and how varied

[ceoyoyo]

Even an Ebola vaccine that was only effective for a short period of time would be wonderful. Ebola isn't a subtle disease, and outbreaks tend to start in fairly isolated villages, perhaps because the reservoir is an animal. When someone in a village starts bleeding out of every orifice, administer the vaccine to everyone in the village. That stops the outbreak in it's tracks.

Re:How long and how varied

[Firethorn]

Having a 100% proof vaccine for Ebola is nice, as long as it works for the majority of strains and also lasts for life.

Not necessarily. I'd say it remains 'nice' even if it only lasts for 6 months, so long as it works on 'most' strains, but said strains are identifiable.

The critical part here is that it works when given close to exposure. That makes it like the rabies vaccine. Ebola outbreak? You hit everybody in the village up with it, and it remains at 1-2 cases, not hundreds.

If it's 100% effective for life with 1 shot, it goes way beyond 'nice'. As such it would beat most vaccines today, as most vaccines are: Only about 90% effective, require multiple shots to reach that effectiveness, only last a limited period of time, etc...

Flu - annual(though that's for a wide number of varieties), Tetanus - 10 years, Hep A - 2 does, Hep B - 3 doses, Chickenpox - 2 doses, etc...

Re:How long and how varied

[phantomfive]

It's still good in that case, it gives nurses and doctors a chance to survive.

Re:How long and how varied

[Jason Levine]

You're going for funny, but too many people would say that 100% seriously. As the parent of a child with autism, I resent the implication those people make that a child is better off dead from measles than "damaged" with autism. Sadly, too many people have skewed risk-benefit calculations because they hear horror stories about vaccines and haven't seen first-hand the horrors of the diseases vaccines prevent. I guarantee that an Ebola vaccine would be greeted by long lines to get the vaccine and not questions about whether 1 case in 10,000 will have some minor side effect just like nobody said "Let's hold off on that polio vaccine until it is 100% safe" back when polio was raging.

Re:How long and how varied

[Jason Levine]

And, as another poster pointed out, aide workers/doctors/nurses could be vaccinated when they go into an infection zone to treat patients without risking infection themselves. Even if the immunity only lasted a few months, I think any doctor would take the occasional jab over risking Ebola because they were so hot and tired when taking the suit off that they made a small mistake and got exposed to the disease.

Re:How long and how varied

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, let's look at it a little differently... 99.4% of the people *not* vaccinated immediately managed to avoid the disease. Given the small sample size I would say that the study results are significant but not conclusive.

Re:How long and how varied

[mark-t]

Even if the medical staff and volunteers are vaccinated and immune, they may still carry the disease back with them.

Ebola is for cows.

[Anonymous Coward]

You are all cows. Cows say moo. MOOOOOOOOO! MOOOOOOOOO! Moo cows MOOOOOOOO! Moo say the cows. YOU COWS!!

Re:Ebola is for cows.

[Anonymous Coward]

Dude... Get a new hobby...

Re:Ebola is for cows.

[Bathroom Humor]

Moo.

Thanks to MERCK

[ajzimm3rman]

A Private organization.

Re:Thanks to MERCK

[Coren22]

Those greedy bastards. I'll bet they will dare to charge for the vaccine that only cost them millions (or billions) to develop. They should all be taken out and shot. /Democrat

Re:Thanks to MERCK

[Anonymous Coward]

Silly Republican! Democrats don't use guns!

Re:Thanks to MERCK

[Anonymous Coward]

From the article: "The rVSV-ZEBOV vaccine is sometimes known as the Canadian vaccine as it was originally developed by the Public Health Agency of Canada before being sold to Merck to conclude the testing."

Which is actually leaving out a step. Newlink Genetics bought it, sat on it for years, then sold it to Merck.

Re:Thanks to MERCK

[james_gnz]

A Private organization. -- ajzimm3rman

From the article: "The rVSV-ZEBOV vaccine is sometimes known as the Canadian vaccine as it was originally developed by the Public Health Agency of Canada before being sold to Merck to conclude the testing." -- Anonymous Coward

So it turns out the vaccine wasn't developed by a private organisation. But what were you attempting to prove anyway? A vaccine is developed by a private organisation, so... private organisations will always be better at something (or everything?) than public ones?

We could make long lists of good things done by private and public organisations, and also bad things done by both. A convincing argument that one or the other is better suited to any particular role requires more than one anecdote (or antidote).

16 out of 2380

[Anonymous Coward]

Not exactly The Stand we're talking about here, people. And it's fucking Africa, they can hardly feed themselves to start with. I don't understand why we aren't allowing nature to self-correct here. Save the vaccine for if it makes it to the civilised world.

