Oxford University Tests Universal Flu Vaccine 218
dbune writes "A universal flu vaccine has been tested by scientists at Oxford University. '... the vaccine targets proteins inside the flu virus that are common across all strains, instead of those that sit on the virus's external coat, which are liable to mutate. If used widely a universal flu vaccine could prevent pandemics, such as the swine flu outbreaks of recent years, and end the need for a seasonal flu jab.'"
Horatio says... (Score:2, Funny)
This... *sunglasses* ...is nothing to sneeze at.
YEAAAAAAAAAAH!
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Do you really want to grouse about where the Natalie Portman, naked and / or petrified with / without hot grits jokes went?
Judging from all the haters of the new Slashdot redesign, I'm guessing Slashdot became Digg a few weeks ago, since that's when Digg fell from grace. When I joined Slashdot in 2000 (?), it was seemingly centered around hacking the Netpliance iOpener [wikipedia.org] -- a younger coworker and my father both pointed me t
side effects include... (Score:5, Funny)
counting toothpicks and knowing when to double down.
Worldwide death toll (Score:5, Insightful)
The worldwide death toll from the flu and its complications is in the hundreds of thousands [paho.org]. This is potentially more than just preventing an occasional annoying illness. It's more on the order of preventing all fatalities from traffic accidents.
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I'm betting it'll still get blamed for Autism, despite the vaccination being 1 mercury-free shot.
Why? Because Autism won't go away 100% even if we only give one (or zero) vaccines.
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What if they someday develop a vaccine (I'm using the term loosely, I know) that prevents Autism? Will the parents' heads explode with the dilemma?
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Nope, because everybody knows that particular shot causes dyslexia.
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If the crazy lines for the regular seasonal flu shot are any indicator, very few people are concerned about it.
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There's already a bunch of them who say bafflingly stupid things like 'smallpox wasn't stopped by vaccines' and 'measles never hurt anyone.'
The most bafflingly (great modifier, btw) stupid is when the anti-vaxxers (great noun, btw) say "We don't vaccinate our children because we believe that living a healthy lifestyle is the best protection." Whatever the hell that means.
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Anti-vaxxers? That sounds like a UNIX greybeard convention.
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living a healthy lifestyle is the best protection
Living in a place with lots of vaccinated people, hence very low overall infectivity / no epidemics?
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This is probably a bit of a stretch, but I remember driving home from work the day I came down with swine[1] flu. Nearly caused 3 accidents myself. In retrospect I should have gotten a lift home but like being drunk, you don't always appreciate how incapacitated you are at the time. Even without people dying as a direct result of the flu there is still a huge cost to it, even if you just count the sick days.
[1] never actually diagnosed as 'swine flu' specifically, but it was at the peak of the swine flu sea
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The people who die in car crashes probably have a better average quality of life and higher average remaining life expectancy than the typical person who dies of flu.
They also are more likely to be jackasses, too. So I'd much prefer a prevention of flu than fatalities from traffic accidents.
Re:Worldwide death toll (Score:5, Funny)
The people who die in car crashes probably have a better average quality of life and higher average remaining life expectancy than the typical person who dies of flu.
No, I'm quite sure they're still both dead.
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True, but traffic deaths are in tens of thousands, flu deaths are 1-2 million per year. You are not even comparing apple and oranges, you are comparing house cats, and smilodons.
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Worldwide flu death is estimated at between 250k and 500k per year [cnn.com]. Car accident fatalities are estimated at 1.2 million per year [wikipedia.org]. So the difference is a factor between 2 and 5 (not terribly high), and in the opposite direction from what you supposed.
Re:Worldwide death toll (Score:4, Informative)
Being subjective doesn't get you anywhere. If there are only enough healthcare dollars to save Frank xor Joe, then you need objective criteria for determining which you save. Frank doesn't get to die just because he isn't "enjoying life" enough. Discounting life based on perceived quality is exactly what we do. Take the terminal cancer patient for example. We could let them die in as little pain as possible when the usual treatment options fail, or we could perform CPR until every rib is broken and defibrillate until their chest is burnt leather, from the reasoning that, even in their pain-filled non-communicative state, we can't make judgments of their quality of life.
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Good points, and I agree.
My issue still persists in that you still need to be subjective in determining the objective criteria - I'm not claiming there is a better way though.
The parent to which I replied did not seem to be referring to the same objective measures you raise.
