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Biotech

Ebola Vaccines Successfully Tested on Monkeys 39

Posted by timothy from the bring-out-the-chimp dept.
An Anonymous Reader writes "Canadian and American researchers, in a joint venture between Canada's National Microbiology Lab and the U.S. military, have created two vaccines that prevent Monkeys from becoming ill with Ebola and Marburg. While a human vaccine may still be 5 years away, this is very promising news.
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Ebola Vaccines Successfully Tested on Monkeys More

Ebola Vaccines Successfully Tested on Monkeys

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  • Congratulations to all involved! Especially the monkeys!

    Did anyone see that Discovery Channel show a few (seven?) years ago about the Ebola virus and how one doctor noticed that one in one hundred or so survive and asked the survivors for blood samples and injected the samples in uninfected villagers and almost all of them survived despite being exposed to the contagion? That was neat.

  • This was a front page story in today's Globe and Mail: New vaccines target Ebola, Marburg [theglobeandmail.com]. Still at least five years away from testing... but if I had Ebola I think I'd be ready to sign up for early clinical trials!

    Interesting how the vaccine may end up saving African apes as well...

    Eric
    Read about my new AdSense book for non-techies [memwg.com]

  • Great. I guess. (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Seumas ( 6865 ) *
    Well, the good thing is that they have a potential vaccine.

    The downside is that, just like with most other vaccines, they will not distribute it to everyone everywhere. It simply isn't affordable. And once youcome in contact with it, the vaccine isn't going to do you a damn bit of good.

    I don't see how an ebola vaccine is of any use, other than to vaccinate people just before they go to regions which are currently experiencing an ebola outbreak and the person being vaccinated will be directly in contact wi

    • Re:Great. I guess. (Score:3, Informative)

      by vondo ( 303621 ) *
      That's exactly how it's useful. Widespread smallpox vaccination was stop *before* smallpox was eliminated. In the interim, any reported case of small pox resulted in vacinating people in the area and those who could have come into contact with the infected in a containment policy.

      Sure, people will still die in outbreaks, but they can be contained with many fewer people. No matter what the financial cost, *I* don't want a vaccination against Ebola unless I'm going somewhere where there is an outbreak. The

    • So this vaccine is probably on track to save millions of people, and will probably be used as an agent to eradicate ebola.

      So when does ALF firebomb [tkb.org] the lab?

      • Re:Queue the Whackos (Score:2, Insightful)

        by Seumas ( 6865 ) *
        Talk about a whacko.

        Save millions of people? You do realize ebola has only ever killed, like, 800 people?
        • Save millions of people? You do realize ebola has only ever killed, like, 800 people?

          Right, so "on track to" mean "is likely to in the future". Note the tense.

          In 1959 there was 1 known case of HIV. Both viruses are spread back and forth from monkeys to humans either through 'bushmeat' or other activities. Ebola is far more contagious, though the host's mortality rate is greatly increased.

          So typically, we like to learn from past lessons, extrapolate, and prevent where possible.

          Besides that, it can b

          • Re:Queue the Whackos (Score:3, Insightful)

            by Atrax ( 249401 )
            Ebola, as it currently stands, is too deadly to be a global threat. that's right. too deadly. it kills the host too quickly and in too spectacular a manner to achieve a serious spread. The real killers are the ones that spread silently, then take effect. Like flu.

            Of course, it could mutate into a slower incubating version, in which case panic, put until then, I'm not worried about filoviruses. I'd be more worried about the asian 'bird flu'.
            • You know, a working vaccine could make ebola more dangerous. After all if you could immunise all your agents against it, and then gave them little aerosol sprayer packs full of it, you could get them to walk like the angels of death through a city cutting down people left and right.
          • So your rationalization is sort of the same of stripping us of all our rights because "someday there COULD be terrorists that COULD anthrax the hell out of us!".

            Brilliant.

            And what does the Animal Liberation Front have to do with ebola?!

            • Re:Queue the Whackos (Score:3, Interesting)

              by tigersha ( 151319 )
              Epidemics are like fires. The ones that burn really fast consume their fuel too quickly and then die out.