Re:16 out of 2380

[thinkwaitfast]

Africa can feed itself. It could feed the entire world if it wasn't full of thousands of waring gangs (tribes) with over 60% of the arable land on the planet.

Re:16 out of 2380

[david_thornley]

The governments in some of those countries are also thoroughly corrupt, which doesn't help things any.

100% Success in trials...

[MagickalMyst]

I'd be impressed if it had 100% success in the real world.

Re:100% Success in trials...

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you trolling? Did you even read the summary? The "trial" WAS the real world.

As an aside, the ethical implications of that are a little bit unfortunate. IE: Their "control" was to delay intervention for the control group by 3 weeks. As a consequence: 16 people were infected who could have received the vaccine...

Re:100% Success in trials...

[Firethorn]

Given the size of the trial, it's really unlikely that it prevents less than 90% of the cases of Ebola that would otherwise develop. So while I agree that 100% continuing is all that likely, especially if you start including immune suppressed people such as the HIV positive, those with cancer, transplants, young children, the elderly, etc... Still, if you vaccinate 100% of those eligible for it and it provides 95% immunity to Ebola, odds are the vulnerable won't be exposed at all, because you'll have something like 5% of the flare-ups from a wild source, and such flareups should mostly be individual, not thousands.

On the other hand, thinking about Ebola and vaccines reminded me that vaccines have made an even deadlier disease less problematic - Rabies. It wasn't until a relatively short time ago that we had any survivors from the symptomatic stage, and even then getting those requires putting them into a medical coma for a while.

But with the vaccine we realistically save thousands of human lives every year in the USA alone, and that's with mostly vaccinating animals, not people, and only vaccinating humans who we suspect have been exposed or work in a higher exposure risk area.

Re:100% Success in trials...

[Anonymous Coward]

A priori you also do not know if you're endangering the people who get the vaccine early / at all. What if more than double the number of people had serious complications from the vaccine?

Testing Accuracy

[Anonymous Coward]

They say: "446 confirmed cases of Ebola virus disease" and "5 negative tests at reference laboratory" were excluded in figure 2. So ~1% of tests are either false positive or negative. The difference in percent infected between the groups they observed is ~0.5%. They do not include the 1% testing error rate in their analysis despite that it is twice as large as the effect.

Re:Testing Accuracy

[Anonymous Coward]

Woah. Something is wrong here. Look at the kaplan-meier plot in figure 3A. They are comparing apples to oranges for the primary analysis:
"All vaccinated individuals assigned to immediate vaccination versus all eligible individuals assigned to delayed vaccination (primary analysis)."

The sample sizes shown there match up to those in figure 2 for
Immediate vaccination: 2014 individuals vaccinated
Delayed vaccination: 2380 individuals eligible for vaccination

Bizarre...

Re:Testing Accuracy

[Anonymous Coward]

Same AC. I see now. They are trying to say the eligible in the delayed vaccination group would have been vaccinated had they been in the immediate vaccination group. So at least that makes sense, but this is a bad comparison because all those eligible but not vaccinated in the immediate group also didn't show up to the doctor, etc. The better comparison is figure 2C (eligible vs eligible) which shows that after day 19 or so 0/1003 eligible but unvaccinated members of the immediate group were not infected. However the cases continued for the people assigned to the delayed (vaccinated at day 21) group.

So it appears something else is going on here that differs between groups in addition to, or instead of, the vaccine.

Convenient

[linkchaos]

It is interesting that when there is a limited broad commercial viability, the "drug" designers and chemists are able to whip up a cure for something in under a year. However when it comes to something like cancer, where billions of dollars are on the line (nevermind the lives), the cure is oddly and seemingly out of reach forever.

Re:Convenient

[Anonymous Coward]

I think that's the stupidest fucking comparison I've ever seen on Slashdot. And that's a pretty impressive feat.

Re:Convenient

[Anonymous Coward]

That is one of the most ignorant statements that I've ever heard. There are thousands of different types of cancers with probably millions of different causes for them to develop. If you trying to say there should be some magic pill or shot to make them all go away then that makes me facepalm so hard my ancestors will feel it. I'm not trying to say that everyone on this site should be a doctor with a PhD, but dude that was was asinine. We realistically can't eliminate the common cold, do you really think that somewhere out there someone is hiding a cure for cancer. Let me tell you, with someone whose dad just had his prostate removed because he was diagnosed with stage 2 prostate cancer. If there was such a cure then no one in their right mind would hide it, they would be the first trillionaire because everyone would buy it from them.