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(there's some common surgical procedure, of knee / etc. I believe, which has been shown to give no better results than placebo... we waste resources on it only because it's "demanded" - so I'd say that things which people think are important for their quality of life, may be easi
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Tough call which is the greater good, preventing all automobile fatalities, or preventing all influenza deaths.
Not that tough really. In the absence of a perfect and universal flu vaccine you simply can't prevent all influenza deaths. I can come up with several solutions to prevent all automobile fatalities, but nobody would like them, they wouldn't get implemented (or obeyed), and people would still die on the roads.
If you do the cost/benefit analysis on it then the answer is pretty easy. I bet the billions of dollars being spent on flu vaccine could save thousands or millions of lives (and all the other associated
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Agreed. Wish I had some mod points to mod this up. If not being killed in traffic accidents, the people who cause traffic accidents will kill themselves and/or people around them one way or another. Human incompetence in incurable.
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car fatalities have a certain element of Darwinian selection to them (people doing stupid things in cars) although somewhat imperfect as they can carry collateral loss of innocent lives
"They can" is a bit of an understatement... (especially since, but not only, places where people tend to drive alone are fairly atypical; plus: even if just the perpetrator gets hurt... that's the thing, it will probably be "hurt" not "dead" - clogging health services, perhaps ending with disability / pity & care-demanding individual dependent on others for the rest of life; and even very premature death due to recklessness can be seen as a kind of violation of social contract)
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Bullshit.
1. Multi-vehicle accidents have an increased risk of fatalities, if only due to combined velocities being greater in so many cases. Do you really want to claim that all the persons in a multi-vehicle accident are at fault?
2. One of the jerkiest things a driver can do is buy an SUV and not be able to handle such a big vehicle properly.That's just one of many examples of a jerk passing the consequences along to an innocent victim.
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The bottomline is, almost all road accidents are caused by jerks, or people who have no idea how to drive yet somehow got their licences. About the only ways to reduce fatality on the road is to
1. make the road test about 5 times tougher. If you're in north america, 20 times tougher
2. enforce road rules with heavy-hands on top of severe punishments
Since many if not most politicians are either jerks or people who have no idea how to drive yet got their licences, I doubt they'll actually make any real effor
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That's all we need. The world population is growing too rapidly, and they may just have a solution to fix it. Well, I guess we can all be happy in knowing that it will increase violent crimes (and traffic accidents), which should help deal with all those pesky extra humans.
It may seem wrong to say that we shouldn't do it, but really should we screw with the natural controls on population any more than we already have?
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Statistically we are actually overdue for one of those strains to hit, which is part of what fuels the media frenzy every time a new strain of flu is discovered.
Please, you give them too much credit.
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Why would a healthy person need a flu vaccine anyway? Flu's [sic] are normal and should exist, and, if you're healthy you'll manage through a flu just fine.
I'm married, I have two kids under the age of 3, why on earth would I want to risk catching the flu? I'm not going to die, but I am going to be miserable, my wife's going to stress having to look after me *and* the kids and I'm going to pass it to everyone at home.
Stop playing with nature.
Vaccines aren't 'playing with nature' - They're using one of
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You're trolling, right? Can you at least back that up with some sort of a citation.
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Here in Finland many children have got narcolepsy (for life!) as a "side effect" from the H1N1 vaccine. .
No they have not. Vaccinations were suspended on fear of a possible link. But no evidence has been found. Just another false alarm that get far more media attention than the subsequent negative findings.
A classic example of hysterical anti-vaccine, anti-science rumour-mongering here.
Zombies (Score:5, Funny)
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But this got me to thinking, not only would this work against the flu virus it would probably work against herpes, HIV, etc.
Meh. (Score:2)
Of course there's one question (Score:5, Funny)
Good luck with that... (Score:2)
FWIW, there's a bit of precedent here: no infectious form of syphilis has ever developed penicillin resistance. As I understand it, there have been some strains developed in laboratories that are penicillin-resistant, but none of them are capable of infecting human cells. IOW, there is a possibility that in mutating so that the proteins are no longer recognized by c
Would this work for the Common Cold? (Score:2)
The Flu and the Common Cold are both viruses that mutate often, right? Would the same idea work for the common cold?
Please excuse my ignorance if there is an obvious reason why this wouldn't work. My degrees are in computers not medicine.
Re:Would this work for the Common Cold? (Score:4, Insightful)
The common cold isn't caused by one virus, there's many different ones which are responsible. So in other words you could probably create an immunization to cover most of it, but you'd be stuck developing a vaccine like this for each of them ones.
