Malaria Vaccine, Via Mosquito 178
CodeShark writes "The AP is reporting that mosquitoes have been used for the first time to deliver anti-malarial vaccine through their bites. According to this article the results were crystal clear: 100% of the vaccinated group acquired immunity, everyone in the non-vaccinated control group did not. Those in the control group and developed malaria when exposed to the parasites later, the vaccinated group did not. Malaria kills nearly a million people per year, mostly children."
Biology imitates computer science? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Biology imitates computer science? (Score:5, Informative)
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The definition of insanity comes to mind.
Re:reminds me of quinine (Score:4, Informative)
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Further to the previous reply, it is often the case that you actually do get bitten just as much as the person with itchy bites all over them (and are at the same risk of malaria or yellow fever or dengue fever) but the truth is that your reaction to the mosquitoes anaesthetic is not as severe as theirs. Probably because you are ac
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Personally I don't why people get bitten by mosquitoes so much, I rarely ever get bitten, even in a crowd while others are getting bitten.
I'm sure your smug aloofness to your neighbors' plight is a real hit at BBQs.
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I'm sure your smug aloofness to your neighbors' plight is a real hit at BBQs.
Not quite. Growing up I used to go to BBQ frequently, maybe 2 or 3 tymes a month from late spring to fall with up to 10 families. Most of them fished, gardened, and or hunted. And we'd cook before hand or BBQ at the site a lot of this. I only noticed I wasn't getting bitten after hanging out with people in college. Those who went to the BBQs didn't have problems with mosquitoes, but those I met in college did. My problem grow
DDT (Score:2)
M
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The really interesting part of all this that the Central East African countries, North and South Rhodisa and Nyaserland had both the malaria and other insect born diseases effectively conquered by the mid 1950s.
And what effect does DDT and other pesticides have on wildlife? If mosquitoes are wiped out then the food for other species is wiped out as well. Such as bats, birds, dragonflies, and frogs.
In addition, we now have vocal, and well funded NGOs, with a vested interest in keeping the third world poor,
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No, RTFA! (or RTFA *again*) They used an unmodified parasite in the mosquito, while giving the test subjects an anti-malarial drug. This let the subjects build up an immunity to the real parasite while not suffering the effects of a full-blown infection in the process.
There was a separate study referenced briefly in the article using an irradiated parasite, but that had nothing to do with the mosquito vector.
Re:Biology imitates computer science? (Score:4, Informative)
You take the anti-malaria drugs for a few months while getting bitten by mosquitos with real malaria. After a few months, you stop taking the drugs, because your body has used that time to develop an immunity to the parasites. From that point on, you are immune to malaria for the rest of your life, with no further drug costs.
Okay, I read TFA, what I want to know is (Score:5, Interesting)
Answering my own question (Score:5, Informative)
Damn. Informed consent to malaria infection.
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Re:Okay, I read TFA, what I want to know is (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Okay, I read TFA, what I want to know is (Score:4, Informative)
And yes, the volunteers are heroes, even if all we get out of this is knowledge. (If you read the NEJM article, the process is a bit involved -- it takes weeks, you need a strain of malaria known to be well-treatable with existing drugs, it requires a little stable of infected mosquitos.)
Re:Okay, I read TFA, what I want to know is (Score:5, Funny)
it requires a little stable of infected mosquitos.
That sounds repulsive and adorable at the same time.
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I'm envisioning a line of "My Little Mozzie" children's animal dolls...
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No shit! The IRB at my university jumps all over us if we change the wording of an email announcing an appointment to participants, and that's for research classified as minimal risk!
I'm AMAZED.
The altruistic nature of the volunteers is wonderful to see, I agree.
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Chloroquine itself is also fairly toxic.
Thing is, is the immunity limited to Plasmodium falciparum or do they also end up immune to Plasmodium vivax and the rest?
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Inconsistent Logic (Score:2)
You are also asking the wrong question. The question really is: would you risk your life on the slim chance that it might save others knowing that, should the treatment not work, you risked it for very little indeed?
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The more surprising disease is cholera -- a world-wide killer, yet (as I understand it) if you have a sufficient supply of electrolyte (Gatorade, more or less), you can survive it. Not fancy drugs -- gatorade.
A friend of mine once remarked that there's a fair number of hospitals and clinics in Africa that cannot afford bleach for sterilizing equipment, and obviously, this leads to infection and deaths.
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Not really. Malaria is treatable.
