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'Safe Ebola' Created for Research
Posted by
Zonk
on Tue Jan 22, 2008 10:02 AM
from the makes-me-so-happy-to-be-living-in-the-same-city dept.
from the makes-me-so-happy-to-be-living-in-the-same-city dept.
Nephrite writes "By removing a gene from the virus Ebola, UW-Madison scientists have managed to stop the deadly pathogen from replicating. This first step may be a start down the path to a vaccine or drug screening. 'The scientists still want the virus to replicate in order to study it, so they developed monkey kidney cells which contained the protein needed. Because the cell was providing the protein, and not the virus itself, it could only replicate within those cells, and even if transferred into a human, would be harmless.'"
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load of monkey kidney's (Score:2)
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The university tried to open a line of communication with the president to reason with him but was met with difficulty when he retired to the war room to pout and 'play with his toys.'
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Look, the people studying ebola are smart and they are safe. The people at the CDC and elsewhere have, I'm sure, explored the full spectrum of Michael Crichton related disasters. They may even have considered some other pulp fiction horrors, as well as actual real life threats.
Vira
No way to RTFA (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
Scientists have made the lethal virus Ebola harmless in the lab, potentially aiding research into a vaccine or cure.
Taking a single gene from the virus stops it replicating, US scientists wrote in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences journal.
Ebola, currently handled in highly secure labs, kills up to 80% of those it infects.
However, one expert said the new method may not yet be a fail-safe way of dealing with the virus.
We wanted to
Hmmm.. (Score:4, Interesting)
Cheers!
Strat
Before you panic (Score:5, Informative)
Currently, only a few groups have access to BSL4 laboratories, and this has been severely hampering Ebola research. If by taking out the VP30 gene they have reduced the pathogenicity of the virus enough to get the authorities to apply the more appropriate BSL3 tag to the mutant strain, they've succeeded in making an important stride towards expanding the field, while introducing a very minimal risk of an outbreak.
I don't think anyone is talking about drinking the recombinant virus, but merely making it BSL3 instead of BSL4... or even just reducing the risk of working with Ebola under BSL4 conditions.
Parent
Ummm... (Score:2)
No citations, but it's about what I remember from reading The Hot Zone.
Re:Before you panic (Score:5, Funny)
""We wanted to make biologically contained Ebola virus so that we can drink it," said Yoshihiro Kawaoka.
And if you're going to point out that I simply added the part in bold myself, then I can onlly say in my defense that it is probably what Yoshihiro Kawoaka is thinking anyway.
Parent
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Re:Before you panic (Score:5, Interesting)
The strain Ebola-Reston is airborne, fortunately, it appears, the air-borne mutation also makes it non-lethal to humans.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ebola_Reston/ [wikipedia.org]
Parent
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So we're safe as long as we don't touch or have sex with any UW-Madison scientists, or their monkeys.
Re:Before you panic (Score:4, Insightful)
Just a guess, but for some people, a cure to this miserable disease, and for others, one heck of a biological weapon. It is so limited in transmission that one might feel safe using it in certain situations to cripple an enemy. It is so incredibly debilitating while one has it that it would render combatants or other individuals incapacitated and too weak once they recovered, though they probably would not recover.
Ebola is just another tool in this case.
InnerWeb
Parent
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From TFA (Score:2)
OK, I'm not an expert in biosecurity, but wouldn't the reduced air pressure in the room be accomplished by pumping air out of the room?
Re:From TFA (Score:4, Informative)
The idea is that when you take air out of the room, you control the path of the outflow, and thus you can filter the particulates, including viruses. Otherwise, when you open the door, they just tend to diffuse out.
Parent
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...air pressure in the room is less than the pressure outside, so any leak would mean air flowing inwards rather than outwards. ...
OK, I'm not an expert in biosecurity, but wouldn't the reduced air pressure in the room be accomplished by pumping air out of the room?
Off course the experts have thought of that and put the exhaust of the pumps right next to the leaks so the air will get sucked in again immediately.
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If the secure research facility is air-tight, pumping a little bit of air out would produce a vacuum / differential pressure (compared to the positive pressure suit systems) that would could be maintained without pumping out any more air.