This line in TFA confused me (Score:2)
The treatment – using a new technique and tested for the first time on humans infected with flu –
You don't give vaccines to people who are already infected. I realize that this vaccine attacks a whole class, but it's not going to be much good on a specific virus that has already infected the body.
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So does this mean you take the vaccine once (or twice) and never get the flu again ever?
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Most vaccines present weakened viruses so that the body's immune system will know how to fight it. Once it's gained a +5 Antibody of Influenza-Slaying, it can defeat the higher-level flu viruses.
This treatment is a substance that boosts T-cell count, so it doesn't only work as a vaccine.
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It's badly worded, it's saying that they were deliberately infected after being vaccinated not that they were already infected when they were vaccinated.
RF (Score:2)
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Kill most all viruses, invulnerable ones yet live? (Score:2, Insightful)
the vaccine targets proteins inside the flu virus that are common across all strains
Huzza! Resistant Virus strains of the world, UNITE! The time has come for those of us in minority to rise up against our new protein targeting foe! Our cousins, brothers, sisters, mothers and fathers have been killed by these anti-protein wielding vaccinologists!
Behold the folly of their folly! They ignore us outliers, complacent that we have not the capability to fill the niches left by our lost brethren.
TL;DR: Meh, mutants; The ones you don't target will become the next Flu epidemic -- Do we really wa
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So, what you're saying is that if we can eliminate a virus to within five nines of total dead, the 0.001% won't be around to cause havoc... The polio vaccine didn't eradicate polio; in fact, new outbreaks in 3rd world countries have occurred [reuters.com], how long until a mutation renders the current vaccines against polio ineffective?
100 years? More? Meh, you won't be alive then, what do you care.
Oh, and Smallpox is totally not a problem anymore. [thaindian.com]
Those 2010 outbreaks are surely just flukes. No cause for alarm folks,
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Those 2010 outbreaks are surely just flukes. No cause for alarm folks, we've got that whole biology thing understood, constrained and conquered.
In every single case of an outbreak of a vaccine-preventable disease, it's easily traced to anti-vaccination hysteria. In other words, we do in fact have the biology understood; the only reason it's not "constrained and conquered" is because there's no vaccine for stupidity.
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Depends on selection pressure (Score:2)
IANAnE (Epidemologist) but I would think that the likelihood of creating virii that would be invulnerable to the vaccine would depend on whether there would be selection pressure to make it so. While the virii are being transmitted from human to human there is obvious selection pressure for those strains that are resistant. However I believe that most flu epidemics originate in animal (other species) hosts which serve as a long-term reservoir. It is when they cross the species barrier (typically in south
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"Do we really want to breed viruses which are that much harder to kill?"
I hate this argument, as it is akin to the following:
"why do I have to take a shower, I'll just get dirty again"
"why do I want to get better, I'll just get sick again"
Yes, actually, we do want to breed more resistant bacteria. You know, because it would save the 36000 people that die annually in the United States alone (http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2010/08/26/129456941/annual-flu-death-average-fluctuates-depending-on-how-you-slice-i
Pandemic? (Score:2)
Is it bad that I read this article while I was playing Pandemic 2 [addictinggames.com]? I wanted to take a shot at infecting Madagascar again, and now I realize that it's 4 hours later.
Re:1 question (Score:4, Funny)
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But look on the bright side, if you are able to survive the zombie apocalypse for a couple of years until these people come of age you will finally able to get authentic barely legal giantess porn with a bestiality twist thrown in!
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Oh, wait, you mean he completely cooked that study for his own gain? Well, mercury still causes autism! I'm not sure why, but I'm sure it does!
Oh, wait, you mean thimerosal was pulled from just about all childhood vaccines ten years ago and they no longer have any mercury in them? Well, they still cause autism! I don't know why, but I'm sure they do!
Re:1 question (Score:5, Interesting)
The desperate hangers-on to the entirely discredited "vaccine" = "autism" theory recall another bizarre and desperate group I saw on a TV show the other day.
They were having a panel of "crop circle experts" discuss all the mysterious alien influences and methodology underlying a nearby crop circle flap. After a few hours, some people stand up at the back, and state that *they* made the crop circles. They also showed a video-tape of themselves making the crop circles. The crop circle experts claimed - in all seriousness - that the aliens FAKED the tape, and then brainwashed the people into claiming they were responsible.
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I don't know why I'm yelling, but I am!
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Re:Hmm.. (Score:4, Interesting)
Can you guess where I'm going with this? ..... Small.... sample.... size....