It is treatable but not cureable. You are stuck with it for the rest of your life and it can cause complications later if it flares up when you are older and already fighting off another disease.
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how in holy hell did they get that past the human subjects review board? Athlete's foot and common cold is one thing, intentionally infecting your control group with malaria is something else altogether.
You're so cute. You think there's review boards in a lot of the countries that have malaria problems?
Big Pharma: Hi, I'd like to do a study trial on malaria. Here's $10,000.
Despot: How soon can you start? Oh, just out of curiousity, will you be infecting people with malaria, trying to cure malaria, or infecting people, then trying to cure it?
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Had a resistant form of Malaria once. It sucked balls because treatment would only work for a few days and then the symptoms would come back... harder. Took some stronger medicine and was fine.
Malaria is not a big deal for healthy adults who can sense the symptoms. It is a HUGE deal for children who can not always understand the way they feel, or the elderly who have weak immune systems
Good news, everyone (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Good news, everyone (Score:5, Informative)
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It is absolutely a vaccine. After being exposed to this combination of things - you both
a) Don't get malaria
and
b) are now immune to malaria
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You only are immune to malaria as long as you pay them money by buying their pills and taking them.
Sigh.
That was the whole POINT of the study! They stopped taking the anti-malarial drug, but since they were exposed to the parasite so many times while taking it, they are now immune WITHOUT the drugs.
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For how long?? A week? A year? I bet it fades off and is no real immunity.
Also, people: If you disagree, you can say so! Moderation is completely unrelated to agreeing.
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Yeah, if it were a vaccine in the traditional sense you'd be bitten by huge flying cows, not little mosquitoes.
You are factually wrong (Score:2)
This process induces immunity. Thus, it is a vaccine. By strict or loose definition.
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... Unfortunately, at least one of these has undesirable long term side-effects...
Most of them have undesirable side-effects. In the malarial area where I work, the choices are effectively doxycycline or chloroquine. In both cases, you start dosing some time before possible exposure to malaria, and continue to take the drug for quite some time after last possible exposure. Doxycycline has to be taken every day, and most people I know who take it have stomach aches and/or nausea for a couple of hours after they take it, each time. (A couple of hours of nausea! Every day!
To
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I'm in Afghanistan now and am supposed to be taking doxycycline. Not only do the side effects include nausea, but I've heard it causes nightmares, too. Fuck that shit, I'll take my chances. Coincidentally my ass is getting ate up with mosquitoes at this very moment..hope I don't get malaria.. :)
Everybody has AIDS (Score:5, Funny)
Next up, new AIDS vaccine is delivered by sluts.
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Your being funny*, but a modified AIDS virus is being looked at as a way to deal with the AIDS virus.
*for different values of funny. Particular low values in your case.
Next up, new AIDS vaccine is delivered by sluts. (Score:4, Interesting)
Slashdot had an article about how some prostitutes in an African country were immune to AIDS. When I searched I didn't find it but I found another where two Women in China [slashdot.org] were immune due to a mutant gene.
Falcon
Re:Next up, new AIDS vaccine is delivered by sluts (Score:5, Interesting)
You can get a mutation in the gene for CCR5 which codes for a protein on the outside of the immune cells that HIV sticks to so it can enter and replicate and kill them which eventually leads to aids, actually like 10% of people descended from Europeans have this mutation, the further north you go the more common it gets if I remember correctly. It supposedly got passed on by the people who survived the bubonic plague and became more prevalent since people who didnt have that allele died off.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CCR5#CCR5-.CE.9432 [wikipedia.org]
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Someone actually tried [salon.com] this....
Terrible summary text (Score:5, Informative)
The summary text is completely misleading vs. the article text. The mosquitoes don't "deliver" a vaccine. A combination technique is used, involving an existing anti-malarial drug and repeated exposure to the parasites via mosquitoes, to cause natural immunity to develop, essentially controlling a known path to malaria immunity. The article indicates this approach isn't usable on a practical scale, yet is important because:
"This is not a vaccine" as in a commercial product, but a way to show how whole parasites can be used like a vaccine to protect against disease, said one of the Dutch researchers, Dr. Robert Sauerwein.
The article does mentions separate work to commercialize a related approach involving weakened malaria parasites.
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Yep. This is a good exercise in demonstrating how many /.ers actually RTFA and of the ones that do, have enough reading comprehension to understand what the article is telling them.
