Malaria Vaccine Nearing Reality 209
colin_faber writes "Right on the heels of the Bill Gates BusinessWeek article discussing the importance of disease prevention and cure over technological deployment is news from CNN that U.S. researchers may have a viable vaccine for malaria. If true, this could change the lives of up to 3.3 billion people living in malaria danger zones and allow us to do away with this disease, which kills hundreds of thousands of people."
Radiation, not recoding? (Score:4, Interesting)
It was five years ago I read about this [nytimes.com], where they weakened a virus by actually re-coding in with the 'most pessimal' version of its genome. Same proteins, but reproduces three orders of magnitude slower.
And I haven't heard anything since. Does anyone know what's been going on with that? I suppose re-coding a whole single-celled organism might be more difficult/expensive than a virus, but still... the problem with point-mutations weaking a disease is that point-mutations can be reversed. Eventually someone's going to get sick from the vaccine itself. (Still, if the vaccine's effective it's a better bet, but if you can eliminate that chance...)
Could a 100% effective vaccine eradicate malaria? (Score:4, Interesting)
My attempts at googling the answer to this have not been successful, so I ask here... (crazy, I know).
Anyway, if there was a ~100% effective vaccine taken by almost everyone, would that eradicate malaria itself, or
could the malaria parasite continue to exist?
i.e. are humans a vital part of the life cycle of the malaria-causing parasites?
Thanks!
Re:Most Africans are pretty sensible people (Score:4, Interesting)
It should also be a concern for e.g. Europeans.
The alpine latitudes are becoming more Mediterranean. Just this year, we are having a heat wave breaking records. It can be expected that African diseases will spread north-bound due to climate change.
Last year, the first mosquito with Malaria was found in Austria. In Greece, the winter was so warm that the population of mosquitoes survived -- a problematic novelty.
The costs of climate change are high.
Re:African parent vs autism (Score:3, Interesting)
The entire results of that study can be explained by the fact that recently circumcised men are not going to be fucking at all until they heal.
They stopped the study when they saw the cut group catching up after healing. Yeah science, no agenda there.
Re: I hate to say it, but... (Score:4, Interesting)
Oddly, complex things like population control don't work in the simple straightforward way you think.
Educating women is the most effective means of birth control, by far. Making people healthy means they can work more reliably, have more money, afford to go to school, and not miss school because they're sick.
Comment removed (Score:4, Interesting)