Here's a hint: Yesterday, the NFC won the coin toss for the super bowl. That makes 14 years in a row that the NFC has won the coin toss. Does that prove that the coin toss is not random?
Re:Hmm.. (Score:5, Informative)
"We did get an indication that the vaccine was protecting people, not only from the numbers of people who got flu but also from looking at their T-cells before we gave them flu. The people we vaccinated had T-cells that were more activated. The people we hadn't vaccinated had T-cells as well but they were in a resting state so they would probably have taken longer to do anything. The volunteers we vaccinated had T-cells that were activated, primed and ready to kill. There were more T-cells in people we vaccinated and they were more activated."
This test appears to be about safety and confirming some sort of t-cell response, not effectiveness.
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It's plausible. It's been done for toxins. But the moment anyone uses this in Pigs to protect them it will be worthless in a few years.
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Only if you sleep with your pigs.
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The reason why regular vaccines rapidly become useless is because the flu mutates certain parts of itself that immune system targets at an incredible rate so it can avoid your immune system. This new vaccine instead targets those parts of the virus that don't constantly mutate.
Can the virus mutate to get around this, well, yes, but not easily, it'll most likely be no more effective at negating this vaccine tha
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The correct terms are "developed countries" and "developing countries". FWIW, a 'second world country' is a 'communist country'.
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Brain not engaged....
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Don't buy into the BIG CRACKA chiropractic scam!
"Discloser:" I am an average adult male with over 15 years of common sense. A true bullshit-detecting professional.
Facts: Chiropracty causes your wallet to become lighter and nothing much else, Penn and Teller have proven it. These brave men have been vilified by the BIG CRACKA controlled BIG INTERNETS.
All a person needs for good health and long life are:
1) Proper nutrition.
2) Plenty of exercise.
3) Regular critical thinking exercises.
4) Avoid BIG CRACKA contro
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Yeah, it sounds like a good excuse for big pharma to give us all autism!
(I'm joking, by the way.)
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Indeed, it is in fact a bad idea to tackle the seasonal flu. The flu mutates every year, and our immune system is able to learn a new defence. The seasonal flu is not a danger in countries with basic hygiene and sufficient access to medical facilities. If all such flu mutations are killed at once, more drastic mutations that haven't occurred due to lack of selection pressure will appear, expectedly more dangerous than the current strains. This is exactly what we see today with broadband antibiotics: Some pe
Re:Hmm.. (Score:5, Insightful)
"The seasonal flu is not a danger in countries with basic hygiene and sufficient access to medical facilities."
Since some years over 49000 people died of the flu in the US (_with_ umpteen millions vaccinated), does that mean it's not a country with basic hygiene and sufficient access to medical facilities?
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Those people would have otherwise died a week later from something else. Generally, people who die from flu are old and/or weak. But you knew this, didn't you ?
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Those people would have otherwise died a week later from something else.
Bullshit, you don't have to already be on deaths doorstep to die of flu, you just have to get a bad case of pneumonia from it.
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Those people would have otherwise died a week later from something else. Generally, people who die from flu are old and/or weak. But you knew this, didn't you ?
Of course many of "those people" are kids under five (according to the graphic by age group on https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Influenza [wikimedia.org] ), and for pandemics there are big peaks for the 15-40 age group, on par with the "old foggey" levels. But you knew this, didn't you ?
Yes, it is true that the old and infirm are particularly hit by flu deaths, but the majority of those who die do not have a life expectancy measured in weeks independent of their flu infection. If you have information to the c
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Shrinkage and uncontrollable flatulence.
Well, it's as realistic as it causing autism or metal toxicity via thermasol.
Scleroderma?
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OK, I'll bite - Scleroderma is seemingly genetic, so ... ?
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"Papa Doc" Duvalier of Haiti once threatened to cause "shrinker" in his enemies.
It does seem to be genetically predisposed; however, I think it can be treated as autoimmune.
At least I did not reference the merchants' use of shrinkage meaning theft.
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While mutations certainly help a virus in evading the immune system there are some parts of the virus(namely how it binds to the host cell) that canno
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Re:Anybody with knowledge in the field.. (Score:4, Informative)
Well, I am by no means an expert on this stuff, but I think the idea is to make what's called a protein subunit vaccine. They take a key protein from the disease and implant it in some other virus. Your body attacks that virus and develops an immune response to the targeted protein. It's being used in experimental vaccines for AIDS and, apparently, Influenza. However, I don't know if there are any cases of it being done successfully on a large scale.