Furthermore, the little bit of air that does get pumped out can be processed to eliminate or kill viruses -- it can be filtered, passe
Re:From TFA (Score:4, Insightful)
Parent
cancer and vaccines (Score:4, Interesting)
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We keep washing 99.9999% of germs and bacteria off ourselves and we seem to be getting sicker and the germs seems to be getting tougher (MRSA [wikipedia.org]). When I was a kid was played in dirt then came in and grabbed a sammich and went out to play more... Damn life was sweet... Most of us are fine! It's not until we get into the "bacterial hand lotion" kicks that I see my peers dropping like flies...
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sigh.. the most common active compound in antibacterial soaps, lotions etc. is Triclosan. It is rather disturbing to see it used as widely as it is because of the risk of selecting for triclosan resistance. it's a never ending arms race, we make new antibiotics, they develop a way to inactivate or efficiently pump the drug out of their cells. the only thing that has a real chance a
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"Man, I just keep thinking of MI:2 where they make a super virus because they where trying to make a super vaccine."
No they were making a super virus as a weapon they just developed the vaccine first..
"The plot (or more accurately, the excuse for the movie) revolves around a manmade biological weapon called "Chimera" that's been seized by rogue agent Sean Ambrose (a lightweight Dougray Scott). Now Ambrose and his band of generic thugs need to get their hands on the bug's antidote in order to execute th
Genetics.... (Score:2, Funny)
Don't the scientists know that the original virus leapt from monkeys to humans just like HIV.
Hell we can't even classify virus as a living or non-living thing.
And now our irrational scientists like John Hammond think they can tinker...
Although on one hand i support them, ebola is tooo dangerous to escape from the funny farm. if it had been smallpox or something it would be understandable.
Thi
Re:Genetics.... (Score:5, Insightful)
We would like to study ebola, so that we can save your sorry ass if you get it. To do that, we've modified it to weaken it, so we don't kill ourselves studying it. We're not really going to put it in your food and air supply!
As far as why Bush hates funding genetic engineering as a whole you're correct. Your post illustrates PRECISELY why people hate funding it - they are ignorant, scared sheet, and content remaining such.
Parent
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Although on one hand i support them, ebola is tooo dangerous to escape from the funny farm. if it had been smallpox or something it would be understandable.
Smallpox is far more dangerous and has killed more than a thousand times as many people as Ebola. Ebola is actually relatively easy to contain, though quite deadly. Smallpox is deadly and far more easily spread. And most people under 40 in the developed world are not vaccinated against smallpox. So a smallpox release has a far greater potential danger.
How much do we know about virii to safely declare legally that this ebola virus would not leap from monkeys to humans.
First, the standard English plural of virus is viruses. Second, I don't think the courts have anything to do with whether or not a crippled virus is safe an
The Sky is falling (Score:5, Insightful)
Sure Ebola is dangerous, but labs are working around the world with massively dangerous pathogens. Britain's numpties in the bio-farming area managed to release Foot and Mouth into the wild (genius) so of course there is a risk. The question is whether it is safe and what can be achieved by doing this, not simply thinking about the Horror flick that played a ridiculous story line out. Bio-shock story lines are just as realistic as techno-shock ones, i.e. about as realistic as a George Bush explanation on Iraqi WMD.
Bio-science is one of the most real frontiers in science today and its simply stunning what is being done. Sure there need to be controls, but educated people need to stop behaving like Fox News Anchors.
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Worrisome, most certainly.
Out of all the techs we've yet produced as a race, all of them (with the possible exception of the nascent self-replicating nanotechnology field) have been firmly controlled by humanity.
Biotech on the other hand, we create something, and when it leaves (and sometimes before it leaves) the 'home', it gets all grown up, with the possibility of getting a serious attitude of it's own and some seriously big boots to come back kicking with.
With all our machin
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You're right. If those evil scientists keep tinkering around with Ebola like this, it might end up turning into something really bad.