This needs modding (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:This needs modding (Score:4, Insightful)
Vodka Tonic (Score:2)
I prefer to just drink a few extra vodka tonics [wikipedia.org] to prevent malaria when I'm in locations that are known to have it in the mosquito population :)
Um, OK. (Score:2)
Re:Um, OK. (Score:4, Informative)
Presumably because areas with Malaria problems are poor, really fucking poor, as in they've never seen a dollar. That makes distributing a vaccine difficult, since you can't have the locals pay for it, nor do they have a good infrastructure for the delivery even if the Gates foundation or the like picks up the tab.
This method isn't really practical for the same reasons, but TFA mentions a live vaccine that could conceivably be used the same way, and cheaply.
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Ok, when I was a child I too was "afraid" of needles (as most kids probably are). But now I don't see the problem anymore, it's very very short sting that fades away immediately and doesn't even hurt much to begin with.
In contrast, a mosquito bite is bound to itch for hours.
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I got given one of those US coins that's the same size as a new 5p (is the "dime" the tiny one?) once, though, in place of a real 5p, which was somewhat annoying.
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No, what you haven't seen is the physical representation of a dollar. But thats just a piece of paper in the end, and your pounds or whatever they're called are worth a fair bit more than a dollar iirc.
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"Those and developed malaria"? (Score:4, Insightful)
Rephrase, please. The control group did what?
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I think they are missing something (Score:4, Informative)
I grew up in Central African Republic and have had malaria once, and also had dozens of relapses. Malaria stays in your blood and you are at risk for a relapse even after you have recovered with or without medicine. Go server in the US military and contract Malaria while you are overseas on assignment and you will get an extra 600 check each month because it is considered a permanent disability.
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People can have falciparum relapses and onset of symptoms, partcularly for cerebral malaria can be delayed as well.
Better housing/living conditions instead? (Score:2)
I might be wrong, but I believe that the spread of malaria is largely due to badly constructed houses into which the fly is able to enter through cracks during night. If the money went into establishing better living conditions in the affected areas, the threat of malaria in those areas would be lesser, as well as having obvious additional benefits for the people living there.
Just my 2p.
Cool (Score:2)
This is so true to the word science, not only can we change the hiv virus to now attack cancer cells, we can genetically change mosquitos to give us our vaccines against all diseases, including one that they would be responsible for giving to us in the first place.
I say create the super bugs, and fill them with all those good strands of cures for all the worst out there, and then they can feast on our living flesh as we all laugh knowing we are getting vaccinated instead of some random disease.
Half measures... (Score:2)
Why not deliver all medicine this way? They are basically tiny flying needles after all!
RTFA (Score:5, Informative)
The "vaccine" is the parasite itself... oh just RTFA.
Yes it is. (Score:5, Informative)
I read it, and it is a vaccine.
From Wikipedia, bold by me.
A vaccine is a biological preparation that improves immunity to a particular disease. A vaccine typically contains a small amount of an agent that resembles a microorganism. The agent stimulates the body's immune system to recognize the agent as foreign, destroy it, and "remember" it, so that the immune system can more easily recognize and destroy any of these microorganisms that it later encounters.
from tjer article:
"This is not a vaccine" as in a commercial product"
It is not produced like a vaccines are ready for commercial use. In fact it may never be anything but a 'study aid' to learn more about getting a commercially available product.
"The concept already is in commercial development. A company in Rockville, Md. â" Sanaria Inc. â" is testing a vaccine using whole parasites that have been irradiated to weaken them, hopefully keeping them in an immature stage in the liver to generate immunity but not cause illness."
so, yes this concept is being used as a vaccine, just not for malaria.
OK, UTFA (Score:5, Informative)
OK, UNDERSTAND the fine article.
The only place where mosquitoes are involved here is that they're exposing the volunteers to mosquitoes to infect them with parasites that are weakened (in their body) through quinine. That part, that is, using mosquitoes to infect the people with parasites, is the part that's not commercially viable... the company in Rockville is using externally weakened parasites... weakened OUTSIDE the body by radiation... no mosquitoes involved.
Two better articles: Nature and ScienceDaily (Score:5, Informative)
These are better articles:
Mosquitoes against malaria? [nature.com]. Quote: 'In what AP [google.com] describe as a "daring experiment" with "astounding" results, researchers found that ten people subjected to mosquito bites three times over three months whilst taking the drug chloroquine gained apparent immunity against malarial mosquito bites a month later.'
Effective Vaccine For Malaria Possible, Study Shows [sciencedaily.com]. Quote: "This unique method of immunization allowed the human immune system to direct its response to eliminating the P. falciparum parasite at the earlier, liver stage of its life cycle. (Chloroquine kills the parasite at the later blood stage.)"