Re:Convenient

[kwiecmmm]

Really... is it that convenient or is it because cancer is caused by cell mutations and every cancer and victim has a slightly different mutation. And some people have been surviving Ebola, which means their bodies have created antibodies.

Cancer will probably take more than 100 years after this point to completely wipe out. With medicine these days we will probably see better treatments for it and more people will survive over time, but cancer will not be wiped out any time soon.

Re:Convenient

[Anonymous Coward]

"Hey guys: I'm from the internet! I think it is an equivalent problem to vaccinate against a virus and a disease caused by cell division with your own DNA..."

HIV would have been a better comparison except for that whole "it attacks the immune system" thing...

I'm going to form an anti-virus startup where we flip the "evil-bit" on malware. Clearly there are people who think classification tasks distinguishing between two almost identical sets is as trivial as pointing and saying "that one".

Re:Convenient

[circletimessquare]

objectively, based on the content of what you just wrote, you are a moron. not a baseless insult, an accurate characterization of the content of your thoughts, to be someone who wrote what you just wrote

Re:Convenient

[Firethorn]

It is interesting that when there is a limited broad commercial viability, the "drug" designers and chemists are able to whip up a cure for something in under a year.

Problem: They've been working on the Ebola vaccine for a lot longer than a year. What really happened is that they had a vaccine in the early testing stages, with something like an estimated 5 years of testing left before it could be commercially deployed. Then we have a relatively huge ebola outbreak, panic sets in and they grant a waiver for the testing. Basically, they had enough information that 'We think this will probably help you survive exposure to Ebola. We're pretty sure it won't hurt you'. So they administer the vaccine in a sort of accelerated study, because it might save lives. Turns out it probably did.

Outside of an Ebola outbreak, the risks weren't worth it. During one? Worth it.

It actually reminds me of the first vaccination methods - Variolation. Fascinating history. Various versions around, but had a top end of 1% chance of death. Yes, the vaccination itself killed 1% of those treated. But it was against smallpox - with a death rate of 30% during epidemics. As long as the chances of catching smallpox was above 4%, it was 'worth it' to variate. And in Europe, the chances were a lot higher than 4%. Even royalty variolated their children.

As for cancer - apples and oranges dude. The problem with cancer is that it's actually lots of different problems, all under the same name. Causes, effects, treatments, all different.

We've developed lots of cures for various cancers, just not all of them yet.

Re:Convenient

[phantomfive]

Come on now, be nice..... it's possible he's just extremely ignorant.

Re:Convenient

[circletimessquare]

i'm not a nice person. and this is not couple's therapy

if someone says something stupefyingly dumb (on a "news for nerds" website no less), they deserve to be pilloried

i understand the concept of educating the ignorant patiently. but then there is stupidity so amazing there is no hope

prideful ignorance exists in this world. it resists logic reason and patience. such stupidity needs to be attacked for the cancer it is (irony intended). blind and dumb people actually cause real damage in this world

Re:Convenient

[bws111]

Nope. We could blame it on ignorance if, for instance, he asked why it is possible to develop an ebola vaccine but not kill cancer. But he didn't do that, he claimed some kind of conspiracy that is stopping us from curing cancer.

Re:Convenient

[phantomfive]

i'm not a nice person.

That's true.

Re:Convenient

[circletimessquare]

usually, if someone is not nice to you, you avoid them. are you a masochist? do you crave social contact so badly abuse is acceptable?

if you see a comment of mine, don't read it. and don't respond to it. is this concept too complicated and confusing for you?

Re:Convenient

[Coren22]

To be fair to the idiot you replied to, there is a cancer vaccine for one type of cancer, HPV.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
http://www.cdc.gov/cancer/hpv/...

However, trying to tie every cancer together as one cause is absurd. Implying someone is sitting on a cure for cancer is much worse.

Re:Convenient

[phantomfive]

rotfl <3 even if you're not nice, sometimes you're fun to talk to. <3

Re:Convenient

[david_thornley]

HPV isn't cancer, it's a virus. It is the usual cause of cervical cancer, but maybe 10% of the cancers are not associated with HPV.

Re:Convenient

[circletimessquare]

good, glad to entertain, that's the right attitude

Re:Convenient

[Anonymous Coward]

Many years ago on a much smaller forum I read almost the exact same rant. I wonder if this is the same troll, sadly cemented to his workstation by years of cum.