              Ebola is probably not really a virus well adapted to humans. At any given time the chance that there is nobody in the world sick with it is quite high, youonly hear about sporadic outbreaks once in a while (maybe 8 times or soo in 20 years if I recall). Marburg is even rarer. So the virus lives in other organisms and once in a while it accidentally reaches humans kills of a few hundred and then the infe
            • So your rationalization is sort of the same of stripping us of all our rights because "someday there COULD be terrorists that COULD anthrax the hell out of us!".

              Right. Vaccines strip you of your rights. OK.

              And what does the Animal Liberation Front have to do with ebola?!

              They firebomb labs that use monkeys. Try reading the links I bothered to make.
        • You do realize ebola has only ever killed, like, 800 people?

          Strange how cigarettes do kill millions, and we can't find a cure for them yet.

          Strawberry flavoured Ebola would be a big hit I think.

        • You do realize ebola has only ever killed, like, 800 people?

          I didn't realize that. A little Googling suggested more like 1200, but you're right: that's pretty small compared to the all the consternation caused by The Hot Zone and Outbreak.

          Still, I see that Ebola was only "discovered" (in the Western sense of "now we have a Latin name for it") around 1976. So this could well be a Lovecraftian "buried mystery" whose revelation will rise up from the murky primordial depths and slay us all...

          ...or

      • So this vaccine is probably on track to save millions of people, and will probably be used as an agent to eradicate ebola.

        It would be nigh impossible to eradicate ebola, because it has non-human carrier, each of which would also need to be vaccinated, and we don't even know the species (assuming there is only one) for certain!

    • Re:Great. I guess. (Score:2, Informative)

      by ohithere ( 662779 )
      Actually, it depends on the type of vaccine...

      If the vaccine is based on a surface protein of the virus, it could serve to trigger and rally the immune system of an infected person. If the vaccine is merely based on inert particles, it may not help. Of course the BEST alternative for someone infected with ebola would be the blood serum of another survivor.

      An ebola vaccine would be of great help in containing outbreaks of the disease. When the first case of ebola pops up in whatever isolated town, the w
      • That healthcare provider part is very important since in the beginning almost half of the people who died from the disease were the missionary doctors and nurses in the villages where it first broke out.

        They simply did not know what they were dealing with since the disease had not been seen before, and because in the places where ebola is prevalent the sanitary standard of the West is simply non-existent.
    • Well, you've got the right idea. Undoubtedly, it'll be an expensive vaccine to administer, and you're right, I probably won't do you any good once you've got the disease, especially given how fast it kills you.

      But the vaccine will still be very, very useful. For example: right now, when you have an Ebola outbreak, health care workers are usually so scared out of their minds of the disease that they won't take care of the people who might or might not be infected, which ultimately leads to greater spread
  • Since Ebola is such a deadly disease, surely many natives would risk the possible side effects of the vaccine to have resistance to ebola, so why not test it, if it works, just implement it and not wait 5 years of more people dying, etc?
    This is the same with all drugs, why not?
    • Surely many natives would not have the money to pay for their vaccination, since vaccines are priced in order to recoup the losses for research and development of the vaccine. With smallpox (in the 20th century), the only people immunized for the disease were people that were nearby others infected with the disease. That method worked to wipe out smallpox. What would be the point in getting a vaccine to ebola and mass distributing it to every person in Africa? That wouldn't be very cost effective and in
      • ANd because the natives would be way more interested in spending the money on clean drinking water, schools and hospitals to cure other things that kill them sin much greater numbers such as Gastrointestinal Parasites, Cholera, Common Flu and Malaria.

        Virus-induced haemmoragic fever (Ebola Marburg, Congo and a few others) are an extremely rare diseases that does really not affect many people. Ebola and Marburg has more schock value than anything else, mostly because if the way they kill and the fact that no

  • I want to be on the HMO the monkeys have. (Score:4, Funny)

    by Quarters ( 18322 ) on Monday June 06, 2005 @10:08PM (#12742735)
    Those monkeys are always getting the breakthrough drugs before us!

  • Hmm... (Score:1, Offtopic)

    by Mr2cents ( 323101 )
    I can see a new plot leading to the exact same movie as Planet Of The Apes...
  • I didn't even know Davy Jones & Co. had ebola.

    Hey! Hey! We're the Monkey's...

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