Slashdot Mirror
Ebola Vaccine Gives 100 Percent Protection, Could Be Readily Available By 2018 (bbc.com)
According to a study published in the Lancet medical journal on Thursday, an experimental vaccine against the Ebola virus was found to be 100 percent effective. The results offer hope of better protection against the disease that ravaged West Africa in 2014, killing more than 11,000 people. From a report on BBC: A highly effective vaccine that guards against the deadly Ebola virus could be available by 2018, says the World Health Organization. Trials conducted in Guinea, one of the West African countries most affected by an outbreak of Ebola that ended this year, show it offers 100% protection. The vaccine is now being fast-tracked for regulatory approval. Manufacturer Merck has made 300,000 doses of the rVSV-ZEBOV vaccine available for use should Ebola strike.
GAVI, the global vaccine alliance, provided $5m for the stockpile.
Results, published in The Lancet medical journal, show of nearly 6,000 people receiving the vaccine, all were free of the virus 10 days later. In a group of the same size not vaccinated, 23 later developed Ebola. Only one person who was vaccinated had a serious side effect that the researchers think was caused by the jab.
...among anti-vaxxers :)
Know that Marburg and Reston are sometimes called Ebola but are not the same as Ebola Zebov. Still what ever trick was done to find a protective antigen can likely be repeated for these. The most important aspect of this is that it can protect health workers. Treating Ebola patients in hot climates is hard to do when you have to wear so much protective gear.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
So we had best wait a year before doing anything with it. Until it's ready for human use you don't have a vaccine, you have a hype train.
BeauHD. Worst editor since kdawson.
How long until someone suggests that this is a scheme by Merck to profit or do "some horrible thing" to poor African villagers who would surely prefer to die of disease or malnutrition. "I can't believe they're selling this instead of giving it away for free!" "How do they know those villagers wouldn't have gotten better on their own!?"
What is the source of your assertion that waiting between vaccines has any effect at all? Your fever dream that you assume is reason does not count. This false compromise about "spacing" vaccination is merely a rationalization to make anti-vax proponents appear more reasonable.
No vax=>no public supported schooling for your spawn would fix this problem.
3. Before considering vaccination, research and educate yourself on other effective practices such as herbs and yoga.
I was going to comment on the first two ridiculous and unfounded suggestions, but this one actually made me snort. The suggestion that herbs and yoga (which is a great exercise) can replace a vaccine against Ebola is at the same time the funniest, scariest, and most ridiculous thing I've read all week. If this is done in jest, well done, very well done. If not, please get yourself checked into a clinic immediately.
Why #1? Unless your immune system is compromised, there's no danger. HOWEVER, if you need three injections, here are the problems:
1) It's more expensive to make. A triple is one product, three products cost more
2) It's more expensive to administer. Three operations, not one
3) You have to take more time off for three operations than just one. And that comes out of your USian 10 days leave, IF your boss will let you go.
4) Costs more, you have to take more time off and travel three times rather than just once
5) It's more stressful, since you now have three operations, each being uncomfortable at best, each abrading your immunity
6) You have three times as much chance of not being able to make the full protection (you don't go if you have a cold, etc)
7) You are unprotected for much longer, unless you have them close together, negating the "benefit" of not having a triple jab
And, for government funded health systems
8) Costs more on the taxpayer dime
For your #2, you're now going to be YEARS open up to infection, not a good move. As to your #3, there's fuck all that can be fixed by yoga that warrant a vaccine. And your #4 is bullshit. Mercury in many forms aren't absorbed by the human body chemistry and is flushed out, but the stuff is useful to keep the medicine safe to inject past your outer immune system defences, so refusing this is more liable to cause infection and precisely what you claim to want to avoid. There ARE alternatives to mercury based preservatives, but if there aren't, you should AT LEAST consider whether you want some bateria being injected straight into your bloodstream merely because mercury in some forms is dangerous. As far as lead, I have no idea whether that's even used, what for, and what its biological effects would be, only knowing tetraethyl lead.
Pretty sure this is just a classic science journalism mistranslation. The actual scientific study says that the estimated efficacy from the experimental results, to a 95% confidence interval, is 100%. Because no one in the trial got the disease. That is not the same as the colloquial version of "100% effectiveness" that you are thinking of.
I posted this story, not msmash.
Is this happening to other people too? For example, might there be someone other than BeauHD who posted a renewable energy story?
I'm not defending or attacking anyone, just explaining what happened. Chill out dude.
OK Sure. The "lie" is that journalists aren't scientists and aren't properly trained to read a scientific paper and realize that there's a difference between a 95% confidence interval or P-value and what people think of as "100%." That doesn't mean the science is lying. That means the science is reporting results accurately and truthfully. Unfortunately the average reader has no idea how to read a scientific journal and make heads or tails of it.