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The control group don't get anything though, so I wonder what they did to keep it safe.
Best article of all (Score:2)
Also a good editorial: http://content.nejm.org/cgi/content/full/361/5/522 [nejm.org]
The big problem is that they finally got a good, cheap, effective, safe drug, artemisin, against the Plasmodium falciparum parasite, but it's becoming resistant.
The reason it's becoming resistant is that people in Pailin, Cambodia were using artemisin alone. If they use it alone, the P. falciparum can develop resistance to i
Re:Mutation (Score:4, Funny)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elvis [wikipedia.org]
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Re:I think they filed the test subjects (Score:4, Informative)
Well the vaccinated group will never be vulnerable to malaria again...
Says who? Because it is a new study they have not been able to see how long the immunity remains. Also they used mosquitoes infected with Plasmodium falciparum [wikipedia.org] which is one but not the only parasite which causes malaria. Immunity also presupposes it won't evolve.
Falcon
Re:Terrible idea. (Score:5, Insightful)
How the hell did that post get to +4? Must be heartless mod night on /.
Did you know that Africa could feed itself, and half the world if they simply stopped fighting. Went to modern farming techniques and stopped fighting? That Zimbabwe was once the breadbasket of Africa and fed nearly the entire sub-content before Mugabe came to power. I for one welcome the eradication of diseases that are terrible and crippling.
Perhaps we should just stop all immunizations world wide, and let people drop dead. Well that's fine with me, I'm vaccinated against everything I can be. But tell that to some 4 year old kid who will never walk and live in an iron lung because mommy and daddy had a conscience attack, and refused to give her a polio vaccination.
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If they suddenly lose the deaths toll from malaria, and do not stop fighting, they won't have the infrastructure to support the extra mouths.
If they stopped fighting, they could support it relatively easily, assuming they don't have to worry about things like gov't corruption.
Now, the key question: How likely are they to stop fighting each other?
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That, is something I don't have an answer to. Takes a smarter mind then mine to figure it out. Besides, I'm more focused on macro-ethical, and socio-economics than interpersonal, and tribal which is a shame because that's where 90% of all conflict originiates.
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>
Did you know that Africa could feed itself, and half the world if they simply stopped fighting. Went to modern farming techniques and stopped fighting?
The situation is actually far worse than that. E.g., fairly stable countries like Burkina Faso could easily generate more money than they need every year with their cotton production, if it weren't for
If you ever have the opportunity, I'd strongly
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How the hell did that post get to +4? Must be heartless mod night on /.
Did you know that Africa could feed itself, and half the world if they simply stopped fighting. Went to modern farming techniques and stopped fighting? That Zimbabwe was once the breadbasket of Africa and fed nearly the entire sub-content before Mugabe went insane and power hungry. I for one welcome the eradication of diseases that are terrible and crippling.
Perhaps we should just stop all immunizations world wide, and let people drop dead. Well that's fine with me, I'm vaccinated against everything I can be. But tell that to some 4 year old kid who will never walk and live in an iron lung because mommy and daddy had a conscience attack, and refused to give her a polio vaccination.
Adjusted for you. Zimbabwe remained perfectly productive and stable for more than a decade after Mugabe took power. It wasn't till he became paranoid that the problems started.
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He was always insane and power hungry. However like many dictators, you can't crush those under you until you've secured your power base and remove those that have a chance of removing you from power. That consolidation.
It can take months(rarely), years(more often), and decades(the rarest). Just take a look at any dictatorship in t
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What he said had truth in it, even if it does have a somber meaning.
I'm sure he isn't gleefully advocating the idea that no one in Africa should get immunized, and you're creating a straw man by implied he is. He's pointing out the dangerous population explosion that will occur in Africa in the next ten-ish years. Africa will not be able to handle this population explosion, and all of your silly bleeding heart rhetoric wo
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Humanity creates it's own solutions. I can say, I'm not a liberal. But an evil blood sucking conservative. You're faced with a problem, you find a consider, and find a solution. We're pretty good at doing that, don't worry. Population explosions aren't anything to worry about.
You're faced with a need for more food? You continue to modify crops as need be to improve yields. Big shock, we've been doing it for the last 15,000 years. And actually he implied that it should be a choice, I'm at the opposite
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I never said vaccines should be stopped. I support a vaccine. I said it was a terrible idea to not administer the vaccine program without some contraceptive programs which would help reduce incidence of aids and children out of wedlock and would encourage stable, sustainable population trends.