Re:Convenient

[circletimessquare]

perhaps

and here you are, reading and responding

you are what you hate

Re:Convenient

[JazzLad]

Nice troll, bro

Re:Convenient

[circletimessquare]

thank you

Re:Convenient

[linkchaos]

Thank you for taking the time to reply with something that was actually meaningful as opposed to the times square circle jerking that was going on ahead of you. Most are super quick to jump in to throw mud around, while offering nothing in return, which is super productive. I get why it's fast tracked, cause there is panic on the line and we can't have that. I wonder if cancer were contagious would it get the same treatment? Not sure where everyone else on this thread sits with cancer, but its likely touched most peoples lives to some extent. I write this as I sit here looking at my 6 month old niece in the hospital, who has just been diagnosed with brain cancer and now breathes via tracheotomy. Did I mention she is 6 months old? Beyond that, over my lifetime I've lost my father, 2 uncles, 2 grandparents and the list goes on all to cancer. So as a result, perhaps I'm a little jaded when I hear about some "other" disease getting cured in such a short amount of time. I suppose it's only natural. Does, it make me a moron?... Maybe. What does that say about the response I got, besides it that it pushed some buttons as it should? I'll leave that to rest of the aforementioned others to pass judgement on, as they most likely will. Again, thanks for you time.

Re:Convenient

[linkchaos]

HPV is not cancer as mentioned. If it were, most of the world under 40 would be sick with it. At no time did I infer that somebody was sitting on the cure.. I merely inferred that it's odd that they were able to deliver a cure so quickly.

Re:Convenient

[linkchaos]

While I could have replied, starting with something like "To be fair to the "idiot" who included references that he didn't even read..." but didn't see the point, as there is little value add, and you already know that you're bold statement was indeed baseless. That said, I doubt your an idiot.. we all make mistakes.. A lot.

LOL - there is no such thing as 'vaccination'...

[Anonymous Coward]

So they 'vaccinated' contacts of people who had Ebola, AFTER the people they had been in contact with had got Ebola? So it's a MAGIC 'vaccine' now, is it? It prevents you from getting the disease AFTER you would already have it?

WTF?
http://www.whale.to/v/hadwen1.html

How many infections...

[Bartles]

...in the unvaccinated control group?

Re:How many infections...

[ninjagin]

16

Re:How many infections...

[Bartles]

The "control group" was also vaccinated.

Re:How many infections...

[bws111]

Only half the people were vaccinated the first time. The rest were the control group. Of the control group 16 got ebola. Then they vaccinated the rest, and nobody got ebola.

Let me be clear, this is not without risk

[WillAffleckUW]

Giving it too far ahead of time, makes it not work.

The actual vaccines have a fairly high fatality rate, but it is far lower than the fatality rate for Ebola.

So it's a choice between a 0-20 percent chance of mortality versus a 90-100 percent chance of mortality.

It's a solution. It's not an optimal solution. The main problem is there isn't funding for an optimal solution, and it's really hard to get controls in Ebola.

Why isn't there funding? Probably spent on some beachfront property beach cleanup in the Hamptons as "shore protection".

Re:Let me be clear, this is not without risk

[Anonymous Coward]

Why isn't there funding? Probably spent on some beachfront property beach cleanup in the Hamptons as "shore protection".

Or maybe the $325B that people spent on snack foods last year

Or maybe the $182B that people gave to Apple computer last year

Or maybe the $11.4B that people spent on video games last year.

Or how about the $38B spent on movies?

Now, I am sure YOU don't spend any of YOUR money on those kinds of frivolous things, right? I mean, surely you live at a subsistance only level and contribute everything else to finding ebola solutions, right?

Re:Let me be clear, this is not without risk

[WillAffleckUW]

I own Apple stock. And have owned MSFT and Sony stock. How is this frivolous?

Beachfront shore protection - that's frivolous. Waste of time, too. Spends 95 percent of the funds on the richest 1 percent on land areas that will be under water by 2025 regardless. Better spent on Africa.

Re:Let me be clear, this is not without risk

[Anonymous Coward]

Who said anything about stock? Those are revenue numbers. In other words, people spent over half a trillion dollars on stuff that is absolutely not needed for life, therefore it is frivolous. And YOU are the one who thinks money should not be spent on frivolous stuff.

As for beaches, almost half of all travelers took a beach vacation in the last year.

Re:Let me be clear, this is not without risk

[WillAffleckUW]

I stand by my assessment.

100% effective rate...

[halfEvilTech]

Wait I think I seen this movie some where, granted it was a cure for cancer but it doesn't end well for the humans unless of course you like zombies

celebrate science and vaccines as a great good!