Well, that'd be great... but who's going to fund the synthesis of a plane-load of vaccine, and the training for a plane-load of qualified staff to administer it, and then also fund the two plane flights to Africa? You're asking for a few tens of millions of dollars, minimum... and that's not even considering the logistics involved in ensuring that the vaccines aren't immediately seized upon landing, and used as leverage in a civil war.
Maybe you think that the lab techs, nurses, pilots, maintainers, security personnel and diplomats should all just volunteer their time. That's nice, but then who's going to volunteer to feed them as well? Maybe you think the pharmaceutical company should just pay for everything, but they already do a lot of that, and that's partly why American medicine prices are so high.
...or maybe you just have no idea how the world works, and just want to enrage Slashdot readers.
You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
If you want to be really pedantic, it is possibly a false statement but as of yet there is no proof that it is false. Every person that tried the vaccine is Ebola free. Maybe it actually is 100% effective? Who knows? Not you.
Because sometimes science figures stuff out and sometimes it doesn't. Everything is not a conspiracy. Rich people die of cancer frequently. Even Steve Jobs. And yet we haven't fixed cancer in 4 years...10...100. Rich people get colds. We have colds. Rich people get HIV. We have drugs to control it but no cure. Everyone gets urinary tract infections and we can treat those no problem. Everyone gets chicken pox and we can vaccinate against it. Blah blah blah. Sometimes we find the cure of the vaccine and sometimes we don't. Despite the rhetoric from conspiracy folks like yourself, sometimes there is no conspiracy, just science. Likewise, just because someone in the government says we're going to "moon shot" and fix cancer within a decade, doesn't actually mean it's going to be happening. Science and medicine don't actually care what your rhetoric is and they certainly don't care whether you think something is fair or whether you think something SHOULD be curable.
Not racism. There's no money in selling drugs to poor people, and the owners of the drug companies are rich westerners who won't get dengue, but might get Ebola. Their lives are just a BIT more important than other peoples'.
Far more Western people get dengue than ebola. Pretty much all the victims of ebola are poor people; the non-poor victims can be counted on the fingers of one, maybe two hands. In other words, there is no money to be made on ebola vaccins, and yet Western companies created one anyway. Would you care to adjust your prejudices?
I'm worried about the effectiveness of the vaccin. What if none of the vaccinated group even came into contact with the virus?
.
This vaccine was developed in Canada. See http://www.theglobeandmail.com/technology/science/canadian-vaccine-for-ebola-virus-proves-extremely-effective-in-clinical-trial/article33416753/
The article that I saw said that at this point the side effects preclude mass distribution. A risk that might be worth taking in the middle of an outbreak might be unacceptable for general use in the absence of the disease. It's not like vaccinating everyone is going to wipe out Ebola, since its reservoir is non-human species.
Given that it killed off Western health workers, who aren't exactly poor, and West Africa having plenty of rich people (given their income disparity), there's plenty of profit to be made in making this vaccine. Even Western countries might buy a bunch just because they're so terrified of Ebola. Besides, it's got good PR value.
What is more telling is that it took for some white people to be infected to start research into making a vaccine
Given that it killed off Western health workers, who aren't exactly poor, and West Africa having plenty of rich people (given their income disparity), there's plenty of profit to be made in making this vaccine. Even Western countries might buy a bunch just because they're so terrified of Ebola. Besides, it's got good PR value.
The argument was that Western companies ignore the needs of poor countries because they are poor, and gave dengue as an example of an untreated disease. It's just bullshit: far more Western people get dengue than ever got ebola. Far more rich local people get dengue (and malaria and all those other fun tropical diseases) as well. Do you really think nobody is trying to find a cure? Of course they are - billions are spent each year on trying to find a malaria cure alone. But hey, surprise, it's actually a tough problem that cannot simply be solved in five minutes. And even if you do...
Developing any kind of medicine costs lots of money (200-500 million USD is not uncommon), and there are always people suffering from it. So should all medicine be given away for free then? Who is going to pay for the laboratories, the researchers, the materials needed, etc.?
If the people involved do not have any money, you could presumably do it for humanitarian of PR purposes. That will work right until there is a problem; if even one vaccinated person coughs funny after receiving the vaccine the media will be all over this for "experimenting on poor Africans" and "unresponsible deployment of untested medicine". Any Western doctors will be lucky to escape with their lives once the local population gets the idea the vaccine is actually spreading the disease - and don't think that won't happen...
As for fearing ebola - Western countries really need not fear ebola, and that's because we don't believe in witch doctors over here. We isolate victims (sucks to die like that, but I would happily be isolated if it meant not killing the rest of my family), and we certainly don't touch and wash the dead (a very significant vector for the spread of ebola in Africa).
To summarize: African countries had a health problem. African counties did precisely nothing to help themselves (like set up their own research, or even just changing their funeral rites). Western countries stepped in and solved the problem (hopefully). African countries are still bitching and moaning about racism, because apparently we solved the wrong problem and are not doing so entirely free of charge. I'm feeling really inspired to continue my donations to Medicine Sans Frontiers - NOT...