If it works out, it would be fantastic - effective vaccination for two of the worlds biggest killers, which could potentially save millions of lives per year. However, first they need to get it working, and then they need to find a way to make it cheap enough to use in the third world, since that's where most of the deaths occur. It might help that a universal flu vaccine would be very popular in the first world, and could provide them with the money to ramp production.
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I love that there's this kind of development in vaccination, but I'm concerned.
Call me callous and cold, but overpopulation is already a major issue in many parts of the world (India, China, etc)
I wonder if it's such a good idea to simply "wipe out" the world's two biggest killers.
We would rather cling to the planet until we kill it than let ourselves decline. Nothing else does this to its environment, except ironically, diseases. And with no method of "transmission" to another host, we're boned if we keep
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If you really want to be a cynical bastard, you could say it'd be great to get rid of the random killers like influenza so we can wipe out populations in a more controlled manner. War or severe economic sanctions might do the trick, for instance. Hail Malthus and all that.
I like your idea about better sustainability better.
Re:Anybody with knowledge in the field.. (Score:4, Insightful)
Oddly enough, reducing mortality rates goes a long ways towards lowering population growth. People who expect their children to survive will have fewer of them and invest more resources into the ones they have.
Re:Anybody with knowledge in the field.. (Score:4, Insightful)
I was going to post that. Another thing which is really great for decreasing population growth is ensuring that parents don't have to be supported by their children in old age. That reduces the pressure to produce many children and as a result parents tend to have fewer children or none at all of their own choosing.
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unfortunately many of the world's populations do not have the resources to be able to afford such luxuries.
I hate to be the one to bring these polarizing issues up, but it is something that will come to bite us unless we work for efficient technology and _actual_ global prosperity so that most of the world can live like the western world does, able to choose if they want children, often stopping at two or three.
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"Insightful," my ass. (Score:5, Insightful)
We all know that the drug manufacturers wont produce this vaccine. Currently they have a constant revenue stream with a new vaccine needed seasonly. Greed is better than a cure. It's a false hope.
Why does this nonsense always get a mod-up?
Look around you.
See anyone dying of Smallpox? Measles? Polio? Diphtheria? Tetanus? Has your daughter received the HPV - Cervical Cancer vaccine?
There is big money to made in treating cancer.
Why do you suppose that this vaccine wasn't suppressed?
The answer is that the cure brings with it a new level of understanding. It exposes opportunites that had never before been seiously considered.
When most men and women were in failing health along about age 45 or so, it didn't make much sense to put real money into studying arthritis, cancer, glaucoma, senile dementias, and so on.
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See anyone dying of Smallpox? Measles? Polio? Diphtheria? Tetanus?
How much money each year did pharmaceutical companies make from selling palliatives for those conditions? Vaccine sales are chump change - Big Pharma makes billions per year selling over-the-counter "remedies" to suppress the symptoms. They aren't going to be happy with an effective vaccine that can substantially reduce demand for those products.
Assuming larger trials prove this vaccine to be effective, I expect it to become commonplace in Europe fairly quickly. But in the US, given Big Pharma's influenc
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"According to the BBC, those who've had the swine flu get super-immunity to the common cold amongst other things.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-12152500 [bbc.co.uk]"
The article doesn't mention the common cold anywhere.
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"If used widely a universal flu vaccine could prevent pandemics, such as the swine flu outbreaks of recent years, and end the need for a seasonal flu jab."
I didn't read the journal article, but it sounds as though somebody's advocating distributing this vaccine every year during flu season (prophylactically).
If a vaccine is successful, shouldn't we hold on to it and only distribute it during potential emergencies such as the emergence of H1N1? I would think the last thing we should be doing is breeding super vaccine-resistant flu viruses by over-medicating. It seems like whenever a new treatment is discovered, we deploy it immediately. Suppose if we deployed this new flu vaccine, in the best case scenario, we could save a hundred thousand lives per year, every year, for a decade or two, (and there's probably a lot of profit to be made in the process). But if we distribute the vaccine sparingly, perhaps it would remain effective for longer, and we could save tens of millions of lives when the next pandemic hits.
It's an interesting mathematical dilemma, but I've never seen anybody bring this up. What is the best solution?
(I've had this question for a while. It seems like a great question for the slashdot crowd.)
Vaccines are only effective BEFORE someone is infected, and even then they need time to work. By the time it's a wide spread emergency or pandemic it's too late to immunize.
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Vaccines are only effective BEFORE someone is infected,
For flu maybe. But rabies vaccine for example works after you are infected, as the infection moves slowly.