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We had eugenics in Canada at one time. Ugly business that, immoral not to mention highly unethical. There's some lines you shouldn't cross. There's some lines you can't cross, there's some lines that when you do cross, you're just an evil fuck.
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Really its sick that you would mention such a thing.
Family planning and educational programs are completely humane and ethical and simply provide information so people can make better, more sustainable reproductive choices. Why, if we cant already feed the people we have, do we want to encourage rapid population growth which will result in millions more starving children. Every 5 seconds another child starves to death. Those who resist family planning and educational programs which simply educate people to
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Also I question the ethics of administering a vaccine in a way that people cannot resist it. It should be a basic right to refuse a vaccine, adn the only people that would effect is those who do not accept the vaccine. Why not just deliver the vaccine in a shot?
Woah, where did all of that come from? Why would you even think that?
All subjects provided written informed consent. The trial was approved by the institutional review board at the Radboud University Nijmegen Medical Centre.
And you got modded +5 insightful, for asking a question already answered in the article... :/
I think I just threw up in my throat a little
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The best way to get the population levels down is to have a better life standard. Just look at the birth rates in Europe and North America.
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The best way to get the population levels down is to have a better life standard. Just look at the birth rates in Europe and North America.
Actually, America's population is increasing, but you're right: it's not because Americans are breeding more Americans. But yeah, I understand that Germany is suffering a severe population decline. That's too bad: they still make the bulk of the world's precision machine tools.
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I totally agree (not). We should allow blind drivers too, and the RIAA should be allowed to bankrupt file sharers out of house and home to they die on the streets. Too many people is the problem and the way to solve it is to kill them.
Here you are with a problem (lack of resources) to which the natural solution is to let people die... were it only so. Ignoring the facts of the situation (Africa's "problems" derive from war and conflict as much as too many people; malaria is a disease that even nature cannot
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I never said that we should not administer the vaccine. I said the vaccine should be administered with a contraceptive and education program to encourage stable and sustainable population trends. This policy would prevent many deaths. Didnt you read what i said? Good grief.
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Do you nthink food shortages which ALREADY exist will get any better with a rapid increases in population growth? The birth rates are already very high in africa so in many cases its likely that malaria brings it just down to replacement level. We know that population growth is unsustainable in the long run as sure as the sun sets in the west, simply because the earth has a limited surface area, arable land is limited and it takes fairly ideal, uncommon conditions to grow a decent diet, so we shouldnt struc
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I did not say it was a terrible idea. Its a good idea. I said it was a terrible idea to administer a vaccine without a contraceptive program to encourage sustainable, stable population trends.
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I never said population should becontrolled with disease? Did you even read what I wrote before you sent this rubbish? I believe that the vaccine should be provided and that contraceptives provided and education along with the vaccine program.
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I said that we should administer the vaccine and at the same time, deliver contraceptives and educational programs for sustainable, stable population levels. This would help prevent poverty and suffering by preventing depletion of the finite land and water resources they have to work with. More population growth would lead to increases in starvation and suffering, and this happens in places as well where malaria is not a big problem simply because land and water resources are just so overexploited. I am not
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I never said that the vaccine program would be conditional on contraceptive program but they should be provided simultaneously. They are educational programs and family planning services. If we ever wish to help these people and get poverty under control, we need to provide these services so that they are better informed to make better reproductive choices. We have limited land and water resources. The fact that millions die of starvation every yer and this planet is teetering on ecological collapse with ma
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I never said that. I said the vaccine should be delivered along with contraceptives and education to encourage stable, sustainable population levels. Even where malaria is not common, there are still problems with exhaustion of resources due to overexplotation and increasing demand due to population growth, or we are destroying rainforests and killing off whats left of the planets oxygen producers. There are a lot of countries with very high poverty and almost no malaria. So dont try to think hat getting ri
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The Nijmegan group is a different group from Sanaria, which is a US based organization. The former is what this article was about, the latter is irradiating anopheles.
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Please listen to this poster. Or perhaps read the article yourself.
There is NO vaccine which is delivered via mosquitoes. The researchers were testing the effectiveness of chloroquine in conjunction with moderate exposure to the malaria parasite in an attempt to boost immunity in the host.
The bottom line is that you still need to take a drug on a regular basis, and that drug isn't perfect.
Little has changed since the days of tonic water. Sorry.
-FL