Archive for July, 2014

Has the Time Come to Test Experimental Ebola Vaccines?

30 July, 2014

The Ebola Virus is Spreading Across West Africa in The Largest Outbreak To Date

Mortality rates are currently at 60%, where normally up to 90% of affected people die. Unfortunately, there are no cures or vaccines for the disease, despite its emergence in 1976.

In March of this year, cases of Ebola were reported for the first time in Guinea, Western Africa. Notably, these outbreaks took place in Guinean districts that bordered Sierra Leone and Liberia. In the past, outbreaks have taken place in remote areas of Africa, but this outbreak has had the opportunity to cross border and spread throughout Western Africa, and it has done just that. Now fourth months since the March outbreak, 1,093 people have been infected and there have been a reported 660 deaths attributed to the deadly virus (source: CNN vital signs.)

 

Source: www.vaccinenation.org

I would say – yes!  I am sure the beleaguered healthcare workers in Guinea, Liberia, Sierra Leone and now Nigeria would welcome the experimental vaccine candidates, and the experimental therapeutics, for that matter.

See on Scoop.it – Virology News

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“Controversial scientist recreates H1N1 flu that killed 500K people” – NOT

2 July, 2014

Dr Yoshihiro Kawaoka, professor of virology at University of Wisconsin at Madison, has tweaked the 2009 strain of pandemic influenza to make it resistant the human immune system’s antibodies.

Source: www.dailymail.co.uk

Trust the Dimwitted Mail to misstate what happened – which is that Yoshihiro Kawaoka selected the H1N1pdm 2009 flu virus in culture till he came up with antibody-binding escape mutants.

What he said:

‘Through selection of immune escape viruses in the laboratory under appropriate containment conditions, we were able to identify the key regions [that] would enable 2009 H1N1 viruses to escape immunity,’

Now recall that the H1N1pdm 2009 virus is NOT a particularly nasty variant; that it has NOT been proved the escape mutants will infect vaccinated people at all – and that all the work was done "a state-of-the-art laboratory at the Institute for Influenza Virus Research in Madison", so the odds that it will get out are VERY low.

But papers have been sold, and the scare is in.

Posted in biotechnology, Evolution, Influenza viruses, Scoop.it, Vaccines: General, Viruses | Leave a Comment »