All sarcasm aside, creating less-pathogenic versions of deadly viruses is one of the best techniques available to provide h
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That is a bit simplistic. The story summary is pretty neutral, and the "whatcouldpossiblygowrong" tag is a humorous tag used for many stories. Actually, reading the list [slashdot.org]
Um.... (Score:2, Informative)
treat the host pool (Score:4, Insightful)
Which is why imho vaccine efforts should be directed at the animal host pool in order to eradicate the filovirus, ie make it extinct.
The host is widely considered to be bats http://www.emedicine.com/MED/topic626.htm [emedicine.com] and if only a tiny portion of the grant money spent on dna twiddling was spent establishing this and looking at either eradicating the bats or vaccinating them then, perhaps, the whole filovirus family could be eradicated.
Before all the bat-lovers start crying foul I would like to point out that it is only ebola's high mortality rate that keeps it contained. If mother nature dose a bit of her own dna twiddling and hits the sweet spot for mortality versus infectivity then haemorrhagic fever will reach Hollywood proportions.
But, call me cynical, this would leave no recurring income for vaccine makers.
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Too late.
IANABE, but bats have been known to eat flying insects on occasion. Seems to me that this kind of tinkering has been shown repeatedly to produce unintended consquences. In this case, I'd wager the end result would be something along the lines of less bats -> more mosquitos -> more mosquito problems -> more malaria. Or, from the malaria tinkerers perspective, more bats -> less malaria -> more ebola. Given that malaria is a greater p
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But, call me cynical, this would leave no recurring income for vaccine makers.
Um, cynical wasn't exactly the word I was thinking of. Though since you can't seem to afford a clue, I'll give you one. Vaccine research is a money-loser unless you come up with an effective vaccine for western diseases - and even then its risky. At best vaccines generate $6 billion annually - that's about 1.5% of the annual pharmaceutical market worldwide. The problem is, an effective vaccine is used only a few times, and is highly cost effective. So there is not so much profit to be made. Moreover, you w
Nerves of steel (Score:2)
Re:Nerves of steel (Score:5, Insightful)
What do you think happens should "something go wrong" when you're assembling a skyscraper? Pouring molten steel? Flying a plane? Heck, just driving a car can kill you in the most horrible ways.
If you want safe, you're pretty much hosed.
If you want to balance risk with precaution, work in an industry where the life and death of not just you, but lots of others are on the line. You'll quickly find that the level of precaution taken is burdensome, but quite reassuring.
PS: It doesn't kill everyone. To quote Wikipedia:
-http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ebola [wikipedia.org] (citation from http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/EID/vol11no02/04-0533.htm [cdc.gov])
Parent
One has to wonder if the 'safe virus itself' (Score:2)
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FYI, there is already an ebola vaccine (Score:2, Interesting)
Easier solution (Score:2)
Now they won't need to activate that laboratory self-destruct!
Aim for the head (Score:5, Funny)
The scientists still want the virus to replicate in order to study it, so they developed monkey kidney cells which contained the protein needed.
Hey, isn't that how the Rage virus got started? Pretty soon those monkeys will develop a taste for human brains, the military will see this as a promising new bio-weapon and, 28 days later, Milla Jovovich is naked on your shower floor washing away the zombie blood...again.
Do these people NEVER learn?
Only eight genes? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:oops (Score:4, Insightful)
Why wouldn't you support that?
Parent
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As much as I'd like to find a treatment/vaccine for something as nasty as Ebola, I'm not so sure tinkering around with its genetic code like this is such a good idea.
Well, then pretty much most of biomedical research on infectious agents is shit outta luck. How do you think he get live attenuated vaccines? How do you think a lot of HIV research is done?
Like others, I can't help but think about the paraphrased quote from Jurassic Park, "Life will find a way"; if that ever happens and that modified Ebola mutates and gets out of isolation, we are in a world of shit.
Like others I can't help but hope that research decision-makers and funders don't get their ideas about what research should be undertaken from bad science fiction.
(Note I said 'bad science fiction'. That does not imply that the fed shouldn't fund research into making a holodeck. That would be cool.)
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But still, if you get every enemy soldier to line up for the biggest shot of their life you could easily wipe them all out with this strain.