[circletimessquare]

news like this makes me so mad. because it demonstrates something wonderful we as a civilization have achieved time and again. something that should be applauded and celebrated and championed:

1. disease, unfair deaths

2. science, hard work by intelligent people

3. vaccine, innocent lives saved

it's obvious, straightforward, undeniable, a wonderful good

against that we have prideful ignorance, that continues to claim the lives of innocent children and others, simply because of their various paranoid conspiracy theories, lies, and petulant low iq

in a just world, those who don't vaccinate die from ebola

in the real world, those who do vaccinate protect those who do not, and when the herd immunity breaks down, because of the unvaccinated, the vulnerable innocent and the unlucky few who got a vaccine but it didn't take hold, also die

Re:LOL - there is no such thing as 'vaccination'..

[bobbied]

You cannot be serious.... Look they vaccinated using TWO techniques and it may be hard to follow, but they where not doing a placebo double blind study, but a comparative study of two populations, which has value.

First group where vaccinated right away after someone nearby had been confirmed to have Ebola.. In the group of people who got the vaccine, NOBODY got Ebola who was subsequently exposed after 10 days. Yes, some people got Ebola who either already had it before the vaccine or who where exposed to it during the 10 days after the vaccine, but after that, things where great.

Just to be sure this wasn't a fluke, they vaccinated other groups 3 weeks after the confirmed case of Ebola was found and noted that there where then 16 cases of Ebola in this test group after the 10 day wait, meaning they where previously exposed and got Ebola via the normal route, before the vaccine built immunity in 3 weeks + 10 days. This indicates that the vaccine DOES affect the Ebola infection rate, seemingly very well in that after 10 days, subsequent exposure didn't not produce Ebola.

The implication is that the immediate vaccination prevented Ebola after the 10 day period...

Re:LOL - there is no such thing as 'vaccination'..

[kwiecmmm]

Ebola is not an airborne virus. Therefore if you detect it early enough in the first people you can vaccinate those around them.

And if you read about Ebola's normal course, it would normally take about a week for things to get very bad for patients (bleeding and diarrhea ). Yes, the vaccine might not work and 2,000 some people may have gotten lucky, or it could work for 90% of them and 200 of them got lucky. This does seem like a promising step forward, if people can put aside their disbelief and cynicism, but then again this is slashdot.

The Republicans will never allow this to be used

[Anonymous Coward]

They hate us and want us to die. That is why you should never vote for one of their kind. Don't vote for them.

Re:LOL - there is no such thing as 'vaccination'..

[bws111]

Serious question: are placebos normally used in a vaccine trial? Is there really such a thing as a placebo effect for something like ebola?

Yea but how many of them ended up with autism?

[pteddy]

I bet it's 100%.

Re:LOL - there is no such thing as 'vaccination'..

[thinkwaitfast]

You can be treated for rabies after you been infected. Pets are routinely given rabies shots after an encounter with a wild animal even when they are currently vaccinated.

Ya but...

[Anonymous Coward]

That sounds great... but how many ended up with autism? ;)

Ebola is for everyone

[Anonymous Coward]

Ebola, Ebola, the great equalizer, Ebola
You kill us dead, but we love you. Ebola, Ebola.

Believe what you want...

[mschaffer]

Believe what you want. This is just bad statistics. Are there any real epidemiologists or statisticians in the study that claim it's 100% effective?
If there were only 16 cases in the delayed vaccination groups, you simply do not have enough information to calculate the real efficacy.

Re:Believe what you want...

[bws111]

It doesn't say it is 100% effective, it says it had a 100% success rate IN THE TRIAL. Which it did. The TFA says that the actual effectiveness will be between 75 and 100%. But it is sooo much easier to just criticize than simply read, isn't it.

Developed in Winnipeg Canada

[Anonymous Coward]

Developed in Winnipeg Canada, it sat on a shelf for more than a year before the W.H.O. would field test it for trials. 100% effective, but if it was available for use a year ago, thousands of lives would have been saved. It *was on the shelf* a year ago, but big pharma wouldn't put in dime one because there was no return-on-investment. The W.H.O. had to put up the cash for testing, and now its available. Remember to thank Big Pharma again.

Malaria, Dengue, Chikungunya

[cowdung]

Now if we can only get Malaria, Dengue and Chikungunya to US soil we're sure to cure those devastating third world epidemics as well!

Vaccine the reservoirs

[esperto]

This a human vaccine, which is great, but it will probably won't avoid the next break out.
Wouldn't it be a good idea to also develop a vaccine for bats, which act as a reservoir for the virus?